Turkey’s military offensive in Afrin is also an example of how refugees are instrumentalized to gain domestic support for foreign policy ambitions. From integration policies to electoral politics, migration is often discussed as a domestic policy issue. Yet rarely does its possible connection with foreign policy attract attention (see a few exceptions). One recent example is Megan Barlow’s latest openDemocracy article where she argues that the Turkish government employs refugees not only as political tools for foreign ambitions, but also for reinforcing a conservative and Islamist ideology. My argument follows the same line of thought by situating Turkey’s instrumentalization of refugees in the context of its co-operation with the EU over migration. Hosting the highest number of refugees from Syria, around 3.5 million, Turkey’s refugee and foreign policy have been increasingly intertwined in recent years, especially since 2015 which was a year of crisis for both the EU and Turkey. By providing a chronology of the domestic and regional events occurring since then, I suggest that the EU-Turkey Statement on refugees, and the preceding Joint Action Plan unintentionally but inextricably intertwined Turkey’s national security concerns on its Syrian border with EU border control management policies. 2015: a year of political crisis for the EU An unprecedented and rapid refugee movement via the Aegean Sea hit Europe in the fall of 2015. The lack of internal agreement among EU Member States over a common asylum policy, on the one hand, and the upcoming elections in 2016 in several Member States in which the refugees featured prominently on the other hand, turned this unprecedented movement into a political crisis. The EU-Turkey Statement, issued in March 2016, and the preceding Joint Action Plan in November 2015 came as a pragmatic, and supposedly, short-term response to this crisis. According to the Statement, Turkey agreed to prevent irregular migration to Europe: migrants and asylum-seekers arriving in Greece whose applications had been declared inadmissible or unfounded would be returned to Turkey; and for every Syrian refugee returned from Greece to Turkey, a Syrian would be resettled in Europe – up to a total limit of 72,000. In return, the EU agreed to grant visa liberalization for Turkish citizens under a number of preconditions including complying with the EU’s data protection and antiterrorism laws; renewing accession talks; new negotiations on the customs union; and financial aid amounting to 3+3 billion euros to support refugees. 2015: a year of political crisis for Turkey For Turkey, as well, 2015 was a year of turmoil. Turkey, by then, had already reached its institutional capacity to accommodate a high number of refugees. In March 2015, it partially closed the Syrian border, moving away from the open door policy that had been adopted since the eruption of the Syrian war in 2011, and launched a project to build a border wall in September 2016. Domestically, the parliamentary elections in June 2015 made the continuation of single party rule under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government impossible as the Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP) passed the ten per cent electoral threshold. In July 2015, the ceasefire between the Kurdistan Workers‘ Army (PKK) and the Turkish army came to an end. An urban war erupted in the Kurdish towns and cities, leading to the death of 3,386 people and to the displacement of an estimated 500,000 people from their homes under the curfews that were implemented across the southeast of Turkey. The AKP subsequently won enough votes in snap elections called for November 2015, and continued as a single party government. Turkey was also further constrained at the time in regional politics, especially following the involvement of the US and Russia in the Syrian War. The US ground intervention in 2014, aimed at curbing the rise of ISIS in Syria, and its alliance with the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the military wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) – allegedly an offshoot of the PKK – in the fight against ISIS ran counter to Turkey’s anti-Kurdish position in Syria. The involvement of Russia in September 2015 in support of Bashar Al Assad simultaneously posed a threat to Turkey’s anti-Assad ambitions. Refugees: a bargaining chip in foreign policy aims Institutionally, domestically and regionally constrained, Turkey since 2015 have been aggressively pushing for the establishment of safety zones in Northern Syria, allegedly to settle refugees. On September 4, 2015, in the wake of the death of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi in an Aegean Sea crossing, Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu said that “Turkey tried to convince the international community to establish a safety zone in Syria. They thought that we were pursuing our own national security concerns. So who will protect the Syrians? Today is the day to cooperate and act together.” In November 2015, Turkey put forward a proposal for safe zones after the YPG captured Tel Abyad in June 2015 and ISIS made gains towards Azaz. In February 2016, the Turkish government revived the proposal with the argument that it could be extended as far as 10 km into Syria in order to help prevent hundreds of refugees from crossing the border as they fled a Russian-backed advance. As the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is a member, advanced towards the West of Euphrates and captured Manbij in August 2016, Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield. In February 2017, Turkey, in cooperation with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) gained control of Al Bab. Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım during his visit to London in November 2017 suggested that Turkey could renege on the EU-Turkey Statement over refugees if Kurdish forces in Syria were given a role in UN-sponsored peace talks. Afrin The most recent example of Turkey’s instrumentalization of refugees towards the realisation of its foreign policy ambitions is its recent military offensive called “Operation Olive Branch,” which started on January 20, 2018, in the towns and villages around the Kurdish enclave known as Afrin. The military offensive in Afrin came following the US’s announcement that it would build a “border security force” inside Syria that would include the YPG as a key component. In a speech he delivered in Turkey on January 20, President Erdoğan said that the aim of the operation is “to give Afrin back to its real owners, [..], and to return three and a half million Syrians currently living in Turkey back to their home.” On 23 January, the Presidential Spokesperson İbrahim Kalın similarly noted that “the operation would continue until the three and a half million Syrians currently living in Turkey would go back home.” Turkish Armed Forces moved into the city centre of Afrin on 17 March and captured the city on 18 March. In a recent interview, former ambassador Volkan Bozkir stated that the Turkish army would remain in Afrin until there was no more PYD presence in the city; and local councils composed of the local population were founded. “After this,” he noted, “500,000 refugees whom we are currently hosting in Turkey will be replaced in Afrin as we did in Al Bab.” The pro-government national broadcaster TRT published on March 27 photos of three families who returned to Afrin. Instrumentalization of refugees to gain domestic support for foreign policy ambitions Turkey’s military offensive in Afrin is also an example of how refugees are instrumentalized to gain domestic support for foreign policy ambitions. According to a recent survey, some 89 per cent of those who were surveyed supported the country’s military offensive in Afrin. A strong anti-Kurdish nationalism that unites otherwise politically opposed actors is the primary precondition for this high level of domestic support. This may include an increasingly visible anti-refugee sentiment that should not be underestimated. According to a survey conducted by KONDA in 2016, 70 per cent of those who were surveyed stated that it was fine to share the same city with Syrians but the percentages decline to 41 per cent when asked whether they would like to live in the same neighborhood or in the same apartment building. A more recent survey conducted in January 2017 demonstrates that almost 70 per cent of those who were surveyed were worried that Syrians would harm the sociocultural fabric of Turkish society. This increasing discomfort, and even resentment, among the majority Turkish population towards Syrian refugees also manifests itself in accelerating violence especially in urban centers such as Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. According to a report published in January 2018 by the International Crisis Group, incidents of intercommunal violence increased threefold in the second half of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016. Migration management or border management? Turkey remains a crucial partner for the EU when it comes to border management and the control of refugee movements despite the fact that EU-Turkey relations have increasingly soured since the coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016. In a recent meeting in Berlin with her Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz on January 18, 2018, Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that the “EU-Turkey Statement is exactly the formula that helps protect maritime borders.” In an interview in September 2017 with the Greek daily Kathimerini, French President Emmanuel Macron similarly said that even though Turkey “may have strayed from democracy”, he “wants to avoid a split because Turkey is a vital partner especially in immigration and counter-terrorism.” Co-operation with Turkey over migration arguably remains to a pragmatic necessity for the EU, given that the EU is still divided concerning relocation and resettlement of the refugees, on the one hand; and that immigration continues to be a hugely controversial factor in political life, on the other. Yet, this pragmatic necessity puts interests and values in head-on collision. The militarization of Turkey’s domestic Kurdish policy in the summer of 2015, the increasing strength and salience of Kurdish actors in the Syrian war; and EU-Turkey co-operation over migration contingently come together, turning migration management into a first class problem for border management. In this context, the EU-Turkey Statement, and the preceding Joint Action Plan, given their timing, unintentionally intertwined Turkey’s anti-Kurdish security concerns over its Syrian border with the EU‘s wider concerns over border control, to curb refugee movements. (c) 2018 OpenDemocracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/sinem-adar/re-thinking-eu-turkey-co-operation-over-migration

Mohammed is not his real name. He asked me not to share personal details, fearing retaliation from the fighters he passes when he walks around his city. I can say only that Mohammed is a Kurd living in Afrin, a city in northern Syria that was held for more than five years by Kurdish-led forces until it was, about three weeks ago, overrun and occupied by the Turkish army and its proxy forces fighting under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army (SNA), formerly known as the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA). To be a Kurd in Afrin, once a majority Kurdish city, Mohammed says, is now to find oneself a member of a despised group, suspected of disloyalty, and liable to be robbed, beaten, put to flight, or worse. In its seventh year, the Syrian civil war has seen the warring parties and their foreign sponsors foster and exploit ethnic and sectarian divisions in order to realize their strategic ends. The looting and ethnic cleansing of Afrin by Turkish-backed militias is the latest ugly episode of this grim and cynical logic. Afrin is known for its olive trees. In happier days, a friend sent me a bar of its famous olive oil soap, stamped with calligraphy, that he had bought at a market in northern Iraq. After the Syrian regime withdrew in 2012, Afrin and the surrounding district became one of three cantons governed by the PYD, a Kurdish Marxist-Leninist party whose armed wings, the YPG and the all-female YPJ, became America’s partners in liberating Raqqa from ISIS. Afrin’s population swelled with Kurdish and Arab refugees seeking the relative peace of a region that had never been subjected to aerial bombardment, starvation sieges, or factional internecine warfare. Mohammed did not support the PYD. An educated man with a deep interest in Kurdish culture, he felt alienated by what he saw as the party’s ideological rigidity, its arrogance, and by the military conscription it imposed, even on minors. While he appreciated the security its forces brought, he worried that their attacks on neighboring Arab villages would one day be dangerously reciprocated. Also troubling to him was the way the PYD idolized Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, the leftist Kurdish group that has waged a thirty-year guerrilla war against the authorities inside Turkey. (The PYD is widely considered to be an affiliate of the PKK in Syria.) On January 20, Turkey launched an invasion of Afrin, with the ostensible objective of taking out “PKK-PYD-Daesh terrorists”—a conflation of enemies that makes no sense, since thousands of the PYD’s fighters have died over the last five years in a brutal war against Daesh (the Arabic name for ISIS). Turkey’s name for its military campaign—Operation Olive Branch—was just as disingenuous. Over the past six years, the PYD has worked closely with the United States, and occasionally with Russia and the Assad regime, but none of these allies came to its defense when Turkish forces advanced into Afrin. (On April 3, President Trump announced that the US military would immediately withdraw its troops from Syria, then backtracked the next day. Only France has responded to the Turkish aggression by pledging to send troops to reinforce the PYD-held city of Manbij, about seventy miles to the east.) Turkish planes bombed Afrin unmolested by Russian anti-aircraft defenses. By mid-March, Turkey and the SNA had reached the outskirts of Afrin city. Over megaphones, the PYD called on civilians to evacuate. They promised that the YPG and YPJ would fight the invaders from street to street, but this last stand never was. Instead, the YPG and YPJ melted away, sparing Afrin the enormous numbers of civilian casualties that, in this war, have always resulted from resistance to state forces (although at least 300 Afrin civilians were, all the same, killed over the course of Operation Olive Branch). That night, Mohammed met three young YPG fighters, nervously searching for a vehicle in which to flee, and led them to a parked car. He stayed up, listening to a ragged concerto of artillery fire and air strikes. The Turkish army would have journalists with them, he reckoned. Because of this, he hoped, they would enter the city peacefully. I knew Mohammed through his former classmate, Sara, whom I met in 2016 when she was stuck in a refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos. Sara had taught middle school in Aleppo, and she used to delight in the student field trips she had led to Afrin, her hometown. She flicked through the photographs of those happier times while we sat on the floor of a caravan that she and her husband shared with a large Kurdish family. Lacking a cradle, the mother bounced her new baby on her outstretched legs. “Afrin,” the mom called her child: a tiny girl with glistening eyes, born so far from her namesake. Sara’s family stayed behind in Afrin, even after smugglers conveyed Sara to Germany. A few weeks after Operation Olive Branch began, she sent me photos via WhatsApp of her family’s destroyed home. They had fled in the cold rain to sleep in nearby orchards—a few more to add to the wave of 137,070 people who, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, have been displaced by the invasion. “The biggest calamity is that no one intervenes,” she told me. “Where is Unicef? Where is the public opinion? We are human beings and must have our human rights.” This has been the most ubiquitous and, apparently, the most futile refrain of the war in Syria. * On March 18, Turkey took Afrin’s city center. Photos of the events soon flooded social media. Though far from the worst violations of the war, the scenes were emblematically dismal. Fighters from the SNA fired their rifles into the air at Afrin’s main roundabout, snapping selfies with their free hands. They ran off with looted goods, everything from goats to motorcycles and cans of mortadella—their shamelessness endorsed by religious dispensation from the Turkish-based Syrian Islamic Council. They tore down a statue of Kaveh, a legendary slayer of tyrants and the hero of the Kurdish holiday Newrooz, as if he were one of the stone Assads joyfully toppled during the early days of the Syrian revolution. If a government had wanted to stoke new hatred between Kurds and Arabs, it couldn’t have staged a better show. “They were like hyenas attacking a corpse,” Mohammed told me of the fighters he’d seen breaking into stores that night. “They did not leave a car in Afrin, except the cars of some Arabs who live here, who brought their relatives from the Free Army to protect their property.” Mohammed had to pay several bribes in an effort to save his own car. Echoing a common allegation I could not independently verify, he told me that only Kurdish properties were targeted. Later that night, Mohammed told me, two SNA fighters grabbed him in the old city center, where the market usually took place, next to the main mosque with its honey-colored dome. “Take this Kurd,” one of them, Abu Ahmed (not his real name), shouted to his friend, and he yanked the terrified Mohammed into their car. The men brought Mohammed to an empty house, where they thrust him into a room filled with men, women, and kids, most of them, like Mohammed, displaced from Afrin’s surrounding villages. Abu Ahmed’s companion pointed his gun at the group. “Are all of you Kurds?” he demanded. Convinced they were about to die, the group began to pray. But the fighters’ motives were more prosaic. They confiscated people’s cellphones, searched the house for valuables, then stole Mohammed’s car—in which, for want of a more secure place, he had hidden nearly three thousand dollars, his entire savings. “They took all I had,” he said. On his Facebook page, Abu Ahmed revealed the contours of his life. He attended Aleppo University— once known, in the hopeful days of the 2011 protests, as the University of the Revolution—and then joined the armed struggle against the government regime in Aleppo. He became the leader of a group that later folded into the Islamist-dominated rebel group al-Zenki, which developed into one of the strongest components of the Free Syrian Army in the Aleppo area. Syrian rebel groups merge and vanish like the colors in a kaleidoscope. In one of his photos, Abu Ahmed cradled his adorable sons. Another snap contains a hateful sectarian meme. In a third, he stands in front of a Greek monument. It seems that, a few years ago, Abu Ahmed took a rubber raft across the Mediterranean. Clearly, seeking asylum in Europe didn’t work out for him. Abu Ahmed comes from a village in the Aleppo countryside, some twenty miles south of Afrin, where local rebel fighters kicked out the regime. In retaliation, the regime targeted it with airstrikes throughout the war. The Syrian regime’s brutal bombing campaigns have driven many people in opposition areas to view Turkey as a protector. A few days ago, demonstrators marched in Saraqab, a town in Idlib, calling on Turkey to intervene and stop these massacres from the air. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that men from Abu Ahmed’s village went to fight in Operation Olive Branch. The “Lions,” as this group of fighters dubbed themselves, made a Facebook page on which they posted a video of themselves abusing a POW whom they called a “Kurdish pig.” This earned them many likes from their followers. Five members of Abu Ahmed’s extended family died taking part in Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch. * While military occupations vary in type, they share certain approaches in common. There are house raids, like the one that happened to a family Mohammed knew. Illiterate fighters flipped through the family’s IDs, chose the one belonging to the prettiest daughter, and asked her to accompany them to pick out YPG positions. (She did not comply and, fortunately, they did not retaliate.) There are capricious checkpoint stops, routine harassments, and arbitrary demands for documents. The occupied have to try to figure out which occupier will be most receptive to their appeals—who seems less brutal or more in charge. (Mohammed told me he’d tried to approach a polite-seeming Turkish soldier who toured homes and listened to complaints about the violations of the Turks’ rebel proxies.) It becomes dangerous to take photographs. An art photographer and music teacher named Dilshan Qarojuol, who is well-known locally, was taking photos in central Afrin when she was arrested by fighters from the Sultan Murad Brigade (a predominantly Turkmen division of the Syrian National Army created by the Turkish reorganization of the FSA). The brigade is still holding her in the border city of Azaz. A spokesman for the Sultan Murad Brigade did not respond to my request for comment. There are attempts to blame the local population for crimes that the occupiers have committed. Mohammed told me that SNA/FSA fighters had forced civilians in Afrin to say, on camera, that they had looted their city’s shops. Another video appeared on Habertürk, a Turkish TV news channel, in which the old man interviewed blamed the FSA for looting; the channel changed this in its Turkish subtitle to “YPG.” There is also the erasure of local culture. Mohammed told me he saw Yezidis, members of a non-Abrahamic faith, forced by SNA fighters to carry out Muslim prayers. Dilshan Qarojuol’s musical instruments were looted under the pretext that music is haram, or forbidden. On April 4, the Afrin Media Center reported that fighters from a jihadist SNA group, Ahrar al-Sharqiya, had arrested Dr. Abdul Majeed Izzat Sheikho, the dean of Kurdish literature at the University of Afrin. Anyone suspected of being connected with the PYD (or the YPJ) is liable to be purged. The United Nations has received reports of arbitrary arrests by SNA forces. Mohammed told me about an elderly Kurdish man he knows whose three sons, still in their teens, had been arrested after SNA fighters found a bullet casing in their home. He had also heard of four young men from one family being beaten and arrested by SNA fighters simply for having done their compulsory military service under the PYD. One, Mohammed said, was taken over the border into Turkey; another man, a PYD opponent, was tortured. On March 22, Mohammed himself was stopped by fighters who demanded his passport and accused him of belonging to the YPG. He was released that time, but two days later, he again encountered Abu Ahmed, who shouted that he would come back later to arrest Mohammed. Fearing for his life, Mohammed went into hiding. Afrin city center, March 24, 2018 How did it get this way? Ethnic prejudice, even racism, was always there. Some Syrian Arabs smeared Kurds as stupid, stubborn, and irreligious, or as dangerous separatists—and government policy reinforced such prejudices. Until 2011, about 10 percent of Syrian Kurds did not have citizenship. The regime surveilled their celebrations and suppressed their political activity; on one occasion, in 2004, at least thirty people were shot by members of the state security forces during demonstrations in Qamishli. Many Kurds returned the antipathy of their Arab neighbors. But it took geopolitics to turn this bigotry into military conflict. All the main protagonists in the Syrian war have received some degree of external support. The Syrian regime is propped up by Russia and Iran; the PYD has had extensive assistance from the Americans, and occasional help from Russia. But for a Syrian rebel group, state sponsorship means survival, and the rebel groups (including radical Islamists) that make up the SNA have now devolved into subservient clients of Turkey. Turkey has recruited these rebels to fight the PYD, as part of its long war against the PKK, even if it means they leave aside their own rebellion against the Syrian regime. Over three million Syrian refugees now live in Turkey, under growing government restrictions, and escalating racism from their Turkish neighbors. In addition to crushing the PYD, Olive Branch gives Turkey an opportunity to rid itself of some of these refugees. “We are not in a position to continue hosting 3.5 million refugees forever,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a speech in February. “We’ll solve the Afrin incident, we’ll solve Idlib, and we would like our refugee brothers and sisters to return to their own country.” Turkish officials have promised to resettle between 350,000 and 500,000 refugees around Afrin. In what houses, they did not say. But countless Kurdish families remain stranded on the roads, blocked from returning home by the checkpoints of SNA fighters, while others, who fled to the city of Afrin during Olive Branch, are banned by the SNA from returning to their villages. The resettlement of refugees and internally displaced people in Afrin looks like one of the war’s many attempts to reshape Syria’s demography, using desperate civilians as pawns. While Mohammed places the heaviest blame on Turkey, he also believes that it is only the presence of Turkish troops that has prevented the SNA from carrying out worse atrocities. To whatever extent this is true, Turkish propaganda adds its own, self-serving spin—portraying President Erdoğan’s intervention as the return of a benign Ottoman Empire that will solve the problems of a squabbling Middle East. In the blunt words of pro-government Turkish newspaper Yeni Şafak: “Yes, we started with Afrin. We have to continue. We have to focus on great plans without caring about those trying to stop us… We have to think like the Seljuks, like the Ottomans…” A few days after the invasion, Turkey’s Anadolu Agency ran a video from Afrin in which children lined up in front of a recently reopened school and waved Turkish flags, while a man instructed them to shout “Thank you, Erdoğan.” It was as if Afrin was once again part of the Ottoman sanjak (administrative district) of Kilis. Mohammed would have sought refuge in Aleppo, but the regime has banned Afrin residents from entering the city, declaring them traitors because they lived under PYD rule. Moving between cities also requires money to pay off the militias’ protection rackets: SNA fighters demanded bribes when Mohammed’s family returned to Afrin, while pro-regime fighters demanded bribes of up to $1,000 from other Afrin residents who fled to Syrian government-controlled areas such as the city of Nubl, near Aleppo, and surrounding villages. Meanwhile, Mohammed alleged, SNA forces had confiscated homes from Kurds—an accusation of PYD membership is sufficient pretext. The theft of houses is a cruel and universally practiced tactic of the Syrian war; dispossessing people and condemning them to homelessness is as effective a way of eradicating a population as bombing it. While Sara’s family has been able to return, most of the Kurdish families Mohammed knows have fled, changing the region’s demographics, perhaps forever. The SNA has promised to punish looters and released a statement telling anyone who had “lost” possessions to submit a claim to the military court in Azaz, and mediators have promised Mohammed they will return the car stolen by Abu Ahmed. If he gets that back, he plans to sell it and everything else he owns. With the money, he said he will pay a smuggler $3,000 to take him over the Turkish border and leave behind his looted shell of a city. “Afrin,” he said, “has nothing but its olive trees.” (c) 2018 The New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/11/how-turkeys-campaign-in-afrin-is-stoking-syrian-hatreds/

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The third collection letter demanding that 64-year-old Semka Agic pay 3,000 convertible marks (roughly 200,000 yen) in legal fees was delivered to her home here in February. Agic filed for compensation from the government for wartime damages -- but lost. "I don't want to pay because I was detained for 13 months. I worked for them, I was raped, I lost my son. I'm not going to pay," she said, her voice shaking with anger. "Will they send me to jail? But I have already been there during the war." After the Bosnian War (1992-1995), Bosnia and Herzegovina split mainly into two autonomous governments, the Bosniak and Croat-led Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serbian-led Republika Srpska. The region handles foreign affairs and other matters as the sovereign nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but practical governing tasks like finance and war damage compensation are handled separately by the two entities. On the issue of providing damages to the victims of wartime sexual assault, opinion is polarized between the two. A large number of those who were subject to sexual violence during the conflict were Bosniaks. Because of this, the Bosniak-majority Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina recognized sexual assault as a war crime in 2006 at the urging of NGOs and other organizations, and passed a law to award benefits to the victims. Meanwhile, the government of Republika Srpska did not recognize rape -- as it often leaves behind no physical scars -- as a war crime. The fact that Serbs systematically carried out the killing and rape of Bosniaks in the name of "ethnic cleansing" during the war is widely known. As for Srpska's stance on the issue, NGOs and other organizations suspect that the government is hesitant to recognize the issue because it expects it would be inundated with requests for large sums of money. Bosniak Agic lived in a small village on the Srpska's side of the region in 1993 when Serbian soldiers attacked her home. They shot her 19-year-old son dead on the spot and raped her. Around 2012, Agic filed a lawsuit for compensation from Republika Srpska, but the government dismissed the claim and instead demanded that she pay the legal fees. But Agic is not alone. Serb women are also starting to push back against Srpska's stance. They were the victims of sexual violence at the hands of Bosniaks. Because the Serbs are seen as the "perpetrators" by the international community, the pain suffered by Serbian women has been largely forgotten. In 2012, Bozica Zivkovic Railic, 60, sought to change that and began to gather the testimonies of Serbian women who had been sexually assaulted and refused to remain invisible. Thanks to her efforts, the Srpska parliament finally moved on the issue, adopting a bill to provide sexual assault victims with compensation in February this year. Still, not only is the amount of the subsidies offered under the law lower than in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it has prompted criticism from human rights groups that "the conditions stipulate that 'those that served under opposing forces are not eligible for compensation,' and there is a possibility it will only provide aid to Serbian victims" and other complaints. The date for when the law will go into effect has yet to be decided. In a region divided along ethnic lines, disparities in how victims of wartime sexual violence are compensated have emerged. The ethnically driven civil war a half century ago still casts a dark shadow on Bosnia and Herzegovina. © 2018 | The Mainichi

The presence of foreign armed groups in Libya’s south poses an increasing threat to local security and regional political ties. On March 13, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) issued a statement of concern at ongoing violence in Sabha, a city in Libya’s impoverished south where a flare-up in tensions since late January has to date killed at least six civilians. The area is contested between forces loyal to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) and ethnic groups aligned with the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Conflicting reports regarding who was responsible for instigating the violence emerged in the aftermath of the communal conflict. Yet in a statement condemning the violence, Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj’s Presidential Council, which heads the GNA, did not charge Haftar’s forces with provocation, but placed the blame squarely on the presence of foreign mercenaries, namely of Sudanese and Chadian origin. Following this statement, the mayor of Sabha, Hamid al-Khayali, declared in an incendiary outburst to Libyan television that “foreign forces are occupying Libya’s south,” an issue “on the shoulders of all Libyans.” Until recently, the presence of non-Libyan fighting groups had largely gone unnoticed in the chaos engulfing Libya. Reports from Sabha have confirmed the Sudanese government’s claims that Darfuri rebel groups are active in Libya. Both the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the two main rebel groups in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, maintain a presence in Libya’s lawless south, allegedly in Haftar’s employ. A 2017 report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya describes these groups as an “increasing threat” and explicitly links SLA activities with Haftar’s LNA. Both main factions of the SLA—the forces of Minni Minnawi and Abdul Wahid al-Nur—are in Libya, and while estimates of their numbers are imprecise, sources interviewed by the UN panel stated that al-Nur’s branch alone has 1,500 fighters in Libya at any one time. In addition, one former JEM commander, Abdallah Jana, is known to operate with a convoy of at least 70 vehicles, and the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT) group claimed to have 700 fighters in Libya as of December 2016, although the UN report remarks that this number could have increased to between 1,000 and 1,500 fighters. The Chadian government is even suspected of pushing its rebels over the border into Libya to “keep them busy.” Haftar has denied using Darfuri militias and accused the Sudanese government of meddling in Libyan affairs. Both the Sudanese JEM and the Chadian FACT officially deny taking sides in the conflict, but senior commanders quietly say the opposite. Ibrahim Al-Bagdadi, JEM’s chief of armament, told Sudan’s Blue Nile TV “it’s business.” While their initial involvement may indeed have been mercenary in nature, alignment with any side has unavoidable political ramifications. Whenever questioned on the matter, Colonel Ahmed al-Mismari, chief spokesman of the LNA, repeatedly maintains that there is “a clear conspiracy” wherein the Sudanese, Qatari, and Iranian governments secretly colluded to support terrorism in Libya. In June 2017, al-Mismari alleged that this collusion spread so far as to involve the provision of weapons and ammunition to the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, Islamist militias, and even to the Islamic State. The next month, during an interview on Egyptian television, he produced a 30-page document supposedly written by the Sudanese Armed Forces, which detailed a program of supplying arms to militant groups. Regardless of the bluster over who is aligned with whom, the presence of foreign forces on Libyan soil struck a nerve and has led to a notable increase in domestic pressure to curtail the influence of the Chadian and Darfuri militias. Significantly, the presence of these groups upsets the delicate ethnic and tribal balance in Libya’s south, which could prove to be a wildcard in an area where Tuareg–Tebu hostilities have frequently boiled over. Some Darfuris are related to, or share old alliances with, the Tebu. Recognition of this distrust has persuaded Haftar’s LNA forces to reevaluate their allegiances with foreign militias, at least outwardly. Airstrikes launched on March 19 against “foreigners” and “Africans” aimed to minimize any damage to Haftar’s public image. However, although a few positions of the Darfuri JEM were also reported to have been struck, they mainly targeted the Chadian FACT rebel group, known allies of the anti-Haftar Misratan Third Force. Haftar’s use of Darfur militias to ensure greater control of Libyan territories overlooks regional politics. Sudan’s government contends that Haftar’s approach is a continuation of Qaddafi-era policies that intended to destabilize Sudan. At this stage it seems doubtful that this is Haftar’s focus—which is more about bolstering the number of troops he commands—but it creates yet another vested interest in a conflict already saturated with outside interference. Haftar gambled that the Sudanese government would be incapable of formulating a meaningful response because its reach in Libya is more limited than that of Libya’s North African neighbors. Thus far, it has paid off. The Darfuri groups have proven effective on the battlefield and are viewed as more expendable than the Libyan rank-and-file of the LNA. The 2017 report from the UN Panel of Experts credits the SLA with playing a major role in the LNA’s push to control Libya’s strategic “oil crescent,” which includes the exporting port towns of Ras Lanuf, Sidra, and Brega. Sudanese media reported JEM involvement, noting at least 118 JEM fatalities in greater Sirte, although evidence that they died in that specific campaign is equivocal. Sudan’s government is justifiably alarmed at the dangers posed by these fighters returning from Libya. Worryingly, Egyptian weaponry has surfaced in Darfur, and the UAE has financed the rebel groups via their connection with Haftar. The Sudanese government is sounding alarm bells that Haftar’s association with the SLA and JEM movements threatens the already fragile situation in Darfur, currently Africa’s longest running internal conflict. Inevitably, the Sudanese government will seek to capitalize on rhetoric against the rebel SLA and JEM groups, whose involvement in Libya has already had tangible effects on Sudan’s own security. Government security forces in Darfur have been targeted by at least one attack launched from Libyan territory and face further challenges monitoring the Darfuri rebel groups once they leave Sudanese soil. Such attacks threaten Darfur’s current relative peace—as do the networks bringing weapons, hard cash, and returning fighters into Darfur—at a time when the Sudanese government has made progress in improving the security situation by implementing a disarmament campaign for Darfur. In the absence of a centralized Libyan state force capable of asserting a monopoly on violence, it is largely down to the Sudanese government to take action against the Darfuri groups. This is unlikely to involve military intervention, as apart from a brief incursion into Libya’s south in support of anti-Qaddafi revolutionaries in July 2011 there is no precedent or support for Sudanese troops operating in Libya. The focus is instead on securing the vast, porous borders shared by Chad, Sudan, and Libya, which have allowed Darfuri groups to transit between states with relative ease. Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir described the joint Sudan-Chad border force as “a model for establishing security” and has instigated a dramatic upturn in Sudanese-Chadian relations since 2010, a rare positive change for the region. Before 2010, the Chadian government had backed the SLA and JEM, offering safe havens in Chad from which they could operate with impunity and a reportedly “strong bond with the Chadian military.” The exploitation of Libya’s lawlessness by hiring the SLA, JEM, and FACT sets a dangerous example. These rebel groups have no remit for involvement in the Libyan conflict beyond material gain, siding with Haftar purely to accrue arms and funding that will benefit them upon returning to Sudan. Haftar and other Libyan actors have embraced the assistance of another state’s rebels, enabling the conflation of mercenary activities abroad with domestic political goals. Consequently, the Sudanese government finds itself in the frustrating position of having its foes empowered by a foreign agent over which it has little sway—one uninterested in regional politics but that might spark future conflict within Sudan. For Libya, the UN Panel of Experts report has proved to be a wakeup call, increasing domestic demands for foreign armed groups to leave Libyan territory and highlighting a sense of distrust at any Libyan force that associates with them. But if Libya’s 2018 presidential and legislative elections go ahead as planned, and Khalifa Haftar becomes the president of Libya, his ties with these forces will ensure that Sudanese–Libyan relations take a nosedive. (c) 2018 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/76034?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTWpnM1lUWmhOV0ZsTW1NNSIsInQiOiJEVmxRbHpqM05aeFFGdEVaZ09UWHdZbXNnSVo1c2JrNVFvN0lYUmVLWFBkNUZrM2llYVwvRXhndSs1a0NQc09qQ2ZuVlB3a25QcVhOQUtqbDFOKzRIN3NFSEdXdFE4aW5xSlE4MkNrRDc4ZVRHYVZZSEVvN0d1K1MxdXgzMHI5YWQifQ%3D%3D

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- While nearly 20 years has passed since the end of the Bosnian War following the breakup of Yugoslavia, for the women who experienced traumatic violence and sexual assault in the name of "ethnic cleansing," the battle continues. In March 1992, the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ushering in a civil war between Bosniaks and Croats versus the Serbs who were against the decision. While all three groups are Slavic, the Bosniaks are mainly Muslim, while the Serbs are Orthodox and the Croats Catholic. A peace agreement was reached in 1995, but the region was left with over 200,000 casualties and some 2.5 million refugees and evacuees. Last year, the curtain closed on the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, set up in 1993 in The Hague, Netherlands, by the United Nations to try war crimes committed during the fighting in the region. The end to the tribunal can be seen on one hand as the end of one segment of the postwar process. However, the women there still carry the deep emotional wounds of their sexual assault a quarter of a century later. It's April 1992, in the town of Visegrad in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. The town with a population of over 60 percent Muslim Bosniaks is being overrun by a large number of Serbian soldiers. The militants steal any valuables from the households and kill any man who resists. The women are raped. This is the face of ethnic cleansing -- the thorough eradication of another ethnic group through violence. The house of Amela Mectuseyac, now 45, was surrounded by some 20 Serb soldiers. Amela, her mother and younger sister were the only ones inside. Amela was struck in the head before being raped in front of her family. Afterwards, she and her sister were able to escape to the house of an acquaintance in a nearby town, but their mother who was left behind endured being raped innumerable times. Bosniak women have come to be the target of sexual violence during conflicts, including World War II, but in the conservative nature of the local society, women who have been raped are divorced by their husbands and left with nowhere to go. Because of this, the women here have kept their suffering a tight-lipped secret. "This is revenge against war criminals," said Amela's now 64-year-old mother Bakira Hasecic. In 2003, eight years after the peace agreement was signed, she started the very first civil group devoted to providing support for the women who had been raped during the conflict. Amela was also involved. At first, only a few women came forward. They were labeled as "women who had been raped" and drew criticism from the public. Amela and the other women held lectures, and used local media appearances to convey the horrors of their experiences. Slowly, other victims started to gather. By 2006, a total of 2,707 women had come forward, and they requested that the government recognize rape as a war crime. After the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided into two constitutional and legal entities within the country, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, led by Bosniaks and Croats, and the Serb-led Republika Srpska (Serb Republic). The government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina recognized the violence against the women as war crimes, and came to provide them with roughly 500 convertible marks (about 33,000 yen) a month in subsidies. But the women's testimonies have also made a difference in another way. With more and more stories being told by the women, the atrocities carried out by war criminals during the conflict have come under the spotlight. So far, the testimonies of roughly 6,250 women have been gathered, and used to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes. However, this had led to problems as well. The women who speak as witnesses in court have to relive the terror of their attack, and in many cases it exacerbates their post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Psychological support for the women before and after their testimonies is imperative, but government support is not reaching them. On top of that, of the several dozen thousand estimated rape victims in the country, only about 800 are receiving government aid. That's because requesting the compensation automatically outs a woman as a victim publicly. Adila Suljevic, 52, was held captive in her home in the northern city of Brcko in 1992 by Serb soldiers. At the time, she was four months pregnant, but while being transferred to other locations and raped over and over again, she miscarried. "Unfortunately, I was thinking of committing suicide. I was looking for a reason not to live anymore," she said, only recovering from her ordeal after over 10 years of psychiatric treatment. Wanting to help other women like her, Adila started an NGO in 2015 to support women who had been the victims of sexual assault. Even now, she says that local women visit her residence practically every day to open up about what happened to them "for the first time." "(The women) are basically suffering alone from the trauma that they had in the past. That's why I decided to open this association," Adila explained. "The main mission of the association is to empower women in different sectors, such as economically, to provide psychological help, to provide social healthcare." For these women, the "war" still has no end. © 2018 | The Mainchi

Mar 12th 2018–Repeated Human Rights Council resolutions have condemned “in the strongest terms” the “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” by the Eritrean government. The Council has condemned violations including arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, religious oppression, denials of the rights of free expression and peaceful assembly. The Council has also expressed grave concern over the unlimited conscription of Eritrea’s citizens and the use of conscripts in forced labor. Council resolutions have urged Eritrea to end these practices and allow international and regional human rights bodies, including Special Rapporteurs, unhindered access to the country to monitor progress. Unfortunately, the Eritrean government has repeatedly ignored the Council’s resolutions. Little change, if any, has occurred. Prisoners remain jailed without trial, indefinitely and sometimes incommunicado. Torture in captivity continues to be a major concern. No independent press is allowed. Endless conscription and its abuses still control the lives of Eritreans, especially the young. The government continues to refuse to give UN and international human rights monitoring bodies access to the country. It has made no effort to hold violators of human rights accountable. In the absence of willingness by the Eritrean government to end its abuses and bring the abusers to justice, we urge the Council to recommend to the international community to implement the principle of universal jurisdiction. As we said here over the last two years, “all states should investigate and, evidence permitting, prosecute in a fair trial, individuals found on their territories who are alleged to be responsible for human rights violations in Eritrea amounting to crimes under international law.” We continue to urge the Council to recommend that all countries permit fleeing Eritreans to lodge asylum claims and then assess those claims fairly. For many Eritreans, a flight to freedom remains the only way to avoid the Eritrean government’s rampant brutalities. © 2018 | Human Rights Watch

Rwanda is commemorating the 24th anniversary of the 1994 Tutsi genocide. This claimed the lives of between 800,000 and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus over 100 days. This is a good time to reflect on the history of policy and practice of memory, justice, and recovery in the country over the past 24 years. Two questions are especially pertinent: how have Rwandans engaged in various forms of memory after genocide? How have these processes been meaningful? From a series of nearly 60 interviews conducted in the country since 2015, I have learned from a diversity of perspectives about memory and justice. The findings suggest that genocide memory in Rwanda is diverse and dynamic. The interviewees’ often offered surprising and unexpected perspectives. These could not have been assumed from reading secondary reports or by observing the commemorations from a distance. For example many people – including genocide survivors and former perpetrators – have a more holistic concept of justice than punishing perpetrators. And there is a huge desire for spaces for dialogue about how memories of genocide emerge impact everyday life. These spaces would bring together survivors, perpetrators, returnees, and ordinary citizens. There is also a great desire for knowledge about how to use these memories to seek justice, validation, and promote coexistence, especially for future generations. What we Learnt I interviewed genocide survivors, former perpetrators and ordinary citizens who were neither targeted for genocide but who did not take part in killing. Officials engaged in memory processes in Rwanda were also interviewed. The commemoration ceremonies take place over 100 days, known as the Kwibuka period, beginning on April 7 each year. During this period Rwandans visit village, district, or national memorial sites known as urwibutso where genocide victims are buried. There they hold memorial ceremonies which include listening to survivor testimonies and representatives from survivors’ organizations. Local and national leaders relate the history of the genocide, and sometimes perpetrators give testimonies. Bodies of victims are still being found to this day, in pits or on farms. These bodies are reburied in communal memorial sites during the kwibuka period. Sometimes icyunamo (time of mourning) is observed. This is the cultural practice of informal mourning that takes place throughout the night, usually around a fire. Regardless of the program of kwibuka, each process ideally pays respect to genocide victims and works to bring Rwandans together. But not all acts of memory are necessarily guided by the intention of achieving peace and justice, unity and reconciliation. Some of this is because of individual differences in perspective and resilience. Simply put, some people cope better with the harms that they suffered for various reasons, among them faith, education and economic gains since the genocide. Some individuals do not feel particularly connected to the memorial sites. Yet they still attend the ceremonies. This can cause conflicts of memory, especially when what is being remembered differs according to an individuals’s experience of the genocidal process. So it is important to ask Rwandans how urwibutso and kwibuka have or have not led to senses of justice, and what aspects of these processes are meaningful. Local Cultures of Memory It is also important to go back into the culture of Rwanda to inform the process of reflecting on and remembering the genocide. That serves to ensure that these processes are salient to Rwandans themselves, regardless of their backgrounds. Achieving these goals is not an easy process. For example, proximity matters, as genocide survivors, genocidaires, returnees, and others still live together in close contact, in local communities and villages in Rwanda. In addition, the genocide took place during a time of a civil war (1 October 1990-4 July 1994) and it was planned by a government that had abandoned its people. The government coerced many to participate in the killings. It used years of deliberate propaganda, hate speech and dehumanisation tactics to indoctrinate others into hate ideology. Many of the survivors were born of so-called mixed marriages, with one Hutu and one Tutsi parent. This reality challenges the binary nature of victimization and perpetration of genocide in Rwanda. Meaning Making and Memorialization The interviews raise further questions: what are Rwandans empowered by and what do they find meaningful about memorial sites and kwibuka, in order to sustain these processes over time? For example, the research shows that, although some survivors feel validated when former perpetrators join them at commemoration ceremonies, others fear that requiring former genocidaires to attend when they still don’t accept their guilt might result in a backlash. Some individuals attend kwibuka to support their neighbors but do not consider it their “own story.” Others consider it to be one of the most significant and emotional days of their lives each year. Some embrace kwibuka as a chance to remember their loved ones among the comfort of friends and neighbors. Yet, others fear it, because of the re-traumatization, grief, depression, and anger they might feel. These are some examples of the diverse perspectives of kwibuka, all of which are valid and coexist in the same physical and emotional space every April in Rwanda. © 2018 | The Conversation http://theconversation.com/rwandans-discuss-how-best-to-commemorate-genocide-94452

Family pressure has fueled a sense of persecution felt by gay people in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim region in southern Russia. Dozens have fled and some have been granted asylum abroad, amid reports of kidnap and torture by Chechen security forces targeting gay or allegedly gay people. Chechen officials deny the reported abuses. Olga Prosvirova of BBC Russian interviewed two of those who fled in fear. They requested anonymity, so their names have been changed. Marko, a Chechen in her early 20s, will never forget the day her family found out she was gay. "They said to me: 'Either we will kill you, or we will lock you up in a psychiatric ward and throw away the key. The only alternative is that you undergo an exorcism.'" Marco now lives temporarily in one of Russia's largest cities, waiting to complete her documents so that she can leave Russia for good. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov maintains that there are no homosexuals in the republic. But an investigation by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper last year found that members of Chechnya's LGBT community were regularly beaten and tortured. Some, it alleged, had even been killed. Mr Kadyrov's spokesman Alvi Karimov dismissed the allegations, telling the Interfax news agency: "Even if such people existed in Chechnya, our law enforcement agencies would not need to bother with them, because their own relatives would simply send them to a place from which they would never return." Marko says she knew she was different even at the age of four. "As a teenager, I used to think about suicide," she told BBC Russian. "But then I decided: 'No, I won't give you the satisfaction. I'll run away and do the things I have always dreamed of, whatever it takes, whether you like it or not.'" Muslim exorcism Before she left Chechnya, Marko agreed to her family's demand that she undergo an exorcism. Her brother took her to their local mosque, where the mullah told her she was possessed by the devil. "He held my head and read verses from the Koran, and I knew I had to respond as a person possessed would," she says. "I had seen enough YouTube videos to know what to do, and so I twisted about and shouted and said there were seven different demons inside me." After two hours, she says, everyone rejoiced and said I was cured. "'Hooray!' they all shouted. 'You are no longer a lesbian!'" They found a young man for her and told her she would marry, but soon after that she managed to escape. Since giving this interview, and helped by an LGBT organisation, Marko has left Russia for a new life abroad. She says she now wants to put her past behind her and just live with her girlfriend, whom she met on social media. "I just want to live, to have children and be happy," she says. International dimension It is hard to find out how many Chechens like Marko have been granted refuge outside Russia, as many immigration services do not register the sexual orientation of asylum seekers. Last year the German foreign ministry said it had accepted one gay man from Chechnya and was reviewing four more applications. Lithuania has taken in two and France one. Belgium has given five gay Chechen men humanitarian visas so that they can fly to Belgium from Moscow, Belgian media reported on Friday. And more than two dozen gay and bisexual men and women from Chechnya have been granted asylum in Canada. This week Igor Kochetkov, head of the Russian LGBT Network, told Novaya Gazeta that over the past year his charity had assisted 114 people from Chechnya who said they had been persecuted because of their sexual orientation. Ruslan is torn between his feelings for his boyfriend and love of his own family. He escaped Chechnya after being held captive for a month. "I've liked boys since I was a kid," says Ruslan, now in his early 30s. "But when my relatives found out I was gay, they took away my passport, my documents and my mobile phone and they locked me in my room for over a month." One day he managed to get out and borrowed a neighbour's phone. Later that night his boyfriend came to whisk him away to a different city. 'Living a lie' Ruslan spoke of a "big purge of gays in Chechnya". He said the Kadyrov militia "found one and beat him until he gave them the names of others. "Some were caught and thrown into cellars and beaten violently. Some were never found: their relatives didn't even bother looking for them, because they said they'd brought shame on them." Ruslan's new life is more difficult than he imagined it would be. He spends most of his time hiding indoors; if he goes out, he covers his head with a hood. To earn money recently, he handed out campaign leaflets before last month's presidential election, but once he came across a police patrol and ran straight back to his flat. Unlike Marko, Ruslan has not decided whether he should flee Russia. "I don't know what's happening at home (in Chechnya)," he says. "My brother is probably looking for me: he has most likely gone to the police." When he talks about his family and his home, he struggles to hold back the tears. He misses his mother and young niece, he says, who is getting married soon. "All my life I have observed our customs, according to the Koran," he says. "But I simply couldn't carry on living a lie. The only thing I wish for is that my niece, whom I love dearly, doesn't think badly of me and that her husband does not say to her: 'Your uncle is gay: your family is unclean.' I pray to Allah to protect her from this." © 2018 BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43658689

Darfur Women Action Group expresses grave concern and sorrow at this weekend’s attack in East Jebel Marra. Over this past weekend, March 30th- 31st, the Rapid Support Forces brutally attacked villages in East Jebel Marra, in South Darfur. As of now, this attack left 11 people dead, of which three were young children, and 21 people injured. According to Radio Dabanga, the Rapid Support Forces had more than 18 vehicles and 50 motorcycles for transportation and were backed by gunmen on more than 100 camels, and horses attacked innocent unarmed civilians. The attacks started in the area of Sawani on Saturday morning and continued into the areas of Terongafogi and Owru. The attackers plundered these villages, causing many to flee to nearby valleys and mountains. After pillaging these villages, looting and taking all the livestock and belongings, the RSF then set fire to these villages, as part of the government’s “scorched earth policy,” which aims to make the land uninhabitable for purposes of forced displacement leading to demographic change. Earlier in March, there was another attack in East Jebel Marra. The militia attacked Jawa in an attempt to clear the region of rebel strongholds. Around five days after the initial attack, fighting broke out in Feina and Dawa, displacing many more. There have been reports citing that Feina has been wholly taken over by government forces. Meanwhile, there are thousands of civilians seeking refuge in the surrounding areas, in desperate need of humanitarian aid. We appeal to the international community to give assistance to all those impacted by the fighting and to condemn Sudan for its ruthless genocidal policy. The Sudanese Government for far too long has gotten away with the cruel murder of its civilian population. We must call on the US government take action against the Sudanese Government and let it be known that we will not be complacent in genocide. More so, we must demand aid from international relief organizations and that the government allows full and uninhibited access to civilian populations in Darfur, South Kordofan, and the Blue Nile to provide them with much-needed help. It's dismaying that these horrifying incidents are taking place while the international community is seeking to engagement or normalize relations with the government of Sudan. The continuation of this attacks underscores the lack of accountability and the failure of the international community and the United States. While the government has not seized attacks on its people there are speculations about the US governments intent to normalize relations with Sudan, which would include consideration to remove Sudan’s name from the list of terrorists sponsoring countries. The lifting of sanctions on Sudan has cost and will continue to cost, the US serious leverage through which it can promote accountably for Sudan. We demand that the Trump Administration publicly condemn Sudan and take serious measure to demonstrate US leadership and promote accountability in Sudan We call on Ambassador Nikki Haley to speak up and demand that UN Security Council take serious actions to hold Sudan accountable. We must stand vigilant in the face of the world’s worst crimes and demand that our leaders fulfill their responsibility and take action to end genocide. Our world leaders are failing their promises of “Never Again,” particularly in Darfur and we must speak up, demand that they do better, to mean the words they say. It is our job to remind them and hold them accountable when they fail. Its particularly important that we as ordinary citizens make it clear, that under any circumstances the United States must not normalize relations with Sudan. Normalizing with Sudan is equal to normalizing genocide which we must not allow it to happen in our lifetime. With your support, we can work and end the genocide in Darfur and bring lasting peace to the region and Sudan. Thanks for your continued support! With gratitude, Niemat Ahmadi President and Founder www.darfurwomenaction.org (c) 2018 Darfur Women Action Group

A controversial church bell in Schweringen, northern Germany, has had a swastika inscription removed as part of an unauthorized "spring cleaning". The unknown perpetrators left a note on the door confessing to defacing it, saying they wanted to clean the bell of "the filth of the National Socialists". The note said they aimed to prevent a town "split" after a heated debate. The local parish council had recently decided the bell should still be used, after temporarily suspending its use. The presence of remnants of the Nazi era, such as bells, continues to cause controversy in Germany. The existence of the Schweringen bell only gained wider publicity after another town, Herxheim, had to deal with the controversy surrounding its so-called "Hitler bell". In February it was decided that bell would remain in the Herxheim church, to serve as a reminder of the country's dark past. The Schweringen incident took place at some point over Easter. As well as the swastika, the perpetrators also ground away part of the 1934-era inscription. The note explaining the motive was published in local newspaper Die Harke (The Rake). 'Nazi filth' "We did spring cleaning. Not only the village cleaned, but also the bell. Of pigeon dung, of the filth of the National Socialists, who still threatened after 80 years to divide the village population, and hopefully also of the dirt that might have been thrown off about Schweringen," it said (in German). "Schweringen is a village of clear, decent, intellectual, cosmopolitan citizens, and they will not simply stand by as the villagers are planning a split." "In this hope, and as Christians for freedom, we have freed this bell from the signs of a time of guilt and abuse," the note concludes. Community Pastor Jann-Axel Hellwege said the discussion about Schweringen's bell had posed an "unprecedented challenge to the people in the church". He said the church was assessing whether the damage had affected the sound of the bell, and whether to take legal action. © 2018 | BBC News

The governments of Thailand and Malaysia should cooperate to provide protection to Rohingya refugees in accordance with international law and standards, Fortify Rights said today. Yesterday, Thai authorities reportedly returned to sea a boat carrying 56 Rohingya-refugee men, women, and children. Thai police told reporters that this was the first boat of Rohingya refugees they had seen in more than one year. However, Fortify Rights documented other arrivals-by-sea of Rohingya refugees in both Malaysia and Thailand in 2018, including a boat that arrived in Thailand in February 2018. “This is not a problem that will go away on its own,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights. “Governments in this region need to show leadership and follow their legal obligations to protect refugees rather than send them to potential death sentences at sea.” The boat of 56 refugees reportedly arrived yesterday on the island of Lanta in Thailand’s Krabi Province following a heavy storm the night before. Thai authorities confirmed that they sent the boat back out to sea. Malaysian authorities report no sign of the boat in Malaysian waters and have said that official Malaysian policy is to turn away boats of refugees unless the boat faces inclement weather. “Noor,” a 16-year-old Rohingya girl from Maungdaw Township in Myanmar’s Rakhine State told Fortify Rights that she boarded a ship off the coast of Myanmar in February to flee the aftermath of attacks on her village by Myanmar state security forces. She arrived in Thailand after spending ten days at sea. “When we arrived, we had to walk in the jungle for about an hour before we arrived at a house,” she told Fortify Rights on March 9. “We stayed at the house for one day before moving farther . . . We walked another three to four days in the jungle and then crossed the border [into Malaysia].” Noor safely arrived in Kuala Lumpur. She had been sold into marriage. An estimated 170,000 Rohingya men, women, and children arrived in Thailand and Malaysia on countless boats from 2012 to 2015. Transnational human trafficking syndicates working in concert with various authorities operated many of the boats. Traffickers killed untold refugees at sea and in on-shore human trafficking camps over a multi-year period. In May 2015, human traffickers abandoned boats at sea carrying thousands of Rohingya and Bangladeshi survivors of trafficking. Thailand and Malaysia reinforced their borders and refused to allow the disembarkation of survivors, resulting in an untold number of deaths. The Thai and Malaysian authorities went so far as to tow boats of refugees out of their territorial waters, leaving them adrift at sea. On July 19, 2017, Thailand convicted 62 defendants, including high-ranking government and security officials, for crimes related to the trafficking of Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Malaysia via Thailand in 2015. The Malaysian authorities have not similarly prosecuted traffickers, despite the discovery of 139 graves believed to contain the bodies of Rohingya victims in 28 suspected human-trafficking camps in Wang Kelian in May 2015. The Malaysian Bar Council and the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) have called on the Malaysian authorities to investigate the situation. To this day, Thailand and Malaysia maintain a “push-back” policy with regard to refugee arrivals by boat, which puts lives at risk and fails to ensure the protection of possible survivors of trafficking, Fortify Rights said. Under customary international law, the principle of non-refoulement prohibits states from returning any person on its territory or under its jurisdiction to a country where they may face persecution. Thailand and Malaysia’s “push-back” policies violate this principle. Malaysian and Thai authorities have also detained thousands of Rohingya refugees and survivors of human trafficking in Immigration Detention Centers and government-run shelters in recent years, in violation of the right to liberty. Customary international law as well as Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Thailand is a state party, protects the right to liberty. This right extends to migrants, who may be detained only in exceptional circumstances and in accordance with international law. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should take action to address root causes in Myanmar and provide support to countries in the region providing shelter to refugees, Fortify Rights said. In November, Fortify Rights and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum published a report finding “mounting evidence” of the crime of genocide against Rohingya in Myanmar. The report was based on a yearlong investigation, including hundreds of interviews with Rohingya eyewitnesses and survivors of Myanmar Army-led massacres, mass gang-rapes, and arson attacks against Rohingya. More than 775,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since October 2016, and the Rohingya exodus from Myanmar continues. “The root causes of this crisis have not been adequately addressed, and until they are, people will seek protection in other countries,” said Matthew Smith. “ASEAN needs to show leadership, protect refugees, and do more to end atrocities in Myanmar.” For more information, please contact: Puttanee Kangkun, Thailand Human Rights Specialist, Fortify Rights, +66 (0) 84 700 4874 (Thai/English), Email: puttanee.kangkun@fortifyrights.org; Twitter: @KhunputPuttanee, @FortifyRights Matthew Smith, CEO, Fortify Rights, +66 (0) 85 028 0044 (in Thailand), Email: Matthew.Smith@FortifyRights.org; Twitter: @matthewfsmith, @FortifyRights Amy Smith, Executive Director, +66 (0) 87 795 5454 (Thailand), Email: amy.smith@fortifyrights.org Twitter: @AmyAlexSmith, @FortifyRights (c) 2018 Fortify Rights International

Over the weekend, Genocide Watch released the following Genocide Warning for Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. A Genocide Warning is called when a genocidal process is under way, often indicated by genocidal massacres, with the imminent danger of root and branch destruction. GENOCIDE WARNING: TURKEY/SYRIA/IRAQ: TURKISH ARMY, ANATOLIA, AFRIN, SINJAR, NINEVEH http://www.genocidewatch.com/countries-at-risk Kurds are at risk for large-scale genocide by the regional powers of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, all of which have sizable Kurdish minority populations. Currently the largest threat comes from Turkey. On January 20, 2018 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan launched cross-border military operations into northwestern Syria with the code name "Operation Olive Branch," The mission aimed to oust Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (or YPG) from the district of Afrin. Turkey considers the YPG to be an extension of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency within Turkey on and off since 1984 in the name of greater rights and regional autonomy. The YPG denies being an extension of the PKK and has been allied with the United States (among other countries) in the fight against the Islamic State/Da'esh since 2014. The Turkish Armed Forces have conducted Operation Olive Branch with little apparent concern for the laws of war, dropping bombs and shelling towns indiscriminately. Hundreds of civilians around Afrin, including religious minorities displaced by the Syrian War and by Da'esh, have been killed. There is evidence that suggests that Turkish forces may have intentionally targeted civilians. The Turkish government and media have characterized the YPG as a "terrorist organization," casting its invasion of Syria as an anti-terror operation. It has also referred to its aggression against its southern neighbor as "jihad," echoing language used by ISIS and other extremist groups. The term "terrorist" is used in Turkey as a catch-all phrase to dehumanize opponents and legitimize the suppression of human rights and freedoms. Since the attempted coup of 2015, the Turkish government has dismissed thousands of civil servants and jailed hundreds of teachers, professors, journalists, politicians, human rights workers and other cultural leaders for being suspected supporters of "the opposition." Many of these detainees have been charged with terrorism. The term "terrorist" has also been used to justify military-style violence against the Kurdish minority populations in the country's South East, where the PKK presence is strong. The Afrin operation is not unlike "anti-terror" operations conducted in South East Turkey since 2015, where, in towns like Cizre, Turkish security forces have displaced much of the population, imposed harsh curfews (sometime lasting twenty-four hours a day for weeks and even months), cut off water and electricity supplies, killed dozens of civilians, destroyed cultural institutions (including mosques), desecrated cemeteries, and laid waste to homes by defecating on furniture and bedding, destroying cooking implements, and killing domestic and farm animals. Soldiers have also written racist slogans on buildings and have hung the Turkish flag from windows. In Cizre -- as in Afrin -- the bodies of killed female fighters have been mutilated, videotaped, and shared widely on social media. These life force atrocities are strongly suggestive of genocidal intent. In Syria, the Turkish military and the forces under its leadership (which may include Da'esh fighters), declared total control of Afrin on March 25, 2018. They have been accused of pursuing a policy of "demographic change" in the Afrin district by settling villages with Turkmen and Arab families originally from outside of the area. The majority of Afrin's population, an estimated 150,000 people, had already retreated from the town along with YPG fighters before the arrival of Turkish troops. Recent reports from inside occupied Afrin tell of dozens of girls and young women being kidnapped by Turkish and jihadi forces and subjected to systematic rape. There are also reports of the forced conversion of Yazidis. Erdoğan has vowed to continue further east to Manbij and Kobane in Syria as well as to the Sinjar and Nineveh regions of Iraq, ostensibly to destroy the PKK, which has bases in Iraq's northern mountains. In the wake of a Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) referendum on independence in Northern Iraq in September 2017, which angered neighboring countries with significant Kurdish minority populations, and to which they responded with the harsh and coordinated economic isolation of the KRG, Turkey's aggression into neighboring states threatens the long-term security and viability of all Kurdish populations in the region. Genocidal Pattern: Gross Human Rights Violations (Murder, Massacre, Rape, Torture, Violent Humiliation) + Mass Cultural Destruction. (c) 2017 Genocide Watch http://www.genocidewatch.com/countries-at-risk