The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in its ethnic persecution of the Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority. The genocide lies now as a symbol of the failure of humanity to mobilize in time to rescue its citizens. Western nations have since been condemned for blatant complicity and inaction despite the intelligence and means to intervene. And now, after a mere twenty-three years, we are repeating that cruel mistake in the wake of the Rohingya Crisis. The Rohingya Crisis in happening now, under the complicity of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who stood for a democratic Myanmar during its regime change in the late 1900’s and is now silent in the face of ethnic persecution in her own state. The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, totaling about 1 million people. In a Buddhist Myanmar, the Rohingya are an ethnic and religious minority who are not even part of the 135 recognized ethnic groups in the country. Despite their roots being tied to the country and many Rohingya knowing no other home, many are slurred with the tag of being illegal immigrants due to their practice of Islam. Many citizens and government officials in Myanmar believe that the Rohingya have immigrated from East Bengal, a neighboring Muslim majority state. The government has always discriminated against them severely by enacting laws that limit the community’s ability to attain education, property, and employment. But now the state is choosing to stand silent as the Rohingya are being persecuted by the animosity of the military and citizenry of the fledgling democracy. In August of 2017, after a clash between the Rohingya militant group known as Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and the military, Myanmar’s government officially declared them a terrorist organization. Using the entirety of the Rohingya population as scapegoats for the incident, the military mounted a cruel campaign in which they killed Rohingyas, raped women, destroyed homes, and stole property. To flee persecution, more than six hundred thousand Rohingya have fled the country while faced with the threats of open fires, landmines, and animal attacks, planted by the military to deter those crossing the borders. The military in Myanmar, a powerful political entity still yielding power from its previous rule, is rarely questioned by the democratic state led by Suu Kyi. It is, perhaps, horrific irony to see her failure to condemn and act against the persecution, as she herself was once persecuted for fighting to establish a democracy in the former state of military-ruled Burma.And yet, in the face of the genocide of the 21st century, she stands still for perhaps the sake of her political image in the country, as any action for the Rohingya is widely unpopular. But it is important to remember that this is, in fact, a genocide. “Omission” from the United States and other Western countries is a profound action – one that signals that we do not intend to fix our mistakes with Rwanda. As such, we must urge our congressional representatives and senators to push for sanctions against Myanmar immediately. Our inaction in the face of this atrocity will go down in history forever as yet another act of cruelty and complacency by humanity unless we choose to act this time around. http://highschool.latimes.com/fairmont-preparatory-academy/modern-genocide-our-complicity-in-the-rohingya-crisis/ (c) Los Angeles Times

As the Rohingya crisis escalates, the state of Myanmar is silencing the media – and the people who dare to talk to them In December last year, after the Myanmar security forces had been accused of deadly attacks in the state of Rakhine, the government allowed a press trip to the area. Such visits are rare; this three-day, state-guided trip was allowed only after pressure from human rights groups and the UN to investigate allegation of atrocities against Rohingya people. Thirteen journalists toured the area, closely watched by security forces. Locals were reluctant to talk from fear of retaliation. But on 21 December Shuna Mia, a 41-year-old Rohingya man from the township of Maungdaw, bravely decided to speak out. According to activists who have seen footage of his interview, he said that people in his community had been raped and killed by security forces. Later that night, villagers say, a group of people went to Shuna’s house. His family grew worried, and they began to look for him early the next morning. Around midday, a headless body was found floating in a nearby river. His family identified it as Shuna’s. A year on, the Myanmar army continues to wage a devastating war against the Rohingya people. Security forces have raped, tortured and killed thousands, and have burned settlements to the ground, including Maungdaw township, where Shuna had lived, and where earlier this week a mass grave was found. The violence has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya people into neighbouring Bangladesh. The UN has branded the military’s actions as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Myanmar has long been a country of media repression and censorship. But Shuna’s death marked the start of a revived effort from the government to quash independent reporting. Two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were arrested in Yangon last week and are now feared “disappeared”. Myanmar’s ministry of information said the reporters had “illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media”. It’s believed they had uncovered photographic evidence of the mass grave in Rakhine state. As the violence against the Rohingya people intensified, Myanmar authorities and Aung San Suu Kyi also adopted a new tactic: to smear the Rohingya people on social media, and to deny well-documented accusations of crimes against humanity. The day after Shuna was found dead, someone representing the state counsellor of Myanmar (Aung San Suu Kyi’s official title) posted a photo of a headless body on the office’s Facebook page, stamped with the words “Truth teller BEHEADED”. The post claimed Shuna had told the media that security forces had not committed rape or arson, and suggested he was killed by “Muslim insurgents” in retaliation. That directly contradicted local reports, activists and Shuna’s family, who believe he was abducted and beheaded by security forces for speaking to journalists. This was just part of the government’s efforts to discredit Rohingya people. On the same day, the same Facebook account posted photos of Rohingya women who said they had been raped by security forces. The label “FAKE RAPE” dismissed the countless reports of sexual violence . In 2010, I spent a year working with Amnesty International on its Burma campaign, calling for the release of political prisoners. Part of my work was on the Radios for Burma project, where I supported Amnesty staff as they smuggled 10,000 radio sets into the country’s remote areas. The aim was to amplify independent media for hundreds of thousands of people who had been starved of independent information. Back then, I saw how limited access to free and fair information was across the country. Seven years on, the government is targeting vulnerable citizens all over again. But this time, it is orchestrating its own version of events through social media. And, worst of all, it is being encouraged by Aung San Suu Kyi, the very woman that the western world once hailed as a champion of freedom of speech. For decades, Aung San Suu Kyi called for press freedom, and many expected conditions for journalists to improve following her release from house arrest. But as the abuse of the Rohingya people has escalated, she has denounced honest and unbiased press coverage, blaming “terrorists” for “a huge iceberg of misinformation”. When Shuna’s body was found, several other people from his village who had spoken to the media fled to Bangladesh. “The soldiers murdered my husband in November,” one woman told a reporter. “Weeks after, they raped me before my daughter. My mental pain was unbearable. I wanted the world to know of it.” Shuna and others risked their lives to reveal what is happening to the Rohingya people. As the crisis continues to escalate, let’s not allow their efforts to be twisted by the Myanmar government, or dismissed as fake news. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/23/aung-san-suu-free-press-fake-news-rohingya?platform=hootsuite (c) 2017 The Guardian

THE HAGUE — Embarrassed by its failure to prevent Europe’s worst atrocities since World War II, the United Nations Security Council created a tribunal in 1993 to track down and punish those responsible for the horrific violence against civilians that convulsed the Balkans during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Over its 24-year life, the tribunal indicted 161 people, heard from nearly 5,000 witnesses and met for 10,800 days. It convicted people from all parties to the conflict on war crimes and crimes against humanity, though the largest number were Serbs. Six Bosnian Serbs, including the political leader Radovan Karadzic and the military commander Ratko Mladic, were convicted of genocide and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Its pioneering work, televised from the court, introduced a new vocabulary into the public realm. Terms like ethnic cleansing and “mass rape as a weapon to destroy lives,” notions once confined to experts, are now widely used. As the tribunal expanded the body of international law that had lain mostly dormant since the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, it spawned an avalanche of scholarship. Other courts followed it, dealing with Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Lebanon. Many believe the tribunal provided the momentum for the founding of the permanent International Criminal Court. But at a closing ceremony this past week for the court, known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the mood was sober. The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said that “accountability has taken root in our collective consciousness.” But international criminal justice, he said, was still a “long-term undertaking.” Speaking in the medieval Knights Hall in the presence of the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, Serge Brammertz, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, said: “It seems as if today, there are more conflicts than in recent history.” He added, “The need for justice is immense, but so are the political barriers.” The ceremony had the tinge of a memorial service, as fragments from witnesses’ testimonies were displayed on a giant screen and an actress read out heartbreaking accounts from victims of atrocities. Some in the audience were moved to tears. The tribunal first captured the world’s attention late one night in 2001, when a helicopter dropped the man who until then was Serbia’s president into the courtyard of the United Nations jail near The Hague. Slobodan Milosevic became the first former head of state to appear before a modern international war crimes court. He died in prison of a heart attack in 2006, two months before his trial was due to end. Prosecutors were blamed for having been overly ambitious, bringing 66 charges covering three wars — in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo — which they said he had instigated. The trial of Mr. Milosevic, though, revealed government archives and evidence that contributed to a different public mind-set. “When I was in law school, it was normal for dictators to retire in the south of France,” said Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at Washington’s American University. “All my students have grown up in a world where it’s normal to think a mastermind of atrocities must be brought to book.” When the court was created, the wars of 1992-1995 still raging, its outlook was anything but rosy: It lacked money, administrative staff and investigators, and it faced tasks unlike anything prosecutors or defense lawyers had faced in national jurisdictions. Evidence was often hidden in secret mass graves, and witnesses had fled. Crime scenes were riddled with land mines. “The office felt a bit like the Wild West,” said Michelle Jarvis, a deputy to the chief prosecutor, who joined in 1997 as an intern. She recalled being told that “everything we do all day, every day, is difficult, there’s no precedent, there are no straight answers.” Without an armed police force of their own, tribunal detectives struggled to find fugitives or deliver arrest warrants; NATO peacekeepers initially said arrests were not part of their mandate. Politics played a big part in getting fugitives to The Hague: The United States threatened to hold back aid to Serbia unless Mr. Milosevic was handed over. Senior Croat and Bosnian Serb defendants, including Mr. Karadzic and Mr. Mladic were finally delivered, apparently as a condition for European Union candidacy. The first low-level offenders from Bosnia arriving in The Hague served as a testing ground for new rules and laws. Judges went for guidance to texts of modern international conventions that had never been applied in trials, and had to turn them into applicable laws. “It all felt so urgent, so important,” recalled Douglas Stringer, a former American federal prosecutor who arrived in 1997. “People were watching closely to see if this court could fly or if it would crash and burn. It wasn’t clear; it was all an experiment.” Failure was not an option for Antonio Cassese, a prominent Italian jurist and the court’s first president, who died in 2011. Several of his early decisions, initially seen as controversial, broadened basic precepts of international criminal law. He wrote that war crimes could occur not only in wars between nations, but also in conflicts within a country. In another decision, he ruled that massacres, torture and other atrocities committed by a government or a group could constitute crimes against humanity, even without a war. “It was intended for tyrants abusing their own people,” he said in a later interview. To tie politicians to the violent campaigns they had planned far from the scenes, judges came up with the doctrine of “joint criminal enterprise,” tantamount to the notion of conspiracy used against organized crime. The tribunal, and its Rwanda counterpart, also created precedents on sexual crimes committed in times of conflict. Judges at the Rwanda tribunal said rape could be prosecuted as part of genocide. The Yugoslavia tribunal, which received reports of more than 20,000 rapes in Bosnia, went further, ruling that systematic rape could also be treated as enslavement, torture and a weapon to destroy lives, and therefore as a war crime. Ms. Jarvis, the prosecutor, said that of the 90 convictions at the Yugoslavia tribunal, more than half included responsibility for sexual abuse. Critics insisted that the prosecution examine possible crimes by NATO for its bombing of civilian targets in Serbia. Investigators did, and later reported that civilians were killed, but that they received no cooperation from NATO and were unable to find war crimes. The end of the tribunal’s life has made for more open debates around the normally secretive court. Defense lawyers said they had been treated as poor relatives, left without the much vaunted “equality of arms” and overwhelmed by the power of the prosecution. Another sensitive issue involved the uneven quality of the judges. Close to half the tribunal’s judges, who were commonly backed by their governments and elected by the General Assembly of the United Nations, had been diplomats or academics without trial experience, causing delays and frustration at times. Wolfgang Schomburg, a German judge formerly at the tribunal, said that only judges with courtroom experience should be admitted in any future war crimes court. “How can we justify that defense lawyers required seven years experience to appear before this tribunal, and judges none at all?” he asked. In both Serbia and Croatia politicians have accused the tribunal of bias against their side, and have welcomed convicts returning home as heroes. Even the Croatian commander Slobodan Praljak, who swallowed cyanide in court in November after his appeal was rejected, has been commemorated in Zagreb as a heroic figure. All the same, under Western pressure, war crimes chambers now operate in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, handling low-level defendants with the help of the database and case law from the tribunal in The Hague. Hrvoje Klasic, a professor of history at the University of Zagreb, said it would probably take a generation or more before people in the region would accept what happened in the wars and start believing there were victims and crimes on all sides. But he said the trials had produced enormous amounts of evidence and uncovered the kind of archives and records that “historians like me would never get from our governments.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/world/europe/yugoslavia-tribunal-hague.html?_r=0 (c) 2017 The New York Times

For six hours he hid in an upstairs room, listening to the crackle of gunfire and the screams of people being slaughtered outside his Myanmar home. With every footstep that drew near, every cry that pierced the air, 52-year-old Bodru Duza braced for the soldiers to find him, to kill him like all the others who had fled to his compound that morning seeking a safe place to shelter. They were being blindfolded and bound, marched away in small groups, then butchered and shot as they begged for their lives. What had started out as a quiet Sunday in northwestern Myanmar had spiraled into an incomprehensible hell — one of the bloodiest massacres reported in the Southeast Asian nation since government forces launched a vicious campaign to drive out the country's Rohingya minority in late August. By the time it was over, there was so much blood on the ground, it had pooled into long rivulets across the uneven earth, among bits of human flesh and the fragments of shattered skulls. When Duza finally dared to emerge from his hiding place, he wondered how anyone could have survived. The compound he grew up in was now consumed by an ethereal silence. His wife, daughter, and five young sons were nowhere to be seen. And as he crept toward a backdoor to escape, he stumbled upon the corpse of an unknown boy sprawled on the floor. "Oh Allah!" he thought. "What have they done to us? What have they done to my family?" In this Nov. 25, 2017, photo, Bodru Duza, 52, third from right, kisses his sons as he sits for a portrait with members of his family in a tent in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. Duza's family belonged to the ethnic Rohingya Muslim community, which has long been persecuted and denied basic rights in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. They lived in the village of Maung Nu, where at least 82 Rohingya are believed to have been murdered on Aug. 27. The massacre was part of a streak of violence that started before dawn two days earlier, when Rohingya insurgents staged an unprecedented wave of 30 attacks on security posts across Rakhine state. At least 14 people were killed. The assaults triggered one of the greatest catastrophes the Rohingya have ever known: an army counter-offensive that has left hundreds of villages burned and driven 650,000 refugees into Bangladesh. The aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates 6,700 Rohingya civilians were killed in the first month of reprisals alone, and human rights groups have documented three large-scale massacres. The Associated Press has reconstructed the massacre at Maung Nu as told by 37 survivors now scattered across refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their testimony and exclusive video footage from the massacre site obtained by AP offer evidence, also documented by the United Nations and others, that Myanmar armed forces have systematically killed civilians. Myanmar's military did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story, and the government — which prohibits journalists from independent travel to northern Rakhine State — did not reply to an AP request for a visit. The army has insisted in the past that not a single innocent has been slain. For as long as anyone could remember, there was only one place in Maung Nu that was truly considered safe. It was a large two-story residence shared by two of the village's most prominent businessmen — Duza and his brother Zahid Hossain. Built on a hillside more than half a century ago, the vast home was known for its three-foot-thick walls of hardened mud, which many believed to be bullet-proof and virtually impossible to burn. That mattered in Rakhine state, where the Rohingya population lived in fear of both the military and the area's ethnic Rakhine Buddhists. Although the Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for decades, they are still seen as foreign invaders from Bangladesh who are intent on stealing land. Despite the tensions, Hossain worked extensively with local army commanders, trading cows and rice and jointly operating a brick-making factory. Both brothers were charismatic, educated and popular. Duza, an affable man who was well-known throughout the area, had previously served as village administrator for 12 years. Many people assumed that neither he nor his compound would be harmed. After insurgents launched their first attacks a year ago, the government had imposed strict new measures aimed at curbing militant activity. Islamic schools were closed, a curfew was put in place, and authorities ordered the removal of fences and even shrubbery so security forces could see inside private compounds. But Maung Nu, a village of about 2,000 people also known as Monu Para, remained peaceful. Duza and his brother counted their blessings. They were among the village's wealthiest men. They owned scores of cows and buffalo, and vast acres of rice. Soon, it would all be gone. A few hours after midnight on Aug. 25, fierce volleys of gunfire woke the residents of Maung Nu. Rohingya militants had launched a surprise assault on a Border Guard Police post in Hpaung Taw Pyin, less than a kilometer (a mile) to the north. The fighting lasted until dawn. According to the government, two officers and at least six of the assailants died. That morning a commander from the army's Light Infantry Battalion 564, based just south of Maung Nu, called the local district administrator, Mohamed Arof, furious. "Why didn't you tell us about these attacks?" the commander demanded. "I didn't know anything about it," replied Arof, a Rohingya. "I only heard the shooting, like you." The same day, police snatched Arof's 15-year-old son from a rice paddy and took him to their camp, where he was hanged with a rope along with three other teenagers, according to Arof and several witnesses. It's unclear why the teens were killed, but word of their deaths spread quickly. Fearing more reprisals from security forces, most of Hpaung Taw Pyin's residents fled. Hundreds of them walked to the homes of friends and relatives in Maung Nu, in the hope they would be safe there. And for a day, they were. On Aug. 27, bursts of gunfire echoed across Maung Nu again. This time only the army was shooting. Several military trucks parked on the village's main road around 9 a.m. and began disgorging troops who fanned out on foot, firing into the air. Peering out a window of her home, 35-year-old Jamila Begum spotted several armed soldiers crossing her yard carrying coils of nylon rope. Hundreds of people were already on the move, seeking the closest refuge — the hillside compound of Duza and Hossain, which included half a dozen other homes belonging to their relatives and a large rectangular pond. Jamila's family joined them. Other residents were being rounded up by force and ordered to head to the compound. Some cowered inside their homes, wondering what to do. One of them, 18-year-old Mohammadul Hassan, put a woman's veil over his face when troops burst through the front door of his home, guns drawn. Hassan immediately recognized one of the soldiers — a skinny army staff sergeant named Baju who was well-known in the village. A member of the 564th Battalion, Baju had lived in the area for 15 years and spoke the Rohingya dialect, according to numerous villagers. Duza said Baju was also a frequent visitor to his home. When the soldiers discovered Hassan hiding among several female relatives, they became enraged. He was dragged outside along with two of his brothers, shoved to the ground and kicked until blood poured from his left eye. As troops ripped clothes off the women and seized their valuables, the three brothers were stripped and tied up. The soldiers marched them to Duza's compound naked, at gunpoint, the sunbaked dirt road burning their bare feet. In this Nov. 27, 2017, photo, Mohamed Yaha demonstrates what he saw when soldiers bound the hands of men with nylon rope and blindfolded them with scarves taken from the women when they massacred his village in Myanmar's Rakhine State. Duza had never seen people so scared. As the number of Rohingya hiding on his property rose into the hundreds, his wife, a warm woman with an easy smile named Habiba, turned to him and asked, "What's happening? What's going on?" The answer came when dozens of helmeted soldiers in olive green uniforms arrived around 11 a.m., accompanied by several border guard police. Their entrance set off a new panic. A few men in Duza's house locked the main wooden doors and climbed the stairs to a balcony, where most of the males already had gathered. Before joining them, Duza pulled Habiba aside. "Please take care of our daughter and our sons." So many people were crammed into their house by then, though, that Habiba soon lost track of all but one child. Outside, a soldier's voice rose above the others. It was Baju, and he was calling on everyone to come out, assuring them they would not be harmed. As the minutes passed and nobody emerged, the calls turned menacing, and the sergeant threatened to burn the compound to the ground. Several bursts of gunfire rang out and a young boy was struck in the forehead. The women recoiled in horror as he lay motionless before them, the back of his skull blown apart. Seconds later, soldiers broke down the doors and began dragging people out, separating the men from the women. Mothers and elderly women were ordered onto their knees. Some tried to push back when troops ripped off their headscarves and tore at their clothes. The soldiers first demanded their cell phones, then grabbed at exposed breasts as they snatched gold earrings, necklaces and wads of cash. About 20 or 25 of the women — mostly attractive and young — were taken away. They were never seen again. The rest eventually were driven, along with their children, into a pair of houses on the property. The soldiers bound the men's hands behind their backs and ordered them into the dirt courtyard in front of the house, where they were forced face down onto the stifling ground. Most were blindfolded with masking tape or veils taken from the women. A handful who tried to resist were thrown off the balcony head-first. Troops started to walk across the sea of people, grinding boots into their heads and beating them with rifle butts. Some of the soldiers cursed their prisoners, calling them dirty "kalar," a derogatory word for Muslims that is frequently used in Myanmar. Duza's brother, Hossain, begged for the violence to stop. "Why are you doing this?" he cried. "Why are you tying us up?" There was no answer. Around noon, a senior officer called a commander on his phone. The officer said they had rounded up 87 men. "What should we do with them?" The call ended shortly afterward, and the officer barked an order to his troops. "Let us begin." In this Nov. 28, 2017, photo, Shafir Rahman describes how he watched a soldier hammering a four-inch nail into the side of a man's head with a rifle butt. Duza watched through a slit in a closed window as a soldier plunged a long knife into his brother's neck in front of their house. When two of Hossain's sons got up and tried to run, soldiers opened fire. Duza stepped back in shock. He scrambled to an upstairs room and crawled into the only place he could think of to hide: a foot-high space under a large wooden container normally used to store rice. He covered his legs with rice sacks and curled into a ball, trying to disappear. Outside, screams like he'd never heard before reverberated across the courtyard. Several soldiers hammered four-inch nails into the temples of three men on the ground with the butts of their rifles. Four other men were decapitated, including a prominent gray-bearded mullah. Then a pair of soldiers — one was Baju — descended on Jamila's husband. With two-foot-long machetes, they hacked into his neck from both sides. He crumpled in the dirt, gagging on blood. Gasping for breath, Jamila stumbled toward the door. She wanted to rush to his side, to help him, to be with him — to die. But the women in the house pulled her back. "You can't go," one said, as Jamila collapsed, weeping. "If you go out there, they'll kill all of us." While women rocked back and forth, several children began praying. In the courtyard, they could hear people begging for their lives. "Please Allah!" Please help us!" "We're dying!" When Jamila rose to look out the window again, she saw her 16-year-old son dragged away by the collar of his shirt and tied to a tree, screaming, "I didn't do anything!" The gunshots rang out. Jamila could not bear to look. In this Nov. 26, 2017, photo, Jamila Begum, 35, caresses a favorite shirt and school bag of her late son who was killed by members of Myanmar's armed forces accused of massacring civilians in in Myanmar's Rakhine State. As the afternoon wore on, the carnage became more methodical. Men and teenage boys were taken away in small groups and killed by firing squads near a forested area on the edge of the property. In some cases, a soldier blew a whistle beforehand, signaling for them to begin. Other troops wrapped corpses in orange and green tarps and transported them downhill in three-wheeled push-carts to a pair of army trucks parked on the road. Several witnesses reported seeing soldiers digging pits and dumping bodies into them. When Mohammad Nasir was marched to the killing ground with six others, he saw more than a dozen cadavers crumpled there under the trees. As those beside him braced for death and called out Islamic creeds — "There is no god but Allah! Mohamed is his prophet!" — Nasir wriggled loose and ran. He made it to the far side of a small ravine before the first burst of gunfire rang out. Half an hour later, when he had run out of breath, he realized he had been shot in the elbow. Mohammadul Hassan was taken to a pond just east of the main house. Soldiers ordered him to kneel with his two brothers, then shot them all from behind and rolled them over to make sure they were dead. When Hassan unexpectedly opened his eyes, an officer sitting on the bank walked casually forward and fired a single rifle shot into his chest. Hassan later regained consciousness, stumbled away, and survived. That afternoon, soldiers began searching the compound for men. At one point, Baju grabbed Duza's 9-year-old son Mohamed Ahasun, and demanded to know where his father was. The boy said Duza had left four days earlier for another village. Baju slapped him, but let him go. In the tiny, darkened crawl space upstairs, Duza's mind had gone numb. He kept telling himself: "It has to stop ... This has to end somehow." Praying for survival, he waited for the soldiers to discover him, to drag him out by the feet. But they never did. And when the guns finally fell silent, he crept slowly downstairs, and slipped away. For the next two weeks, he traveled alone, joining the hordes of Rohingya bound for Bangladesh. They crossed streams and forests and mountains, and finally the Naf River, which separates the two countries. When Duza got out of a boat and stepped onto Bangladeshi soil, he looked back toward Myanmar and saw half a dozen columns of smoke curling skyward from burning Rohingya homes. His family, he thought, was surely dead. In this Nov. 24, 2017, photo, Li Juhar, who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine State, becomes animated, forming both his hands into the shape of guns, when he speaks of soldiers flooding into his village. There is no way to independently confirm the death toll in Maung Nu. But one handwritten tally seen by The AP details the names, ages and professions of 82 people, most of them men and boys from Maung Nu and Hpaung Taw Pyin, who family members say were killed. They are farmers and students, carpenters, businessmen and teachers. The youngest is seven years old; the oldest, 95. According to Arof, the village administrator, at least 200 more remain missing and are feared dead. Most of the survivors struggle to understand why so many of their neighbors were slaughtered. Arof said the army falsely believed they were supporting the insurgency, but something much deeper had driven the killing. The massacres reported since August have stood out for their high casualty toll, their ferocity, and the methodical way in which they were carried out. "You have to understand ... they hate us," Arof said. "This didn't only happen in our village, it happened everywhere." In the end, Duza was one of the luckiest survivors. After weeks spent imagining another life without a family, he found a newly-arrived refugee with a Myanmar phone and asked to use it. He dialed his wife Habiba's number. A young girl answered. He could barely believe it. It was his 14-year-old daughter, Taslima. As tears welled in his eyes, Duza asked about the rest of his family. "Are they with you? Are they alive?" "Yes papa! Yes!" Taslima replied. "We're here! Everybody is fine." Duza's family had been elsewhere in the compound when he fled. It would take them six more weeks to make the journey to Bangladesh. When the family reunited in a refugee camp, Duza broke down as he hugged his wife and squeezed the children he never thought he'd see again. They had lost so much -- their friends and relatives, their home, their savings, their future -- but they had somehow found each other. "It felt like living in another world," Duza said. "It felt like a new life." https://www.voanews.com/a/rohingya-survivors-myanmar-amy-slaughtered-men-children/4175020.html (c) 2017 VOA News

Ideal Citizen Movement (ICM), a non-political organisation, today began a long march from Dhaka towards Cox’s Bazar demanding safe and dignified return of Rohingya refugees to their homeland in Myanmar. The long march started from in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka towards Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar around 12 noon. They held a rally there before starting the long march where speakers called upon the Myanmar authorities to give citizenship to the Rohingyas and urged the international organisations including United Nations to intervene in ensuring safe repatriation of the Rohingyas. The speakers also criticised the role of China, Russia and India for not taking steps to resolve the Rohingya issue. Expressing solidarity with the programme, Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, founder of Gono Shasthya Kendra, said Bangladesh government executed some responsibilities by giving the Rohingyas shelter on humanitarian ground but there are more things to be done in this regard. He urged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to visit the OIC member countries to launch diplomatic initiatives in resolving the Rohingya issue. Expressing concern over the government’s bilateral agreement with Myanmar on Rohingya repatriation, Md Mahmudul Hasan, founder of ICM, said it is not clear that how many Rohingyas would be taken back and unless there is any pressure from the world leaders, Myanmar may not take them back at all. http://www.thedailystar.net/rohingya-crisis/bangladesh-bd-citizen-body-begins-long-march-demanding-safe-repatriation-rohingyas-myanmar-1509214 (c) 2017 The Daily Star

Muslims who escaped mass killing by state troops recount horrifying experiences. For six hours he hid in an upstairs room, listening to the crackle of gunfire and the screams of people being slaughtered outside his Burma home. With every footstep that drew near, every cry that pierced the air, 52-year-old Bodru Duza braced for the soldiers to find him, to kill him like all the others who had fled to his compound that morning seeking a safe place to shelter. They were being blindfolded and bound, marched away in small groups, then butchered and shot as they begged for their lives. What had started out as a quiet Sunday in northwestern Burma had spiralled into an incomprehensible hell — one of the bloodiest massacres reported in the SoutheastAsian nation since government forces launched a vicious campaign to drive out the country’s Rohingya minority in late August. By the time it was over, there was so much blood on the ground, it had pooled into long rivulets across the uneven earth, among bits of human flesh and the fragments of shattered skulls. When Duza finally dared to emerge from his hiding place, he wondered how anyone could have survived. The compound he grew up in was now consumed by an ethereal silence. His wife, daughter, and five young sons were nowhere to be seen. And as he crept toward a backdoor to escape, he stumbled upon the corpse of an unknown boy sprawled on the floor. “Oh Allah!” he thought. “What have they done to us? What have they done to my family?” Duza’s family belonged to the ethnic Rohingya Muslim community, which has long been persecuted and denied basic rights in predominantly Buddhist Burma. They lived in the village of Maung Nu, where at least 82 Rohingya are believed to have been murdered on 27 August. The massacre was part of a streak of violence that started before dawn two days earlier, when Rohingya insurgents staged an unprecedented wave of 30 attacks on security posts across Rakhine state. At least 14 people were killed. The assaults triggered one of the greatest catastrophes the Rohingya have ever known: an army counter-offensive that has left hundreds of villages burned and driven 650,000 refugees into Bangladesh. The aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates 6,700 Rohingya civilians were killed in the first month of reprisals alone, and human rights groups have documented three large-scale massacres. The Associated Press has reconstructed the massacre at Maung Nu as told by 37 survivors now scattered across refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their testimony and exclusive video footage from the massacre site obtained by AP offer evidence, also documented by the United Nations and others, that Burma armed forces have systematically killed civilians. Burma's military did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story, and the government — which prohibits journalists from independent travel to northern Rakhine State — did not reply to an AP request for a visit. The army has insisted in the past that not a single innocent has been slain. For as long as anyone could remember, there was only one place in Maung Nu that was truly considered safe. It was a large two-storey residence shared by two of the village’s most prominent businessmen — Duza and his brother Zahid Hossain. Built on a hillside more than half a century ago, the vast home was known for its three-foot-thick walls of hardened mud, which many believed to be bullet-proof and virtually impossible to burn. That mattered in Rakhine state, where the Rohingya population lived in fear of both the military and the area’s ethnic Rakhine Buddhists. Although the Rohingya have lived in Burma for decades, they are still seen as foreign invaders from Bangladesh who are intent on stealing land. Despite the tensions, Hossain worked extensively with local army commanders, trading cows and rice and jointly operating a brick-making factory. Both brothers were charismatic, educated and popular. Duza, an affable man who was well-known throughout the area, had previously served as village administrator for 12 years. Many people assumed that neither he nor his compound would be harmed. After insurgents launched their first attacks a year ago, the government had imposed strict new measures aimed at curbing militant activity. Islamic schools were closed, a curfew was put in place, and authorities ordered the removal of fences and even shrubbery so security forces could see inside private compounds. But Maung Nu, a village of about 2,000 people also known as Monu Para, remained peaceful. Duza and his brother counted their blessings. They were among the village’s wealthiest men. They owned scores of cows and buffalo, and vast acres of rice. Soon, it would all be gone. A few hours after midnight on 25 August, fierce volleys of gunfire woke the residents of Maung Nu. Rohingya militants had launched a surprise assault on a Border Guard Police post in Hpaung Taw Pyin, less than a mile to the north. The fighting lasted until dawn. According to the government, two officers and at least six of the assailants died. That morning a commander from the army’s Light Infantry Battalion 564, based just south of Maung Nu, called the local district administrator, Mohamed Arof, furious. “Why didn’t you tell us about these attacks?” the commander demanded. “I didn’t know anything about it,” replied Arof, a Rohingya. “I only heard the shooting, like you.” The same day, police snatched Arof’s 15-year-old son from a rice paddy and took him to their camp, where he was hanged with a rope along with three other teenagers, according to Arof and several witnesses. It’s unclear why the teens were killed, but word of their deaths spread quickly. Fearing more reprisals from security forces, most of Hpaung Taw Pyin’s residents fled. Hundreds of them walked to the homes of friends and relatives in Maung Nu, in the hope they would be safe there. And for a day, they were. On 27 August, bursts of gunfire echoed across Maung Nu again. This time only the army was shooting. Several military trucks parked on the village’s main road around 9am and began disgorging troops who fanned out on foot, firing into the air. Peering out a window of her home, 35-year-old Jamila Begum spotted several armed soldiers crossing her yard carrying coils of nylon rope. Jamila Begum, 35, cries when talking about how members of Burma's armed forces killed her son and husband. Hundreds of people were already on the move, seeking the closest refuge — the hillside compound of Duza and Hossain, which included half a dozen other homes belonging to their relatives and a large rectangular pond. Jamila’s family joined them. Other residents were being rounded up by force and ordered to head to the compound. Some cowered inside their homes, wondering what to do. One of them, 18-year-old Mohammadul Hassan, put a woman’s veil over his face when troops burst through the front door of his home, guns drawn. Hassan immediately recognised one of the soldiers — a skinny army staff sergeant named Baju who was well-known in the village. A member of the 564th Battalion, Baju had lived in the area for 15 years and spoke the Rohingya dialect, according to numerous villagers. Duza said Baju was also a frequent visitor to his home. When the soldiers discovered Hassan hiding among several female relatives, they became enraged. He was dragged outside along with two of his brothers, shoved to the ground and kicked until blood poured from his left eye. As troops ripped clothes off the women and seized their valuables, the three brothers were stripped and tied up. The soldiers marched them to Duza’s compound naked, at gunpoint, the sunbaked dirt road burning their bare feet. Duza had never seen people so scared. As the number of Rohingya hiding on his property rose into the hundreds, his wife, a warm woman with an easy smile named Habiba, turned to him and asked, “What’s happening? What’s going on?” The answer came when dozens of helmeted soldiers in olive green uniforms arrived around 11am, accompanied by several border guard police. Their entrance set off a new panic. A few men in Duza’s house locked the main wooden doors and climbed the stairs to a balcony, where most of the males already had gathered. Before joining them, Duza pulled Habiba aside. “Please take care of our daughter and our sons.” So many people were crammed into their house by then, though, that Habiba soon lost track of all but one child. Outside, a soldier’s voice rose above the others. It was Baju, and he was calling on everyone to come out, assuring them they would not be harmed. As the minutes passed and nobody emerged, the calls turned menacing, and the sergeant threatened to burn the compound to the ground. Several bursts of gunfire rang out and a young boy was struck in the forehead. The women recoiled in horror as he lay motionless before them, the back of his skull blown apart. Seconds later, soldiers broke down the doors and began dragging people out, separating the men from the women. Mothers and elderly women were ordered onto their knees. Some tried to push back when troops ripped off their headscarves and tore at their clothes. The soldiers first demanded their cell phones, then grabbed at exposed breasts as they snatched gold earrings, necklaces and wads of cash. About 20 or 25 of the women — mostly attractive and young — were taken away. They were never seen again. The rest eventually were driven, along with their children, into a pair of houses on the property. The soldiers bound the men’s hands behind their backs and ordered them into the dirt courtyard in front of the house, where they were forced face down onto the stifling ground. Most were blindfolded with masking tape or veils taken from the women. A handful who tried to resist were thrown off the balcony head-first. Troops started to walk across the sea of people, grinding boots into their heads and beating them with rifle butts. Some of the soldiers cursed their prisoners, calling them dirty “kalar,” a derogatory word for Muslims that is frequently used in Burma. Duza’s brother, Hossain, begged for the violence to stop. “Why are you doing this?” he cried. “Why are you tying us up?” There was no answer. Around noon, a senior officer called a commander on his phone. The officer said they had rounded up 87 men. “What should we do with them?” The call ended shortly afterward, and the officer barked an order to his troops. “Let us begin.” Duza watched through a slit in a closed window as a soldier plunged a long knife into his brother’s neck in front of their house. When two of Hossain’s sons got up and tried to run, soldiers opened fire. Duza stepped back in shock. He scrambled to an upstairs room and crawled into the only place he could think of to hide: a foot-high space under a large wooden container normally used to store rice. He covered his legs with rice sacks and curled into a ball, trying to disappear. Outside, screams like he’d never heard before reverberated across the courtyard. Several soldiers hammered four-inch nails into the temples of three men on the ground with the butts of their rifles. Four other men were decapitated, including a prominent gray-bearded mullah. Shafir Rahman, 50, describes how he watched a soldier hammering a four-inch nail into the side of a man’s head with a rifle butt. Then a pair of soldiers — one was Baju — descended on Jamila’s husband. With two-foot-long machetes, they hacked into his neck from both sides. He crumpled in the dirt, gagging on blood. Gasping for breath, Jamila stumbled toward the door. She wanted to rush to his side, to help him, to be with him — to die. But the women in the house pulled her back. “You can’t go,” one said, as Jamila collapsed, weeping. “If you go out there, they’ll kill all of us.” While women rocked back and forth, several children began praying. In the courtyard, they could hear people begging for their lives. “Please Allah!” Please help us!” “We’re dying!” When Jamila rose to look out the window again, she saw her 16-year-old son dragged away by the collar of his shirt and tied to a tree, screaming, “I didn’t do anything!” The gunshots rang out. Jamila could not bear to look. As the afternoon wore on, the carnage became more methodical. Men and teenage boys were taken away in small groups and killed by firing squads near a forested area on the edge of the property. In some cases, a soldier blew a whistle beforehand, signalling for them to begin. Other troops wrapped corpses in orange and green tarps and transported them downhill in three-wheeled push-carts to a pair of army trucks parked on the road. Several witnesses reported seeing soldiers digging pits and dumping bodies into them. When Mohammad Nasir was marched to the killing ground with six others, he saw more than a dozen cadavers crumpled there under the trees. As those beside him braced for death and called out Islamic creeds — “There is no god but Allah! Mohamed is his prophet!” — Nasir wriggled loose and ran. He made it to the far side of a small ravine before the first burst of gunfire rang out. Half an hour later, when he had run out of breath, he realised he had been shot in the elbow. Mohammadul Hassan was taken to a pond just east of the main house. Soldiers ordered him to kneel with his two brothers, then shot them all from behind and rolled them over to make sure they were dead. When Hassan unexpectedly opened his eyes, an officer sitting on the bank walked casually forward and fired a single rifle shot into his chest. Hassan later regained consciousness, stumbled away, and survived. That afternoon, soldiers began searching the compound for men. At one point, Baju grabbed Duza’s nine-year-old son Mohamed Ahasun, and demanded to know where his father was. The boy said Duza had left four days earlier for another village. Baju slapped him, but let him go. In the tiny, darkened crawl space upstairs, Duza’s mind had gone numb. He kept telling himself: “It has to stop ... This has to end somehow.” Praying for survival, he waited for the soldiers to discover him, to drag him out by the feet. Bodru Duza, 52, demonstrates how he hid in his house. But they never did. And when the guns finally fell silent, he crept slowly downstairs, and slipped away. For the next two weeks, he travelled alone, joining the hordes of Rohingya bound for Bangladesh. They crossed streams and forests and mountains, and finally the Naf River, which separates the two countries. When Duza got out of a boat and stepped onto Bangladeshi soil, he looked back towards Burma and saw half a dozen columns of smoke curling skyward from burning Rohingya homes. His family, he thought, was surely dead. There is no way to independently confirm the death toll in Maung Nu. But one handwritten tally seen by The AP details the names, ages and professions of 82 people, most of them men and boys from Maung Nu and Hpaung Taw Pyin, who family members say were killed. They are farmers and students, carpenters, businessmen and teachers. The youngest is seven years old; the oldest, 95. According to Arof, the village administrator, at least 200 more remain missing and are feared dead. Most of the survivors struggle to understand why so many of their neighbors were slaughtered. Arof said the army falsely believed they were supporting the insurgency, but something much deeper had driven the killing. The massacres reported since August have stood out for their high casualty toll, their ferocity, and the methodical way in which they were carried out. “You have to understand... they hate us,” Arof said. “This didn’t only happen in our village, it happened everywhere.” In the end, Duza was one of the luckiest survivors. After weeks spent imagining another life without a family, he found a newly-arrived refugee with a Burma phone and asked to use it. Bodru Duza, 52, third from right, kisses his sons as he sits for a portrait with members of his family in a tent in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. He dialed his wife Habiba’s number. A young girl answered. He could barely believe it. It was his 14-year-old daughter, Taslima. As tears welled in his eyes, Duza asked about the rest of his family. “Are they with you? Are they alive?” “Yes papa! Yes!” Taslima replied. “We’re here! Everybody is fine.” Duza’s family had been elsewhere in the compound when he fled. It would take them six more weeks to make the journey to Bangladesh. When the family reunited in a refugee camp, Duza broke down as he hugged his wife and squeezed the children he never thought he’d see again. They had lost so much — their friends and relatives, their home, their savings, their future — but they had somehow found each other. “It felt like living in another world,” Duza said. “It felt like a new life.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/rohingya-crisis-latest-burma-armed-forced-slaughtered-men-children-maung-nu-survivors-muslim-a8124181.html (c) 2017 The Independent

WASHINGTON — The State Department said Friday the U.S. is considering further actions against those responsible for “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims, after a Myanmar general was blacklisted and Democratic lawmakers called for more military officers to face sanctions. Rep. Eliot Engel, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, contended that Myanmar authorities were committing genocide in Rakhine State. He said it was “stunning” that the Trump administration has only designated one person from Myanmar over the bloody crackdown that caused a refugee exodus to Bangladesh. The United States imposed sanctions on Maung Maung Soe, who until last month was chief of the Myanmar army’s Western command responsible for security operations in Rakhine. He was among 13 people worldwide punished Thursday under human rights legislation. Katina Adams, a State Department spokeswoman for East Asia, said Friday the U.S. is continuing to consider options under U.S. and international law “to help ensure that those responsible for ethnic cleansing and other atrocities face appropriate consequences.” The crackdown has forced 650,000 of the minority Muslims to flee the majority-Buddhist nation, casting a shadow over its transition to democracy after decades of direct military rule. That has soured relations with Washington, which in the past five years had been rolling back economic sanctions to support Myanmar’s political change. “With 6,000 dead and thousands more raped, beaten and displaced, it is clear Maung Maung Soe has not acted alone,” said Rep. Joe Crowley of New York. “The other military officials involved in the ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya must be sanctioned for their roles in this genocide. The United States has a moral obligation to act.” Engel has put forward legislation to impose targeted sanctions and visa restrictions on those responsible for the crackdown. He called Friday for sanctions against the Bureau of Special Operations in the capital, Naypyidaw, including the military commander in chief, Min Aung Hlaing; the field commanders of three divisions under Maung Maung Soe’s command in Rakhine State; and military commanders in northern Kachin and Shan states accused of “flagrant abuses of civilians.” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon also supports more sanctions. He said by barring a U.N. human rights investigator from the country, the government was trying “to cover up and make invisible a campaign of mass atrocities.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pressed-by-lawmakers-us-mulls-more-sanctions-on-myanmar/2017/12/22/a8609f82-e74a-11e7-927a-e72eac1e73b6_story.html?utm_term=.095cb9986bd7 (c) 2017 The Washington Post

In Bangladesh, thousands of teenaged refugees are now caring for their younger siblings and relatives after losing their families in Myanmar violence. At just 18, Rabiaa is newly orphaned and a “mother” of two. Her parents died when their village in Myanmar’s Buthidaung township was razed a few months ago. In the chaos, she was separated from her four siblings and found her two nieces, aged four and nine, in distress on the side of the road. They sought refuge in a local village for a month before crossing to Bangladesh. “It was a tough journey,” said Rabiaa, recalling the 25-day walk with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “My nieces were crying the whole time, missing their parents and little brothers.” They arrived at a transit centre run by UNHCR, a first stop for new arrivals in Bangladesh, and were given hot meals, clean water and new clothes. A week later, they moved to Kutupalong camp where they now live beside their former neighbour from Myanmar. “Since we all lost our parents, I am now playing the role of a mother and they are like my little children,” said Rabiaa of the two girls. “I will take care of them for the rest of my life, even if it means that I don’t get married. I want to see them well-educated.” Rabiaa’s predicament is sadly far too common in the refugee camps and settlements of Cox’s Bazar, where some 650,000 refugees have arrived after fleeing violence that erupted in Myanmar in late August. “Since we all lost our parents, I am now playing the role of a mother.” The UN Refugee Agency believes that children make up 55 percent of the total refugee population. Thousands have fled without the protection of their family or community and become caregivers to younger siblings or other children overnight. According to the current family counting exercise, some 5,600 families are headed by children under 18 years of age. Jainab Bibi, 14, is still mourning her mother’s death during the journey to Bangladesh two months ago. “We covered her body with a blanket and left,” she said, crying. “I miss her very much.” As well as coping with that loss, she also has to care for her eight-year-old brother. Fortunately, they are now living with a former neighbour who was a good friend of their mother’s. “We never think of children as lonely. But here, I met some of the loneliest children who now have to adopt an adult role taking care of their own siblings,” said Louise Aubin, UNHCR’s senior emergency coordinator in Cox’s Bazar. UNHCR and partner organizations are identifying families headed by children, as well as children who are alone or unaccompanied, for individual follow-up to assess their situation. “I met some of the loneliest children who now have to adopt an adult role taking care of their own siblings.” UNHCR and others involved in child protection are setting up sustainable foster care arrangements within the refugee communities to ensure that these refugee children are safe and properly supported. More child-friendly spaces and education facilities are being established to help ease the pressures on children forced into adult roles. These roles can be hard to shake off. Aisha has been playing “mum” since she was seven years old. Her parents died of tuberculosis in Myanmar 10 years ago, leaving her to care for three younger siblings. They fled to Bangladesh in October, where Aisha takes care of the shelter while her two brothers and a sister look for work, collect firewood or attend the madrassa, or Islamic school. She frets that she cannot give them everything they need, and still imagines a life in which her parents are still alive – a life where she could marry and worry less about the little ones’ future. But the daydream wears off as she remembers her responsibilities: “I want to make sure they are well educated. If they get high marks, I will feel like I raised them well.” Arefullah, 18, is also doing his best to provide for his 16-year-old sister Mahbouba. They lost touch with their parents and four brothers during the violence back home, and do not know if they are alive or dead. While Arefullah keeps checking in with community leaders on their whereabouts, he is moving ahead with his new life in Bangladesh. The teenager has opened a barber stall in Kutupalong camp: “I get four to five customers a day, making about 160 taka (US$2). It’s enough to buy food for my sister and me.” http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/stories/2017/12/5a3a698e4/orphaned-rohingya-children-forced-grow-fast.html (c) 2017 UNHCR

Sudan’s economy has entered a melt-down phase, and civil unrest is bound to follow; it will be met with ferocious repression, already evident in seizure of newspapers publishing economic data and NISS surveillance of fuel stations and bakeries. These are the consequences of decades of gross mismanagement: • Widespread bread shortages, Sudan fuel crisis halts transport | Radio Dabanga | December 21, 2017 | SUDAN Khartoum and a number of Sudanese states are experiencing a severe bread and fuel crisis. Transport has ground to a halt leaving many stranded. On Tuesday and Wednesday the main stations of El Shuhada in Omdurman, the central station in Khartoum North (Bahri), the stadium and Jackson in Khartoum were crowded with hundreds of people after the vehicles stopped because of lack of fuel. Northern State State Witnesses from Karma in the Northern State said the security services are monitoring the fuel stations and allowing each person to take no more than three gallons. They explained that any quantities more than that must be certified by the security services. El Gezira State El Gezira state is experiencing a severe fuel and bread crisis. Residents of Wad Madani told Radio Dabanga about the lack of fuel at most of the city’s fuel stations except for three. They said the vehicles line up in long queues in front of the fuel stations since early morning. Wad Madani is daily witnessing a lack of bread during the evening and the price of a loaf of bread rises outside the bakeries to one Pound by the evening. Sennar State Residents of Senga in Sennar have complained of lack of fuel in the stations as a result of the lack of access to the state’s fuel quota. They also complain of the deepening bread crisis in the city during the past two days. They said that the security services limit people from taking more than a few of bread for a family without permission. South Kordofan State Abu Jubeiha in South Kordofan is experiencing a severe bread crisis. People said that there is no bread to be found in the bakeries after 10 am. The owners of bakeries attributed the crisis to the fact that the quota of flour given to them by economic security is only three sacks a day. El Gedaref State The bread crisis in El Gedaref has entered its second month without finding a solution from the authorities. The residents said they stand in long lines in front of bakeries for hours without getting enough bread. They say that a number of bakeries are closed during day and evening periods because of the reduction of the daily quota of flour. North Kordofan State Residents of El Obeid in North Kordofan have renewed their complaint about the worsening of bread crisis. They said they there are no looming signs for resolving the crisis. The press leaders have received instructions by telephone from the security services not to publish any press material on the bread and fuel crisis in many cities of the country. This is a portrait of an economy in melt-down: two critical commodities—bread and fuel—are unavailable because the Khartoum regime has so badly mismanaged the economy, including the agricultural sector, that there is no enough hard currency, foreign exchange currency (Forex), to purchase imports of flour and refined petroleum products, including diesel fuel. The regime made developed no significant domestic refining capacity during the years it was flush with petro-dollars (1999 – 2011); it has allowed the agricultural sector of the economy to decay so that instead of being a net exporter of agricultural products, Sudan is a net importer especially of wheat for flour to make into bread, now in such short supply. Mismanagement, misplaced priorities, and fantastically gross self-enrichment have left ordinary people of Sudan without a critical food item or the ability to move within and between cities. Essential medicines are unavailable as well. The absurdity of blaming U.S. economic sanctions for the crisis is coming fully into focus, despite the foolish and ignorant pronouncements by the UN, IMF, and others. And yet if the U.S. State Department lifts the designation of Khartoum as a “state sponsor of terrorism” this May, Khartoum will become eligible for international debt relief: Sudan’s external debt now exceeds $50 billion and cannot be serviced, let alone repaid, by the regime amidst its current self-inflicted economic crisis. Past history makes clear that debt relief will be little more than a tool for accelerated self-enrichment by the regime and its cronies. http://sudanreeves.org/2017/12/21/sudans-economy-has-entered-a-melt-down-phase/ (c) 2017 SUDAN Research, Analysis, and Advocacy

The State Department said Friday the U.S. is considering further actions against those responsible for “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims, after a Myanmar general was blacklisted and Democratic lawmakers called for more military officers to face sanctions. Rep. Eliot Engel, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, contended that Myanmar authorities were committing genocide in Rakhine State. He said it was “stunning” that the Trump administration has only designated one person from Myanmar over the bloody crackdown that caused a refugee exodus to Bangladesh. The United States imposed sanctions on Maung Maung Soe, who until last month was chief of the Myanmar army’s Western command responsible for security operations in Rakhine. He was among 13 people worldwide punished Thursday under human rights legislation. Katina Adams, a State Department spokeswoman for East Asia, said Friday the U.S. is continuing to consider options under U.S. and international law “to help ensure that those responsible for ethnic cleansing and other atrocities face appropriate consequences.” The crackdown has forced 650,000 of the minority Muslims to flee the majority-Buddhist nation, casting a shadow over its transition to democracy after decades of direct military rule. That has soured relations with Washington, which in the past five years had been rolling back economic sanctions to support Myanmar’s political change. “With 6,000 dead and thousands more raped, beaten and displaced, it is clear Maung Maung Soe has not acted alone,” said Rep. Joe Crowley of New York. “The other military officials involved in the ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya must be sanctioned for their roles in this genocide. The United States has a moral obligation to act.” Engel has put forward legislation to impose targeted sanctions and visa restrictions on those responsible for the crackdown. He called Friday for sanctions against the Bureau of Special Operations in the capital, Naypyidaw, including the military commander in chief, Min Aung Hlaing; the field commanders of three divisions under Maung Maung Soe’s command in Rakhine State; and military commanders in northern Kachin and Shan states accused of “flagrant abuses of civilians.” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon also supports more sanctions. He said by barring a U.N. human rights investigator from the country, the government was trying “to cover up and make invisible a campaign of mass atrocities.” Myanmar denies allegations of human rights violations, saying its security forces have not targeted civilians and were responding to attacks by Rohingya militants in August. The aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates at least 6,700 Rohingya civilians were killed in the first month of the crackdown. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pressed-by-lawmakers-us-mulls-more-sanctions-on-myanmar/2017/12/22/a8609f82-e74a-11e7-927a-e72eac1e73b6_story.html?utm_term=.413bcff97a6a (c) 2017 The Washington Post

Lately, Colombo has intensified its defiance of UN resolutions calling for investigations into war crimes committed during the latter stages of the civil war. In late November, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena declared that “There won’t be electric chairs, international tribunals or foreign judges. That book is closed.” Earlier, in October, Colombo sought and obtained the help of British parliamentarian Lord Naseby to downplay a report by the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts, which in March 2011 found “credible allegations” that as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war, mostly as a result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan military. Naseby had called on the UN to reduce the number from 40,000 to between 7,000 and 8,000 based on his own research. Naseby’s links to Sri Lanka go back to 1975, when he founded the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka. Naseby has been an advocate for Sri Lanka in the British parliament and in 2005, was awarded Sri Lanka Ratna, the highest national honor bestowed upon foreigners for exceptional and outstanding service to the nation by the then Sri Lankan government. In November 2017, Sirisena thanked Naseby for calling for a reduction in numbers of the people killed. Although much has been made by the Sri Lankan press about Naseby’s call for a revision of the casualties, this has been summarily dismissed by the British government via its High Commissioner in Colombo. Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. Britain’s position is based on the Report of the UN Panel of Experts, comprising prominent human right activists, Marzuki Darusman (from Indonesia), Yasmin Sooka (South Africa), and Steven Ratner (United States). Unlike Naseby’s “findings,” the UN report has been corroborated by several other independent sources. These include: the Channel Four documentary Killing Fields, Francis Harrison’s book Still Counting the Dead, and reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Since 2012, resolutions calling for international investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka have been passed in the UN. Until 2015, these were opposed by Colombo on the grounds that international investigations were intrusive and, if implemented, would undermine Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. The Sri Lankan government during this period was the one that had successfully crushed the Tamil rebellion and the resolutions passed were directed in particular at this government, headed by president Mahinda Rajapaksa. In January 2015, Maithripala Sirisena, with the support of the United States and India, defeated Rajapaksa in the presidential election. The new regime was expected to be more receptive to UN resolutions on post-war justice. In September 2015, a new resolution calling for an investigation into war crimes avoided any reference to an international investigation and in its place called for establishing a mechanism involving foreign judges in a local investigation. The Sirisena government went along by co-sponsoring this resolution. However, in March 2017, Colombo sought and obtained another two years to implement the 2015 resolution. But its current actions show that it has no intention of implementing the resolution. Instead, it seeks defy the very resolution it had co-sponsored in 2015. There are good reasons to suspect that the Sri Lankan government’s opposition to any impartial investigation is due to its apprehension that it may result in Colombo having to face the much grimmer charge of genocide. In February 2015, Sri Lanka’s Tamil-dominated Northern Provincial Council passed a resolution reflecting Tamil sentiments that the crimes perpetrated went beyond war crimes and were in fact genocide. Following this resolution, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) came under criticism for its “silence” on genocide. The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, was prompted to raise this with the OHCR, which responded by stating that the UN report does not preclude the potential for a future finding that genocide was committed as a result of further criminal investigations. OHCR’s response was not entirely surprising. In December 2008, just six months before the Tamil rebellion was brutally crushed, the New York-based Genocide Prevention Project had identified Sri Lanka as one of the eight “red alert” countries where genocide and other mass atrocities were underway. And just two months later, in February 2009, the Boston Globe compared the ongoing massacre in Sri Lanka to the Bosnian Srebrenica genocide. Then there were the accusations leveled by Professor Francis A. Boyle, a leading American expert in international law, who interpreted the Sri Lankan government’s actions as genocide under international law. In December 2013, a full session of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples Tribunal held in Bremen to consider evidence gained over three years found,”that the State of Sri Lanka is guilty of the crime of genocide against Eelam Tamils.” Given the suspicions that Sri Lanka may well be guilty of genocide, this may be the reason for its concerted attempts to evade any kind of investigations into its conduct during the final phase of the war. https://thediplomat.com/2017/12/why-is-sri-lanka-defying-the-united-nations/ (c) 2017 The Diplomat

French investigating judges have closed a long-running inquiry into the shooting down of former Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana's plane near Kigali International Airport on April 6, 1994. Moments after the missile attack extremists in the Habyarimana government launched the Genocide against the Tutsi, which would claim the lives of at least a million people. Observers say France has sought to use the inquiry as a bargaining chip in its relations with Rwanda, which accuses Paris of actively supporting the regime that planned and executed the Genocide, including through training and arming the Interahamwe militia that played a central role in the killings. But the French judges handling the case, Jean-Marc Herbaut and Natalie Poux, on Wednesday this week issued a notice of termination of the case. Experts familiar with the French legal system told The New Times yesterday that the notice will become a permanent order after 90 days in the event there is no appeal against the decision or new testimony that compel the judges to reopen the inquiry. This is the third time the case is being closed, with the previous two notices of termination being reversed. Rwanda's Minister for Justice and Attorney General Johnston Busingye said Kigali was watching the developments closely, aware that last year a similar notice was revisited about just four hours to the 90th day after which it would have become a permanent notice. "It's unprecedented that a case is opened three times over the same flimsy reasons," he said, citing fake testimonies and witnesses, and attempts to manipulate and hoodwink the judges. Nonetheless, we trust in the wisdom of the judges, Busingye said. When a similar notice was issued last year, a former Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) soldier, James Munyandinda, alias Munyeragwe, turned up just hours to the expiry of the 90-day window claiming that he saw the surface-to-air missiles that brought down the Dassault Falcon 50 jet at the headquarters of the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), the then rebels led by current President Paul Kagame. "The lawyers for the accused people (all former RPA soldiers) supplied evidence of the real account of who Munyandinda is, which contradicted his flawed account," Busingye said. "Our case was too compelling to ignore and it appears that the judges have found that they had been taken for a huge ride." The French public prosecutor is among the people who will give an opinion on the notice over the next three months. The accused Rwandans in the case include Defence minister James Kabarebe, the country's envoy to China Charles Kayonga, Maj Gen (rtd) Sam Kanyemera Kaka, Maj Gen (rtd) Jack Nziza, Lt Col (rtd) Rose Kanyange Kabuye, Lt Col Jacob Tumwine, and Franck Nziza. "This case should have been closed in August 2014," said Dr Jean Damascene Bizimana, the head of Rwanda's anti-genocide commission who was the deputy chairperson of a 2008 Rwandan inquiry into the missile attack, which concluded that the missiles were fired from Kanombe area which was under the control of the presidential guards. Bizimana was referring to the work of French judges Marc Trévidic and Nathalie Poux, who came to Kigali in 2010 to investigative the case - along with a team of ballistics experts -before concluding two years later that the missiles had been launched from the Kanombe area, corroborating findings from Rwanda's own inquiry. This was contrary to claims by another French investigating judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, who in 2006 sparked off a diplomatic row between Kigali and Paris after he blamed the attack on the RPF and issued arrest warrants against the Rwandan officials. Bruguière claimed the missiles that brought down the Falcon 50 jet had been fired from the Masaka zone by RPA elements that had allegedly infiltrated the area. The RPA was RPF's military wing that defeated the genocidal regime in July 1994 and stopped the slaughter. It was later transformed into RDF. "Bruguière's work was of course a sham, not just because he never conducted any site visit in relation to this case but his was a political investigation that was not backed by any scientific evidence," Bizimana told The New Times yesterday. Tom Ndahiro, a genocide scholar, said the French inquiry into the Habyarimana plane crash should never have taken place in the first place. "It was meant to end in failure," he said. The investigation, he said, was intended to humiliate Rwandan leaders and absolve the real culprits. "The suspects of the attack are in France, they were simply after the wrong targets," he said. Ndahiro said several investigations, including one by French author Jacques Morel (author of La France au cœur du génocide des Tutsis au Rwanda, loosely; France at the heart of Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda), had meticulously documented the role of France in the Genocide, adding that Paris's attempts to drag the RPF's name through the mud was calculated to deflect attention away from its principal role in the Rwanda tragedy. France says it got involved with the case mainly because a French crew died in the attack. The case has been handled by three lots of judges over the years - first, Bruguièr; then Marc Trévidic and Nathalie Poux; and then Jean-Marc Herbaut and Nathalie Poux. The latest development comes hot on the heels of a new report by American law firm Cunningham Levy Muse LLP which says there is strong evidence linking France to the Genocide in Rwanda. The Muse Report, commissioned by the Government of Rwanda, says French officials facilitated the flow of weapons into Rwanda in the build-up to the Genocide, despite knowing about violent attacks against the Tutsi in the country. British investigative journalist Linda Melvern, the author of the book, 'A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide', told The New Times yesterday that the French investigation "seemed nothing more than a determined attempt to blame the RPF for the crime". The probe, she said, will be remembered in years to come as one of the most ignominious in French judicial history. She linked the narrative that the RPF is to blame for the missile attack to high-ranking Genocide convicts and suspects. "The story that the RPF was to blame originated with the génocidaires as their crime got underway, it was a story they promoted in their trials and which was spread by some of their lawyers and by their supporters, a cornerstone in their defense in court," Melvern said in reference to the Genocide trials conducted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). This story, she added, is promoted by French military officers, political and diplomatic officials and conspiracy theorists. "Not a scrap of credible evidence was ever produced to prove it to be true." "It might now be an appropriate moment for French archives to be opened, archives which contain the most crucial information about the role of the French military in these events which for years has been hidden from press and parliamentary scrutiny," the British author said. "Burning questions need some urgent answers. A true reckoning of French policy in Rwanda has yet to come." Bizimana said that if France was genuinely interested in the truth surrounding the assassination of Habyarimana it should have investigated its own military officers who were in Rwanda at the time of the missile attack because a French contingent controlled the Kanombe area - along with Habyarimana's para-commando battalion, elements of the presidential guard. The French troops that controlled the Kanombe area were under Commander Grégoire De Saint Quentin, while Habyarimana's para-commando battalion was under Major Aloyse Ntabakuze, who would later be arrested and sentenced to 30 years in jail for genocide by the ICTR. Rwanda's own investigation into the case, popularly known as the Mutsinzi Commission, arrived at conclusions similar to those of a United Nations inquiry, which concluded that the plane had been shot down by three whites with the help of the presidential guard and that the missiles had been fired from the Kanombe military barracks. The Rwandan inquiry was validated by British forensic experts. Habyarimana's plane was shot down as he approached the airport from a regional summit in Tanzania intended to prompt implementation of a power-sharing agreement with the RPF that had been signed in August 1993. A separate investigation by Rwanda's Mucyo Commission linked 33 French political and military officials directly with the slaughter. "France needs to come to terms with its role before, during and after the Genocide," Minister Busingye said. France is home to dozens of Genocide suspects and survivors have blamed French authorities for protecting their former tormentors from justice. http://allafrica.com/stories/201712220570.html (c) 2017 The New Times