CALL FOR APPLICATIONS USHMM-Yad Vashem Research Workshop: Ego-Documents in the Soviet Sphere on the Holocaust: Revealing Personal Voices due March 12, 2018 The Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem and the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are pleased to invite applications for an international research workshop entitled, Ego-Documents in the Soviet Sphere on the Holocaust: Revealing Personal Voices. The workshop is scheduled for June 3–7, 2018 at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel. The workshop will focus on the Holocaust and Jewish life in the Soviet Union during World War II as reflected in sources from the war and postwar periods, such as diaries, letters, memoirs, testimonies, interviews, and appeals of individuals to authorities. The workshop will cover the countries of the former Soviet Union, including areas that were occupied by German and Romanian forces in WWII. The historical themes might include, but are not limited to, the following topics: surviving under the occupation, ghettoization, Jewish POWs and Soviet Jews in death camps, Jews in the underground and partisan movements, gender and the Holocaust, the fate and experiences of Jewish families, Jewish-gentile relations, collaboration, evacuation and Jewish life in the Soviet rear, and Jews in the Red Army. Participants will present research projects centered on methodological problems and challenges of working with ego-documents, while reflecting on historical events in such documents. Discussions might explore the effect of wartime and postwar censorship, along with the ways that ego-documents reflect the identity of their authors’ shifting views over time and historical context. Participants will be expected to submit a paper (no more than 15 pages) three weeks prior to the start of the workshop for circulation among the participants. Daily sessions will include 30-minute presentations followed by discussion of research (up to 30 minutes), as well as opportunity for participants to do research at Yad Vashem’s library and archives. The workshop will be conducted in English. Applications are welcome from scholars working in all relevant academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, art history, geography, film studies, history, Jewish studies, law, literature, material culture, philosophy, political science, religion, sociology, and other fields. Applications will be accepted from doctoral candidates (aspirants) and scholars who obtained their Ph.D. (or candidate of science degree) within the last five years. All applications materials must be received by March 12, 2018. Incomplete applications will not be considered after this date. Late applications will not be accepted. Selected participants will be notified by March 30, 2018. An application consists of: A current Curriculum Vitae outlining the applicant’s qualifications (including previous coursework, research projects, presentations, and publications) An abstract of no more than 500 words for your proposed paper (including title and discussion of methodological and theoretical issues) PhD students are required to include a recommendation letter from one of her/his dissertation advisers. To preserve the confidentiality of recommendation letters, faculty recommenders must email or fax their signed letters (on institutional letterhead) directly to shlomit.shulhani@yadvashem.org.il, fax: +97226443479 Please send all application materials via email to: Ms. Shlomit Shulhani, program coordinator and researcher at Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, International Institute for Holocaust Research Yad Vashem at shlomit.shulhani@yadvashem.org.il The organizers will cover round trip economy-class air tickets to/from Israel, provide lodging for the duration of the workshop, and meals. Participants must obtain their own health insurance. The Call for Applications can also be viewed here. This program is made possible by a generous gift of Michael and Laura Mirilashvili to Yad Vashem’s Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and is supported by the Jones Day Foundation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (c) 2018 The United STates hOlocasut Meoiral Museum

Registration for the Holocaust Research Institute's upcoming conference, 'The Holocaust and Motherhood', is now open. The conference consists of two separate events. On the evening of Thursday 22 March 2018, Dr Zoë Waxman (University of Oxford) will deliver a keynote lecture on 'Mothers, Sisters, Resisters? Motherhood and the Holocaust Twenty Years On' at The Wiener Library, central London, UK. This event is free; please click here to register. This will be followed by a day of panel presentations, also at The Wiener Library, on Friday 23 March. The day will begin at 10:00 and finish at 17:00. There is a conference fee of £15.00 to cover catering and stationery. Please note that catering at the conference will be vegetarian with a vegan option. Those who require vegan food, as well as any other dietary requirements, should indicate this on the conference registration page, which can be found here. Registration for this event must close on Friday 23 February 2018. A conference programme will be available shortly. (c) 2018 University of Oxford

Dear Supporters, It has come to our attention that the United Nation's Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, met on Sunday with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Addis Ababa on the sidelines of the 30th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union. We are incredibly shocked and outraged to see that the UN's top leaders are ignoring the fact that al-Bashir is currently carrying out a genocide against his own people and is wanted by the UN-backed International Criminal Court on multiple counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in response to his actions in Darfur. We understand the importance of the role of the UN Secretary-General and his participation in the African Union Summit, however since the indictment of al-Bashir the United Nations' high-level officials maintained its non-essential contact policy, which limits contact with al-Bashir and other criminals wanted by the ICC. A spokesperson from the office of the Secretary-General, as well as the Sudanese Foreign Minister, justified the meeting under the pretext of talking about peace within Sudan. However, it is morally imperative and more appropriate for the Secretary-General to send his special envoy. President al-Bashir has continually demeaned UN officials working within Sudan, including expelling them and humiliating them. President al-Bashir is being rewarded for this instead of being held accountable. In addition to his millions of victims, the majority of whom remain displaced, President al-Bashir's security as of this past week has arrested over 210 political activists and civil society leaders as the result of them peacefully expressing their rightful concern over the scarcity of food in Sudan. To date, these detainees remain in custody including the chairman of Darfur Bar Association whose health is severely deteriorating We fear that this type of meeting will allow al-Bashir to use the good intention of the UN to oppress his people further. We wish to remind the Secretary-General that al-Bashir is not an ordinary President. He is the man ordering the slaughter of innocent civilians, the burning of villages, and the authorization of rape as a weapon of war targeting women and girls. This is the man who is responsible for killing over 300,000 people in Darfur, which has been documented by his own institutions. To this date, over 3 million people remain in camps, and many have so for the past 14 years. It would be more appropriate if Mr. Guterres could pay a visit to those, who have been victims due to al-Bashir's actions and have so for many years. The fate of these people resides in the hands of al-Bashir, their killer. "If the international community has a short memory and tries to move on leaving the victims behind, we the victims and the survivors, have not forgotten, and will not hesitate to use our voices as a reminder for the world. We will continue to speak up and fight for justice and peace with dignity" said Niemat Ahmadi the President and Founder of Darfur Women Action Group, and a Darfuri survivor. As of today, President al-Bashir still maintains control over 50, 000 of Arab Janjaweed Militias and the notorious Rapid Support Forces. They are still being authorized to commit the most vicious crimes against the indigenous African people in Darfur and have been fully integrated into the Sudan's Armed Forces, taking control of Darfur President al-Bashir endeavors for peace, particularly in Darfur, have been mainly characterized by killing men, women, and children, raping women, arresting, torturing and killing students and using military means to silence political opposition. We finally wish to remind the Secretary-General that the victims of genocide in Darfur, whether they be in camps, in the diaspora, or remain prisoners to an abusive regime are standing witness to his actions. This weekend's meeting indicates that not only our highest institutions are failing the victims, but these institutions are making historical mistakes by normalizing genocide. Mr. Guterres' meeting with President al-Bashir of Sudan is not only an insult to victims, but it jeopardizes accountability measures for the world's worst crime, genocide. This meeting undermines the legitimacy of the ICC as a UN-backed court. We call on our supporters to speak up for the people of Darfur and Sudan at large and call on our leaders to remind them that they must not reward or normalize relations with a genocidal criminal. The real peace is not an act of empowerment of the powerful, but it is the act of compassion that recognizes the plight and the dignity of the victims We believe that peace will never be realized in Sudan unless justice is served, the rights of men and women are well respected, criminals who commit genocide are held liable for their actions, and the victims are treated with dignity and respect. Thank you for your continued support. Sincerely, Niemat Ahmadi President and Founder www.darfurwomenaction.org (c) 2018 Darfur Women Action Group

SANAA, Yemen — The three-year-old Yemen conflict has largely been cast as a war that pits an internationally recognized government against Iranian-backed rebels who ousted it from the capital and now also control much of the north. But fighting in the southern Yemeni city of Aden over the past week revealed the extent to which Yemen’s war also is driven by other historical grievances that could pose serious obstacles to negotiating an end to the conflict, according to Yemeni and Western analysts. Over several days, southern separatists battled their estranged partners — forces loyal to ousted President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi — and briefly seized control of Aden. Both sides belong to the same alliance led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which is fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in an effort to restore Hadi to power. The battles in Aden have exposed the fragility of that alliance and highlighted the diverging agendas of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The separatists, known as the Southern Transitional Council (STC), have long sought to restore the independent state of South Yemen, which existed before Yemen was unified in 1990. They have long been suspicious of the northern-based central government in Sanaa, which Hadi presided over, accusing it of corruption and undermining the south. The violence, said analysts, is a reflection of these long-simmering tensions. “It shows how the war has shattered the country, fracturing it along historical divides,” said April Longley Alley, a senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group. “The narrative of a ‘legitimate government’ fighting the ‘Iranian-backed Houthis’ obscures a complex local reality, and it hinders efforts to achieve peace.” The infighting within the alliance intensified the despair in the Middle East’s poorest nation. More than three dozen people died in last week’s clashes, adding to the war’s death toll of more than 10,000, mostly civilians killed by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes. Millions more are suffering from hunger and disease in what aid agencies describe as one of the world’s most dire and forgotten humanitarian crises. Yemen’s war began in the spring of 2015, after the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and forced Hadi and his government to flee south to Aden. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim countries entered the conflict largely to prevent their regional rival, Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy, from projecting its influence along their borders by backing the Houthis. Hadi had come to power after his predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled the country for more than three decades, was himself forced to step down after a populist revolt, part of the Arab Spring uprisings. When Hadi was chased out of Sanaa, he set up a government in exile in Aden with the backing of the Saudis and Emiratis, even though he has presided mostly from the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Many southerners had expected the Hadi government to improve their lives. But over the past three years, Hadi has struggled to exert political authority or bolster the economy. Aden has been shaken by suicide bombings and other violence, staged by al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch as well as by a nascent Islamic State affiliate. “Very little has been done to stabilize the situation and get things working again,” said Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. “People have gotten increasingly frustrated there.” The trigger for the past week’s clashes was the expiration of a deadline set by the separatists for Hadi to dismiss his government. They accused the government, run day-to-day by Prime Minister Ahmed Obaid bin Daghr, of corruption and mismanagement. After the separatists took control of much of Aden, Hadi’s officials were confined inside the presidential palace, and some contemplated fleeing the city. Amid these divisions in the alliance, there are “real questions about the viability or the credibility of the Hadi government and what exactly do they represent sitting at the other side of the table,” said Feierstein. “These are the kinds of issues that are going to make rebuilding Yemen difficult,” he added. “In the immediate term, it complicates efforts to revive the political process.” Further imperiling the chances for a political settlement is a separate set of divisions within the Iranian-backed alliance. Late last year, the Houthis had a falling out with the influential former president Saleh, who had aligned himself with them, and they killed him. That raised questions about whether the Houthis have the desire or will to negotiate an end to the conflict. A day after the southern separatists surrounded the presidential palace in Aden, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sent delegates to defuse the animosities and put in place a cease-fire. Saudi Arabia is the main backer of the pro-Hadi forces. The UAE is the main supporter of the separatists, training them and working closely with them in fighting the Houthis and Islamic extremists. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have other differences as well. Saudi Arabia, Alley said, is closely aligned with an influential Yemeni party, Islah, which has historical links to the Muslim Brotherhood. (The party recently announced that it had severed links to the Brotherhood.) The UAE, for its part, opposes Islah. Despite the tensions, it is highly unlikely that Saudi Arabia and the UAE will part ways over Yemen. Both countries share the belief that the Houthis and Iran pose an existential threat to the region. The southern separatist group, Alley added, “is on a collision course with the pro-unity Hadi government and has been for some time. Now what we see is the UAE and [Saudi Arabia] scrambling to paper over differences between the two so that they can maintain, at least while the war with the Houthis continues, the myth of a unified front under an internationally recognized government.” In Aden, many residents view the UAE's growing presence suspiciously and worry the country could seek economic gain by trying to control Yemen's ports, especially Aden, which is nestled beside key shipping lanes. “The Emirates has ambitions in the south, and one of its most important ambitions is the port of Aden,” said Hassan Aljalal, a Yemeni journalist. “And its support for the southern movement shows this ambition.” Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi researcher at the University of Exeter, said Yemen’s exiled government shared some of the blame for the violence in Aden, and should “submit its resignation if it is unable to manage the battle against the Houthis and provide services to the citizenry at the same time.” The authorities had received several billion dollars of aid from the Saudi-led coalition, and “where did the money go?” Alghannam said. The coalition, he added, also needed to put more pressure on the government to “deliver for the people.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/yemens-war-is-so-out-of-control-that-allies-are-turning-on-one-another/2018/02/03/50d26426-05fe-11e8-aa61-f3391373867e_story.html?utm_term=.5ed7b4b99b00 (c) 2018 The Washington Post

The Trump administration is doubling down on a lie the U.S. government has promoted since it first began cooperating with the Syrian Kurds against the Islamic State group in 2014: that the Kurds it is working with in Syria differ from those that are anathema to NATO ally Turkey. American officials designed that fiction to enable the anti-ISIS strategy adopted under President Barack Obama and continued under President Donald Trump. Now it’s taking its most serious toll yet: Turkey is bombarding Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in northwest Syria, with airstrikes and artillery fire and the U.S. is refusing responsibility. Extending the Obama-era logic, team Trump maintains that Afrin is totally distinct from the Kurdish regions in Syria’s northeast that are home to American bases and thousands of U.S. troops. Dozens of civilians have died in the campaign’s initial assault on smaller villages around the main city. Over a million more are at risk, as are Turkish civilians facing rockets in response. And Trump’s choice has boosted bitterness toward the U.S. among Washington’s most effective partners in Syria. In the weeks ahead, it could torpedo U.S.-brokered cooperation between Kurds and the country’s majority Arab community, tempting more Arabs to join radical groups like the powerful local al Qaeda affiliate or what’s left of ISIS; escalate an already dire humanitarian crisis; and cede more space in Syria to actors Trump is ostensibly committed to challenging ― Russia, Iran and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. There’s little clear benefit to the U.S. in return. Foreign Fantasies Versus Local Realities Squaring U.S. policy in Syria with the country’s increasingly assertive neighbor Turkey is a goal that’s eluded Washington for years. Since the Obama era, the U.S. campaign against ISIS has relied on a Kurdish militia in northern Syria called the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Turkey views that group as inseparable from an internationally blacklisted Kurdish separatist movement called the PKK that it has fought for years. The Obama administration’s solution was to speak of a difference between the two forces as often as it could. That position fails to account for the two groups’ mutual history, leftist ideology and recruiting pools, but it’s one the Kurds can live with. Their respective officials say they sympathize for fellow Kurds across the countries they live in (Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran) but have distinct command-and-control structures. And to further assuage Turkey and Syria’s Arabs, the YPG subsumed its fighters under a larger anti-ISIS battalion without an explicit Kurdish flavor ― a two-year-old construct called the Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes thousands of Arabs and Assyrians. But that fig leaf never quite satisfied Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He used his military and allied Syrian Arab groups to carve out Turkey’s own area of influence in northern Syria in the summer of 2016, noting that the Kurds were expanding beyond previously agreed-on borders, and pushed increasingly dramatic anti-Kurd rhetoric as he sought nationalist support at home for his growing authoritarianism and as the YPG grew visibly stronger thanks to American help. Isolated from the other main Kurdish regions in the northeast, Afrin was an easy target for Turkish saber-rattling. By the tail end of 2017, Turkish officials began frequently speaking of an operation there to teach the Kurds a lesson. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month projected a long-term U.S. presence in Syria, implying a long-term relationship with the YPG, Turkey declared that an operation by Turkish forces and Arab militants would come within days. Erdogan sought and received approval from Russia, which controls most airspace in northwestern Syria as part of its operation to defend the Syrian regime, and used the Turkish threat to tell the Kurds they should simply hand Afrin to Assad ― something they could never accept given his brutality and Kurds’ painful memories of his rule, two Kurdish officials told HuffPost. Faced with the Turkish-Kurdish showdown analysts have warned of for years, Washington decided reality was simply too complex to deal with. The official U.S. line is that all parties should remain focused on ISIS. That admonition caused the trouble in the first place, of course. The U.S. focus on ISIS meant the YPG was an essential partner, and frustration with Turkey’s long reluctance to crack down on the group dominated planners’ thinking, making it easy to punt on questions like how the two would coexist once Americans changed the power balance in the Kurds’ favor and what Washington owed them in return for their anti-ISIS success. “We encourage all parties to avoid escalation and to focus on the most important task of defeating ISIS,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway wrote to HuffPost on Monday. “The armed Kurdish groups in Afrin are not defeat-ISIS coalition partners.” For Kurdish officials who treat Afrin as an integral part of the society they’re building and defending, that distinction is meaningless. And they see Turkey’s desire to quash the region as the canary in the coal mine. Just as the epic battle to defend the town of Kobani from ISIS in 2014 became a seminal moment for Kurdish identity and dignity, the struggle over Afrin is dominating the thinking of the community’s leaders, as well as millions of Kurds outside Syria ― and they’re closely watching the Western response for portents of their future. “Turkey is not only attacking and targeting Afrin. They want to target all of north Syria, including Arabs and Assyrians,” Sinam Mohamad, an international representative for the government of the YPG-controlled areas, argued at a recent event at the Washington Kurdish Institute. Even the American-crafted proxy force in Syria is defying the Trump administration line, not going so far as to threaten a major rift but warning that the crisis could force it to define its priorities differently from those of the U.S. “The Syrian Democratic Forces in their meetings with the U.S. officials and the [anti-ISIS] coalition officials have been very clear that although they will be seeking support in Afrin, they will not be waiting for that to respond and to resist this aggression,” Renas Xan, a local teacher who’s an adviser to the U.S.-backed group’s media team, told HuffPost this week, noting that could mean some forces get redirected toward Afrin and away from recently captured, still vulnerable ISIS strongholds. “There is a general mobilization … that everyone above 18 years old available to support the resistance of any sort should take up arms or help in any way possible to defend their people.” The reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise to the Americans who have been talking to and working with the Kurds for close to four years. The YPG first consolidated its power in the Kurdish areas ― which they call Rojava ― after Assad effectively ceded control in 2012 to focus on fighting Arab rebels. As the militia gained fighting experience, recruits and eventually American support, the goal of connecting Afrin with Kurdish regions further east was a constant. “I remember when they liberated the Tal Abyad territory between Kobani and Jazira, they were telling me back then that they were planning to go to Afrin,” said Amy Austin Holmes, a scholar at the Wilson Center think tank and professor at American University in Cairo who has interviewed scores of fighters in the region. (Kobani and Jazira are the two other mainly Kurdish areas in northern Syria; Tal Abyad is a largely Arab area that lies between them that the Kurds captured from ISIS in 2015.) But the U.S. wanted the Kurds to prioritize taking ISIS territory. So they did, turning their focus to Arab-majority areas farther south. Implicit in that bargain was that the U.S. would ― eventually ― respect the Kurds’ own priorities. It’s hard to know how costly the breaking of that promise will be. “Afrin is such a hugely symbolic matter,” said Nick Heras, a Middle East Security fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank. “The stovepiping of Afrin from the main counter-ISIS campaign in eastern Syria by the U.S. is a risky line of action.” Taking Credit ― And Responsibility The Trump administration seems to know what it wants ― an end to the fighting ― but not how to get it. Its most serious move so far was an apparently harsh call between Erdogan and Trump on Jan. 24. The readout said Trump repeatedly praised the U.S.-Turkey partnership but warned that Erdogan was proceeding down a path that could result in ”conflict between Turkish and American forces.” U.S. officials have also said they will defend another strategic area under Kurd-dominated rule that Erdogan has threatened, the Manbij region east of Afrin. But none of that has halted the Turkish bombing and slow advance. Critics are already eager to assign blame. “My general sense on Afrin is that it shows the dysfunction of Trump’s national security process,” Colin Kahl, one of the top Obama-era officials managing the relationship with Turkey, wrote in an email this week to HuffPost. He pointed out that the administration set the stage for the clash by Trump first tellingErdogan, in November, that the U.S. would cut off heavy weapons to the YPG, and officials then talking about an extended U.S. presence alongside the YPG-dominated forces less than two months later. But the reality is that both administrations made the pattern of choices that’s resulted in this breaking point ― and that it originated under Obama, whose aides made little progress on preventing Erdogan from being a spoiler other than complaining about him. Kahl described the Obama administration’s view in an extensive piece last year in which he said Erdogan created the risk of Turkish-Kurd violence by backing Arab militants, including extremists, more interested in fighting Assad than ISIS, therefore forcing Washington to rely on and strengthen the YPG. Now, officials say the response is the responsibility of the State Department ― a bad sign, given that the agency just lost its No. 3 official, is facing unprecedented morale and staffing challenges, and counts as its top diplomat on such issues the special counter-ISIS envoy, Obama holdover Brett McGurk, who is deeply distrusted by both the Turks and Kurds. A State Department official contacted by HuffPost did not address multiple specific questions about the agency’s response, simply saying it discourages the fighting and respects Turkish concerns. And the absence of a clear strategy makes the Washington conversation ripe for distortion. Turkey is already running “a slick disinformation campaign” on Capitol Hill to prevent the Kurds’ concerns even getting a fair hearing, said Sarah Stern of the Endowment for Middle East Truth advocacy group, which is helping set up congressional meetings for the Kurdish region’s representatives. What U.S. officials are sure of is how much is at stake. ”Increased violence in Afrin distracts from efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS,” Rankine-Galloway of the Pentagon told HuffPost. “It also has significant potential to increase civilian displacement, refugee flows and casualties.” Mohamad, the Kurdish official who’s still in Washington, listed other worries: more power for radical Turkey-backed groups and broader distrust that could cause conflict between Kurds and Arabs all across the areas the U.S. has delivered from ISIS. For her, the issue is personal ― her husband and children are still in Afrin. But ever the diplomat, she pushes loftier arguments. “The U.S.,” Mohamad said, “has a moral obligation.” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/years-of-us-government-lies-could-soon-result-in-a-kurdish-massacre_us_5a75db08e4b01ce33eb32b3a (c) 2018 The Huffington Post

The Plight of Burma’s Rohingya: Discussion and Photography Exhibition Tuesday, February 13, 9–11 a.m. Russell Senate Office Building Room 385 Two Constitution Avenue NE Washington, DC Please join the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide and the American Jewish World Service for a panel discussion and the launch of a photography exhibition on the mass atrocities and ethnic cleansing of Burma’s Muslim-minority Rohingya population. Leading experts on atrocity prevention and prominent Rohingya activists will share updated information about the ongoing crisis and next steps to stem the atrocities and prevent future attacks. Photographer Greg Constantine’s photo essay of Rohingya refugees fleeing mass atrocities will be on display in the Russell Senate Office Building from February 12 through February 16. Discussion will draw on the Museum's recently released report with Southeast Asia-based Fortify Rights, “They Tried to Kill Us All: Atrocity Crimes Against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, Myanmar.” The report documents crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and mounting evidence of genocide against the Rohingya community. RSVP NOW SPEAKERS: Robert Bank, President and CEO, American Jewish World Service Greg Constantine, Photojournalist Lieutenant-General (Ret.) Roméo Dallaire, Founder, Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, former UN Force Commander of the 1994 UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda Cameron Hudson, Director, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Tun Khin, President, Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK Wai Wai Nu, Director, Women's Peace Network Arakan Ambassador David Saperstein, former US Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Members of Congress will deliver remarks following the discussion. Photo: A group of Rohingya travel in the back of a truck to one of the refugee camps in Balukhali, September 2017.Greg Constantine, US Holocaust Memorial Museum Keep Holocaust memory alive to inspire citizens and leaders to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity in a constantly changing world. Visit ushmm.org/campaign to hear more. © 2018 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the Holocaust was an unimaginable crime and “attempts to negate it should always be condemned”. He added that Poland has long tried to fight deniers and that the country wanted to fight lies about the Holocaust. “That is why we are changing the law... Camps, in which millions of Jews were killed, were not Polish. This truth must be protected because it is part of the truth about the Holocaust,” Morawiecki said. Morawiecki highlighted that the Polish government condemned all World War II crimes, “regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator and the nationality of the victim,” adding that Poles and Jews were both victims of the Nazi German regime. Morawiecki spoke on Thursday evening amid tensions between Poland and Israel which emerged after Poland's lower house last week passed a bill that would introduce penalties for anyone who publicly ascribes blame to the Polish nation or state for crimes committed by Nazi Germany. Commentators have said that Israel is concerned that the law could mean penalties for anyone who criticises any individual Pole's role in the Holocaust. Israeli ambassador to Poland Anna Azari said her country rejected the bill, adding: "In Israel, this bill is seen as creating a possibility of punishment for Holocaust survivors' testimony". The Polish bill has also been criticised for limiting freedom of speech. But the government in Warsaw has stressed that artistic expression and academic research would be exempt under the new laws. “We will not limit freedoms in the debate about the Holocaust, we owe that to everyone who experienced it,” Morawiecki said. “We understand emotions in Israel. A lot of work is needed for us to be able to tell, together, our shared and often complicated history,” he added. A working group for “historical truth and Israeli dialogue” was called on Thursday, after Morawiecki and his Israeli counterpart earlier agreed to hold bilateral dialogue. GermanDeathCamps.info, a new educational website aimed at debunking misconceptions about Poland’s role in the Holocaust, has been launched by Polish Radio. The Polish bill was passed in the Senate on Thursday and needs to be signed by President Andrzej Duda before it enters into law. (vb/pk) http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/347252,Polish-death-camp-and-lies-about-WWII-is-also-Holocaust-denial-Polish-PM (c) 2018 Poland Radio

The U.N. special envoy on human rights in Myanmar said Thursday that the Myanmar military's violent operations against Rohingya Muslims bear "the hallmarks of a genocide." Yanghee Lee told reporters in Seoul, where she is based, that she couldn't make a definitive declaration about genocide until a credible international tribunal or court had weighed the evidence, but "we are seeing signs and it is building up to that." Her briefing described her recent visit to refugee camps in Bangladesh and other areas in the region to discuss the Rohingya, a percecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar. Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled their villages into Bangladesh since the Myanmar military's crackdown following Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya insurgents. The government of Myanmar has refused her entrance to the country. Responding to a question about an Associated Press report Thursday that details a massacre and at least five mass graves in the Myanmar village of Gu Dar Pyin, Lee said that while she didn't have specific details on the village, "you can see it's a pattern" that has emerged with the Rohingya. She said such reports must be investigated, "and this is why we've called for a fact finding mission ... and access for international media to" the areas in northern Rakhine state where the Rohingya live. Lee said that Myanmar's actions were "amounting to crimes against humanity." "These are part of the hallmarks of a genocide," she said. "I think Myanmar needs to get rid of this baggage of 'did you or did you not,' and if proven that they did, then there has to be responsibility and accountability. No stones must be left unturned because the people, the victims, the families of the victims definitely deserve an answer," she said. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-02-01/un-official-says-rohingya-crisis-has-hallmarks-of-genocide (C) 2018 US News

In December 2016 Tasneem El-Zaki was arrested and put into isolation in a Sudanese prison for three months. The human rights lawyer was 28 years old at the time and underwent torture during her time in jail. Her crime? Defending the rights of a group of women who had been raped in Darfur. El-Zaki, who comes from the city of Al-Fashir in the country’s western Darfur region, knew the risks involved when she decided to study law and specialise in women’s and young people’s rights. While at university she proposed to write her Masters thesis on war crimes committed by the Sudanese government. Her professors advised against the project and she chose a different topic. Working as a lawyer defending the rights of some of the most vulnerable people in Sudanese society means El-Zaki lives with the daily fear of arbitrary arrest and detention. Like El-Zaki, many of her colleagues have been imprisoned in isolation without access to legal representation since the crackdown on civil society began after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against the country’s president, Omar Al Bashir, in 2009. In January 2018 Amal Habani, the co-ordinator of the No Oppression Against Women Initiative in Sudan, was beaten with an electric rod by Sudanese forces during interrogation. Fellow human rights defenders Nahid Jabrallah and Mohamed Aldouma, the president of the Darfur Bar Association, were also arrested last month. Meanwhile, protests broke out across the country after the Sudanese government removed subsidies as part of austerity measures leading to a hike in prices for bread and other essential foodstuffs. Sexual violence Following her release from prison last year, El-Zaki was forced to flee to Egyptafter she refused to stop supporting rape victims. She was then temporarily relocated through Front Line Defenders to Ireland, where she has spent the past six months learning English. She hopes to return to Sudan this month to continue her work defending women living in rural Darfur. “These are normal women living in villages with a large military presence,” says El-Zaki. “These villages have no hospitals, no police station, no services at all. And rape cases are so specific. Nobody comes to us as witnesses because they are afraid of the military. There are other violations by the military against young people for the clothes they’re wearing. If you don’t dress properly you can be punished without trial. There’s no personal freedom in Sudan.” Being a woman in Sudan is not easy, says El-Zaki. Aside from the high risk of rape, nearly nine out of 10 girls will undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), which involves the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia for non-medical reasons. El-Zaki worries that if she does not go back to Sudan, countless women who experience sexual violence will be left vulnerable and alone. She dismisses any suggestion that returning home could put her own life at risk. “Only a few people are trained to help with these types of cases and many people are too scared to work in this area. There are no international organisations left in Sudan, just UN missions and they can’t visit every village. I’ve created relationships with the people in these villages. I feel so bad that I lost my jobs in Sudan because I can’t help women from here. Last week a policeman called to my sister’s house and asked for me so I don’t know what will happen. But I must go back.” https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/africa/there-s-no-personal-freedom-in-sudan-says-rights-lawyer-1.3376929 (c) 2018 Irish Times

The Associated Press on Wednesday published a report detailing the existence of several previously undisclosed mass graves of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar along with shocking details of the systematic execution of victims and attempts to hide evidence of the crime. The lengthy report by the AP's Foster Klug relied on interviews with more than two dozen refugees who managed to escape from soldiers and flee to neighboring Bangladesh at the start of a brutal military crackdown on the Rohingya in August. Some of the survivors provided the news agency with time-stamped cellphone videos supporting their claims. The AP uncovered evidence of at least five mass graves at one location, Gu Dar Pyin, that bolster charges leveled by the U.S. and United Nations of ethnic cleansing in the country's northern Rakhine state. About 200 soldiers, known as Tatmadaw, swept into the area on Aug. 27, according to witnesses. One of them, Mohammad Sha, 37, a shop owner and farmer, told the news agency that he "hid in a grove of coconut trees near a river with more than 100 others. They watched as the military searched Muslim homes and dozens of Buddhist neighbors, their faces partly covered with scarves, loaded the possessions they found into about 10 pushcarts. Then the soldiers burned down the homes, shooting anyone who couldn't flee, Sha said." The news agency writes: "Myanmar has cut off access to Gu Dar Pyin, so it's unclear just how many people died, but satellite images obtained by the AP from DigitalGlobe show a village decimated. Community leaders have compiled a list of 75 dead so far, and villagers estimate the toll could be as high as 400, based on testimony from relatives and the bodies they've seen in the graves and strewn about the area." Almost every villager interviewed by the AP saw three large mass graves at Gu Dar Pyin's northern entrance, near the main road, where witnesses say soldiers herded and killed most of the Rohingya. A handful of witnesses confirmed two other big graves near a hillside cemetery, and smaller graves scattered around the village." The AP says cellphone video shot by survivors show "blue-green puddles of acid sludge [surrounding] corpses without heads and torsos that jut out from the earth, skeletal hands seeming to claw at the ground." Local officials contacted by the news agency claim to know nothing of mass graves and Myanmar's government has repeatedly denied any organized campaign against the Rohingya. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 688,000 Rohinghya have fled Myanmar since August. Last year, Doctors Without Borders said it believed that 6,700 Rohingya were killed in a single one-month periodfollowing the crackdown. Matthew Smith of the aid group Fortify Rights, speaking with Michael Sullivan, who reports from Asia for NPR, says his group has been documenting mass graves in Rakhine since 2016. He said the group had not specifically documented the use of acid to dissolve bodies, but had collected evidence of soldiers "cutting bodies up" and "burning piles of bodies." "[The] pre-planning aspect of this would be consistent with what we found in other places" in Rakhine, Smith says. Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said it is time for the U.S. and the European Union to "get serious" about identifying culprits in Myanmar's military. He said the AP's reporting "raises the stakes for the international community to demand accountability from Myanmar." "The AP's report that Tatmadaw soldiers brought along to Gu Dyar Pin village containers of acid to disfigure the bodies and make identification more difficult is particularly damning because it shows a degree of pre-planning of these atrocities," Robertson said. The plight of the Rohingya — long a persecuted minority in Myanmar — has brought international scrutiny to the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is nonetheless accused of ignoring massacres carried out by her country's military. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, who has called the situation in Rakhine "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing," says Suu Kyi and the head of Myanmar's armed forces, Gen. Aung Min Hlaing, could potentially face charges of genocide. In January, Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to a two-year timeframe for the repatriation of Rohingya Muslims housed in sprawling camps, despite deep concerns voiced by international aid groups and the refugees themselves. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/01/582323591/ap-investigation-details-shocking-massacre-mass-graves-of-myanmar-rohingya (c) 2018 NPR

After a Myanmar court's renewed refusal today to grant bail to two Reuters journalists who have been held for nearly two months, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for an international campaign on their behalf and for signatures to a petition for their unconditional release. It was the second time in ten days that a judge refused to release the two journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, on bail. They are now facing the possibility of spending many more months in prison before they get a chance to defend their innocence in court. Arrested on 12 December, they were formally charged on 10 January with violating the Official Secrets Act, a colonial-era law dating back to 1923, under which they are facing a possible 14-year jail sentence. The law is nowadays only used when the military want to make it clear that they do not want to be the subject of investigative reporting. It was last used against four journalists in 2014. “These two journalists are paying for their professionalism,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “Their only crime was to take an interest in the atrocities by Myanmar’s security forces against the country’s Rohingya minority, which resulted in an exodus of around 700,000 refugees. “Aung San Suu Kyi’s government must immediately end this travesty of justice, involving entrapment by the police, trumped-up evidence and a complete lack of transparency. The refusal to grant bail clearly shows that the judicial system is being used to punish these two reporters and to intimidate their media colleagues.” The court that considered the release request should have granted it on the grounds that their arrest was illegal. The two journalists are accused of being in possession of classified documents at the time of their arrest as they left a Yangon restaurant. But, as they have repeatedly pointed out, they had only just been given the documents in the restaurant by two mysterious policemen and had not had time to study them. RSF launched a petition on 22 January in order to start an international campaign for their release.Free Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo !SIGN THE PETITION The UN special envoy on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee of South Korea, voiced support for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo today, calling them “brave” and “fearless” in their attempts to cover one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. She said the operations by Myanmar’s armed forces against the Rohingya community in Rakhine State bore “the hallmarks of a genocide” and added, “this is why we’ve called for access for international media.” When US diplomat Bill Richardson resigned last week from an international panel advising Suu Kyi’s government, he said she had become “furious” when he called for the release of the two Reutersjournalists. Since last September, RSF has been urging Suu Kyi to lift the many restrictions on journalists in Myanmar, especially on those who would like to cover the military operations in Rakhine State. Myanmar is ranked 131st out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index. https://rsf.org/en/news/myanmar-court-again-refuses-free-two-reuters-journalists (c) 2018 Reporters Without Borders

The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it was “deeply, deeply troubled” by new reports of mass graves in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where the military has been accused of atrocities against minority Rohingya Muslims. The Associated Press reported earlier it had confirmed the existence of more than five previously unreported mass graves in the Myanmar village of Gu Dar Pyin, through interviews of survivors in refugee camps in Bangladesh and through time-stamped cellphone videos. “We are deeply, deeply troubled by those reports of mass graves,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a regular news briefing. “We are watching this very carefully. We remain focused on helping to ensure the accountability for those responsible for human rights abuses and violations.” Nauert said the reports highlighted the need for authorities in Myanmar to cooperate with an independent, credible investigation into allegations of atrocities in northern Rakhine state. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-rakhine-graves/u-s-says-deeply-troubled-by-reports-of-myanmar-mass-graves-idUSKBN1FL6I5?rpc=401& (C) 2018 Reuters