Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urges the authorities in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, to abandon the absurd proceedings against two foreign journalists who were given two-month jail terms last week and are facing another trial tomorrow for trying to film with a drone. The two journalists, Malaysian producer Mok Choy Lin and Singaporean cameraman Lau Hon Meng, were making a documentary in Myanmar for Turkey’s state-owned TV broadcaster TRT when they were arrested outside the parliament building in Naypyidaw on 27 October. According to TRT, Mok and Lau had obtained all the required permitsso they were stunned when, after interviewing a parliamentarian, police arrested them as they removed their drone from its cover with the aim of taking aerial shots of the parliament building. The police also arrested Aung Naing Soe, the Burmese journalist who was acting as their interpreter, and their Burmese driver, Hla Tin. All four were sentenced on 10 November to two months in prison for an alleged violation of the 1934 Aircraft Act. At tomorrow’s trial, Mok and Lau are facing the possibility of an additional sentence of up to three years in prison under section 8 of Myanmar's Import Export Law. “The judicial authorities must drop these spurious charges, which are clearly being used to prevent journalists from doing their work,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “We second the support the journalists are receiving from TRT and we back the efforts by the Malaysian and Singaporean consulates to obtain their release as soon as possible. These two journalists and their co-workers should not have to suffer because of political and diplomatic circumstances.” Relations between Turkey and Myanmar soured in September when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the term “genocide” to describe the actions of Myanmar’s army in the western state of Rakhine, which are blamed for the Rohingya refugee exodus. Myanmar is ranked 131st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reporters without Borders

There is “mounting evidence” of genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, according to a new report published today by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Fortify Rights. The government of Myanmar has a responsibility to halt atrocities being perpetrated by Myanmar security forces, civilian perpetrators, and militants and hold perpetrators accountable. The international community should develop and implement a shared strategy to ensure the cessation of atrocities and advance accountability. “The Rohingya have suffered attacks and systematic violations for decades, and the international community must not fail them now when their very existence in Myanmar is threatened” said Cameron Hudson, Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Without urgent action, there’s a high risk of more mass atrocities.” “They Tried to Kill Us All”: Atrocity Crimes against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, Myanmar is based on one year of research conducted by Fortify Rights and the United States Holocaust Museum in Myanmar and Bangladesh. More than 200 in-depth, in-person interviews—documented primarily by Fortify Rights in Myanmar and on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border—with Rohingya survivors and eyewitnesses of atrocity crimes, as well as international aid workers, informed the report. It documents widespread and systematic attacks on Rohingya civilians from October 9 - December 2016 and from August 25, 2017 to the present day committed by Myanmar Army soldiers, police, and civilians. “They tried to kill us all,” said “Mohammed Rafiq,” 25, from Min Gyi village in Maungdaw Township, recalling how soldiers corralled villagers in a group and opened fire on them on August 30, 2017. “There was nothing left. People were shot in the chest, stomach, legs, face, head, everywhere.” The report reveals how Myanmar state security forces and civilian perpetrators committed mass killings in dozens of villages in Maungdaw Township in the first wave of violence in 2016 and in villages throughout all three townships of northern Rakhine State since August 25, 2017. Myanmar Army soldiers and civilian perpetrators slit throats; burned victims alive, including infants and children; beat civilians to death; raped and gang raped women and children. State security forces opened fire on men, women, and children at close range and at a distance and from land and helicopters, killing untold numbers. Survivors from some villages described how perpetrators slashed women’s breasts, hacked bodies to pieces, and beheaded victims, including children. “These crimes thrive on impunity and inaction,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights. “Condemnations aren’t enough. Without urgent international action towards accountability, more mass killings are likely.” More than half of Myanmar’s one million Rohinyga have fled the country in the past nine weeks and over 700,000 Rohingya are now living as refugees in Bangladesh. Thousands are still arriving in Bangladesh weekly. Since 2012, the Government of Myanmar has confined more than 120,000 Rohingya to more than 35 internment camps throughout Rakhine State. The Myanmar Army-led assault on Rohingya civilians comes in response to attacks by the Rohingya militant group, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on three police outposts on October 9, 2016 that left nine dead and another attack on 30 police outposts and one army base on August 25, 2017 that left at least 12 dead. Members of ARSA are also responsible for human rights violations. The government of Myanmar has enforced strict restrictions on Rohingya freedom of movement, marriage, childbirth, and other aspects of daily life for decades. The authorities deny Rohingya Myanmar citizenship by law and deny their ethnic identity, claiming they are interlopers from Bangladesh and casting them as an existential threat to Buddhist culture. The government continues to deny the delivery of essential humanitarian aid, including food and nutrition, to affected areas of northern Rakhine State. “These crimes won’t end on their own,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Fortify Rights. “People of conscience in Myanmar need to do everything possible to end the abuses and culture of impunity in the country.” Along with recommendations for the Government of Myanmar, the report details options for the international community, such as: enacting targeted sanctions on the individuals responsible for crimes in Rakhine State, instituting an arms embargo on Myanmar, and referring the situation to the International Criminal Court, which was established to investigate, try, and prosecute those responsible for atrocity crimes when the State is unwilling or unable to do so. For more information, please contact: Laura Green, Communications Manager, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (in the U.S.), +1.202.210.6890, lgreen@ushmm.org Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Fortify Rights (in Bangladesh), +66.85.028.0044,matthew.smith@fortifyrights.org; Twitter @matthewfsmith, @FortifyRights Andrea Gittleman, Program Manager, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (in the U.S.), +1.202.488.6562, agittleman@ushmm.org Amy Smith, Executive Director, Fortify Rights (in the U.S.), +1.207.322.2939,Amy.Smith@FortifyRights.org; Twitter @AmyAlexSmith, @FortifyRights Kate Vigneswaran, Legal Director, Fortify Rights (in Thailand), +66.94.940.8057, kate.vigneswaran@fortifyrights.org; Twitter @KateVigneswaran, @FortifyRights _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Fortify RIghts

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) deplores US President Donald Trump’s treatment of the press while on a ten day trip to Asia, which included stops in several countries that are home to some of the worst press freedom predators. The trip demonstrates a continuing decline in the US government’s willingness to defend press freedom in its bilateral and multilateral relationships with other countries. As press freedom has been on a steady downward trend in the United States of America, President Donald Trump took some of his restrictive anti-press practices with him on his official trip to Asia last week. From denying reporters access to certain events, to refusing to take questions, Trump was able to give the leaders of China, Vietnam and the Philippines a front-row seat to his disdain for freedom of the press. Past presidents have typically made it a point to take journalists’ questions during trips abroad as a political showing of America’s commitment to the First Amendment. Former President Obama was heavily criticized for not allowing questions on his first trip there in 2009, but convinced the Chinese press secretary to take questions when he returned five years later. These official visits have usually been an opportunity for reporters to question foreign officials about issues typically off limits to local reporters, like a given country’s human rights record. For example, during Obama’s trip in 2014, a New York Times reporter was able to question China’s restrictive visa policies that targeted foreign journalists. No questions allowed at press conference per Chinese request However, this wasn’t the case with Trump. American reporters following the President on the China portion of his trip were not given the opportunity to ask either Trump or Chinese President Xi Jinping questions during a joint “press conference” that took place November 9. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated “It was at the Chinese insistence there were no questions today." Though both Trump and Xi Jinping are known for their hostility towards the press, there is a notable difference between the two countries that makes Trump’s refusal to take questions more concerning. In addition to being the largest prison in the world for both professional and citizen journalists, China has routinely denied medical care to journalists who fall ill in detention. This recently lead to two deaths, including that of Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo. While China may be one of the worst offenders in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index (176/180 countries), Vietnam ranks just above it. Yet Trump failed to defend access for his press pool there as well. Access to APEC summit in Vietnam restricted During the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that took place in Danang, Vietnam on November 10 and 11, the White House press corps’ access to key events was severely limited, leaving many journalists wondering what was happening behind closed doors. First, reporters were barred from covering an APEC dinner on the 10th, which featured guests like Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The press’ exclusion from the dinner was all the more significant given that the investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election and the White House’s repeated denial are currently dominating media coverage in the US. On November 11, the majority of the White House press pool were kept in a separate room and barred from covering a photo-op between Trump and other Asian leaders. However, A Fox Newscamera crew and an official White House photographer were permitted to cover the event and tasked with sharing their footage with the rest of the pool. Restricting reporters’ access while in Vietnam, which ranks 175 out of 180 countries on RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index, is certainly an odd way to display American exceptionalism in freedom of information. The Vietnamese government has systematically criminalized freedom of expression during the past year by means of censorship, arbitrary detention and covert state violence. At least 25 bloggers have been arrested or deported. Yet this issue was never able to be raised publicly during the trip due to access restrictions. “How is the US government supposed to advocate for press freedom abroad when it can’t even guarantee access to its own journalists traveling with the President?” asks Margaux Ewen, Advocacy and Communications Director for RSF North America. “Leaders of some of the most repressive countries in the world for journalists are witnessing just how little the American President values the First Amendment, which is completely detrimental to any future US efforts to push for the release of bloggers and reporters in places like China and Vietnam, or greater protection for journalists in the Philippines.” "President Trump is providing the region’s authoritarian leaders with a blank check,” added Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “APEC’s members should remind their partners of the need to respect fundamental rights as, for example, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has done, albeit cautiously, while in Vietnam and the Philippines.” Duterte’s anti-press insults a laughing matter for Trump When asked about the lack of coverage during the summit on Saturday, Press Secretary Sanders claimed she didn’t realize media access would be as limited during the trip and pledged to rectify that during the remainder of the trip in the Philippines. Yet by Monday, November 13, the President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte was calling journalists “spies” while posing for pictures before a bilateral meeting with Trump. Duterte’s jab was made in response to a reporter’s question of whether President Trump would discuss human rights abuses while in the Philippines, following harsh criticism of Duterte’s infamous “drug war,” which has resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings. Shortly after Duterte’s comments, which merely elicited laughter from Trump, journalists were escorted out of the room and weren’t allowed to ask any further questions. Over the past year, four journalists have been killed in the Philippines in relation to their work, with Duterte’s anti-press rhetoric becoming increasingly violent. He once infamously claimed that “just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch.” Referring to corrupt journalists at the time, he added that “you won't be killed if you don't do anything wrong.” That the US president should find comments like these a laughing matter represents a serious blow to the democratic principles that lay the foundation of the United States of America. The Philippines ranks 127 out of 180 countries on RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The United States ranks 43rd ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reporters Without Boarders

From the relative safety of Bangladesh’s cramped coast, Rashid could finally believe that freedom was within reach. He thought often of the violence that had driven his family from Myanmar’s Rakhine State: the friends jailed and tortured by Buddhist nationalists; the women violated; the heavy-handed restrictions enforced against fellow Rohingya Muslims. But it was his memories of scenes from Indian TV shows that gave him hope — and an idea. The enterprising 30-year-old bought bus tickets to the Indian border in the fall of 2015 and made his way to a village south of the capital of New Delhi with other refugees — strangers back home; now like extended family. The transition was a far cry from Bollywood glamour: makeshift tents turned to waterlogged rubble during monsoon season, and a local moneylender locked the cash-strapped newcomers into a cycle of indebtedness. But Rashid gradually learned Hindi, secured UN refugee identification cards for the 105-person settlement, and devised a camp-wide system of collecting and sorting recyclables — a steady, if meager, source of income. I am listening to Rashid’s story when two men in pristine white vestments enter the Rohingya camp. Women and girls observing our exchange pull scarves over their hair and scramble into a shop, ducking behind plastic containers of Butter Joy and Pulse candies in the window. Only the headstrong Hombiya stays put, crouching on a stoop in her bright green hijab. The two guests, Muslim clerics on rounds to visit the area faithful, have driven nine kilometers from their mosque in Faridabad District’s Sector 10 to provide spiritual counsel after local Hindus attacked the camp during Eid al-Adha, an Islamic holiday that honors Ibrahim’s obedience to God. Rashid’s community, still harboring the memory of Buddhist brutality in Myanmar, is the latest target of homegrown Hindu nationalists driven to protect India’s ancient “Hindu” culture from perceived incursions by outsiders — mainly Muslims. Since the previous month’s attack, the visiting clerics have encouraged the Rohingya men to maintain peace and avoid revenge, they tell me. It is best, they say, for the community to put the violent episode in its past. The refugees look on in respectful silence. They rely on these Islamic leaders — along with their fading memories of Islamic tradition the way it was practiced back home for generations — to sustain their faith in this Hindu-dominated region. We discuss the new wave of Rohingya that has fled Myanmar, also known as Burma, since late August, when the Burmese military began a systematic campaign of murder, rape, and arson against the minority ethnic group. Mostly illiterate, the Rohingya here in Mujeri Village use mobile phones to stay informed. Rashid and his community sought refuge well before this latest exodus, and left Bangladesh for India nearly as soon as they’d arrived, unable to pursue a better life amid the scarcity of opportunity there. But the thousands now fleeing Myanmar have given them new cause for concern: Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently vowed to deport the 40,000 Rohingya already living in India. Activists quickly lodged an appeal on behalf of the Rohingya, and India’s top court will hear the case on November 21. As the busy clerics confer well-wishes and depart, I strike up conversation with Hombiya. A naked baby crawls on the hard earth beside her, clasping straws extracted from aerosol cans that have been hammered flat to meet the scrap buyer’s specifications. She shyly kicks off her dusty blue flip-flops and fiddles with the gold stud piercing in her nose. Even after reaching the relative safety of India two years ago, Hombiya tells me, her community has suffered constant tension. Would they ever return home, or should they put down roots? Now, would they be among the deported? Even before the Hindu mob came, exclusion in the name of foreign religions she didn’t fully understand was becoming too much to bear. A Troubled Eid Hombiya’s friend Iniasa had been sitting at the edge of the camp in the late afternoon haze when she noticed a pair of unknown men untying the Rohingya’s two calves from the tree. She shouted an alert into the camp, and several men rushed over. Rashid tried frantically to express in Hindi that the calves were an Eid gift from a New Delhi-based Islamic NGO. On seeing the Hindu men’s strange insistence that the calves be freed, though, Rashid promised to return them unscathed to their previous owner. The Rohingya men led the animals into the camp, where a web of thin blankets would conceal them for the night. Rashid hadn’t known the importance of emphasizing that the calves were buffalo, rather than sacred cows. In fact, he was tragically unaware at the time of the so-called “cow protection” attacks erupting erratically in and around Faridabad, not to mention much of India — a phenomenon that coincided with the 2014 rise to power of Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Then again, many residents who lived near the Rohingya’s crude mass of tarps knew nothing of the foreign scrap collectors who occupied them, or the ethnic cleansing campaign that had driven them to the quiet edge of Mujeri Village. He didn’t know what lay ahead, but Rashid’s unease kept him from sleep. At around five o’clock in the morning, the hum of approaching motorbikes became audible, and then grew louder. A mob was approaching. Rashid and five other men hurried to the spot where the calves had been tied the night before to face the strangers, but were outnumbered roughly three to one. Three women ran from the camp to assist their husbands, but the villagers ripped their clothes and threw them to the ground. Seeking to avoid a camp-wide brawl, the attackers hoisted the six men onto their motorbikes and sped off toward nearby Mirzapur Village. Jolted awake, the camp followed on foot. Stopping at a nearby patch of trees, several men from the village held the Rohingya while others whipped their backs and faces with switches. One biker sped off to retrieve a knife. The villagers were threatening to kill them. The crowd had soon grown so large that the nervous attackers released the men, warning them not to call the police. Back at the camp, the typically unflappable Rashid wept as he considered his next steps. Hands shaking, he took the UN refugee card from his pocket and dialed the number on the back. The person on the other end advised him to call the police and take the injured to the hospital. Ignoring the attackers’ threats, Rashid complied. Police patrolled the village the day after the attack, but their brief presence did little to address new challenges, Rashid tells me. Emboldened passersby now shout at the Rohingya to go home. “We don’t have anything to eat, and they’re saying we’re terrorists,” Rashid says, shaking his head. For the Rohingya, the harassment calls to mind memories of being derided as “Bengalis” — a label common in Myanmar that likens the ethnic group to foreign Muslim invaders. With a fretful Eid behind them and the Hindu festival of lights on the horizon, tension hangs heavy in the firecracker-clogged air. Hatred at the Grassroots On the drive from New Delhi to meet the Mujeri Rohingya, I make a point of noticing cows. They roam freely through trash heaps, behind Diwali trinket vendors and lurching throngs of auto-rickshaws moving nowhere in a hurry. Near the town of Ballabgarh, I spot a group of men through the hazy gridlock, thrashing an animal with sticks. Alarmed, I turn to my taxi driver. “Was that one a cow?” I ask. Randeep smiles. “Buffalo,” he says. Even here in India’s “cow belt” — named not for the number of cows but for the Hindu population’s ardent belief in their sacrosanctness — I’m not alone in my ignorance. Rashid’s Hindu attackers had mistaken buffalo for sacred cows, after all. Cattle and meat misidentification is so common in similar attacks, in fact, that the violence strikes the casual observer as being less about cows — and Hindu devotion — than about certain disaffected Hindus’ longstanding wariness of their Muslim neighbors. As Rashid’s community knows too well, anti-Muslim sentiment across parts of the Indian subcontinent can extend from the upper reaches of society to the grassroots. In Myanmar, an alarmingly large segment of the population holds contempt for Muslims, and especially the Rohingya. While Hindu nationalists in India use disrespect for cows as the basis for harassment, Burmese Buddhist nationalists have played up an attack by Muslim militants on police posts in August to justify the latest atrocities against Rohingya civilians. Even many influential Buddhist monks have promoted the narrative that the Rohingya are living illegally in a “Buddhist” state and must be expelled. But as in India, where Muslims have lived for centuries, Burma’s 1.1 million Rohingya have a long history in Rakhine. Like the long-simmering nationalist frenzy the Rohingya experienced at the hands of Burmese attackers back home, nationalism based on religious identity has seeped slowly into the collective Hindu consciousness in India. Here, it is engineered and spread by a sophisticated network of ideologues. For the better part of the past century, Hindu nationalists have steadfastly cultivated organizations under the banner of the so-called Sangh Parivar to influence and recruit students, laborers, lower castes, and every conceivable social group. As the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen explains in his book The Argumentative Indian, “The Hindutva movement reaps considerable strategic benefit from the variety of styles and modes of operation that the diversity of organizations within the Parivar allows.” At the Parivar’s core is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary group that first set out to reform Hindu society from below before independence, according to French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot, creating “local branches (shakhas) of the movement in towns and villages according to a standard pattern.” Jaffrelot explains that “young Hindu men gathered every morning and every evening on a playground for games with martial connotations and ideological training sessions.” The RSS is now involved in everything from running schools to coordinating disaster relief efforts. Internationally, the best-known Parivar organization is the ruling BJP, which takes a more moderate approach to politics than the Parivar’s violent wings. But crucially, as Sen writes, the BJP can “draw on support — sometimes violent support — from other members of the Hindutva family who can stray from the BJP’s cultivated urbanity and provide a harsher force.” The BJP and its more militant associates “can differ on political means and tactics — varying from soft-spoken advocacy to hard-headed violence — but still agree on a grand Hindu vision of India.” The extent of the Parivar’s reach in India has severe consequences for Muslims like the Mujeri Rohingya, who must reckon with vigilantes keeping watch in their own villages. The Search for Justice I am headed next to the Ballabgarh Police Station to speak with officials about their investigation of the attack on Rashid’s settlement. Despite the Parivar’s influence on Hindu society, I hold out hope that the world’s largest democracy boasts a strong rule of law. I realize as I leave the Rohingya camp that the driver I’ve hired, a New Delhi-based taxi company owner, has been guarding his car for hours. Highly professional and skeptical of my itinerary, Randeep has been hesitant to talk to me — due in part, I realize, to the presence of my interpreter, a critic of the caste system. But now, finding ourselves momentarily alone, he explains that he doesn’t trust the Rohingya. He struggles to trust anyone who knowingly breaks the law by setting foot in India without legal documentation. Randeep is proud of the business he’s built with his family over the years, but covets a government job. India’s reservation system essentially precludes this possibility, he explains. With so many good jobs constitutionally set aside for scheduled castes and tribes and other backward castes, little opportunity remains for a middle-class Indian like himself. Randeep is a Hindu of the Jat caste, he tells me, like many residents of Mujeri. I later learn that Jats in this very state, Haryana, staged large-scale protests last year demanding to be labeled as a backward caste, a designation that would secure affirmative action-like benefits for them. In Randeep’s mind, competition from India’s refugees doesn’t help his people’s cause. The five-kilometer drive to the station is made longer by the increasingly jammed roads that seem a world apart from the Mujeri Rohingya’s outlying community. When I arrive, the station inspector, Hans Raj, is sitting in a spartan office with another officer and Vinod Mittal, a crime reporter from Zee News. Leaning back in his chair, Raj agrees to update me on the investigation that remains underway a month later. An assistant brings chai. The police arrested one man following the attack, he tells me, but ruled him a mere bystander after questioning. No other suspects from the 15-to-20-person mob had been apprehended. Raj later examined the hospital’s medical report, noting that no one had broken any bones. He reminds me that cattle slaughter is a serious crime in the state of Haryana — though unlawfulness does not condone vigilante violence, he adds. Raj states in no uncertain terms that the Rohingya are dangerous, owing to the informal nature of their work and the consequent dependence on petty theft. They take empty bottles and other loose items to sell, he explains. They borrow money from shop owners and never repay. Mittal adds that he once saw Rohingya women pulling iron rods from a house. Whether out of ignorance or intent, neither can say. I ask whether these events might be hearsay. They’re documented, Raj claims, gesturing into the station. I nod. A sparkling shrine to the Hindu goddess Saraswati catches my eye on my way out — the sole embellishment on the station’s whitewashed walls. Raj and Mittal’s allegations find echoes at the national level in India. The Indian government stated in September that Rohingya refugees in India have ties to terrorist organizations, yet a subsequent investigation by NDTV found scant evidence of Rohingya criminality, let alone terror links. Police in Rashid’s district of Faridabad reported that not a single case is registered against the Rohingya there. But it is the sensational allegations of terrorism — not NDTV’s investigation — that spread like wildfire among local residents. Back in the village and seeking to find Rashid’s elusive assailants, I see the impact of sensationalized news firsthand. I meet Surat, a nearby convenience store owner, who has heard about the mob attack. He doesn’t know the aggressors, he tells me, but asks me to stay for tea. He pours milk into a scabrous black pot of steeping chai and studies me carefully. An incense flame in the mounted Hindu shrine flickers and fades as customers browse boxes of Rishu-brand stand candles and toothpaste. Sometimes, rarely, the Rohingya up the road bring food to sell him, he says, at prices lower than the going rate. The extent of his interactions with the destitute squatter community is this occasional trade in dust-covered butter cookies and Lays potato chips. Surat has never heard of the country of Myanmar before my visit, but he has heard about a woman living in Ballabgarh with links to a terrorist group. Perhaps the Rohingya are terrorists too, he reasons. Who could be sure? He asks why I am inquiring after the Rohingya, when there are so many Indians in need. A wrinkled old man, overhearing our conversation, pipes up from the front of the shop. He tells me with confidence that Pakistan supports the Rohingya, owing to the people’s shared faith. He knows the refugees to be terrorists, and finds my investigation naïve. “You already know,” he says dismissively in response to my probing questions. I thank my hosts for the chai and depart. Before we can pull away, Surat hurries outside and raps on the window, glancing both ways. In a hushed voice, he tells us where to find the instigator of the attack. Thanking him for the information, we immediately set off for the other side of town, asking residents along the way for the home of a man named Habdu. On the designated street, where a black and white cow idles beneath a tree on the corner, a gaggle of children pinpoint Habdu’s house. The man inside doesn’t rise from the couch when my interpreter enters through the open front door. When he and his mother realize the reason for our visit, they claim that an older brother, who is out of town, planned the attack. The recumbent man, in an apparent show of innocence, says that he has cancer in his hand. Quickly realizing that they have potentially implicated the family, the two suddenly begin to deny any knowledge of the incident. As the man who is almost certainly Habdu and his mother grow visibly nervous, we depart, hardly believing that our 20-minute search had yielded more than a weeks-long investigation by local police. Habdu’s role was the village’s worst-kept secret. I wondered who else was hiding in plain sight. Faiths at the Mercy of Religion? The next day, I visit retired professor Partha Ghosh in New Delhi to get his take on Rashid, Inspector Raj, and Habdu. Ghosh’s office is in the Institute of Social Sciences, a breezy building of tiered garden atriums that seem a world apart from the chaotic exterior. The institute is positioned directly across from the sprawling Jawaharlal Nehru University, which made headlines last year for its so-called “anti-India” student protests that ended in arrests and hunger strikes. Ghosh, a lifelong student of South Asian politics, describes Modi’s neatly divided political strategy: selling a grand strategy of development while subtly perpetuating Hindutva. Modi may criticize the Hindu agitators publicly, but he never takes serious steps to stop them, explains Ghosh. The result is a permissive environment in many cow-belt villages, shored up by Hindu nationalists in power at all levels. The police, far from objectively enforcing the law, tend to reflect the political temperament of the society from which they come. Nonetheless, Ghosh believes the peak of Hindu nationalism has arrived. He thinks India under Modi has witnessed both the death of decency and the loss of humor — two fixtures of traditional Indian society. As Indians find themselves at the peak of despair, a backlash at the polls is inevitable, he believes. Despite widespread anti-Muslim sentiment, he tells me, the majority of India’s voter base is a vast secular force between extremes. Sen seems to agree: “Despite the veritable flood of religious practices in India,” he writes, “there is also a resilient undercurrent of conviction across the country that religious beliefs, while personally significant, are socially unimportant and should be politically inconsequential. Ignoring the importance — and reach — of this underlying conviction has the effect of systematically overestimating the role of religion in Indian society.” I thank Ghosh and exit to the buzzing street. India may yet recover from its Hindu nationalist phase, but Rashid’s community can scarcely wait until the 2019 general elections to discover its fate, whether at the hands of seething vigilantes or deportation officials. It certainly cannot return to either Myanmar or Bangladesh, where only fighting or squalor awaits. As targets of politicized religion wherever they go, the Rohingya of Mujeri now believe faith to be their only secure possession. *** On the drive home, we stop for lunch. Randeep pulls into a roadside restaurant and waits at the front counter. “Join us!” I urge. “No, Ma’am,” he politely declines. My interpreter, a member of the priestly Brahmin caste, and I eat alone. Randeep’s firm adherence to Brahminical values — Brahmins and Jats don’t eat together, I learn — brings order to an otherwise chaotic world. It’s a world where Dalits and refugees are rising — or seem to be. Where refugees like Rashid are better known as concepts than neighbors. Where the seeming goodness of a “cow protection” mission conceals deep fears of cultures and castes reduced to irrelevance. As I pay and leave the restaurant, I see a large clear plastic donation box next to the register, in which a brightly colored cow figurine is awash in rupee notes. Confident in my assessment of him, I half expect Randeep to leave his change, but instead I see that he’s saving it for the dirt-smeared girl standing outside with outstretched hands. I hadn’t even noticed her. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Diplomat

India, a land of deep religious significance, is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. This rapidly developing nation of 1.3 billion people – where mobile phones outnumber public restrooms and cattle are found meandering down busy streets – faces the unique challenge of maintaining its history of religious pluralism with growing evidence of increased religious intolerance. According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), India is 80 percent Hindu, 14 percent Muslim, two percent Christian, one percent Sikh and less than one percent other religious groups including Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Baha’is. As the world’s largest democracy, the Indian constitution protects freedom of conscience and the ability for individuals to practice their faith freely. The constitution also mandates a secular state, prohibiting the government from religious discrimination or from denying religious groups the right to establish and manage their own businesses. However, India has seen an uptick in religious tensions and outright violence targeting religious minorities. There is growing concern the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-controlled parliament’s Hindu nationalist platform is flaming social hostilities towards non-Hindu religious communities. According to an assessment by USCIRF in its Annual Religious Freedom Report 2017: “Members of the ruling party have ties to Hindu nationalist groups implicated in religious freedom violations, used religiously divisive language to inflame tensions, and called for additional laws that would restrict religious freedom. These issues, combined with longstanding problems of police and judicial bias and inadequacies, have created a pervasive climate of impunity in which religious minorities feel increasingly insecure and have no recourse when religiously motivated crimes occur.” Combined with this drive towards Hinduism, other factors threatening religious freedom in India include state anti-conversion laws, constitutional and state laws restricting cattle slaughter, and a 2010 Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. Currently, there are six states in India that have enacted anti-conversion laws prohibiting forced conversion from one faith to another. While these laws may seem to protect religious minorities, they have actually emboldened social hostility and vigilantism towards non-Hindu faiths. Open Doors, a Christian Human rights organization, notes that communities that have turned to Christianity from Hinduism face increased persecution. Another issue is restriction or prohibition of cattle slaughter. While the cow is considered sacred in the Hindu faith, many Muslim faith traditions and some of their livelihoods depend upon the beef industry. Individuals transporting cattle to market have been harassed, beaten and some have been killed. On November 6, Reuters reported that Hindu nationalists are not only assaulting Muslim farmers, but also stealing their cattle. In 2010, the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act set limits on foreign contributions to organizations and the use of these donations if they pose a threat to “national interests.” In 2015, nearly 9,000 charitable organizations had their licenses revoked because of noncompliance issues with this law. Many of these organizations that work on human rights, anti-human trafficking and religious freedom have not been relicensed. Compassion International, which is a Christian humanitarian assistance organization that provides child sponsorships, was forced to close its doors in India after serving the marginalized there for nearly 50 years. To help address these concerns, the U.S. has announced a grant of nearly $500,000 for a non-governmental organization to submit proposals to develop early warning systems for “reducing religiously-motivated violence and discrimination” in India. Further, the newly confirmed U.S. Ambassador to India, Ken Juster, has stated publicly that religious freedom is one of his priorities. As Indian religious minorities face uncertain times, it is important that U.S. foreign policy remain strong in advocating for an India that honors its constitutional promises of religious freedom to people of all faiths. Elisabeth Dohertyr Office Manager Take Action: 1. Read the USCIRF Annual Report 2017 on India. 2. Pray for due diligence by Indian government officials and police to protect the rights of religious minorities who have been threatened by mob violence. 3. Stand in solidarity with the persecuted in India and around the world by taking part of #RedWednesday by wearing red or lighting a building in red on Wednesday, November 22, 2017. For more information on how you can be involved, please visit: Bit.ly/RedWednesdayUSA __________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Wilberforce Initiative

What’s behind the new political crisis in Zimbabwe? The crisis began on 6 November when President Mugabe fired Emmerson Mnangagwa and expelled him from the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. This was not unexpected. The powerful vice president had become a serious rival and threat to the physically weakened but still astute Mugabe. Since Vice President Joice Mujuru’s unceremonious removal from office in late 2014, there has been a debilitating factional battle within ZANU-PF over who would succeed the aging president. It pitted Mnangagwa and his supporters against a group of powerful senior and vocal party members – dubbed the “G40”. They rallied around First Lady Grace Mugabe and by mid-2016 it was evident Mugabe tacitly favoured his wife’s associates, who dominated ZANU-PF’s Youth and Women’s Leagues. During this period, veterans of the liberation war, a key pillar of Mugabe’s support, broke ranks and fell behind Mnangagwa. However, Mnangagwa was unable to embrace them, fearful this would be used against him as further evidence of disloyalty. Instead, he distanced himself from those who supported and promoted him, which made him look weak and indecisive. His eventual fall played out in awkward slow motion, with the pendulum of his political fortunes swinging back and forth as analysts feverishly speculated whether or not his ambitions to succeed the president would be thwarted. Some expected Mnangagwa’s removal to play out at the party’s extraordinary congress in December. There is speculation that Mugabe acted ahead of this out of fear that his health might rapidly deteriorate. Where does the army and security sector stand on Mnangagwa’s firing? Mnangagwa’s support within the security sector, which is crucial to ZANU-PF’s continued rule, supposedly made him too big to fall. Evidently, this was not the case. But his removal has lifted the lid on growing discontent. A public statement on 13 November by the commander of the defence forces, General Constantine Chiwenga, sent an unambiguous warning that internal dynamics in ZANU-PF, including counter-revolutionary infiltration into the party and hostile attitudes toward the security sector from certain politicians, were destabilising Zimbabwe and generating insecurity. Without mentioning Mnangagwa, Chiwenga called for an end to the unfolding purge of party elements with a liberation history, warning that if the integrity of Zimbabwe’s revolution was threatened, the army would intervene. Although couched in defence of the Zimbabwe’s commander in chief, President Mugabe, Chiwenga implicitly was pointing his finger at him, the first lady and certain G40 elements. This unprecedented public intervention has sharpened tensions within both ZANU-PF and the security forces. How Mugabe responds to this will be critical if further tensions are to be avoided. He has allowed senior officers to make political statements before, but generally when these were about the opposition. On several occasions in the last two years, he publicly has expressed displeasure at their intervention in internal party affairs. Chiwenga’s statement goes beyond previous interventions, and Mugabe will have to employ all his guile if he intends to ensure continued accommodation with the armed forces. What does Mnangagwa’s dismissal mean for Zimbabwe’s mutating political landscape? Mnangagwa’s networks within the party and state administration insulated him to some extent from Mugabe’s machinations and the clear intent of the first lady to bring him down. By mid-2017, it was clear that the G40 was in fact Mugabe’s own project (albeit one he may not have full control over), employed along with his wife as a foil to contain Mnangagwa’s ambitions. As the noose tightened, the crude choreography of accusations against him crescendoed into a series of public humiliations, during which he was accused of disloyalty, deceit and tribalism. It all pointed to his inevitable removal. Yet, inexplicably, he hung on, seemingly without a coherent plan and unable to convincingly push back. G40 acolytes in the provinces have drawn up a list of Mnangagwa allies they want purged. This includes long-time State Security Minister Kembo Mohadi and recently fired Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who has been the public face of re-engagement with international financial institutions. Some may be expelled from the ZANU-PF, but most will be enmeshed in internal disciplinary processes that will significantly frustrate any possible organised pushback from within ZANU-PF’s provincial structures. A purge of senior civil servants perceived as aligned to Mnangagwa also is expected. President Mugabe turns 94 in February and remains the party’s presidential candidate for the 2018 election. What kind of succession is he planning and will he support the elevation of his wife, Grace Mugabe, to the vice presidency? Having removed his major rival, Mugabe can now stage-manage his own succession, which likely will occur only after he dies in office. ZANU-PF’s extraordinary congress, scheduled 12 to 17 December, will see a reconfiguration and possible expansion of ZANU-PF’s presidium to include three vice presidents (also known as 2nd secretary), most likely the incumbent, Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, Grace Mugabe and Defence Minister Sydney Sekeremayi. The latter has been enthusiastically promoted over the last few months by Grace and the G40 as the man Mugabe trusts most. But, like everyone else, Sekeremayi is a mere appointee and serves at the president’s pleasure. He does not have his own power base, and in late 2014 he had to be rescued by Mugabe after being caught in the cross-hairs of the anti-Mujuru purge. ZANU-PF’s Women and Youth Leagues, now supported by Vice President Mphoko, have called on Mugabe to appoint Grace as vice president. She is undoubtedly ambitious and may well have her sights on the top job. Mugabe, the final arbiter, has supported his wife’s controversial foray into the political battlefield, where she has been effectively promoting his political interests. But he is aware that she is not popular and that such a blatant dynastic move may well galvanise the fragmented opposition, as well as disgruntled elements within ZANU-PF. Her elevation to first vice president would also not guarantee that she take over once Mugabe dies. Indeed, her political cachet is likely to be significantly diminished when her husband is no longer in office. Can Mnangagwa stage a comeback? When the axe fell last week, Mnangagwa fled to Mozambique, fearing for his own safety. This was an irony not lost on those who welcome the downfall of a man nicknamed the Crocodile, with a reputation for brutality and once regarded as untouchable. His first public pushback, a statement from an unknown location, attacked the first family for treating ZANU-PF as their personal property and promising he would be back to take control of the situation within a matter of weeks. Mnangagwa’s options are certainly now more constrained. It is unclear whether he will attempt to undermine ZANU-PF’s election preparations or if he has the capacity to do so. There is also the question of how he should relate to the opposition and especially its principal leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who heads the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), with whom he has been accused of secretly conspiring. To join the opposition would be used as further “evidence” of his alleged complicity, and may well further divide the opposition, many of whom want nothing to do with a man accused of an array of gross human rights violations and of having sought to disrupt the opposition. But to strike out on his own (as Mujuru did when she formed her National People’s Party) likely would have him heading only a small and marginal party in a fragmented political landscape. What does this development mean in terms of improving Zimbabwe’s prospects for re-engagement with international creditors, reform and recovery? There is widespread uncertainty regarding what will happen next. Tsvangirai, whose own health problems have fed speculation that he may not be able to lead the major opposition coalition, the MDC Alliance, in national elections expected in April 2018, has rightly warned that the political environment is dangerously unstable. Economic conditions have visibly deteriorated over the last two months. The volume of physical money circulating in both the formal and informal economy has contracted sharply. Inflationary pressures exacerbated by this liquidity crisis have driven up the cost of living, leading to a crash in the purchasing power of salaries paid into bank accounts. At the same time, the government is continuing along a dangerous path of deficit financing, with the new Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo announcing the budget deficit will climb to $1.82 billion this year (the total budget is $5.6 billion). The government has no plan beyond the limited option of domestic borrowing, which has skyrocketed since 2013. Zimbabwe is once again heading back into hyperinflationary territory. Mnangagwa was held out by many as the best hope within ZANU-PF for piloting an economic recovery predicated on re-engagement with international creditors and a package of reform that would instil a measure of much needed confidence. Yet evidence that he would or could deliver on this front is not persuasive. Those now in the ascendency within ZANU-PF in any event are unlikely to explore these options, especially before the elections. They have demonstrated no intention of doing so. In theory, Mnangagwa could lay out the re-engagement, reform and recovery plan that he apparently was unable to deliver because he was constrained by internal ZANU-PF factionalism. That said, if he does not come up with a coherent strategy that moves beyond efforts to clawback power within ZANU-PF, few will be convinced that he has the vision to pilot such a comeback, let alone confront the bigger challenge of a national recovery plan. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 International Crisis Group

In the age of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, netizens around the world view on their mobile phones and tablets the deeply disturbing images of Rohingyas, children, elderly men and women, filing out of Western Burma (or Myanmar) as the result of Burma military’s “clearance operations”[1] at the rate of 100,000 per week[2] for 6 weeks. The power of such imagery has so moved national politicians and senior officials from such world bodies as UN and EU that they have publicly used such evocative, if non-legal term as “ethnic cleansing”.[3] Gregory Stanton, the renowned American genocide scholar and former U.S. State Department official, who heads the Genocide Watch, has gone so far as to say Myanmar is committing the crime of all crimes, namely a genocide. Stanton states that he is avoiding purposefully the journalistic “ethnic cleansing.” For he views rightly the now popular terminology as Milosevic’s “euphemism,” which is not considered punishable crime in international law.[4] Ethnic cleansing is a deplorable act committed by a U.N. Member State and its collaborating non-state actors in society, involving violent expulsion of a target population with their distinct ethnic and racial identity from a particular geographic region within the nation’s national boundaries.[5] Burma’s latest round (each marked by its distinctive methods of expulsion and justificatory ideologies) in what has become a decades-old pattern or cycle of targeted violence and destruction against Rohingyas, is typically accompanied by their displacement and flight from the country. This essay aims to highlight the scope and rhythmic nature of Burma’s persecution of Rohingyas the devastating impact on the Rohingya population. First, it sets out to describe and help readers understand the evolving pretexts given by the successive Burmese governments and the methods of group destruction and resultant waves — five in total — of the outflow of Rohingyas in large number. Then it attempts to offer an interpretive framework within which this cycle of violence-exodus-lull is best understood. Burma’s Cycles of Terror-Expulsion-Destruction-Exodus-and-Lull The diagram above captures both the periodic and cyclical pattern of cross-border forced migration of Rohingyas and the biblical volumes of fleeing refugees across Bangladesh-Burmese borders over the last almost four decades. This pattern of slaughter, structures of severe repression, intervals of lull becomes cyclical since the military-controlled state developed the threat perception regarding the Rohingya population as demographic force of Islamic faith that pose a twofold threat to the country’s predominantly Buddhist character and as a proxy for terrorist groups such as ISIS.[6] Two striking features of the diagram are the fixed and instrumental role of the Burmese military as the most powerful perpetrator and the shifting nature of the pretexts on which the operations of violent expulsion (which force large numbers of Rohingyas to flee their homes on the Burmese soil) have been based. In the first large-scale “terror,” as the then Hong Kong-based Fast Eastern Economic Review (July 14, 1978) put it,[7] the campaign that was centrally organized and carried out by the military government of ex-General Ne Win resulted in the exodus of over 280,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh.[8] Then as now, such large volumes of terror-fleeing Rohingyas forced their way into the neighbouring Muslim country within a short period of about eight weeks. The ostensible pretext of this campaign named “King Dragon Operation” was the “illegal immigration check” of Chittagongnians, that is, Muslim residents of Bangladesh’s Chittagong region that had illegally crossed the 170-miles-long, porous Burmese-Bangladeshi borders and settled in Western Burmese state of Rakhine.[9] Amid the strong protests and the veiled threat of arming Rohingya refugees by the then military government of Brigadier Zia Rahman in Dhaka, the exodus ended[10] and the Myanmar side agreed to the U.N.H.C.R.-facilitated repatriation. Rangoon took back 180,000-190,000 of the total estimated number of refugees in the same year[11] while many other Rohingya refugees found their way to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.[12] The Lull and the Emergence of the Structures of Apartheid This first exodus was followed by 12-year lull. More ominously for the Rohingyas, within four years after the violent crackdown on “Illegal immigration” on their ancestral land of Northern Rakhine, they were de-nationalized, that is, Myanmar’s military rulers, under the civilian façade of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, effectively declared them non-nationals who did not belong to Myanmar. Where violence failed to expel them en masse, Burma’s generals and ex-generals found the blunt instrument in law reminiscent of Nazi-era Nuremberg race laws ... Specifically, in a clever stroke of law enacted in effect as the decree, but rubber-stamped by the People’s Parliament, a paper-tiger, Rohingyas found themselves Myanmar’s Jews. Where violence failed to expel them en masse, Burma’s generals and ex-generals found the blunt instrument in law reminiscent of Nazi-era Nuremberg race laws which disenfranchised and reclassified German Jews as “non-nationals” of the Third Reich. While the Citizenship Act of 1982 never spelled out Rohingyas as their main target one of the two Rakhine members of the drafting committee,[13] the late nationalist historian Dr. Aye Kyaw, made it unequivocally clear, the law was primarily intended to exclude Rohingyas from citizenship eligibility by requiring the non-existent documentation to prove their residency before the first Anglo-Burmese War of 1824.[14] The first-ever printing press imported by the Christian missionaries, arrived in British Burma only in 1870’s. During the pre-colonial (pre-1824), the feudal Burmese society relied on dried palm-leaf as the medium of written language. The idea of documenting one’s residency was un-heard of. In addition to Burma’s use of this tailor-made citizenship law, it was during this decade of lull, the military set up structures of repression[15] complete with severe restrictions on Rohingyas’ physical movement, deprivation of property rights, establishment of the regimes of forced labour, extortion, control of population growth via stringent marriage restrictions, summary execution and sexual violence.[16] 1991-92 Wave: The Resumption of State-directed Violence after 1988 Nationwide Uprisings In the six-year period following the passage of 1982 Citizenship Act, increasingly pauperized Burma at large gradually plunged into a period of popular unrest, which culminated in a nationwide peaceful revolt in August 1988, calling for the end of the one-party military dictatorship led by Ne Win and the restoration of democracy and freedom for all. Like the rest of the country's ethnic groups and social classes, Rohingyas organized mass protests in Northern Rakhine, and rallied behind Aung San Suu Kyi and her newly-founded National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which emerged as the flagship opposition. The fact that this unwanted Rohingya population, which had been legally deprived of the right to belong in Myanmar, attempted to join hands with the emerging opposition movement throughout the country became another impetus for the next round of violent assault on them by the military.[17] After the military restored “law and order” in the seat of the government in Rangoon and other major urban centers throughout Burma, they turned their attention to the growing popular support among Rohingyas for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. Burmese (military) authorities began confiscating National Registration Cards (NRC) issued before 1982 Citizenship Act was decreed by the head of the military junta ex-General Ne Win: this was a key document which proved Rohingyas to be full-citizens of Myanmar. Instead, the authorities replaced the old NRC cards with “residency cards” (or White Cards, so-called) and began to identify them as “Bengali.” This was designed to drive home the message that they were foreigners who did not belong in Myanmar. While Rohingyas with prior citizenship instantly lost their citizenship status, those who were under 12 years old — the age at which a national becomes eligible for applying for the official national ID cards under Burmese citizenship and immigration law — and the new born are not issued any proof of citizenship. As a matter of fact, Burma in effect render “illegal” thousands of Rohingya babies who were conceived in the wombs of mothers who could not afford exorbitant fees to secure marriage licenses and secretly wedded in the presence of Muslim spiritual leaders.[18] Prior to her first house arrest in July 1989, Aung San Suu Kyi herself travelled to Northern Rakhine and patronized local NLD chapters in the predominantly Rohingya areas. Rohingyas saw new rays of hope in the burgeoning opposition movement with Suu Kyi as the most popular, if untested leader. On their part, Rohingyas saw new rays of hope in the burgeoning opposition movement with Suu Kyi as the most popular, if untested leader.[19] In 1992, Myanmar military intelligence established an inter-agency military unit named “Border Affairs Division” (or Na Sa Ka), which was then used as the main instrument to crush the pro-democracy Rohingya communities. The angry sentiment — how dare “the Bengali illegals” offered their solidarity to the Burmese generals’ nemesis — appears to have added a new layer of sadism to the rationale behind the systematic persecution of Rohingyas.[20] In no time, the Na Sa Ka in effect turned Northern Rakhine’s Rohingya villages, wards and towns into a vast web of security grids dotted with armed check-points. The troops began to commit a laundry list of major human rights violations including forced labour, severe restrictions on physical movements, extortions, summary executions, sexual violence, marriage and child birth restriction, confiscation of previously issued national identity cards. This new wave of repression by the central military triggered the second exodus of Rohingyas in 1992. According to the U.N.’s count, “a total of 256,193 Rohingyas fled of which 236,393 were repatriated while nearly 20,000 were too afraid to return to N. Rakhine and stayed on.”[21] As a matter of fact, the second wave of exodus and the growing repression against Rohingyas caught the attention of the United Nations in New York and pro-Aung San Suu Kyi human rights campaigners. It became one of the major factors — the other were civil war-related rights violations in Eastern Burma in the regions of Karens, Shan, Karenni and the general repression against the NLD opposition, with the freshly minted Nobel Peace Prize winner under her first house arrest — leading to the appointment of the Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in Myanmar beginning in 1992.[22] A pattern of exodus-repatriation-lull began to emerge. It was during this period of lull that Rohingyas came to be subjected to the emerging genocidal conditions of life ... It was during this period of lull that Rohingyas came to be subjected to the emerging genocidal conditions, which included severe restrictions of access to essential life-sustaining services such as emergency medical care, preventative medicine, enough nutrition, unnatural control over birth via severe restrictions on marriage licenses, and so on. While the national average for physican: patient ratio is 1:691, in the combined two main Rohingya towns of Maung Daw and Buthidaung, Rohingyas: doctor ratio is 158,000: 1, according to the Harvard Medical School research team which studied the public health situation of Rohingyas.[23] The direct outcome of the policy-induced health and food deprivation is felt most acutely among Rohingya children, as pointed out earlier. As early 2006, these structures of repression and the resultant genocidal conditions, that is, conditions that have in effect made life for the Rohingya population nearly impossible, were noted in the dispatch, marked “Confidential” and dated February 20, 2006, sent by M. Kairuzzman. Bangladesh’s ambassador in Rangoon, to the Foreign Secretary in Dhaka. After the site visit under the U.N.H.C.R. auspices to Northern Rakhine with its 97 percent make-up of Rohingyas, Ambassador Kairuzzman wrote: according to the UNHCR statistics, the government (of Burma) has engaged a platoon of Na Sa Ka/Army personnel (retired/serving) for 100 (Rohingya) people who enforce curfew at night whenever they feel only for the Muslims … For 104 hamlets/villages in N. Rakhine state, there are 58 check-posts to harass the Muslim population out of which 80% are illiterate, 65% of children are suffering from malnutrition, and mortality rates are 4 times higher than other parts of Myanmar. Northern Rakhine state’s glittering pagodas in every nook and corner are only for the 3% of the Buddhists. On the contrary, only a handful of mosques seen on the roadsides are in such dilapidated conditions that itself bar Rohingyas from going to mosques. In most places, Muslims are not allowed to pray inside the mosques. Northern Rakhine state are highly infested with T/B, malaria and diarrhea …. These days the government provides them a document called “Residence Document” for those who can fulfil these conditions: 1) speak in Myanmar language; 2) marriage certification; and 3) birth certificate.[24] Eleven years on, these man-made conditions have remained in place. As recently as July 2017 the World Food Program found that up to 80,500 Rohingya children under the age of five are suffering from “acute malnutrition,”[25] that is, euphemism for sub-Sahara like semi-famine. WFP conducted Food assessment among the Rohingya population between December 2016 and March 2017, the WFP released its preliminary findings. It reports, “based on the household hunger scale, about 38,000 households corresponding to 225,800 people are suffering from hunger and are in need of humanitarian assistance.”[26] Further, the WFP report states, “high food insecurity, limited access to essential services including health care, and poor ac-cess to safe water and sanitation may have exacerbated an already serious malnutrition situation (based on DHS 2015-16 for Rakhine State, the Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) was at 13.9 percent while the Severe Acute malnutrition (SAM) - 3.7 percent). None of the children from 6 to 23 months met the minimum adequate diet, only 2.5 percent reached minimum dietary diversity and 8.5 percent met the minimum meal frequency.”[27] These inhuman conditions and structures of direct repression by Myanmar security troops have also been a major factor behind wave-like streams of Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar. After the ten-year lull since the second cycle which ended with the second repatriation of Rohingyas in 1994-95, the communal riots broke out in several towns in Rakhine state in June and October of 2012. The Communal or Sectarian Violence of June and October 2012 It is noteworthy that on the eve of the communal riots in June, there were two significant developments, which caused, without a doubt, concerns among the military leaders. First, Aung San Suu Kyi decided to play electoral politics, even within the structural constraints of 2008 Constitution drawn up by the military with the sole aim of ensuring its unchallengeable position in national politics. In April 2012, her party contested for all the available seats in the by-elections, and her NLD contestants defeated every single one of their military-backed opponents.[28] Second, because of the media and political freedoms ushered in by the government of ex-General President Thein Sein Rakhine nationalists were emboldened to make loud and public demands for greater political and administrative autonomy for Rakhine people from the central government in Naypyidaw and the equitable sharing of revenues originated from one of the country’s biggest income earners — offshore natural gas sales, all of which hitherto went into the military’s coffers.[29] No sooner had Aung San Suu Ky’s party swept the parliamentary by-elections in April 2012 than the story of three “Bengali” Muslims gang-raping and murdering a 28-year-old Rakhine Buddhist woman in a town called Taung Goke. While the murder indeed took place in May, the rape story was completely false, according to Zargana, a well-known political comedian and former dissident, who served as one of the members the Presidential Commission on Rakhine Violence formed in the wake of the communal violence.[30] He interviewed the government’s coroner who performed the post mortem on the victim, but who was forced to state otherwise in his medical report. And Myanmar’s official media outlets — and Thein Sein’s presidential spokesperson — spread the false story of “Muslim Bengali men” gang raping a Buddhist Rakhine. In retaliation, a well-organized mob in Taung Goke town dragged ten Burmese Muslim leaders from their inter-state bus travelling back to Rangoon from their pilgrimage in Rakhine sate and slaughtered them on the street in broad daylight, and in full view of the local police and military.[31] That set off communal riots across half a dozen towns across Rakhine. The violence broke out again in October the same year, this time with the participation of the government military and police units, on the side of the Rakhine Buddhists.[32] Unlike the first two waves of exodus which were triggered by the military-directed terror and repression, the bouts of violence in 2012 took on the “communal” characteristic, with the “reformist” government giving organized anti-Rohingya Rakhine mobs a blanket impunity as they killed Rohingyas and destroyed Rohingya neighborhoods, places of worship, and businesses. In some cases the security forces joined in the orgy of violence and destruction of Rohingyas.[33] Myanmar’s official narrative about the violence and exodus has again shifted from one of “illegal immigration” to “communal violence” between the two mutually hostile local Buddhist and Muslim communities, with a long history of violent clashes dating back to the World War II era. The international media and influential think tanks such as the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG)[34] began echoing this new official narrative in which the instrumental role of local Myanmar security forces, that simply told the Rohingya victims who begged for protection from organized mob attacks to simply “pray to your Allah,”[35]and the central government that provided the impunity to anyone who inflicted death and destruction on Rohingyas. While portrayed as “sectarian or communal violence,” Rohingya people bore the overwhelming destruction and death — 86 percent, as estimated by the Kofi Annan-led Rakhine Commission Report, released in September 2017.[36] Overlooking the previous waves of state-organized violence and repression of 1978 and 1991-92, influential external players such as ICG, U.N. agencies, the E.U. and various foreign governments began to promote a new “democratic transition” narrative that the “sectarian violence” in Rakhine was an unfortunate but almost inevitable part of a transitional process during which multi-ethnic societies undergo liberalization. But this narrative of the overwhelming violence against Rohingyas is contradicted by the policy-induced cycle of violence-exodus-lull, which dates to the time during which the country was completely closed off from the outside world and ruled tightly by the military junta with no signs of political or economic liberalization. The Fourth and Fifth Cycles of Violence and Exodus: “Muslim Terrorism” In the last two waves of violence and exodus in 2016 and 2017, Myanmar government and Burmese language private media outlets began peddling yet another pretext for the use of central’s government troops, namely Myanmar’s national defence against the emerging ISIS-inspired “Bengali extremist terrorists”.[37] The primitively armed Rohingya militant group named Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) did launch two clusters of attacks against Myanmar’s armed security outposts, typically with sticks, spears, swords and a “handful of home-made grenades and guns,” in October 2016 and August 2017.[38] In both attacks the militant reportedly killed a total of two dozen police. As a matter of fact, the attacks by the primitively armed Rohingya young men only handed Myanmar government a “pretext” to launch another large scale assault on the Rohingya people, as former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) Eric Schwartz told PBS News Hour on October 13, 2017.[39] In fact, following the two bouts of “communal violence” in Rakhine Myanmar government had been trying to unsuccessfully to re-frame the issue of Rohingyas as a national security concern, namely that of “Jihadist terrorism.” No one other than ex-Major Zaw Htay, the current spokesperson for Aung San Suu Kyi government with the ranks of Director General in the President’s Office, was openly promoting the verifiably false rumors that “fully armed Bengali terrorists had crossed the Burmese borders to commit terrorist attacks on Burmese soil” if they were “army intelligence field reports.[40] At the time Zaw Htay was one of two presidential spokespersons for the ex-General and President Thein Sein. His fear-mongering about “Bengali terrorism” predated at least three years before the emergence of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Despite Myanmar’s sustained efforts to reframe persecution and violent repression of the Rohingya people as “national defence against Islamic terrorism,”[41] not even the United States Government, which has been at the forefront of “the global war on terror,” has bought Myanmar’s new and unconvincing narrative. However, this narrative has been very well-received by the public in Burma, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi herself. Through this “Myanmar war on Muslim terror” narrative, the Burmese military has not only burned down thousands of Rohingya homes in nearly 300 villages in the region of N. Rakhine stretching over 100 kms. in length but it has destroyed the predominantly Buddhist society’s demands for human rights for all, greater freedom and further democratization. Conclusion Today, there are more Rohingyas outside of their ancestral borderlands of Myanmar and Bangaldesh than inside. The exact death toll of Rohingyas, both men and women, children and elderly, will never be known. For the loss of two dozen police, Myanmar has inflicted overwhelming and pre-planned violence and terror against the virtually helpless and unarmed population. In the virtual world of Burmese language Facebook individual Burmese soldiers have boasted that they have slaughtered a large number of Rohingyas while Bangladeshi authorities estimate the death toll to be several thousands. On October 27, 2017, the three-member U.N. Fact Finding Mission issued a brief official statement upon completion of their week-long visit to Bangaldesh where they interviewed scores of Rohingya refugee out of a total of 600,000 new arrivals. In the words of the mission’s leader former Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, “We have heard many accounts from people from many different villages across northern Rakhine state. They point to a consistent, methodical pattern of actions resulting in gross human rights violations affecting hundreds of thousands of people.” Mazzuki was also quoted as saying the number of Rohingya killed (in the most recent wave of Burmese state-directed violence) may be “extremely high.” This Mission’s one-page statement came on the heel of a damning field report (September 13-24, 2017) by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (O.H.C.H.R.), which states: Credible information indicates that the Myanmar security forces purposely destroyed the property of the Rohingyas, scorched their dwellings and entire villages in northern Rakhine State, not only to drive the population out in droves but also to prevent the fleeing Rohingya victims from returning to their homes. The destruction by the Tatmadaw of houses, fields, food-stocks, crops, livestock and even trees, render the possibility of the Rohingya returning to normal lives and livelihoods in the future in northern Rakhine almost impossible. It also indicates an effort to effectively erase all signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognizable terrain. Information received also indicates that the Myanmar security forces targeted teachers, the cultural and religious leadership, and other people of influence in the Rohingya community in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge.[42] This report also highlights that prior to the incidents and crackdown of August 25, a strategy was pursued to: 1) Arrest and arbitrarily detain male Rohingyas between the ages of 15-40 years; 2) Arrest and arbitrarily detain Rohingya opinion-makers, leaders and cultural and religious personalities; 3) Initiate acts to deprive Rohingya villagers of access to food, livelihoods and other means of conducting daily activities and life; 4) Commit repeated acts of humiliation and violence prior to, during and after August 25, to drive out Rohingya villagers en masse through incitement to hatred, violence and killings, including by declaring the Rohingyas as Bengalis and illegal settlers in Myanmar; 5) Instil deep and widespread fear and trauma — physical, emotional and psychological — in the Rohingya victims via acts of brutality, namely killings, disappearances, torture, and rape and other forms of sexual violence.[43] Whatever one may choose to call name of Myanmar’s persecution of Rohingyas, “genocide,”“crimes against humanity,” “ethnic cleansing,”one thing is beyond dispute: Burma’s military and local Rakhine non-state collaborators have been engaged in the cycle of violence-expulsion-destruction-exodus-lull of biblical volumes over the last 39 years since the first large-scale centrally-organized campaign of terror against Rohingyas. Only Burma’s official pretexts and the methods of destruction have evolved, but the devastating impact on both the lives of individual Rohingyas and the existence of Rohingyas as a distinct ethnic community remains constant. International lawyers, U.N. officials and world leaders may and do debate as to whether Myanmar’s mass atrocities constitute the crime of all crimes, a genocide. But over one million Rohingya refugees, displaced in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, India and other countries and the smaller number that are being trapped inside Northern Rakhine State between the unwelcoming world and the hateful Burmese society do not have the luxury of deciding what to call the crimes they have been subjected to for nearly 40 years. Alas, as the diagrammatic waves of terror-exodus show, the mythical international community has once again made a mockery of the rally cry against genocides “Never again!” Endnotes [1] “Myanmar Army Conducts Clearance Operations; Thousands Flee Clashes,” Voice of America, August 28, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, https://www.voanews.com/a/myanmar-army-conducts-clearance-operations-in-rakhine-state/4003642.html. Also see Global Center for the Responsibility to Protext, “Populations at Risk Current Crisis,” October 15, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017 http://www.globalr2p.org/regions/myanmar_burma. [2] “Myanmar Refugee Exodus Tops 500,000 as More Rohingya Flee”, US News & World Report, September 27, 2017, accessed November 11, 2017 https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-09-29/myanmar-refugee-exodus-tops-500-000-as-more-rohingya-flee. [3] “UN human rights chief points to ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’ in Myanmar,” UN News Center, September 11, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57490#.Wgg3AMZl-mY. See also “UN Chief Assails 'Ethnic Cleansing’ of Myanmar's Rohingyas,” Voice of America, September 13, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017 https://www.voanews.com/a/united-nations-antonio-guterres-myanmar-rohingya-ehtnic-cleansing/4027395.html. [4] “Expert Witness Dr. Gregory Stanton’s Statement,” Delivered at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Myanmar, Faculty of Law, University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, September 18, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, https://tribunalonmyanmar.org/2017/09/18/expert-witness-dr-gregory-stantons-statement/. [5] For literary definition of ethnic cleansing see “ethnic cleansing,” Oxford English Living Dictionaries, accessed November 12, 2017, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ethnic_cleansing. [6] For the Burmese military’s institutionalized view of Rohingya Muslims as a threat see (ex-Colonel) Ye Htut, “A Background to the Security Crisis in Northern Rakhine,” ISEAS Perspective 2017/79, accessed November 12, 2017, https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2017_79.pdf. (Hereafter “A Background to the Security Crisis in Northern Rakhine”). In contrast, a British researcher Joseph Allchin offers a different perspective. See Joseph Allchin, "Myanmar: The Invention of Rohingya Extremists,” The New York Review of Books, October 2, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017 http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/10/02/myanmar-the-invention-of-rohingy.... [7] William Matten, “Burma’s Brand of Apartheid,” Far Eastern Economic Review, July 14, 1978. [8] For the details of this state-directed first large scale anti-Rohingya campaign see ex-General Khin Nyunt, The State’s Western Gate Problem (in Burmese, hereafter cited as “The State’s Western Gate Problem”) (Yangon: One Hundred Flowers Press, 2016) 21-60. [9] Ibid. pp. 21, 22, & 23. [10] Interview with F. K. Jilani (deceased), a prominent Rohingya teacher and community leader, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2013. [11] “The State’s Western Gate Problem”, p.p.29-31. [12] Interviews conducted face-to-face in 2014 and 2015 with Rohingya activists in Germany and the U.K. who initially went to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia after their temporary refuge in Bangladesh. [13] For a legal analysis of the Citizenship Act, see Benjamin Zawacki, “Defining Myanmar’s “Rohingya Problem””, American University Washington College of Law's Human Rights Brief 20, 3 (Spring 2013). [14] The late Aye Kyaw was a Monash University-trained Rakhine historian, who served on the Citizenship Drafting Committee established by ex-General Ne Win, the then despot. In his Burmese language interview five years ago to Irrawaddy News Magazine, Aye Kyaw emphatically stated that the new Citizenship Act was aimed specifically at de-nationalizing and disenfranchising Rohingyas, whom he considered the British colonial-era agricultural “coolies” from Chittagong, East Bengal. The Irrawaddy News Group has emerged as the leading cheerleader justifying persecution of Rohingyas, and has since removed Aye Kyaw-incriminating Burmese language from its website. [15] See “A Background to the Security Crisis in Northern Rakhine,” 4. [16] UN Commission on Human Rights, Situation of human rights in Myanmar, March 3, 1992, E/CN.4/RES/1992/58, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f02154.htm. Also see Human Rights Watch, “Burmese Refugees in Bangladesh: Still No Durable Solution,“ May 1, 2000, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a86f0.html. [17] Interview with Ro Nay San Lwin, a well-respected Rohingya activist based in Germany, whose uncle led the local efforts in N. Rakhine state to mobilize Rohingya community support for Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy, 2015. [18] Interview with Rohingya Blogger U Ba Sein, London, U.K., 2016. [19] See AFK Jilani, “Aung San Suu Kyi: The Lady of Destiny,” The Taj Library Press, Chittagong, Bangladesh. The late Jilani was a Rohingya educator and writer who resettled in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. [20] Interview with Ro Nay San Lwin, 2015. [21] Dispatch No. 102, marked “Confidential” and addressed to Bangladesh Foreign Secretary (February 20, 2006), from Bangladesh Ambassador to Yangon, Myanmar. (Hereafter “Dispatch 102”), accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.maungzarni.net/2017/10/myanmars-ethnic-cleansing-of-rohingyas.html. [22] “Situation in Myanmar,” U.N. General Assembly resolution A/RES/47/144, adopted on December 18, 1992, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/47/a47r144.htm. [23] Syed S. Mahmood et al., “The Rohingya people of Myanmar: health, human rights and identity,” The Lancet 288, December 1, 2016. See The Lancet Editorial on the review article here, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32458-8/fulltext. [24] “Dispatch 102”. [25] “Food Security Assessment of the Northern Part of Rakhine State,” World Food Program (WFP), July 2017. “Hunger rife among Rohingya children after Myanmar crackdown: WFP,” Reuters, July 5, 2017 (Hereafter “Food Security Assessment”), accessed November 12, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-malnutrition/hunger-rife-among-rohingya-children-after-myanmar-crackdown-wfp-idUSKBN19Q1WC. Subsequently, the U.N. agency withdrew this report after its official release as the direct result of the objection by Myanmar Government of Aung San Suu Kyi. See Oliver Holmes, “UN report on Rohingya hunger is shelved at Myanmar's request,” The Guardian, October 17, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/un-report-on-rohingya-hunger-is-shelved-at-myanmars-request. [26] Ibid. [27] Ibid. [28] “Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi wins by-election: NLD party,” BBC, April 1, 2012, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17577620. [29] Shwe Gas Movement’s statements and press releases – shown on its website up to 2012 – exemplify this grassroots demand from Rakhine community for more equitable revenue sharing and opposition to the Burmese military’s increased presence in Rakhine State, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.shwe.org/press-releases/. [30] Personal telephone and face-to-face communications with the Burmese author. 2012. Also see Maung Zarni, “Did the gov’t incite the racial violence targeting the Rohingya?” Democratic Voice of Burma, October 2, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.dvb.no/analysis/did-the-govt-incite-the-racial-violence-targeting-the-rohingya/24116. [31] Ibid. [32] Human Rights Watch, “All You Can Do is Pray.” Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State (Hereafter “All you can do is pray”), April 22, 2013, accessed November 12, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/04/22/all-you-can-do-pray/crimes-against-humanity-and-ethnic-cleansing-rohingya-muslims. [33] Ibid. Summary. [34] Jim Della-Giacoma, “A Dangerous Resurgence of Communal Violence in Myanmar,” ICG, March 28, 2013, accessed November 12, 2017, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/dangerous-resurgence-communal-violence-myanmar. [35] “All You Can Do is Pray.” [36] “Towards a Peaceful, Fair and Prosperous Future for the People of Rakhine,” Final Report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, August 23, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017. http://www.rakhinecommission.org/the-final-report/ [37] Maung Zarni, “Is Irrawaddy News Group leading Myanmar genocide propaganda?” August 6, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.maungzarni.net/2017/08/is-irrawaddy-news-group-leading.html. Also see “Rohingya: Hate speech, lies and media misinformation,” Al Jazeera English Listening Post, September 16, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2017/09/rohingya-hate-speech-lies-media-misinformation-170916072755690.html. [38] “Myanmar: Who are the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army?” BBC, September 6, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41160679. [39] “What can stop the extreme violence against Rohingya Muslims?” PBS NewsHour, October 13, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, https://svit.vkadri.com/video/pbs-newshour-what-can-stop-the-extreme-violence-against-rohingya-muslims.html. [40] On file with the authors is the screenshot of a Facebook Timeline on the then President Thein Sein’s spokesperson ex-Major Zaw Htay, June 2013. He is now Aung San Suu Kyi Government’s spokesperson. [41] “A Background to the Security Crisis in Northern Rakhine.” [42] See U.N. Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, “Mission report of OHCHR rapid response mission to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh,” September 13-24, 2017, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/MM/CXBMissionSummaryFindingsOct.... [43] U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Mission report of OHCHR rapid response mission to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, 13-24 September 2017,” October 11, 2017. Accessed November 12, 2017. https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/mission-report-ohchr-rapid-response-mission-cox-s-bazar-bangladesh-13-24-september. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Middle East Institute

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi attends during an opening session of the 31th ASEAN Summit in Manila, Philippines, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017 (Athit Perawongmetha/Pool Photo via AP) (Associated Press) 7:45 p.m. A Philippine official says Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has assured other Southeast Asian nations that her government is implementing the recommendations of a commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the situation in Rakhine state, where more than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque also said Suu Kyi pledged Monday that repatriation of the displaced people would begin within three weeks after Myanmar signed a memorandum of understanding with Bangladesh. The memorandum was signed on Oct. 24. He said Suu Kyi gave no further details. Roque said at least two ASEAN leaders brought up the Rohingya issue Monday during a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila. Roque said Suu Kyi did not refer to the Rohingya by name. Although Rohingya Muslims have lived in Myanmar for decades, the country’s Buddhist majority still sees them as invaders from Bangladesh. The government denies them basic rights, and the United Nations has called them one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Since August, when their homes were torched by Buddhist mobs and soldiers, more than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh. 11:30 a.m. Southeast Asian leaders were to announce Monday the start of negotiations with China on a so-called “Code of Conduct” in the disputed South China Sea in what they regard as a milestone but some experts dismiss as a non-starter. Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also will sign an accord aiming to protect migrant workers from the poverty-wracked region during a two-day summit that opened Monday in Manila, according to a draft of a post-summit communique seen by The Associated Press. The ASEAN leaders also will reiterate their “grave concern” over North Korea’s development of “weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear and chemical weapons, and ballistic missile technologies,” and press their strong condemnation of terrorism in the communique. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Associated Press

Downing Street has said the actions of military forces in Burmaagainst the Rohingya people “looks like ethnic cleansing”. Theresa May‘s spokesman made the comments as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims are fleeing to Bangladeshfollowing an army operation in their homeland in Myanmar. It came as Burmese government announced that the army general in charge of operations in Rakhine state has been replaced. Theresa May’s spokesman said: “We’ve been appalled by the inhumane violence that’s taking place in Rakhine state. “It’s a major humanitarian crisis. It’s been created by the Burmese military and it looks like ethnic cleansing.” The intervention follows a brutal crackdown on the community by ethnic Rakhines and the Burmese military. An estimated 600,000 Rohingya are already believed to have fled to the neighbouring Bangladesh since the start of the crackdown in late August. According to UN estimates, around 1,000 people have died but the Burmese military has claimed the figure is closer to 400. The UN has already condemned the violence, saying it is a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. The government claims they are the descents of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and refers to them as Bengalis, who arrived in the country after Partition in 1947 and has denied them citizenship – making them stateless. But the Rohingya say they are indigenous to the area, claiming descent from the precolonial Arakan civilisation. Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been condemned by the international community for her failure to stand up for the Rohingya. She has faced calls for her to be stripped of the numerous humanitarian honours and awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, she received during her years under house arrest for challenging the country’s ruling military junta. Last month she was stripped of her Freedom of Oxford award, which she received in 1997 for her “struggle for democracy”, and musician Bob Geldof has announced he is returning his Freedom of Dublin over Ms Suu Kyi having the same prize. At the beginning of this latest wave of violence, the Ministry of Defence announced it would suspend its “education programme” where it trains the Burmese military “until there is an acceptable resolution to the current situation”. A spokesman for the MoD told The Independent in September: “We call on the Burmese Armed Forces to take immediate steps to stop the violence in Rakhine and ensure the protection of all civilians, to allow full access for humanitarian aid and to facilitate the civilian government’s implementation of the Rakhine Advisory Commission’s recommendations in full. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Independent

The British government has said the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar "looks like ethnic cleansing," Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said Monday. As new accounts emerged of atrocities in Rakhine state,where government forces claim to be targeting "terrorists," Downing Street called on Myanmar's government to permit access for aid agencies. "We've been appalled by the inhumane violence that's taken place in Rakhine State. It's a major humanitarian crisis. It's been created by Burma's military and it looks like ethnic cleansing," the spokesman said, using the traditional name for the country. "Burmese authorities need to stop the violence and ensure access into Rakhine State so that UK aid can provide a lifeline to those who are suffering there." May's criticism comes after the UN called the situation in Myanmar a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing," and some observers have even accused the country's military of overseeing a genocide. British Prime Minister Theresa May (left) greets Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi in London on September 13, 2016. Accounts of horror More than 615,000 Rohingya refugees have fled the country since August 25, according to aid agencies, pouring into neighboring Bangladesh, which has struggled to deal with the influx. The refugees have escaped violent clashes in the north of Rakhine state, where Myanmar's military has intensified what it calls "clearance operations" targeting "terrorists" after Rohingya militants attacked police posts, killing 12 security officials. Many of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who have escaped Myanmar have told of mass rape, murder and arson. In an exclusive CNN report this week, refugees described surviving atrocities and horror before reaching the relative safety of the camps. "They killed and killed and piled the bodies up high. It was like cut bamboo," said Mumtaz, a Rohingya woman from the village of Tula Toli in western Myanmar, who woke up to find herself on a mound of charred bodies. "In the pile there was someone's neck, someone's head, someone's leg. I was able to come out, I don't know how." British connection Myanmar was colonized by the British in 1885 and did not gain its independence until 1948. Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi's father helped negotiate the country's release from imperial control, and she was educated in the UK and married to a British citizen. Suu Kyi has come in for intense international criticism for her handing of the Rohingya crisis, with calls for her to be stripped of her Nobel Peace Prize. Musician and activist Bob Geldof said this week he was handing back an Irish award also held by Suu Kyi in protest over her actions. While London has long supported Myanmar's democracy movement and figures like Suu Kyi, it also has links to the country's military, which retained a large degree of power even as it transitioned the country to semi-civilian rule in 2015. Earlier this year, the UK said it would suspend its training program for the Myanmar military because of the violence in Rakhine State "until there is an acceptable resolution to the current situation." ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 CNN

Overview: Weapons Collection Campaign With “Shoot to Kill” Orders On October 11, 2017, a large contingent of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan’s largest paramilitary corps, redeployed to North Darfur’s capital, al-Fashir, from neighboring South and North Kordofan states. According to local media and eyewitness reports, the reinforcements consisted of some 10,000 fighters who arrived on 400 vehicles consisting of “technicals” (mini-trucks mounted with light to medium artillery pieces), armored vehicles, and water and fuel tankers. In his welcoming speech, the governor of North Darfur state, Abdel Wahid Yousif Ibrahim, indicated that the contingent was brought over to help local security forces implement the second and compulsory phase of a weapons collection campaign that the government launched in August 2017. 1 What began in part as a disarmament and collection campaign has rapidly escalated into a volatile, highstakes armed standoff that could dramatically alter the balance of power of a resource-rich region where large-scale violence has unfolded. In the days that have since followed the initial RSF deployments, according to numerous reports, RSF fighters and Sudanese government troops both increased their force size and activities significantly in the area. They have brought heavy military equipment and hundreds more vehicles, seized weapons and motorcycles, and engaged in bold personal attacks on individuals. Most notably these RSF fighters have recently entered the large and highly productive gold-mining area of Jebel Amer, which has been tightly controlled forseveral years by Musa Hilal, the leader of a rival armed group to the RSF and an outspoken recent critic of the Sudanese government. 2 There are also multiple reports of heavy government and RSF forces moving to other areas near Jebel Amer, including another key stronghold area of Hilal’s: Saraf Omra. These recent events suggest dynamics among groups in North Darfur that had stabilized and remained relatively peaceful for a time may be quickly coming to a boil. But the situation is highly fluid, with a rapid surge in efforts by the region’s vitally important traditional authorities and mechanisms to defuse the situation as well. Arrival of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the capital of North Darfur, El Fasher. October 2017. Photo: Radio Dabanga The Sudanese regime’s political and security incentives, prompting years of selective recruitment and weaponization of rival groups to serve its interests, have created and exacerbated the current situation. Beginning with the lead-up to the 2015 elections, President Omar al-Bashir announced his intent to rein in the tribes. He was motivated to do so because of rising levels of alarm within his inner circle of power at the growing political and military influence of the tribes at the expense of the ruling National Congress Party in the five Darfur states and three Kordofan states. 3 This led al-Bashir to issue Presidential Decree Number 419/2017, 4 establishing a High Commission for the Collection of Weapons in the States of Darfur and Kordofan, with immediate effect.5 The extensive territorial coverage of the commission’s mandate for all eight states reflects the extent of the harm that the regime has done by arming so many groups in these parts of Sudan. The most prominent tribal militias in the eight states were armed and equipped by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) itself, in conjunction with parallel and coordinated arming of other groups by the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS). Presidential Decree 419 of 2017 required citizens to hand over any illegal weapons, ammunition, and unlicensed vehiclesto the security forces or face legal action under Sudan’s criminal justice laws, including but not limited to the Public Safety Act, and the Arms and Ammunition Act of 1986.7 Chaired by Sudanese Second Vice President Hassabo Abdelrahman, the commission for weapons collection includes representation of all relevant ministries at the ministerial level. Presidential Decree Number 452 of June 11, 2017 further added to the commission the top commanders from SAF, the NISS, the national police, and the Rapid Support Forces. 8 The commission was given powers to employ all means necessary, including detentions and the use of force, to disarm those they encountered. 9 “All means necessary,” was interpreted to allow “shoot to kill” tactics with opponents of Decree 419. 10 The first phase of the campaign has seen the collection of only a limited number (in the lower thousands) of the estimated hundreds of thousands of firearms known to be widely possessed by civilians, militias of all kinds, and paramilitaries operating under the nominal control of the government of Sudan in the eight states of Darfur and Kordofan. Reflecting the limited response to the campaign, the voluntary surrender of firearms yielded 2,000 pieces in South Darfur and 3,000 pieces in West Darfur as the deadline of the period for voluntary surrender set for mid-October 2017 approached.11 Successive governments in Sudan have armed civilians and militias recruited on an ethnic basis to wage war against armed insurgencies. Arming these fighters is considered a cheap option, both in monetary terms and for reducing human losses among privileged elite classes. The regime of President Omar alBashir, however, carried the practice to unprecedented levels. It did so because of its drive for political survival and security that went beyond the narrow military expediency that prevailed in the no less illadvised and supremacist calculations of the military establishment that was in place under President Jaafar Nimeiri (who held power between 1969 and 1985) and Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi (who held power between 1986 and 1989). The result isthat now entire areasin Sudan that are affected by rural insurgencies are awash with firearms that are held by government-sponsored militias, paramilitaries consisting of militias integrated in the armed forces, members and former fighters of armed insurgent groups, and ordinary citizens. The government of Sudan scored a major political and diplomatic success with the lifting of U.S. trade and financial sanctions that had been imposed on account of Sudan harboring international terrorist groups in the 1990s and perpetuating atrocity crimes against its own citizensin conflict areas. On the heels of this diplomatic success, the weapons collection campaign appears to be meant to present the regime of President Omar al-Bashirto the international community as a guarantor of domestic and regionalstability. The effort appears to have worked, with the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Khartoum reportedly welcoming the disarmament campaign after a briefing by the official overseeing its implementation, Vice President Abdelrahman. 12 The welcome would appear premature because of the selective and heavy-handed approach the campaign has adopted from the beginning that risks backfiring. A successful disarmament and weapons collection campaign in Sudan would require the Sudanese government to develop a comprehensive strategy to address root causes of conflict that pushed individuals and groups to arm themselves in order to protect their families and communities. The militarization of the citizenry in Darfur and parts of Kordofan and eastern Sudan has been a process that developed over decades in a context of multiple armed insurgencies and as a result of short-sighted government strategies for waging counterinsurgency through proxy tribal militias. The systematic arming of tribal militias by the government without strict systems for the control and tracing of arms further aggravated the situation in many places where weapons could be purchased from arms traffickers, and an underground weapons market thrived. The collapse of law and order institutions and the disintegration of rule of law under the watch of the current regime also deepened the sense of insecurity and provided added incentives for people to arm themselves. Local intercommunal disputes over dwindling land and water and over newly discovered mineral resources also encouraged tribes to build up their military capabilities with the full complicity of government security agencies that prioritized their counterinsurgency interests. Sudan desperately needs a good disarmament campaign. However, the manner in which the current campaign is unfolding bodes ill for its outcome. It is entirely driven by narrow, short-term security considerations, and it fails to address the factors that led to the spread of weapons outlined above. As a result, the campaign received a lukewarm response from the public and no collective militia response to our knowledge. On the contrary, the disarmament campaign triggered major tribal tensions in Darfur and sparked an ominous armed standoff between the two largest paramilitaries in the country, the Rapid Support Forces and Border Guard Forces. To lay the foundation for a more effective and broadly beneficial disarmament campaign in Sudan, the Sudanese regime should prioritize a comprehensive and inclusive peace with the Darfur armed groups that rejected earlier limited solutions and with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLM/A-N) that fights the regime in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states. The Sudanese regime should disarm the tribal militias and paramilitary groups that are armed by its own security agencies to curb the violence that occurs in intercommunal clashes in which these militias engage on the sides of their tribes. If the government were to disarm the militias and paramilitary groups that it had armed to begin with, other tribes might be convinced to follow suit. The disarmament of the tribes would require a phased process involving the kinds of trust-building measures that are familiar to disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) experts. Involving a party such as the United Nations and African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as a facilitator and guarantor of the campaign would be crucial to encourage the progressive disarmament of Darfur’s many tribes. The Sudanese government must also implement the legal and institutional reforms it has endorsed in a number of peace agreements, including but not limited to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, and the 2011 Doha Document for Peace in Darfur. Opting for a policy of “shoot to kill” tactics targeting those who are reluctant to surrender their arms in Darfur, as instructed by the vice president, is a recipe for disaster that could plunge Darfur into a new phase of bloodshed. A comprehensive and lasting solution to conflict in Darfur requires addressing the rights of the 2.5 million direct victims of ethnic purges and pursuing justice and reparations for what they have suffered through no fault of their own. Their right of return to areas from which they were driven during the successive ethnically targeted attacks over the last decade and a half should be respected and facilitated as appropriate. Perpetrators of the worst atrocity crimes and those who instructed them to commit such crimes should be held accountable. Only with such forthcoming admissions of the wrongs committed in Darfur and remedies for those affected will the Sudanese regime be able to bring back social peace and lasting stability in Darfur. A recent virulent verbal spat, between warlord and tribal leader Musa Hilal and Second Vice President Hassabo Abdelrahman, shortly after the announcement of the launch of the government-led disarmament campaign in mid-August 2017,served as an ominoussign ofthe troublesto come. The verbal clash threatened to escalate into large-scale fratricidal bloodshed, pitting the Border Guard Forces— which are under nominal government command (but have always remained loyal to their founding commander Musa Hilal —against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by Hilal’s younger cousin and one-time protégé Mohamed Hamadan Dagolo, known as Hemmeti. However, there are many signs that precisely because of this blood relation, the worst violence has been averted for the moment, though well-founded fears persist that large-scale violence could erupt. Paradoxically, the two main feuding paramilitary groups both have their roots in the Janjaweed militia that the Sudanese government created to support the counterinsurgency campaign led by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), against a rebellion in Darfur that began in the early 2000s. In the government’s counterinsurgency campaign in Darfur, the SAF soldiers and Janjaweed fighters jointly perpetrated a campaign of large-scale killings, rapes, and the torchings of villages in 2003 and 2004 that displaced more than 2.5 million non-Arab Darfuris from their lands into sprawling camps where they remain today, nearly 15 years later. The Sudanese government recruited the Janjaweed fighting force primarily from the clans of the North Darfur-based camel-herding Rizeigat tribesmen of Arab descent. These fighters were sent on a killing rampage that targeted the non-Arab Fur and Massalit farming communities and the non-Arab pastoralist Zaghawa people. People of these three non-Arab groups in Darfur were subjected to an ethnic cleansing campaign. The clans that carried out these acts were also influenced by an obscure “Arab Gathering” (also translated as Arab Alliance, and Arab Confederation) group. This group was launched in 1987 by a few dozen Darfuri elites of Arab heritage who publicly propagated an Arab supremacist ideology for the first time in 1987. The group has since that time continued to seek greater political and military power for their communities and the deliberate marginalization of non-Arab groups. 13 When a first wave of violence subsided in 2004, the Sudanese government yielded to intense international pressure and absorbed most of the Janjaweed into a newly created “Border Intelligence Force,” which was later renamed the Border Guard Force (BGF). Following an early 2013 fallout between the government and BGF commander Musa Hilal, the Sudanese regime created the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that year and assigned Hemmeti as its commander. Hemmeti and the RSF first served under the operational command of the NISS and later under SAF. The new RSF force initially consisted almost entirely of fightersfrom the Mahariya clan of the Rizeigat group that isthe rival to Musa Hilal’s Mahameed clan. The newer RSF then broadened its recruitment base as it rose to prominence in the government’s security structures. In May 2017, President al-Bashir stated that the creation of the RSF was his greatest achievement and an immense source of pride for him as he presided over a ceremony inducting a total of 11,428 new fighters into the RSF.14 President al-Bashir’s regime increasingly relied on the RSF, leading to the mushrooming over time of the RSF’s roles and functions. On top of its original counterinsurgency purpose that it continues to assume in western and southern regions of Sudan, the RSF was also deployed to ruthlessly repress peaceful expressions of dissent in urban areas. This wasthe case in September 2013, in Khartoum, when more than 170 protesters, many students and children among them, were killed. 15 In 2014, the RSF was deployed as Sudan’s primary border force, as part of Sudan’s effortto demonstrate to the European Union that it could help to contain irregular flows of migrants from and through Sudan to Europe.16 Starting in 2015, RSF forces deployed alongside SAF soldiersin the warin Yemen under the Saudi-led alliance against the Houthi rebels. In response to the latest tensions in Darfur, the Sudanese government is deploying the RSF to “pacify” people in a Darfur tribal and social landscape that has been torn apart by the Sudan government’s own divide-and-rule policies. Such policiesinvolve selectively rewarding certain tribesin Darfur fortheir loyalty to the regime by allocating to them the modern local government units that loosely overlap with traditional historic dars (the Darfuri name designating tribal homelands). The Sudanese government has armed certain tribes in its desperation to contain the Darfur armed movements. Major tribes have therefore acquired territorial and military power, while exercising the state’s administrative and fiscal powers. The end result of these practices is that Darfur today resembles a de facto militarized, ethnic-based system of local government. The larger tribes allied with the government have acquired a sense of tribal sovereignty. As a result, “border” disputes became major drivers of intercommunal violence as compellingly documented in a 2008 publication by a prominent Darfuri scholar, Yousif Takana.17 The centuries-old traditions that regulate social relations and support the peaceful coexistence among major tribes and minority tribes living on their “dars” have kept the peace among Darfur’s many communities for generations. Occasional disputes over resources and land used to be contained and regulated through traditional conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms that are akin in many ways to today’s concepts and practices of transitional justice. Tribal peace conferences in Darfur include phases of fact-finding by traditional elder mediators from neutral tribes, acknowledgement of responsibility in triggering a clash, and compensation based on the Islamic Sharia legal system of blood money for lives lost, injuries sustained, and property looted or destroyed. The current Sudanese government has, however, manipulated these mechanismsfor political and security purposes and profoundly disrupted the effectiveness of these systems. Instead of maintaining the tradition of government neutrality in tribal disputes, and instead of participating as an observer and guarantor of agreements reached in tribal peace conferences as successive post-independence governments have done, the current regime has instead armed some tribes against others. SAF’s paramilitaries, such as the Border Guard Forces, the Central Reserve Police, and the Rapid Support Forces have joined in tribal disputesin which their own groups were involved, using government-issued arms and munitions in these conflicts with total impunity as they are granted immunity by the national laws. The RSF As An Enforcer: A Fatal Flaw of Civilian Disarmament Campaign Critics have been quick to point out the limitations of a purely security- and politically-driven approach to disarming the tribes and civiliansin Darfur—absent a comprehensive and inclusive peace processin Darfur and Sudan, and without the support and participation of those targeted for disarmament. 18 While the effort to curb the spread of small- and medium-range weapons in the population is long overdue, there is little chance this campaign willsucceed without a broadersocial peace taking hold in Darfur and Kordofan. A sustainable policy would require the government of Sudan to maintain a neutral posture among the tribes and to reverse the deep harm it has inflicted on millions of Sudanese people in the states where the government itself has been the lead distributor of weapons to civilians since the 1980s. Critics have been quick to point out the limitations of a purely security- and politically-driven approach to disarming the tribes and civiliansin Darfur—absent a comprehensive and inclusive peace processin Darfur and Sudan, and without the support and participation of those targeted for disarmament. 18 While the effort to curb the spread of small- and medium-range weapons in the population is long overdue, there is little chance this campaign willsucceed without a broadersocial peace taking hold in Darfur and Kordofan. A sustainable policy would require the government of Sudan to maintain a neutral posture among the tribes and to reverse the deep harm it has inflicted on millions of Sudanese people in the states where the government itself has been the lead distributor of weapons to civilians since the 1980s. In the wake of a July 2016 decision by the Sudanese Defense Ministry to integrate all paramilitaries under the command of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), the RSF’s subsequent inclusion in the committee tasked with overseeing the implementation of the weapons collection policy raised grave concerns in Darfur. In particular, the inclusion of the RSF corps within the security forces ordered to enforce the weapons collection campaign, by force if necessary, was bound to fuel the distrust of those targeted for disarmament, whether they were organized tribal militias or individuals who acquired arms to defend their families, farms, and herds in the absence of law and order in their regions. A main motivation for arms acquisition in Darfur remains self-defense in response to the collapse of law and order in the region and the targeting of entire communities by government militias acting with total impunity, including the RSF which are chief among the aggressors. Many tribal leaders and ordinary citizens have pointed out that the RSF has repeatedly attacked entire communities targeted solely on the basis of their ethnicity, killing many and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes as amply documented in the periodic reporting of the joint United Nations and African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) reports to the U.N. Security Council as well as by reputable local and international human rights organizations. 19 RSF forces have also taken the side of their tribe in many instances of tribal infighting. For these reasons and others related to the RSF’s routine involvement in criminal activities, such as looting and extortion, many in Darfur have said that the RSF cannot be trusted as a neutral actor to sit at the highest level of decision-making and as the primary enforcer on the ground of the civilian disarmament policy. Tribal Tensions: The Standoff Between the Rapid Support Forces and the Border Guard Forces When the standoff between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Hemmeti and the Border Guard Forces (BGF) led by Musa Hilal first began, the BGF fighters were quick to declare that they rejected their integration into the RSF. Their leader, Musa Hilal, argued that the BGF was already a “regular force” and part of the SAF, which is technically a true and fair qualification of their legal status. However, the BGF fighters were mostly motivated out of their concern that the civilian disarmament campaign was meant to dissolve their force and erode the authority of their tribal leader, Musa Hilal. In a defiant move, on August 12 Hilal summoned BGF fighters who were loyal to him to his tribal chieftain headquarters in Mustareiha. Thousands of BGF fighters, coming from multiple SAF garrisons in Darfur, responded to his call and pledged to resist disarmament or integration into the RSF by force if required. The display of force was motivated, among other reasons, by the previous day’s interception and detention by the RSF of seven of Hilal’s close aides, who were returning from Libya. Vice President Hassabo suggested that the men were there on behalf of Hilal to negotiate the recruitment ofsome 1,000 fighters from Darfur to send to Libya’s Gen. Khalifa Haftar. In return, Hassabo alleged, Haftar would have provided logistical support to Hilal.20 Musa Hilal has lobbed personal attacks at the regime of President Omar al-Bashir before, while sparing the president himself, and this strategy has served Hilal well in the past. It has served as a survival tactic as it implies that the president personally is above blame and only corrupt members of his entourage are to blame for the tensions between Hilal’s political platform, the Sudanese Revolutionary Awakening Council (SRAC) and the regime. It is unclear whether that approach will remain successful, given the degrading and deeply insulting language Hilal used against the vice president. Hilal’s closest aides also followed hislead with similarly inflammatory statements. Zakariya Musa Abbas, a top commanderin Musa Hilal’s SRAC militia, threatened from his exile in Libya to target the families of Hassabo and Hemmeti if a suspected plot to assassinate Musa Hilal were to succeed.22 Another serious incident occurred weeks later, when an RSF patrol clashed on September 21 with what the RSF field commander said were human traffickers belonging to the Border Guard Force operating on the porous borders among Sudan, Libya, and Egypt. Two RSF fighters and 17 alleged human traffickers were killed in the clash; those killed included Musa Hilal’s personal bodyguard and relative Suliman Daoud. 23 A statement issued days later by a tribal alliance of Mahameed tribesmen in Khartoum vehemently denied that those killed had anything to do with human trafficking and claimed that those killed were traders and artisanal gold miners returning from a business trip to Libya. The statement claimed that the group was killed ruthlessly after being detained by the RSF forfailing to pay a high ransom for their release. 24 Subsequent statements by the Sudanese Revolutionary Awakening Councilspokesman Haroun Mideikhir also indicated there had been threatsto target and kill Musa Hilal and his close followers and relatives. He characterized the incident as a deliberate government attempt to stoke tribal tensions within the Rizeigat tribe by seeking to push the RSF and the BGF to confront each other militarily.25 (As noted above, both separate paramilitary forces were recruited on the basis of their ethnicities from different clans of the Rizeigat people.) The killing of the 17 BGF elements affiliated with Musa Hilal came very close to sparking armed clashes between BGF and RSF fighters when some 270 BGF vehicles reportedly surrounded the RSF bases in the gold-rich Jebel Amer area and surrounding lands. These BGF forces demanded the release of BGF elements that had been detained during the September 21 incident; they also demanded the return of their vehicles and other belongings that had been confiscated by the RSF and the surrender of commanders responsible for the incident to justice authorities. A Rizeigat tribal mediation committee succeeded in getting the RSF to meet first two demands but failed for the third, according to reliable sources.26 Tribal mediation appears thus to have only partially succeeded in averting an alleged government plan to push the RSF and the BGF to confront each other in order to weaken both to better control them, according to many commentators. 27 The recent deployment to North Darfur of an armada of technical, armored and service vehicles with some 10,000 RSF fighters brought over from neighboring North and South Kordofan states clearly demonstrates the government’s determination to neutralize the restless BGF and put an end Musa Hilal’s influence over the BGF fighters. The renewed threats of a fratricidal conflict between the RSF and the BGF fighters prompted a collective of Rizeigat intellectualsto issue a statement in which they accused the regime of President Omar al-Bashir ofseeking to stoke conflict within and among Arab communities—after the government’s having used the same divisive and deadly tactics with other groups. Rizeigat elders and activists are evidently concerned that most of the RSF troops who were deployed to Darfur in October 2017 belong to other ethnic groups from Kordofan and central Sudan. Rizeigat intellectuals, community leaders, and activists consider the deployment a deliberate government attempt to neutralize the tribal mechanisms that have so far succeeded in averting deadly gun battles between the core elements of RSF and the BGF.28 However, it is worth noting that the same tribal dignitaries, with the exception of a few individuals among them, had met the atrocity crimes committed by the Janjaweed, the BGF, and the RSF against Darfuri non-Arabs over the last decade and a half with deafening silence. Regardless of whether these tensionslead to open armed conflict as many fear, and some wish, or prompt the parties pull back from the brink, the confrontation has already revealed several hidden layers of the economic underpinnings of the rivalry among the actorsinvolved. Because ofthe covert alliances between members of the inner circles of power in Sudan’s kleptocratic regime and the warlords they have created to protect their power and their ability to loot the country’s rich resources, it is unlikely that the lucrative enterprises in which the politicians and the warlords are jointly involved would, in the end, help calm the current tensions. Joint Looting of Sudan’s Natural Resources Earlier reporting by the Enough Project and others has shown that Musa Hilal and Hemmeti are both involved in exploiting the resource-rich Jebel Amer area in North Darfur. 29 In a 2016 report, U.N. investigators documented the income that Hilal and the Abbala armed group gain from artisanal gold mining operations at Jebel Amer, estimating at least an annual income of $54 million. 30 Follow-up reporting by local media in 2017 revealed that of the two semi-industrial gold mines in Jebel Amer that are specialized in extracting additional gold from the residues of artisanal mining, one belonged to ElGeneid company, known to be owned by Hemmeti’s brother. 31 The other was owned by a Border Guards Force commander. 32 Musa Hilal reportedly owns an unknown number of artisanal gold mines (locally known as “wells”), while also heading the tribal body that controls the entire large-scale operation jointly with the tribal leader of the Beni Hussein people on whose traditional tribal lands Jebel Amer is found. As to the involvement of government officials in the gold rush for personal gain, the former governor of North Darfur, Yousif Kibir, reportedly owned four “wells.” Kamal Abdel-Latif, a former minister of mining, reportedly operated eight. A financial services company owned by a former director of the Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS) was among a handful of companies that were authorized by the bank to purchase gold from artisanal miners.33 The joint venture in exploiting Jebel Amer clearly serves the interests of both Hilal and Hemmeti, but it does not prevent frictions or flare-ups from occurring. This reportedly happened recently with the killing of an RSF captain (who had recently returned from deployment in Yemen) during a search for an RSF vehicle that had allegedly been carjacked by elements close to Hilal.34 No wonder that in January 2017, when the then-minister of interior called on the army to intervene to enforce state authority and control over the Jebel Amer mining site—which he said was beyond the capacity of the national police—the two warlords publicly ridiculed him, forcing his resignation. This incident laid bare the limits of the state’s authority in Darfur and shows the intimate intertwined monetary interests binding government officials and the warlords protecting them. This trend of mutually beneficial avoidance, observed in earlier incidents of brinksmanship at Jebel Amer, appears, however, to be in its waning days, replaced by what appears to be the government’s determination to curb the economic power of its rival, Hilal. On October 26, a large formation of RSF fighters descended on Jebel Amer and took control of the area after disarming the militiamen who were there.35 The regime is also targeting for intimidation or elimination Hilal’s closest allies, including through arrests and detentions, as the incidents discussed above would indicate. “Blood Money” From the War in Yemen In his response to the vice president’s threats, Hilal shot back that the RSF fighters were being used as mercenaries in the war in Yemen, while regime insiders divert lucrative Saudi payments meant for Sudan to the private pockets of a handful of officials he named. These individuals, according to Musa Hilal, include the RSF commander Gen. Hemmeti, a senior officer overseeing the operation in the SAF’s military intelligence department, a NISS senior commander, and the controversial Gen. Taha Osman, whose tenure as President Omer al-Bashir’s cabinet director has continued to be marked by financial scandals even as he was officially removed and a close relative of the president was appointed to replace him.36 The financial incentives that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offers to individual foreign fighters and to countries providing troops supporting its war in Yemen are proving to be a strong magnet for both the fighters and their countries, and indeed for the masses of unemployed youth desperate for opportunities to earn some income even if it means participating in a foreign war. According to informed sources and media reports, RSF foot soldiers receive 500,000 to 600,000 Sudanese pounds (SDG) in one lump sum payment upon their return from six-month deployments in Yemen. Junior officers receive an average of 600,000 to 750,000 SDGs for the same period (equal to $25,000 to $30,000 U.S. dollars at the parallel market rate of 20 SDG to 1 U.S. dollar at this writing in mid-October 2017). During their deployments, the localsalaries, allowances, and benefits of the RSF continue to be paid normally. In case of death in combat, the fighter’s family would receive the payment, in addition to diya, or blood money, calculated at the Saudi Arabian rate for diya. The provider, in this case the RSF, would receive 40 percent of the total package payment of all the fighters. These financial incentives account for the noticeable rush by young men of fighting age to join the RSF regardless of origin. This would partially explain the demonstrable ability of the RSF to draw new recruits as evidenced of the induction of a total of 17,000 new fighters in its ranks in May 2017. The average monthly salary of a foot soldier for the deployment period is more than 10 times higher than the monthly salary of the highest-paid medical practitioners in the public sector.37 For obvious reasons, it is highly unlikely that any of the lump sum Saudi payments compensating the RSF as a troop-contributing institution would ever find their way to Sudanese state coffers. Official Trade in Vehicles of Tainted Origins The arms collection campaign launched in August 2017 also involved the regularization or confiscation of thousands of vehicles that had been illegally smuggled into Sudan from conflict-torn neighboring countries, primarily Libya and the Central African Republic. The presidential decrees authorizing this campaign inadvertently exposed yet another dimension of the criminal economy of the Sudanese kleptocratic elites. The vice president said, somewhat implausibly, that of the illegally imported 60,000 vehicles that were in circulation in Darfur and are gradually finding their way to Khartoum and other areas of the country, only a small fraction, according to his count, were reported by Interpol as being linked to some criminal background.38 While any figures cited by Sudanese officials, including those at the highest levels in this instance, should be subject to further verification, there is indeed a serious problem associated with these vehicles. Despite the dismissiveness of the vice president, the risk is great that those smuggling the vehicles into Sudan are using this activity for money laundering. It is unclear what percentage of this fleet of illegal vehicles has simply been stolen or extorted from lawful owners in Libya. The Sudanese government’s decision to legalize the status of the vehicles by making the individuals who purchased them pay government customs and tax dues (which are federal levies), and licensing fees at the local level (both varying by model and year), points to the Sudanese government’s readiness to have the state profit from a trade of highly suspect origins. According to local reliable contacts, the customs dues on a 2014 Toyota Hilux mini-truck model were 160,000 SDGs ($8,000 U.S. dollars). Customs fees on the Toyota Land Cruiser, in equally high demand, were 280,000 SDGs ($14,000). Customs on the Hyundai Atoz model, for individuals with limited budgets, amounted to 22,000 SDGs ($1,100). State and provincial authorities also imposed administrative and licensing fees on these vehicles that are indexed on the Sudanese customs department’s fee schedules. Smugglers of these vehicles and those financing them seized an opportunity to evade official customs and tax levies and overcome other limitations on the importation of vehicles to Sudan, including the requirement to import new models and the availability of a large market of limited-income Sudanese people. The collapse of public transport systems where they existed made it appealing for many households to acquire the cheaper secondhand but lightly used Korean models such as the Atoz and Klick for a portion of their price in the local used-car market. The higher-priced Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux models appealed to a narrower clientele, reportedly including agents for car dealerships in Khartoum and other buyers with a lot of cash in hand who were able to move large sums ofmoney through bank transfers to Darfur There is no lack of beneficiariesfrom the illicit trade in the vehiclessmuggled into Darfur from neighboring countries. According to sources, the Meidoub militia that is part of the Central Reserve Police, an official paramilitary force, reportedly levies some 2,000 SDGs on each vehicle entering North Darfur from the ElMalha control post, on the border with Libya, which the militia controls. Vice President Hassabo told the media that the vehicles entered Sudan through a dozen other posts. It does not appear that any of the crossing points of the trucks carrying the smaller vehicles was an official customs station, indicating clear violations of articles 190 and 198 of Sudan’s customs law. 39 The role of the trade in these vehicles in financing the civil war in Libya and in sustaining Islamist militias there before their retreat has yet to be fully investigated. Conclusion Darfur, Kordofan, and all of Sudan’s other restive regions urgently need a good, serious campaign to disarm civilians. However, a sustainable solution for the serious problem of proliferation of small and medium arms in the hands of civilians, and the reversal of the trend of the use of such arms in an alarmingly growing number of intercommunal deadly conflicts, would require the Sudanese regime to abandon such policies as the arming of certain loyal tribes against others collectively labeled as regime opponents. The Sudanese government should pursue a comprehensive political solution to its open-ended conflict with the Darfur armed movements and the Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLM/A-N); only then would the government be able to launch a credible campaign to disarm the tribes and civilians. Such a disarmament campaign should progress through the same channels that the government has used to aggressively arm the tribes, that is to say through their chiefs and through the traditional command structures of pastoral communities. The campaign should be voluntary, based on assurances of the neutrality of the government with regard to all tribes and the citizens of the country. Disarmament should be phased, requiring all the tribes to first voluntarily put aside the heavy weapons in their possession in a process that can be verified by a neutral observer, such as UNAMID. Societal peace is achievable in Darfur, but only if the government refrains from interfering with the rich traditions and processes of tribal reconciliation in Darfur. Protecting the rights and remedying the wrongs done to 2.5 million victims in Darfur is no less central to a comprehensive and lasting social peace in this region. Their rights of return should be respected as they seek; orchestrators and perpetrators of atrocity crimes should also face justice. As for the current standoff between the RSF and the BGF, this current situation might not erupt into a fullblown frontal gunfight. There is a reason for this reserve. While it is in the regime’s interest to encourage such a confrontation with the aim of weakening both forces to better control them, there is little appetite among the Rizeigat people, we are hearing, for this to happen. Unlike instances of attacks on civilians in Jebel Marra, an RSF offensive against the BGF fighters would likely involve blood brothers fighting on opposite sides. This is in addition to the joint power and wealth ambitions of the leadership of both the RSF and the BGF. The redeployment of 10,000 newly recruited RSF fighters from North and South Kordofan appears meant to neutralize this ethnic kinship factor between the core constituents of the RSF, who are Rizeigat Mahariya, and members of the BGF, who are predominantly Rizeigat Mahameed. The freshly deployed fighters are reportedly mostly from Kordofan and from the central Sudanese tribal groups, and hence less inclined to be swayed by tribal mediation to stand down. In the end, the factor that would most likely discourage a head-on clash would be Khartoum’s eagerness not to risk losing the good press it has been receiving from its international partners, including especially the United States and the European Union. By dramatically increasing its military footprint in Darfur, the Sudanese regime would be vulnerable if an incidental clash were to spin out of control—as could have happened following the killing of the 17 followers of Musa Hilal in September. The record of both the RSF and the BGF would indicate that such a scenario is quite likely to happen, given the tendency of the two forces to shoot first and ask questions later, if at all. Endnotes 1 Dabanga, “Sudan sends 10,000 RSF to collect arms in North Darfur,” October 13, 2017, available at https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/sudan-sends-10-000-rsf-to-collect-arms-in-north-darfur. 2 Dabanga, “RSF raid on Darfur gold mine nets weapons, motor cycles,” October 27, 2017, available at https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/rsf-raid-on-darfur-gold-mine-nets-weapons-motor-cycles. 3 North Darfur, South Darfur, West Darfur, Central Darfur, East Darfur, North Kordofan, South Kordofan, and West Kordofan. 4 A copy of the decree is on file with the author. 5 Dabanga (in Arabic), “Mohamed Badawi: Developments of weapons collection, Boko-Haram vehicles, and the economy of armed conflicts,” August 31, 2017, available at https://www.dabangasudan.org/ar/allnews/article/محمد-بدوي-تطورات-جمع-السالح-سيارات-البوكو-حرام-و-إقتصاد-اعات . المسلحة-الن ز ز 6 Small Arms Survey (SAS) Human Security Baseline Assessment for Sudan and South Sudan (HSBA), “Remotecontrol breakdown: Sudanese paramilitary forces and pro-government militias,” pp. 3, 8 (Geneva: April 2017), available at http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/issue-briefs/HSBA-IB-27-Sudaneseparamilitary-forces.pdf. 7 Dabanga, “First warning in Darfur’s illegal arms, vehicle collection,” August 8, 2017, available at https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/first-warning-in-darfur-s-illegal-arms-vehicle-collection. 8 Both decrees are on file with the author. 9 A copy of the decree is on file with the author. 10 Kuwait News Agency, “Sudanese VP vows to kill ‘confiscation of unlicensed weapons’ opponents,” August 28, 2017, available at http://www.kuna.net.kw/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=2630940&Language=en. 11 Dabanga, “Sudan sends 10,000 RSF to collect arms in North Darfur”; Al-Youm al-Tali (in Arabic), “Zalengei: the voluntary collection of more than 3 thousand firearms,” October 16, 2017, available at https://www.alyoumaltali.com/shownew/87513. 12 Sudan News Agency, “Vice - Presidnt [sic] Briefs US Chargéd’Affaires on Weapons Collection Campaign,” October 12, 2017, available at http://suna-sd.net/suna/showNews/357756/en. 13 For background on the Darfur conflict, see International Crisis Group, “Darfur Rising: Sudan’s New Crisis” (Nairobi/Brussels: March 2004), available at https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/sudan/darfur-risingsudans-new-crisis. See also Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (New York: Three Rivers Press, May 2010). See also Abdullahi Osman El-Tom, “The Arab Congregation and the Ideology of Genocide in Darfur, Sudan,” available at http://eprints.maynoothuniversity.ie/2641/1/Ara.pdf. 14 Ahmed Younis, “Sudanese President Orders RSF to Handle Mercenaries, Insurgents,” Asharq al-Awsat, May 14, 2017, available at https://english.aawsat.com/ahmedyounis/news-middle-east/sudanese-president-orders-rsfhandle-mercenaries-insurgents. 15 For more on the abuses documented in these incidents see Amnesty International and the African Center for Justice and Peace Studies, “Sudan: Excessive and Deadly: The Use of Force, Arbitrary Detention and Torture Against Protesters in Sudan,” pp. 16-18 (London: 2014), available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AFR54/020/2014/en/. See also Human Rights Watch, “‘We Stood, They Opened Fire’: Killings and Arrests by Sudan’s Security Forces During the September Protests” (New York, April 2014), available at https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/04/21/we-stood-they-opened-fire/killings-and-arrestssudans-security-forces-during. 16 Suliman Baldo, “Border Control from Hell: How the EU’s migration partnership legitimizes Sudan’s ‘militia state,’” (Washington: The Enough Project, April 6, 2017), available at https://enoughproject.org/reports/border-controlhell-how-eus-migration-partnership-legitimizes-sudans-militia-state. 17 See in particular: Yousif Takana, “The Politics of Local Boundaries and Conflict in Sudan. The South Darfur Case,” p. 20 (Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute, 2008). 18 Dabanga (in Arabic), “Mohamed Badawi: Developments of weapons collection, Boko-Haram vehicles, and the economy of armed conflicts.” 19 Human Rights Watch, “Men With No Mercy: Rapid Support Forces Attacks against Civilians in Darfur, Sudan,” September 9, 2015, available at https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/09/09/men-no-mercy/rapid-support-forcesattacks-against-civilians-darfur-sudan. 14 The Enough Project • Policy brief • enoughproject.org Ominous Threats Descending on Darfur 20 Sudan Tribune, “Sudan’s VP says Musa Hilal aides were recruiting fighters for Libya’s Haftar,” August 15, 2017, available at http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article63263. See also Sudan Tribune, “Sudan’s RSF arrests seven members of Hilal tribal group: reports,” August 11, 2017, available at http://sudantribune.com/spip.php?article63225. 21 Author’s monitoring of Sudanese social media. 22 Audio recording widely distributed through social media, on file. 23 Dabanga, “26 dead as Sudanese militia, human traffickers clash,” September 24, 2017, available at https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/26-dead-as-sudanese-militia-human-traffickers-clash. 24 The statement is on file with the Enough Project. 25 Sudan Tribune, “Tribal tensions in N. Darfur after killing of human traffickers by RSF militias,” September 25, 2017, available at http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article63607. 26 Enough Project telephone interviews and message exchanges, September 28 and October 3, 2017. 27 See Radio Afia Darfur (in Arabic), “Failure of tribal efforts to resolve the conflict between the Border Guards and the Rapid Support Forces,” October 6, 2017, available at www.afiadarfur.com/rsf-border/. 28 Statement received on October 15, 2017, on file. 29 Baldo, “Border Control from Hell.” 30 U.N. Security Council, “Final report of the Panel of Experts submitted in accordance with paragraph 2 of resolution 2200 (2015),” S/2016/805, p. 41, para. 138, September 22, 2016, available at http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2016/805. 31 Shamaeil al-Nour (in Arabic), “Fully Armed Gold,” al-Tayar, February 8, 2017, previously available at http://www.altayar.sd/play.php?catsmktba=16777; on file with the Enough Project. 32 al-Nour (in Arabic), “Fully Armed Gold.” 33 Author interviews with informed local sources. 34 Reliable sources who spoke to the Enough Project on condition of anonymity, corroborated by social media sources. 35 Dabanga, “RSF raid on Darfur gold mine nets weapons, motor cycles.” 36 Sudan Tribune, “Sudan’s al-Bashir relieves influential presidential minister,” June 15, 2017, available at http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article62727; Ahmed Younis, “Sudan’s Bashir Relieves Presidential Minister and Director of President’s Offices,” Asharq al-Awsat, June 15, 2017, available at https://aaaenglish.wpengine.com/ahmedyounis/news-middle-east/sudans-bashir-relieves-presidential-ministerdirector-presidents-offices; Ahmed Younis, “Sudan: Ambiguity Surrounds Fate of Presidential Offices’ Director,” Asharq al-Awsat, June 16, 2017, available at https://aaaenglish.wpengine.com/ahmedyounis/news-middleeast/sudan-ambiguity-surrounds-fate-presidential-offices-director. 37 Altareeq Online (newspaper, in Arabic), “A Sudanese soldier dreams of fighting in Yemen in order to purchase a plot of land and a Raksha,” August 9, 2017, available at https://www.altareeq.info/ar/جندي- -بالقتال-يحلم-سودان ز ز -ف ./أج-من-اليمن 38 Al-Nilin (news website, in Arabic), “Hassabo: illegal vehicles monitored by the Interpol enter the country,” August 22, 2017, available at http://www.alnilin.com/12884250.htm. 39 Dabanga (in Arabic), “Mohamed Badawi: Developments of weapons collection, Boko-Haram vehicles, and the economy of armed conflicts.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(c) 2017 Enough

There is a growing possibility that the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP) regime in Khartoum will soon prevail militarily in its thirteen-year campaign in Darfur. The current Jebel Marra offensive seems increasingly likely to overwhelm the last resistance by the Sudan Liberation Army/Abdel Wahid, and thus the last major natural redoubt controlled by rebel forces in the region. If in fact Khartoum prevails, we may sure that military resources (including Antonov “bombers”) now utilized in Darfur will be moved to the ominously growing campaign in South Kordofan. It does not appear premature to begin something like a retrospective account of the immense cost of the genocidal counter-insurgency that began in 2003. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in its March 15, 2016 “Sudan Humanitarian Bulletin,” reports figures revealing that the number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) is greater than at any time during the thirteen years of violence and civilian destruction in Darfur that have defined Khartoum’s pursuit of a genocidal counter-insurgency. 2.66 million people were displaced as of December 2015; 110,000 people have fled to North Darfur and South Darfur during the current Jebel Marra offensive. There are no definitive figures for Central Darfur and Jebel Marra itself; but estimates from the UN and other sources suggest that the number is again measured in the tens of thousands. In short, some 2.8 million are internally displaced in Darfur, overwhelmingly from the non-Arab/African tribal groups of the region. The UN High Commission for Refugees in its “2015 Country Operations Profile—Chad” reports that approximately 380,000 Darfuris were refugees in eastern Chad. Although this figure has been reduced by some 60,000 refugees who have evidently returned to Um Dukhun in West Darfur and Tina and Karnoi in North Darfur, we cannot be sure of the cause of these returns. WFP budgeted nothing its food operations for the twelve camps along the Chad/Darfur border, and many have returned to Darfur not because of improved security but because they were slowly starving in Chad, where the regime of Idriss Déby has made clear its desire to remove the Darfuri refugee population. Still, more than 300,000 Darfuris remain in Chad as refugees living in increasingly tenuous circumstances. We have no reliable census for the number of girls and women raped during these terrible thirteen years, but all evidence suggests that the figure is many, many tens of thousands(see my analysis of rape in Darfur for the years 2014 – 2015: Continuing Mass Rape of Girls in Darfur: The most heinous crime generates no international outrage | January 2016 | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1QG استمرار الاغتصاب الجماعي للفتيات في دارفور: أبشع جريمة لا تغضب العالم | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1Rr Darfur suffers as well from the broad food shortage that is increasing throughout Sudan, with a population of 2 million suffering from Acute Malnutrition. 4 million people are or will become seriously food insecure in 2016, and in some regions the situation is catastrophic. The South Kordofan/Blue Nile Coordinating Unit reports (March 2, 2016) that: “As many as sixty four percent (64%) of households in the [Kau-Nyaro-Warni area are severely food insecure; and a further thirty six percent (36%) are moderately food insecure (total 97%).” Water shortages—for both livestock and people—are reported constantly throughout Darfur, but particularly in Darfur, where many IDP camps have dangerously low capacity. Thousands of villages have been destroyed, either wholly in part. Much of the destruction has been confirmed by satellite photography. Radio Dabanga reports an estimate that in the past two months alone, during Khartoum’s military campaign in Jebel Marra, 150 villageshave been destroyed to date, even as a renewal of the offensive seems imminent: East Jebel Marra, during the past three fighting seasons, has seen more than 1,000 villages wholly or partially destroyed. See my extensive data collection and mapping for November 2014 – November 2015: “Changing the Demography”: Violent Expropriation and Destruction of Farmlands in Darfur, November 2014 – November 2015″ | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1P4 Mortality in Darfur, 2003 – 2016 The consequences of this massive, ethnically-targeted onslaught are clearly overwhelming in scale. Even so, we have no definitive account of how many people have died as a direct or indirect result of violence. The latter population includes death during flight from violence, a huge total unto itself; children—even infants—finding themselves without families; inadequate humanitarian resources for the displaced; and what epidemiologist refer to grimly as “deferred mortality”: deaths that are not immediate but are simply delayed or made more likely by the direct or indirect consequences of violence. In the early years of the genocide, by far the greatest cause of death was violence itself. Failure to recognize this basic fact thoroughly vitiates an otherwise valuable mortality assessment (January 2010) from the Center for the Epidemiology of Disaster (CRED, Belgium), which essentially excludes violent mortality for the period February 2003 to what if vaguely referred to as “early 2004.” Since this is perhaps the very most violent year in the Darfur genocide, such a bizarre shortcoming destroys the credibility of any estimate of total morality from violence (the CRED distortion of data is discussed at length in my August 2010 mortality study, below). At some point, however—perhaps in 2006—the greatest cause of death became, and has remained, malnutrition and disease among the populations violently displaced. The last time the UN offered an assessment of mortality in Darfur was in April 2008—eight years ago. At the time, Sir John Holmes, head of UN humanitarian operations, offered a figure of “300,000.” That figure—eight years later—continues to be cited in the world’s appallingly inadequate reporting on the region. In August of 2010, using all extant data and surveying all relevant reports, I produced the analysis that appears below. It concluded that approximately 500,000 Darfuris had died as of that date, overwhelmingly from non-Arab/African tribal groups. Although I had frequently attempt at earlier stages in the genocide to quantify the death total, since 2010 Khartoum has made impossible the aggregation of new mortality data, and both the UN and nongovernmental humanitarian communities seem content with the failure to take account of the lives lost. But as I argued in a recent email interview with Agence France-Presse (an excerpt was included in the final version of the dispatch), efforts to establish the number who have died during violent conflict is neither morbid nor gratuitous, for two primary reasons: [1] If we know how many have died, we have the single greatest indicator of how many more are likely to die if conditions remain unchanged. This is why continuing use of the April 2008 estimate of “300,000” is so disturbing. Although levels of violence have varied over 13 years of conflict, violence certainly produced, directly and indirectly, massive new mortality since April 2008. Had the world taken seriously the UN estimate of 2008, we would in fact have a much better sense of current mortality. And yet AFP, Reuters, the NY Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg are all constrained by, and use, the UN figure of 300,000 that can’t possibly be right. [2] The second reason mortality estimates are important: if we don’t make every effort possible to ascertain human mortality, we are implicitly devaluing the lives of those who died but whose deaths don’t figure in our assessment of an ongoing humanitarian emergency. This is as true in South Sudan as it is in Darfur, as well as South Kordofan and Blue Nile. If we give up on establishing mortality estimates, if we content ourselves with only the easily gathered and quantified data, we are in one way or another saying that the lives of those not so easily captured in such data don’t “really count.” But they do matter, whether we count them or not. Building on the figure of 500,000 from August 2010, I conclude that approximately 600,000 people have now died in the Darfur genocide. In extending my 2010 figure I am able to use no single set of data, but rather a close analysis of all reporting by Radio Dabanga; figures for Severe Acute Malnutrition for children under five (among whom the mortality rate is over 50 percent for those not in a hospital or therapeutic feeding center); data and reports from all dispatches by Sudan Tribune; reports and data from UN OCHA that allow some inference about mortality; reports from confidential sources on the ground; and a wide range of reports of conditions in the IDP camps. Again, there are no hard data sets to aggregate, there is no certainty to the conclusions I draw from a reading of all published (and unpublished) reports on conditions and mortality in Darfur. Yet given the data spreadsheet from “Changing the Demography”: Violent Expropriation and Destruction of Farmlands in Darfur, November 2014 – November 2015″ | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1P4/, I have concluded that it is impossible that significantly fewer than 100,000 civilians have died in the five and a half years since my August 2010 analysis. For comparative purposes only, I might note that the April 2008 UN figure of 300,000 yields an average annual mortality rate of about 60,000. Wholly, coincidentally, my August 2010 analysis (coming two and a half years later, but using much fuller sets of data) also yields an average annual mortality rate of about 60,000. By contrast, a figure of 100,000 dead over the past five and a half years yields an average annual morality rate of under 20,000. Given the high level of violence and violent displacement over the past four years, particularly in East Jebel Marra, there are many reasons to believe that this may significantly understate mortality. 600,000 dead It has become a truism of genocide studies that no two genocides are the same. The destruction of perhaps 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in spring/summer 1994 was—in stark contrast with Darfur—largely over in 100 days, although the terrible aftermath of that vast spasm of ethnic violence is with us still. And the vast Nazi campaign to destroy European Jewry during the Second World Wars has too often served as a distorting paradigm of what genocide must be. But the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide specifies acts that have all defined Khartoum’s ruthless counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur: Article 2 In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. “In whole or in part…” There can be no denying that 600,000 dead—overwhelmingly from the non-Arab/African tribal populations of Darfur, who have clearly been targeted “as such”—is a very substantial “part” of the “group.” Darfur has been, and continues to be, the site of genocide—the longest genocide in over a century—one the world simply got tired of. Eric Reeves | March 18, 2016 ******* QUANTIFYING GENOCIDE: Darfur Mortality Update, 6 August 2010 Eric Reeves | 6 August 2010 | http://sudanreeves.org/2017/01/05/quantifying-genocide-darfur-mortality-update-august-6-2010/ In the late summer of 2004, during the most violently destructive phase of the Darfur genocide, the US State Department commissioned the International Coalition for Justice (CIJ) to oversee a systematic interviewing of Darfuri refugees who had fled to eastern Chad. It was on the basis of the report that emerged from these interviews (“Documenting Atrocities in Darfur” at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/KHII-64S2UH?OpenDocument/) that Secretary of State Colin Powell would make his September 2004 determination that genocide was being committed in Darfur. The personnel conducting the research included human rights experts, law enforcement officials, genocide scholars, forensic experts, and those with significant experience in the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. They were provided with ample resources, including a full complement of translators. On the basis of 1,136 carefully randomized interviews, conducted among the Darfuri refugee population in Chad at 19 camp locations along the border, the Coalition for International Justice (CIJ) found that “sixty-one percent [of those interviewed] reported witnessing the killing of a family member.” The implications of this extraordinary figure were registered by only a very few among those who purported to speak about levels of mortality in Darfur. My own efforts to draw implications from these data (first in fall 2004, http://www.sudanreeves.org/Sections-article226-p1.html/) were followed by those of Professors John Hagan and Patricia Parker (April 2005, commissioned by the Coalition for International Justice) and by Dr. Jan Coebergh, an independent researcher (http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-genocide&month=0501&week=e&msg=QU6O9eX//YCJKYYA6ShbIg&user=&pw=/). They yielded comparable results using different statistical methodologies. But because “Documenting Atrocities in Darfur” was not specifically designed as a mortality study, its consequential findings were dismissed by many professional epidemiologists, in nearly all cases with painfully little contextual understanding of the Darfur conflict—and ultimately by the US Government Accounting Office, which similarly dismissed the data from “Documenting Atrocities in Darfur” and the reports that utilized them. This ham-fisted dismissal has been smugly accepted as definitive in some quarters. My own finding was that by the beginning of 2005, 215,000 people had been killed (this based primarily on CIJ data) and that another 200,000 had died as a result of disease and malnutrition directly consequent upon ethnically-targeted violence (my primary sources for this latter figure were UN World Health Organization mortality studies, particularly of August/September 2004; see http://www.sudanreeves.org/Sections-article482-p1.html/). Total mortality, I argued, was over 400,000 (400,000 was the figure that Hagan and Parker would arrive at several months later, though making assumptions that I believe worked to understate violent morality and overstate mortality from disease and malnutrition). There have been no subsequent mortality studies that have used the CIJ mortality data. But those data have recently (July 14, 2010) found remarkable corroboration and amplification in a report entitled “Darfurian Voices” (http://www.darfurianvoices.org/ ). The report indicates that 72% of Darfuri refugees (in a population of approximately 250,000) had one or more (up to ten) “immediate family members (parents, siblings, spouses, children) [who] were killed in attacks related to the current conflict” (page 14). What are the statistical implications of these figures (pages 14 – 15 of the report)? Let us assume for clarity in treating percentage data 100 respondents (the actual number of respondents was approximately 1,250; see citation of “Footnote 2” in Appendix 1b); let us assume as well a rather large average immediate family size of 10 (see Appendix 2), so that the 100 respondents represent a total statistical cohort of 100 families or 1,000 refugees; and finally, let us assume no duplication in family representation in the survey, an assumption warranted by the statistical methodology of the survey. [specific percentage values here are from the bar graph on page 14, rounded to nearest percentage integer]: Percentage of 100 families who experienced “x deaths” per immediate family: 0 deaths 28% = ( 0 deaths within the statistical cohort of 1000) 1 death 20% = (20 deaths within the statistical cohort) (1 x 20) 2 deaths 16% = (32 deaths within the statistical cohort) (2 x 16) 3 deaths 12% = (36 deaths within the statistical cohort) (3 x 12) 4 deaths 8% = (32 deaths within the statistical cohort) (4 x 8) 5 deaths 5% = (25 deaths within the statistical cohort) (5 x 5) 6 deaths 3% = (18 deaths within the statistical cohort) (6 x 3) 7 deaths 3% = (21 deaths within the statistical cohort) (7 x 3) 8 deaths 2% = (16 deaths within the statistical cohort) (8 x 2) 9 deaths 1% = (9 deaths within the statistical cohort) (9 x 1) 10 deaths 2% = (20 deaths within the statistical cohort) (10 x 2) 100% of 229 total deaths within the statistical cohort of 100 families (1,000 refugees) The statistics represented here in simplified form are derived from approximately 1,250 interviews of persons 18 years of age and older residing in eight of the twelve official Darfur refugee camps (see Appendix 1c). The report uses a “stratified random sampling approach” (though see Appendix 1 concerning selection of leadership figures). The survey was able to field a full complement of translators (speaking Arabic as well as Fur, Massalit, Zaghawa, and other African languages). The report assumes a total Darfuri refugee population of approximately 250,000 (249,744), based on a May 2009 calculation by the UN High Commission for Refugees. (The “Darfurian Voices” data were collected between April and July 2009.) Assuming no family duplication in representation (again, such duplication is highly unlikely given the sampling method) and an average immediate family size of 10: For 100 respondents—each representing 10 family members, for a total represented population of 1,000 refugees—there is confirmation of 229 “immediate family members (parents, siblings, spouses, children) [who] were killed in attacks related to the current conflict” (in other words, 22.9% of the 1,000 represented refugee population). If we assume that this figure is fully statistically representative for Darfuri refugees in the camps of eastern Chad (as it was designed to be), the total figure for violent mortality experienced by this population is approximately 57,250 (229 x 250 [250 = 250,000 1,000 persons] as of July 2009. Alternatively, we may calculate 22.9% of 250,000—again 57,250. If we assume a smaller average size for families in the camp, the total number of deaths increases proportionately. (Such an assumption does not increase the number of family members killed in the sense of numbers per family, but rather increases our estimate of the number of families represented in the camp, and thus the total number of deaths.) FURTHER POSSIBLE EXTRAPOLATIONS FROM THESE DATA Since the total displaced population in eastern Chad and Darfur has grown over more than seven years, we require an average figure on which to base any extrapolation to the internally displaced populations inside Darfur. Using UN figures, such averaging moves from a starting number of 0 (zero) for early 2003 to approximately 1.66 million in December 2004 to approximately 2 million in October 2006 to the present figure of 2.7 million, first reported by the UN in October 2008 and relevant through the gathering of “Darfurian Voices” data in April July 2009. Finding a precise average number of displaced persons, including refugees, with proper weighting of particular time-frames, is not feasible. More troublingly—from a statistical perspective—displacement is less and less directly related to violent attacks—and thus violent mortality—after 2004, although it is still typically related to concerns about insecurity, and significant violent mortality continues. But if precision is impossible, reasonable estimates can be made from available figures for displacement. If we assume an average internally displaced population of 830,000 (830,000 = (0 + 1.66 million) 2) for the period of February 2003 to December 2004, and if we assume that the Chadian refugee mortality figure is fully representative of this population, then we may estimate that the total number of family members killed is 229 x 830 (830 = 825,000 1,000 persons) or almost 190,000 (190,070) “immediate family members (parents, siblings, spouses, children) [who] were killed in attacks related to the current conflict.” Alternatively, we may calculate 22.9% of 825,000—again 190,000 (190,070). The average total of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) for January 2005 to October 2006 may be estimated as 1.83 million (1.83 million = (1.65 million + 2 million) 2). Thus the average increase in the internal displacement population for the period of January 2005 to October 2006 is 1.01 million (that is, this figure represents the increase from the average population of internally displaced persons for February 2003 through December 2004: 1.83 million minus 825,000). If we assume that by this point in the conflict the Chadian refugee violent mortality rate overstates by a factor of 5 violent mortality among internally displaced Darfuris, then we may estimate that the total number of family members killed is (229 5) x 1,010 (1,010 = 1.01 million 1,000 persons) or approximately 46,000 (46,258) “immediate family members (parents, siblings, spouses, children) [who] were killed in attacks related to the current conflict.” Alternatively, we may calculate (22.9% 5) of 1.01 million—again 46,000 (46,258). The average total of IDPs for November 2006 to July 2009 may be estimated as 2.35 million (2.35 = (2 million + 2 .7 million divided by 2). Thus the average increase in the internal displacement population for the period of November 2006 to July 2009 is 520,000 (that is, this figure represents the increase from the average population of internally displaced persons for January 2005 to October 2006: 2.35 million minus 1.83 million). If we assume that by this point in the conflict the Chadian refugee violent mortality rate overstates by a factor of 10 violent mortality among internally displaced Darfuris, then we may estimate that the total number of family members killed is (229 10) x 520 (520 = 520,000 1,000 persons) or approximately 12,000 (11,900) “immediate family members (parents, siblings, spouses, children) [who] were killed in attacks related to the current conflict.” Alternatively, we may calculate (22.9% 10) x 520,000—again 12,000 (11,900). Violent mortality through July 2009 is thus estimated to be: 57,250: violent mortality among Darfuri refugees in Chad 190,000: violent mortality among Darfuri IDPs, February 2003 – December 2004 46,000: violent mortality among Darfuri IDPs, January 2005 – October 2006 12,000: violent mortality among Darfuri IDPs, November 2006 – July 2009 305,250: total violent mortality among displaced Darfuris through July 2009 Obviously these calculations all depend upon how we answer a basic question: how representative are Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad of the displaced population within Darfur itself? And how does the answer to this question change over the course of the conflict? “Darfurian Voices” attempts no extrapolation of the sort offered here, confining the relevance of all their data on all issues to eastern Chad alone. But the question of larger relevance is imperative, given the paucity of data on violent mortality in Darfur, especially in the first year of the conflict. Moreover, we are not completely without suggestive, if more localized, data. One important consideration in answering this central question is the reason for civilian flight. Nearly all the refugees in eastern Chad fled from violence. For an analysis of the relationship between violence and human displacement within Darfur itself, especially valuable data come from an early study published in The Lancet (October, 1, 2004, “Violence and mortality in West Darfur, 2003-2004” at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15474133/ ). This study suggests an extremely high correlation between violent displacement and displacement per se, precisely what we find among refugees in eastern Chad. (In fact, this study presents data indicating that violence within Darfur during the first two years of conflict is associated even more closely with displacement than among the Darfuri refugees as reported in “Darfurian Voices.”) Thus it supports in particular the calculations here for violent mortality for the period of February 2003 to December 2004. Certainly we may safely assume that the 1,250 interviews conducted by “Darfurian Voices” are highly statistically relevant, especially given the ethnic and geographical range of those interviewed (virtually all were from non-Arab or African tribal groups, with 82% from the Massalit, Zaghawa, and Fur tribes; eight geographically distributed camps were represented). At the same time, there is no purely statistical justification for these deflator factors of 5 and 10; they are estimates based on close textual analysis of many hundreds of reports of violence during the periods in question. CAVEATS Although the “Darfurian Voices” study is deeply impressive in its research, it must also be noted that, as was the case with the CIJ study, there are several limiting factors in any statistical assessment of the responses that were recorded, factors that might well drive total violent mortality within displaced Darfuri populations either higher or lower. [1] Neither the CIJ study nor the “Darfurian Voices” study can take into account families in which all members were killed, and who thus had no reporting presence in the camps where interviews took place. There is circumstantial evidence that this number may be significant (e.g., the survival of only one member of a large family would suggest that this family came perilously close to being unrepresented). Non-survival works to understate total violent mortality. [2] Further, families with small numbers of survivors are under-represented in the statistical sampling vis-à-vis families that survived largely intact; to the extent that these small families of survivors have been diminished by killings, their under-representation works to understate total violent mortality. [3] The CIJ study reports that 28% of those interviewed “directly witnessed” persons dying from the consequences of displacement before reaching Chad. These deaths must be considered the direct consequence of violence, if not violent deaths per se, and would significantly increase violent mortality totals suggested by the CIJ data. There is no comparable set of disaggregated figures in the “Darfurian Voices” report; such deaths, the direct consequence of antecedent violence, may or may not be included in the phrase “were killed in attacks related to the current conflict.” If they are not included, then the total violent mortality figure would rise significantly. [4] The possibility for double-counting of families in using the “Darfurian Voices” survey data cannot be overlooked. If there are approximately 25,000 refugee families in eastern Chad, we cannot be sure to what degree they are separated geographically. Thus, if statistical method ensures that there was no overlap between the families within the “Darfurian Voices” sample, the same cannot be said of families represented in the sample but that are also part of the population total not included in the sample (by virtue of separation and geographic dispersal). Here there may be overlap and in effect “double counting.” The only situation that would eliminate the problem is one in which each refugee family, in its entirety, lived in the same location. The UN High Commission for Refugees has done a great deal of work over the past six years in re-uniting refugee families within the twelve camps in eastern Chad, but to the degree they have not been fully successful, a kind of double-counting through overlap may have occurred in my statistical extrapolation. The degree of such overlap is unclear, but I believe it is relatively small. One other possible source of double-counting is the “double role” some individuals may play in different “immediate families,” i.e., someone might be both a father in one family and brother to a father in another family. If both brothers were selected for their responses in the survey, their reports would double one another. Again, given the randomizing strategy of the survey, this seems quite unlikely to produce a significant reduction in estimated total mortality. [5] The UN High Commission for Refugees reports than more than 500,000 have been newly displaced since January 1, 2008 (the point at which UNAMID formally took over protection activities in Darfur). Within this population are people who have been displaced two, three, even four times (although these multiple displacements do not add to the total figure for internal displacement: approximately 2.7 million). Violent mortality is certainly associated with these additional displacement experiences, often the direct result of renewed violence against civilians within Darfur; however, we have no data by which to quantify this mortality. It may well be significant, as suggested by the large displacement among previously displaced populations in the Muhajeria area of South Darfur in January/February 2009 (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29878&Cr=darfur&Cr1=muhajeria/ ). [6] Given the relative security of the Chadian refugee camps vis-à-vis the much larger displaced populations inside Darfur, violent morality may actually have been higher within Darfur at times during the years after 2004, when the refugee exodus was largely over (90% of the Darfuri refugee population had moved into eastern Chad by the end of 2004). Nonetheless, the assumptions here in calculating violent mortality among internally displaced Darfuris are that the violent mortality rate for the Chadian refugee population overstates by a factor of five for the period January 2005 October 2006 and by a factor of ten for the period November 2006 July 2009. (Deadly cross-border raids by Janjaweed militia and Khartoum’s regular Sudan Armed Forces beginning in 2005 may or may not be included in the “Darfurian Voices” report; if they are not, this would also suggest a higher violent mortality total for Darfuri refugees.) [7] There was significant ethnically-targeted violent mortality in Darfur in the years immediately prior to the outbreak of war in February 2003. We have no data that permits quantification of a total, but there are a number of important reports indicating the scale of the violence. For example, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal in Darfur: A Short History of a Long War (2005) note that in “October 2002, government-supported Janjawiid from the camps in South Darfur launched a major offensive, the first of its kind against Fur civilians” (page 64). Many civilians were killed and “hundreds of villages burned.” They note also that in 1998 Janjaweed forces had attacked Dar Massalit, the Massalit homeland in West Darfur, killing more than a thousand people and burning some 30 villages in a three-month period (pages 60 – 61). There are many other examples. MORTALITY FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF ETHNICALLY-TARGETED VIOLENCE: MALNUTRITION AND DISEASE Almost all studies of mortality issues find that the majority of “excess deaths” in Darfur after the initial phase of the counterinsurgency (2003 – 2004) are a function not of direct violent acts but the health consequences of violence and the displacement it has produced. This has been the consistent conclusion of my own work after 2004. If in fact 304,250 Darfuris have died violently, and more than 240,000 have died from causes other than violent killing (see mortality study from The Lancet, January 2010, below), then total mortality in Darfur and eastern Chad now exceeds 500,000. Here it is critical that we keep in mind the fact that mortality from malnutrition and disease (primarily diarrhea) is a function of antecedent violence that destroyed the livelihoods and security of millions of Darfuris. In other words, these “excess deaths” would not have occurred except for the genocidal violence that exploded in spring 2003. People fled to camps—many dying along the way, often unwitnessed—because their villages had been systematically and comprehensively destroyed on an ethnic basis. High mortality rates even within the camps were reported early in the conflict. The previously cited study in The Lancet, October 9, 2004 (“Violence and mortality in West Darfur, 2003-2004”) reports that in West Darfur, once displaced persons arrived in camps their Crude Mortality Rates (CMR—deaths per day per 10,000 of population) dropped back from catastrophically high levels (5.9 to 9.5), “but remained above the emergency benchmark (a CMR of 1.0), with a peak in 5.6 in el-Geneina.” The same study reports: Before arrival [of displaced persons] at displacement sites, mortality rates (expressed as deaths per 10,000 per day), were 5.9 (95% CI 2.2 – 14.9) in Zalingei, 9.5 (6.4 – 14.0) in Murnei, and 7.3 (3.2 – 15.7) in Niertiti. Violence caused 68 – 93% of these deaths. These are staggering mortality rates for large populations of civilians in or near major towns of West Darfur—and violence “caused 68 – 93% of these deaths” (see sample extrapolation from these data below). Moreover, shortly after The Lancet study, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported similar results in North Darfur: Mortality studies carried out by MSF show that during the early phases of the Darfur conflict the pattern of repeated violence and consequent displacement was the cause of very high mortality [emphasis added].” (MSF press release, Brussels/Khartoum, December 1, 2004, at http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release_print.cfm?id=364/) Mortality rates have stabilized in most of the camps, at least for the present; but there are extremely ominous humanitarian indicators that suggest CMRs may again rise sharply, and that the fate of humanitarian operations in Darfur hangs in the balance (see my recent two-part analysis of current humanitarian conditions in Darfur and eastern Chad, at http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article264.html ). PREVIOUS STUDIES OF MORTALITY FROM MALNUTRITION AND DISEASE The earliest study to bring serious attention to the scale of mortality in Darfur from disease and malnutrition was released by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) in August 2004, for the period 15 June and 15 August 2004 (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2004/pr63/en/index.html/ ); it focused on establishing excess Crude Mortality Rates in Darfur (excess deaths per day per 10,000 people). On the basis of this study, WHO announced in September that 50,000 people in camps for the displaced had died from disease and malnutrition in the five-month period from April 2004 to August 2004 (in October, WHO estimated mortality for the six-month period from March 2004 to October 2004 at 70,000). The figure of 50,000 deaths was erroneously reported by many news organizations as a new figure for total mortality in Darfur, gravely distorting the scale of the Darfur catastrophe. The error was explicitly corrected in an email to me from Dr. David Nabarro, head of WHO emergency response efforts in Darfur: “I fear that remarks I made at a Press Briefing on September 13th 2004 were misquoted. I said that we estimate that at least 50,000 Internally Displaced Persons have died from disease (in some cases exacerbated by malnutrition) since April 2004.” (email from Dr. David Nabarro to this writer, September 16, 2004; emphasis added) It is important here to consider what was left out, as shocking as the figure of “at least 50,000” deaths is in itself. It excluded all mortality—from violence, disease, and malnutrition—prior to April 2004. As we have seen, this total was already well in excess of 100,000. The total excluded all mortality in Chad. It excluded most violent mortality, which occurred largely away from the camps surveyed. It excluded mortality from disease and malnutrition among populations beyond the reach of camp humanitarian workers (this population was estimated to be 500,000 by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan in September 2004). If this inaccessible population—described in the UN report as “conflict affected and in need of assistance”—experienced mortality rates comparable to those in the camps, then an additional 17,000 people died of malnutrition and disease. In short, it was a highly circumscribed study, and yet still yielded a terrifyingly large number of “excess deaths.” (Again, in October WHO increased the mortality figure to 70,000 excess deaths between March 2004 and October 2004.) Further, the report was the basis for extrapolating a future monthly mortality rate of 6,000 10,000 from the same causes within the same population WHO had surveyed (this is reflected in the October 2004 WHO estimate). Dr. Nabarro again clarified this monthly figure, telling me explicitly that the WHO figure for monthly mortality should be closer to 10,000 in the “6,000 to 10,000 deaths per month” range indicated in the report. Predictably, the WHO report so angered the Khartoum regime that they made the one subsequent global mortality study virtually impossible to complete, and ensured through threats against WHO workers that there would be no further such studies in Darfur; insecurity continued to escalate and has made mortality assessments increasingly difficult. As a consequence, we have only localized and piecemeal mortality reports on “excess deaths” from disease and malnutrition from 2005 to the present (as opposed to truly global mortality surveys, with well-established Crude Mortality Rates for all areas of Darfur). At present we also lack global data and analysis of morbidity and malnutrition, largely because of Khartoum’s intimidation of UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations that in the past have generated and promulgated such data. THE VIEW FROM THE CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON THE EPIDEMIOLOGY OF DISASTERS (LEUVEN, BELGIUM) Very usefully, many of these smaller-scale mortality reports have been extracted, collected, and analyzed by Olivier Degomme and Debarati Guha-Sapir in “Patterns of mortality rates in Darfur conflict,” The Lancet, January 23, 2010 (pages 294-300, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961967-X/abstract /). Their account draws in particular on the “Complex Emergency Database” (http://www.cedat.be/guidelines/) of the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). While excluding from its estimates of violent mortality any consideration of the CIJ data (“Darfurian Voices” data were of course unavailable), their study offers important conclusions about deaths from disease and malnutrition that are likely to be approximately right, though excluding mortality in eastern Chad as well as mortality from the period February 2003 to “early 2004” (see below for discussion of this critical lacuna). This highly technical paper, statistically of enormous potential richness, offers some very clear conclusions: the authors “estimate the excess number of deaths in Darfur to be 298,271 (95% Confidence Interval, 178,258 – 461,520)” in the time period “from early 2004 to the end of 2008” (N.B. the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem). Of these approximately 300,000 excess deaths, they argue that “more than 80% of the excess deaths were not as a result of the violence” but from “diseases such as diarrhoea,” at least on the basis of the numerous studies archived at CRED’s “Complex Emergency Database.” This yields a figure of roughly 240,000 deaths from disease (which presumably includes the effects of malnutrition, which has in various times and places in Darfur been extremely high), and a corresponding figure of roughly 60,000 deaths from violence in the period “from early 2004 to the end of 2008.” Unfortunately, Degomme and Guha-Sapir seem incapable of recognizing the direct connection between deaths from disease and malnutrition and the antecedent violence that was responsible for these deaths—this is so even as they speak abstractly of “excess deaths.” But of course these deaths are “excessive” because of the genocidal violence that created the conditions in which people died of malnutrition and disease. And there is nothing abstract about this brutal violence. For the moment, however, we may ignore this peculiar myopia. In the course of their study, the authors explain their limitations. They have not included mortality in Chad (again, 57,250 people killed according to data from “Darfurian Voices,” in addition to victims of disease and malnutrition). They have not included mortality from December 2008 to the present. But even more tellingly they confess that, “Another constraint was that we could not identify any survey that included the first few months of the conflict before the deterioration in September, 2003.” In fact, there are no mortality studies at all for Darfur for the year 2003 in CRED’s “Complex Emergency Database”: entering this year and any of the three Darfur states into the site’s search engine yields only the message, “No entries found, please try broaden your search parameters.” This is why Degomme and Guha-Sapir’s narrative indicates that the period actually represented by their conclusions is January or February 2004 to December 2008: “298,271 (95% Confidence Interval, 178,258 – 461,520)” excess deaths in the time period “from early 2004 to the end of 2008.” (Tellingly, the authors do not specify precisely what is meant by “early 2004.”) This delimitation of time period is highly significant. In excluding the period from February 2003 to “early 2004”—an approximately yearlong period of extraordinary violent mortality, as well as highly significant mortality from other causes—the authors leave out an essential part of the global mortality picture with almost no acknowledgement. Of the half-year period from February 2003 to August 2003 (“phase 1” in their Panel 1) they say only: “not included in any retrospective survey, and mortality data should therefore be estimated by other techniques.” The truth is that they have not identified any Darfur mortality study for any months in 2003. Even so, Degomme and Guha-Sapir push on to offer what is a transparently untenable figure from the US State Department for this critically omitted period of time (“February [2003] to August 2003”): “between 1,000 – 4,500 deaths” (from all causes). In fact, this figure is an erroneous citation by the authors: the State Department “fact sheet” (“Sudan: Death Toll in Darfur,” March 25, 2005)—as originally promulgated on the State Department website—found that “4,100 – 8,800 excess deaths are estimated to have occurred primarily in North and West Darfur [during the period March September 2003].” Notably, though unsurprisingly, Degomme and Guha-Sapir do not cite the URL for this State Department estimate; rather they cite the US Government Accounting Office report on mortality studies that cites this four-page “fact sheet.” The inability to cite the URL for the document in question derives from the State Department’s removal of this statistical travesty from its website (www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/fs/2005/45105.htm/ is now a dead link). But at the time of its initial distribution I analyzed in detail (http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article9364/) the “fact sheet’s” numerous methodological problems, its highly consequential factual errors, the lack of citation or statistical analysis, and a consistent disingenuousness (document accessed by this writer from the State Department website on April 23, 2005 at the now defunct URL). Critically for present purposes, Degomme and Guha-Sapir leave ambiguous whether there are relevant mortality studies or considerations for the period between September 2003 and January 2004, this despite their subsequent parceling out of various “phases of the Darfur conflict,” including “September 2003 to March 2004” (“phase 2” of Panel 1—again, N.B. the terminus ad quem for this “phase”). In their statistical analysis for this period they indicate “excess deaths” of “45,137 (95% Confidence Interval, 27,320 to 73,380).” But it remains unclear what data were used for September 2003 through the end of December 2003: again, there is nothing in CRED’s “Complex Emergency Database.” Nor is it clear what data was used to calculate violent mortality for the period January 2004 to their “March 2004” endpoint for “phase 2.” The authors conspicuously refuse to confront the implications of the CIJ study (which looked retrospectively at Darfur mortality data from February 2003 to August 2004) in speaking about “phase 1”; but even more tellingly—and all too characteristically for professionals with no real knowledge of the historical context in Darfur—they ignore evidence and reports from the ground that make clear that tens of thousands of people were dying from a range of causes during the period “February [2003] to August 2003,” causes that included violence, flight from violence, and life in makeshift camps that were systematically denied humanitarian assistance, often woefully inadequate in any event. The same may be said of their “Phase 2” (“September 2003 to March 2004”), which plays such an ambiguous role in their analysis. Let us be clear about the significance of the figure “1,000 – 4,500” deaths—from all causes—in the period February 2003 through August 2003 (by which time Khartoum had substantially deployed its Janjaweed militias, as well as its regular military forces, in genocidal destruction). Degomme and Guha-Sapir conclude that total excess mortality in Darfur is 298,271 “from early 2004 to the end of 2008.” But by a tawdry statistical sleight-of-hand, this time-frame is disingenuously expanded by almost a year to become “about 300,000” “between March 2003 and December 2008.” A year that includes some of the greatest violent mortality in the Darfur genocide (February 2003 to “early 2004”) is brought within their final estimate and time-frame on the basis of a completely vitiated State Department “fact sheet,” which purportedly supports an estimate of “between 1,000 – 4,500 deaths” in this time period. This is simply untenable, and here in the form of an historical compendium is some of what cannot be accommodated to Degomme and Guha-Sapir’s account: [1] The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) found in late summer 2003: …that about 75,000 people are currently scattered on the edge of the Darfur conflict zone, on the Chadian side of the border. Most of them, spread out over 600 km, are women and children. With temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius during the day and minus 15 at night, as well as sand storms and rain, respiratory infections among the refugees are on the rise. They have little shelter, relying on torn rags and bits of plastic sheeting. (UN Integrated Regional Information Services, October 8, 2003) Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) found that within this refugee population, “there is no clean drinking water, forcing people to dig in sandy riverbeds with their bare hands to find ‘a dirty brown liquid.’ With scarce food supplies, malnutrition is also on the increase.” [ ] On top of the hardship faced in Chad, the refugees have already had to flee their homes to escape aerial bombardments and militia attacks in Darfur, MSF pointed out. “Without exception, the refugees are traumatised by the violence they have been subjected to. Many no longer have the emotional strength to do anything except lie in the sand day and night, letting events unfold around them.” [ ] “The military response by the government, which escalated throughout the summer forcing more and more people to become displaced or to flee to Chad, is being backed up by systematic attacks by Arab militias who seek to crush the rebellion and terrorise villagers,” MSF said. (UN IRIN, October 8, 2003) Emphasis should be placed heavily here on MSF’s declaration that, “The military response by the government, which escalated throughout the summer forcing more and more people to become displaced or to flee to Chad, is being backed up by systematic attacks by Arab militias who seek to crush the rebellion and terrorise villagers [emphasis added].” There are many similar contemporaneous accounts of civilians who fled large-scale, organized violence but remained within Darfur. This is summer 2003—precisely the period Degomme and Guha-Sapir have statistically minimized (“1,000 – 4,500 deaths” from all causes). [2] As previously indicated, an early study of violent mortality in West Darfur appeared in The Lancet (October 9, 2004 [9442]); it reported that in West Darfur, once displaced persons arrived in camps their Crude Mortality Rates (CMR—deaths per day per 10,000 of population) dropped back from catastrophically high levels (5.9 to 9.5), “but remained above the emergency benchmark (a CMR of 1.0), with a peak in 5.6 in el-Geneina [capital town of West Darfur].” The same study reports: Before arrival [of displaced persons] at displacement sites, mortality rates (expressed as deaths per 10,000 per day) were 5.9 (95% CI 2.2 – 14.9) in Zalingei, 9.5 (6.4 – 14.0) in Murnei, and 7.3 (3.2 – 15.7) in Nierteti. Violence caused 68 – 93% of these deaths. [Zalingei, Murnei, and Nierteti are all major towns in West Darfur] Again, these are staggeringly high mortality rates among very sizeable populations in or near major towns in West Darfur. For example, the number of violent deaths over the course of 60 days for a population of 200,000 would have been approximately 9,000, depending on the distribution of populations between the three general locations, with their differing CMR’s. Shortly afterwards, MSF would issue its own assessment: Mortality studies carried out by MSF show that during the early phases of the Darfur conflict the pattern of repeated violence and consequent displacement was the cause of very high mortality. (MSF, Brussels/Khartoum, December 1, 2004) “during the early phases of the Darfur conflict the pattern of repeated violence and consequent displacement was the cause of very high mortality.” MSF was the first major international humanitarian organization with a substantial presence in Darfur. My own communications with humanitarian organizations operating in Darfur in 2003 confirm MSF’s conclusions about violent mortality. [3] The scale of the catastrophe in the period excluded by Degomme and Guha-Sapir is also captured in a November 10, 2003 statement by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan—very shortly after the period excluded in the State Department estimate (but preceding Degomme and Guha-Sapir’s “early 2004” starting point for their calculation of total mortality): “The number of displaced people continues to increase thanks to the escalation of armed conflict in the region since February 2003. The estimated 500,000 to 600,000 newly displaced people live in North, South and West Darfur. 70,000 people have sought refuge in Chad, and one million others have been affected by the war.” (Statement from UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, issued Nairobi/Khartoum, November 10, 2003) Degomme and Guha-Sapir estimate that at the end of August 2003 the total civilian population displaced or conflict-affected was 200,000 (graph from Figure 1). This is in shocking contrast with the assessment of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan at the time, who estimated that approximately 1.6 million civilians were displaced or conflict-affected. This enormous disparity is all too revealing. [4] The Khartoum regime was in summer 2003 already hampering humanitarian relief efforts, certainly costing many lives. The issue came to a head publicly in October/November 2003: New regulations [from Khartoum] on travel permits that entered into force on 1 October 2003 have not been followed consistently. As a result, travel procedures remain slow and cumbersome and, in some cases, permission to visit affected areas is withheld. (Statement from UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, issued Nairobi/Khartoum, November 10, 2003) Sudan’s government is hampering an adequate response to an escalating humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged Darfur region by reneging on a pledge to process aid workers’ travel permits speedily, the UN accused on Monday. “Some aid operations haven’t been able to start. Aid workers who are ready to go (to Darfur) are getting stuck,” because their permit applications have not been turned around within a promised 24-hour period, Ben Parker, the Nairobi-based spokesperson for the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Mukesh Kapila said. (Agence France-Presse, November 10, 2003) [5] In December 2003, Ambassador Tom Vraalsen, special UN envoy to Sudan for humanitarian affairs, gave a clear retrospective, noting that while the Khartoum regime characterized “the security situation [in Darfur] as steadily improving,” this account “sharply contrasted with first-hand reports that I received from tribal leaders and humanitarian actors on the ground. They reported that [Khartoum-backed Arab] militias were launching systematic raids against civilian populations. These attacks included burning and looting of villages, large-scale killings, abductions, and other severe violations of human rights. Humanitarian workers have also been targeted, with staff being abducted and relief trucks looted” (emphasis added). (Tom Vraalsen, Note to the Emergency Relief Coordinator; “Sudan: Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur,” December 8, 2003) “Systematic attacks against civilians populations,” “large-scale killings,” “targeting of humanitarian workers”—Vraalsen is speaking out in early December 2003, but his characterization is relevant for much of late summer 2003, during which time Degomme and Guha-Sapir would have us believe only “1,000 – 4,500” people died from all causes. And of course Vraalsen’s characterization is fully relevant for the entire period prior to Degomme and Guha-Sapir’s vague terminus a quo, “early 2004.” [6] Humanitarian conditions were much worse by the end of summer 2003 than Degomme and Guha-Sapir seem aware of. Invoking the terrible famine in Bahr el-Ghazal province in 1998—in which perhaps 100,000 people died—Save the Children (UK) reported that “current overall malnutrition rates are reported to be alarmingly high, with Global Acute Malnutrition rates reaching 25% in some of the affected areas of Darfur, which are accessible to relief workers” (“Sudan Emergency Statement,” December 10, 2003). Such an extraordinarily high GAM rate (the emergency threshold is 15%) was months in the making—again taking us well back into the February 2003 September 2003 period Degomme and Guha-Sapir essentially exclude. Under-Secretary Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Humanitarian Coordinator at this time, declared: “The humanitarian situation in Darfur has quickly become one of the worst in the world. Access to people in need is blocked by the parties in conflict and now, as the need for aid grows, stocks of relief materials are dwindling” (UN News Center, December 5, 2003). Again, though speaking in early December 2003, Egeland’s assessment reflects conditions extending well back into summer 2003. [7] Evidence of sustained “ethnic cleansing” and genocide were clearly in evidence by October/November 2003, and the December 11, 2003 report from the International Crisis Group (“Sudan: Towards an Incomplete Peace,” http://repository.forcedmigration.org/show_metadata.jsp?pid=fmo:3714/) was soon confirmed by many other human rights investigations: “[G]overnment-supported militias deliberately target civilians from the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massalit groups, who are viewed as ‘African’ in Darfur and that the latest attacks by these Khartoum-backed Arab militias occurred deep inside the Fur tribal domain, against unprotected villages with no apparent link to the rebels other than their ethnic profile.” (page 19) The killings and resulting forced displacement prompted Mohamed Barka, member of parliament for the district of Kebkabiya, to warn in early November [2003] against “genocide” in Darfur. In a statement to Alwan newspaper [November 6, 2003], he indicated that in one month of raids, Janjaweed had burnt 150 villages and forcibly displaced 280,000 inhabitants in his district. Other hard hit areas include Kass, Zalingei, and Jabal Marra districts, all within the Fur heartland. (page 19) Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)—again the first humanitarian organization with a large response presence in Darfur—characterized the initial months of the war as, “Mass violence against civilians in Darfur [that] began with a wave of attacks against villages in February 2003 and escalated in summer 2003. (MSF “Field News,” November 1, 2004) By June 2003, Musa Hilal—the most brutal and notorious of the Janjaweed leaders—had returned to Darfur from Khartoum, and immediately set out to recruit both for the Janjaweed and the paramilitary Popular Defense Forces. He was enormously successful, and military equipment delivered from Khartoum continued to become more lethal, making the Janjaweed an ever more effective fighting force (military preparations had been ongoing throughout 2002). The shift to deliberate civilian destruction accelerated in September/October 2003, but we have ample evidence of deliberate civilian targeting throughout the summer of 2003 (i.e., through the end of September). Julie Flint and Alex de Waal report in Darfur: A Short History of a Long War (2005): The [Sudanese Armed Forces] air force continued in its leading role. Large numbers of displaced had congregated in Habila by August 2003. It seems that their presence was the reason why the town was heavily bombed, killing thirty people on a single day that month. The UN Commission of Inquiry found ‘no evidence that there was any rebel activity or structures in the vicinity that could have been the target of this attack. (page 106 Darfuris insisted that this bombing was not a “mistake” by Khartoum’s forces, an explanation the credulous UN Commission appears to have accepted. They pointed out that, “‘Before the bombing of [Habila], Tunfunka, Tulus, Andranga, Hajjar and Bayda had all been burned and everyone had run to Habila'” (cited by Flint and de Waal, page 107). The signature cruelty and genocidal intent of the Darfur conflict was also in evidence early in 2003: These rapes [by the Janjaweed] are orchestrated to create a dynamic where the African tribal groups are destroyed,” an aid worker said. “It’s hard to believe that they tell them [African women and girls] that they want to make Arab babies, but it’s true. It’s systematic.” Nor was sexual violence limited to rape. Early in 2003, a young woman called Mariam Ahmad was stopped at a roadblock and force to watch while Janjawiid cut the penis off her 21-day-old son, Ahmad. The child died soon after in her arms. In Bargai, a village near Zalingei, a young mother who had just given birth to twins was killed with her legs tied to her neck, exposing her genitals. Her babies were thrown into a container of boiling water that had been brought for the birth.” (Flint and de Waal, pages 108 109) Diplomats in Khartoum were speaking privately of a continuing campaign of “ethnic cleansing”: Diplomats have described the fighting in Darfur as “ethnic cleansing” with Arab militias, possibly backed by the government, destroying entire villages inhabited by dark-skinned people who speak African languages.” (BBC, December 11, 2003) Of course direct support of the Janjaweed militia by the Khartoum regime was soon definitively established, most compellingly by Human Rights Watch in “Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur” (December 2005, http://www.hrw.org/node/11496/). The grim assessment of genocidal ambition in Darfur was of course also coming directly from non-Arab/African Darfuris: “I believe this is an elimination of the black race,” one tribal leader told IRIN (UN IRIN. [el-Geneina] December 11, 2003) To suggest in this context that “1,000 – 4,500” people died as a result of the Darfur conflict from February 2003 to September 2003—or indeed from February 2003 to “early 2004″—is in fact more than myopia on the part of Degomme and Guha-Sapir. It is a deliberate, finally disingenuous effort to preserve the supposed integrity of their figure for total mortality. For by using this estimate, they can then give a more inclusive time range for the mortality total they profess to have determined statistically: “the overall number of excess deaths in Darfur between March, 2003 and December, 2008 was about 300,000.” Again, this slippery figure of “about 300,000” is obviously the result of their adding their precise calculation of “298,271 (95% Confidence Interval, 178,258 – 461,520)” (“early 2004 – December 2008”) and the completely untenable US State Department estimate of “1,000 – 4,500” (February 2003 September 2003)—and evidently ignoring the period from September 2003 to “early 2004” (again, there are no data in CRED’s “Complex Emergency Database” for the year 2003, for any of the three Darfur states). Given the high degree of politicization that has defined mortality estimates for the Darfur conflict, it is deeply dismaying to see such disingenuous exclusion and tendentiousness on the part of experienced epidemiologists. They contribute to what has already been a terrible moral discounting of Darfuri lives. WHY MORTALITY FIGURES MATTER Why does any of this matter? Here it’s useful to recall that in February 2004—one year into the most violent and destructive phase of the Darfur genocide—the official UN estimate for total human mortality was 3,000. In retrospect this is of course an absurdly low number, although there was no apparent UN effort to deceive. But this figure gave a deeply misleading picture of the scale of the conflict, and that misapprehension continues, mutatis mutandis, particularly among those intent on denying that the human destruction in Darfur is genocidal. We catch a glimpse of this political disposition in the refusal of Degomme and Guha-Sapir to connect explicitly the ethnically-targeted violence in Darfur with what they themselves describe as “excess deaths” from disease and malnutrition. In the end the challenge to this early distorting UN figure came not from professional epidemiologists like Degomme and Guha-Sapir, but from activists: • from Asma Jahangir, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, who reported in late June 2004 that, “the number of black Africans killed by Arab militias in the Darfur region of Sudan is ‘bound to be staggering” (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=11191&Cr=sudan&Cr1=/) • from Sudan Focal Point/South Africa, which gathered critical mortality data from eastern Chad in early 2004; • from the large team of forensic specialists, genocide scholars, legal experts, and law enforcement officials of the Coalition for International Justice (who, I was told by a member of the team in September 2004, unanimously regarded what they had uncovered as evidence of genocide) • from the UN World Health Organization under David Nabarro • and from independent researchers such as Dr. Jan Coebergh. Most recently, “Darfurian Voices” takes an essential place in this history of efforts to convey the real scale of human destruction in Darfur. One can only hope that it will be read with honesty and moral integrity. ********************************* [I am very grateful to those with training in statistics, epidemiology, medicine, as well as significant experience in Sudan and Darfur, for their critical reviews of this assessment—Eric Reeves, August 6, 2010] Appendix 1: In section III of the “Results” section of the report from “Darfurian Voices,” there are several important statistical results and two important qualifications that should be borne in mind. The footnote to this section is reproduced here in its entirety, as is the explanation by the authors of “Darfurian Voices” of the selection process for refugee leaders. [a] III. EXPOSURE TO VIOLENCE Nearly all respondents were exposed to serious violence while in Darfur. 74% of interviewees [81% of men; 67% of women] left Darfur because of immediate violence that they personally experienced and 21% [15% of men; 26%of women] left because of fear of future violence. 91% had all of their property and possessions stolen or destroyed. 32% [37% of men; 28% of women] had personally suffered physical violence in an attack related to the conflict. 72% of all respondents reported that at least one member of their immediate family was killed in the conflict; the median number of family members killed was 4.2. 90% personally witnessed attacks on family members. [b] Footnote 2 (page 15): While collecting data from the fourth [of 12] camps, we discovered an ambiguity in the Arabic wording of the question regarding the number of family members killed in the conflict. In English, the question read: ‘How many of your immediate family members (parents, siblings, spouses, children) were killed in attacks related to the current conflict?’ In Arabic, the parenthetical statement was accidentally omitted. To correct for this, we inserted the parenthetical statement and re-trained all interviewers. An ad hoc comparison showed that the mean number of family members killed did appear to differ significantly between the first four and last eight camps. USAID reports in May 2004 that at in Dubai, South Darfur, it provided “temporary shelter for 6,400 families,” and then went on to note that, “the average family size in Darfur is 5.” But a month later, USAID would report that, “Based on data collected during Médecins sans Frontières’ (MSF) recent nutritional survey, the average family size among the conflict affected population in Darfur is 7 persons.” CARE, in an April 2004 emergency report on Darfur, found the average family size to be 5.5. Last June (2009) a UNAMID assessment at Masri village (North Darfur) reported: “Residents revealed that about 2,300 households with an average family size of 8 individuals had returned to the area.” In an August 2005 article in the journal Criminology, John Hagan, Wenona Rymond-Richmond, and Patricia Parker note: The patriarchal and polygamous practices of these [Darfuri] African tribes is reflected in the larger average family size reported by males (7.1, compared to females, 6.2), who may have more than one wife. Notably, all of these figures are considerably under the assumed figure of 10 members for the “immediate family” of Darfuri refugees. And again, the smaller the family size—using the data from “Darfurian Voices”—the greater the total of violent mortality. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 SUDAN Research, Analysis, and Advocacy