UN peacekeepers are sent to the most war-ravaged countries on Earth, ostensibly to help them transition to peace. But some stand accused of committing crimes against the very people they are supposed to protect. According to a recent investigation by the Associated Press (AP), between 2004 and 2016, the United Nations received almost 2,000 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse against its peacekeepers. The UN says it has a zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse, but survivors, activists, lawyers and human rights organisations say such crimes have been allowed to continue with impunity. Through conversations with UN peacekeepers and officials, gender experts, academics, researchers and activists, as well as through an investigation of UN data, in this four-part series, we try to navigate these competing accounts to answer the question: How did some peacekeepers become predators? In part one, we examine the history of accusations against the UN. A history of immunity? When, at the end of World War II, the UN conceived of peacekeepers it made them immune from prosecution by the host state for any alleged crimes committed while on mission. This was considered necessary to stop others sabotaging their efforts to assist in post-conflict environments. Instead, they would be held accountable by their own government or judicial system. Decades later, however, it became apparent that some peacekeepers were abusing this privileged position. According to Fiona Tate, a PhD candidate studying law at Queen Mary University of London in the UK, it was part of a problem with much deeper roots. When the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) was set up in 1948, it didn't consider the rights of women and children in the militarised environments in which the peacekeepers would be operating. "As a result of this exclusion, crimes committed against [women] would go largely unrecorded," explains Tate. But in the early 1990s, these crimes started to come to international attention. There were reports of rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Eritrea and Somalia, of prostitution and trafficking in Bosnia and Liberia and of abuse of minors in Sierra Leone. In 1994, the UN appointed Graca Machel, the former first lady of Mozambique, to investigate the effect of armed conflict on children. Her landmark report, released in August 1996, was one of the first to raise the issue of the sexual exploitation of children by peacekeepers and to call for an end to impunity for the perpetrators. In 2001, it was discovered that aid workers and UN peacekeepers had sexually abused refugees in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In 2003, the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan introduced a zero tolerance policy on sexual abuse and exploitation as well as a special mechanism for reporting it. He also "discouraged" peacekeepers from engaging in sexual relations with beneficiaries of assistance "since they are based on inherently unequal power dynamics, [and] undermine the credibility and integrity of the work of the United Nations." In his letter to the UN Security Council, Annan wrote: "We cannot tolerate even one instance of a UN peacekeeper victimising the most vulnerable among us." But the abuse didn't end. "Often [accused] peacekeepers were just moved out of their mission, deployed elsewhere or sent home," explains Paul Higate, a lecturer at the school of sociology, politics and international studies at the University of Bristol in the UK. The AP's investigation revealed that few of the accusations levelled against UN peacekeepers led to prosecutions by member states. And when peacekeepers did end up in court, it was often on reduced charges. "It was not envisioned that immunity would become so problematic," says Tate. 'Worst kept secret'? In 1999, an American hired as a UN police investigator by the British security firm DynCorp was fired. Her name was Kathryn Bolkovac and, following reports of sexual abuse and forced prostitution that implicated UN personnel in Bosnia, she had been tasked with investigating the alleged crimes. But when she submitted a report to her superiors detailing a sex trafficking ring among UN police officers, including Ukrainians, Pakistanis, Romanians, Germans and Americans working in conjunction with local criminal gangs, she was fired. Bolkovac became a campaigner for women's rights in conflict zones. "I have spoken on this issue for the past 15 years … there has been little progress," she says. Bolkovac believes the UN is fraught with misreporting, concealment and a lack of accountability. She describes sexual abuse by its peacekeepers as the organisation's "worst kept secret". "The UN will never promptly report allegations to troop-contributing countries to avoid publicity and to give them time to cover up," Bolkovac says. Ismini Palla, deputy chief of public affairs at the UN Departments of Peacekeeping and Field Support, disputes Bolkovac's view. "The UN notifies the concerned member state on every allegation of sexual exploitation and abuse within days of the receipt of the allegation and makes the information concurrently publicly available on the conduct and discipline unit website," she explains. "The secretary-general has also requested member states to finalise investigations within a six-month timeframe." Palla says there have been improvements in the response of member states to accusations of sexual exploitation and abuse. "In 2012, the average time to appoint a national investigation officer was two and a half months and in 2016 was only eight days. Similarly, in 2012, a national investigation would last 266 days but in 2015 the duration dropped to 185 days (six months)." What happens when 'the secret' is exposed? But to illustrate her point, Bolkovac refers to the case of Anders Kompass, the man widely credited with exposing allegations of sexual abuse by around 16 troops - 11 from France, three from Chad and two from Equatorial Guinea - in the Central African Republic in 2015. Although the French troops were not peacekeepers, they were sent by the UN Security Council to assist in restoring peace and stability following a coup in March 2013. The peacekeepers from Chad and Equatorial Guinea were part of the African Union. Kompass, a former director of field operations at the UN human rights office in Geneva, submitted a report to his superiors detailing the abuses allegedly carried out by the French troops in CAR. When the UN failed to act upon the report, Kompass leaked it to the French authorities in July 2014. It documented allegations of sexual abuse against 13 minors, including the sodomy of boys between the ages of nine and 13. [Illustration by Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera] In March 2015, Kompass was denounced by the UN for violating protocol by sharing the report and was placed on internal investigation. He was exonerated nine months later, but subsequently resigned. He told Irin news that he refused to work for an organisation that lacked accountability. An independent panel appointed to investigate this by then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the UN's handling of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation as a "gross institutional failure". The independent panel's report noted the lack of respect, dignity and protection afforded to survivors and found that Babacar Gaye, the head of the UN mission in the Central African Republic, neither acted on the allegations, nor made any attempt to ensure that the child survivors received medical attention or humanitarian aid. "The welfare of the survivors and the accountability of the perpetrators appeared to be an afterthought, if considered at all," the report stated. In August 2015, Gaye was forced to resign. French prosecutors eventually dropped their case against six French troops in January 2017 over a lack of evidence. But Lydie Koundja, a lawyer and chairperson of the Association des Femmes Juristes de Centrafrique (AJFC), an organisation that assists and represents survivors of sexual abuse in the Central African Republic, says her organisation has applied to the High Court in Bangui for the case against the French peacekeepers to be reopened. She's aware that it's a long shot. "We have evidence, we have testimony, now we will see what the judge says," Koundja explains. "There was data, testimony and even stories written all over the world. But in the end, the French prosecutors dropped the cases," she says. 'No transparency' Experts say that the UN's processes almost certainly shield the accused. Carla Ferstman, the author of a 2013 report by the United States Institute of Peace called Criminalising Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers, says there is "no transparency at any level of investigations [by the UN or the governments of the accused peacekeepers]". Beatrice Lindstrom, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), a New York-based NGO that helps survivors of human rights violations pursue cases in national and international courts, describes the UN investigations system as "incredibly opaque". "When it comes to the UN, justice is extremely rare," she adds. "The UN's gut reaction is always to cover up, to handle in-house, to make the problem go away," Lindstrom says. "Yes, of course, rape happens everywhere, but there is no system where you have this type of legal protection for such crimes. These are people being sent to protect others, after all." But Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, disagrees, saying: "I don't think anyone is trying to bury these cases and trying to make them go away." The spokesperson for the UN's peacekeeping operations, Olivier Salgado, describes the fight against sexual exploitation and abuse as "a top priority of the secretary-general and the entire leadership of the organisation". "Fighting sexual exploitation and abuse is a system-wide uphill battle and we will not let anyone cover up these crimes with the UN flag," Salgado tells Al Jazeera. Bambari, Central African Republic In late 2015, Eunice Danpena* heard a knock on the door of her hut at a displacement camp in Bambari, a town in the Ouaka prefecture in the Central African Republic. It was a UN peacekeeper. She told him she was busy. But he let himself in and raped her. "He forced himself on me and as he was stronger I had no choice," she says. There are currently 12,870 peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. Since 2015, there have been 83 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in the country. The allegations concern some 177 UN peacekeepers and 255 survivors. To date, just five of the accused have been jailed. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Al Jazeera

Civilians fleeing Kajo Keji county, toward the southern border with Uganda, April 27, 2017. © 2017 Jason Patinkin South Sudanese government and opposition leaders have failed to halt atrocity crimes, including killings, rape, and forced displacement, or to hold those responsible to account, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 52-page report, "‘Soldiers Assume We Are Rebels’: Escalating Violence and Abuses in South Sudan’s Equatorias," documents the spreading violence and serious abuses against civilians in the Greater Equatoria region in the last year. The report focuses on two areas: Kajo Keji county, in the former Central Equatoria state, and Pajok, a town in the former Eastern Equatoria state. Nine men – including President Salva Kiir, former Vice President Riek Machar, former army chief of staff Paul Malong, and six other commanders – should face sanctions in view of the mounting evidence of their responsibility for grave violations during the conflict, Human Rights Watch said. The United Nations Security Council, European Union, and other states should impose sanctions on the nine men, and the Security Council should also impose a long overdue, comprehensive arms embargo on South Sudan. “Four years into this crisis, gruesome crimes continue, with millions displaced and hundreds of thousands facing a man-made famine,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “It’s well past time to send a strong message to those in positions of power that atrocities will come at a price.” Human Rights Watch conducted research into the crimes in both states, which have since been divided and renamed by presidential decrees, in May 2017 in northern Uganda, where the vast majority of the victims have fled to refugee settlements. In both South Sudan locations, government soldiers, mostly ethnic Dinka recruits deployed to fight rebels in counterinsurgency operations, committed a range of crimes against Equatorian civilians on the basis of their ethnicity, including unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, and widespread looting. In Kajo Keji county, attacks began with the deployment of new government forces in mid-2016. Witnesses described at least 47 unlawful killings by government soldiers between June 2016 and May 2017, though the total is most likely much higher. In several cases, witnesses said soldiers entered homes and shot civilians, including children, elderly, and people with disabilities.' A middle-aged woman from Romogi village said that soldiers killed her husband, a farmer, and two of her children, ages 5 and 10, on a Tuesday afternoon in January. “I was cooking dinner when about 10 soldiers came to our house,” she said. “My husband went out and they shot him. Then my sons followed him out and they shot both boys.” Witnesses from Pajok said that large numbers of government soldiers entered the town on April 3, and killed at least 14 civilians on the spot. “They pulled me out of the car and took my keys,” said a man in his 60s. “Then, right in front of me, they shot at a man.” He saw them kill several others as well. Witnesses and victims from both locations also reported dozens of cases of arbitrary detention by the army, including holding victims in shipping containers for long periods, torture, and enforced disappearances, with the authorities refusing to acknowledge the detention or disclose the person’s whereabouts or fate. Since the conflict started in December 2013, almost 2 million people have fled South Sudan, and another 2 million are internally displaced with more than 200,000 still in UN protection sites. In the last year alone, the spreading conflict and abuses pushed over 700,000 South Sudanese into refugee settlements in northern Uganda, leaving many areas in the Greater Equatoria region empty. An August 2015 peace agreement did not end the fighting, which resumed in Juba in July 2016, and continued in areas south and west of the capital. Human Rights Watch has documented serious crimes against civilians in Yambio, Wau, and Yei, including clear patterns of sexual violence by government soldiers against aid workers and South Sudanese displaced women in the UN protection site. Human Rights Watch and others have long urged the UN Security Council to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on South Sudan and additional targeted, individual sanctions. The Security Council has not imposed an arms embargo but has placed travel bans and asset freezes on three government and three opposition commanders. The United States and EU also have sanctions in place against the six individuals. The EU has had an arms embargo in place for years but the African Union (AU) has not imposed additional individual sanctions or an arms embargo. Sanctions should be imposed against the following nine commanders against whom Human Rights Watch has accumulated evidence of responsibility for serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law: President Salva Kiir, the army commander in chief; Former Vice Presdient Riek Machar, leader of the opposition forces, in exile in South Africa; Gen. Paul Malong Awan, former army chief of general staff and governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal state; Lt. Gen. Johnson Juma Okot, formerly in charge of the army’s Division 6 troops accused of abuses in the Equatorias and now deputy ground forces commander; Lt. Gen. Bol Akot, who was in charge of the Gudele and Mio Saba areas of Juba at the time of killings of Nuer civilians in December 2013, formerly in command of the army commandos accused of abuses in Western Equatoria, currently director of the National Police Service; Lt Gen. Marial Nour Jok, military intelligence chief since April 2014, and the superior of officers accused of arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearances in the Equatorias and Wau regions; Lt. Gen. Attayib Gatluak “Taitai,” formerly head of Division 4 of the army, accused of abuses in the Unity region in 2015, and now in charge of Division 5, accused of abuses in Wau late 2015; Gen. Johnson Olony, an opposition commander accused of forced recruitment of fighters, including children, in the Upper Nile region; Maj. Gen. Matthew Puljang, who commanded army forces accused of abuses in the Unity region in 2015, accused of forced recruitment of children. The Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan should also urgently investigate the potential criminal responsibility of all these men, both direct and on the basis of command responsibility, Human Rights Watch said. The UN Human Rights Council in March mandated the Commission to collect and preserve evidence with a view to prosecute those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in fair and credible trials. While the 2015 peace agreement envisioned a hybrid court for South Sudan to be established by the AU Commission, almost no tangible progress toward its establishment was made in more than eighteen months. A key challenge was that South Sudan’s government had yet to substantively engage with the AU Commission on the court’s creation. On July 21, 2017, AU Commission, South Sudanese, and UN officials met in Juba to discuss the Hybrid Court for South Sudan and agreed on a roadmap for the court’s establishment, including finalizing the court’s statute by the end of August. The AU should ensure continued forward momentum – even without cooperation from South Sudan’s leaders, if necessary. If a credible, fair, and independent hybrid court is not established, the option of the International Criminal Court (ICC) remains and should be pursued. As South Sudan is not a member of the ICC, either referral by the Security Council or a request from the government of South Sudan would be needed. “The proposed AU Hybrid Court for South Sudan raised hopes of ending the cycle of violence and impunity,” said Roth. “Yet, nearly two years later the court still does not exist. The July 21 roadmap could be a breakthrough for victims, but the proof will be in the establishment of the court.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Human Rights Watch

For a variety of reasons, my primary commentary on events in Sudan, South Sudan, and the Two Areas (Blue Nile and South Kordofan/Nuba Mountains) now appears on Twitter and Linked-In. Commentary is primarily included within “screen shots” of the day’s most important stories, at least from my perspective (my Twitter name is “SudanReeves”). Current emphasis is on the cholera epidemic that has swept across Sudan over the past year (#Cholera_In_Sudan)—an epidemic that the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum refuses to acknowledge. Moreover, the regime has intimidated the UN humanitarian community into silence; indeed, there has been to date no effort publicly acknowledged either to confirm or disconfirm the presence of Vibrio cholerae, an extraordinarily contagious disease that can kill in less than 24 hours in the absence of re-hydration in critical cases. (See my “Open Letter to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the UN’s World Health Organization” | http://wp.me/p45rOG-25t ) Instead of longer analyses, I now post—almost daily—a wide range of commentary; and with the advantage of “screen shots,” I have the ability to incorporate within the cited text commentary of my own, often well in excess of the 140-character constraint of Twitter/Tweets. News stories are primarily from Sudan Tribune and Radio Dabanga, but from other important reports and accounts as well. Today I am highlighting the new report on the “Two Areas” from the Enough Project, addressing a critical issue of divisions within the opposition to NIF/NCP tyranny (“A Question of Leadership: A Dangerous Crisis in Sudan’s SPLM-N,” by Suliman Baldo). If the leadership in South Kordofan and Blue Nile leaders cannot be reconciled, it spells the end of military resistance to Khartoum’s offensives, which will surely resume when the Trump administration lifts U.S. sanctions on Khartoum in October 2017, something it has clearly signaled it wants to do (see comments by the shameless Steven Koutsis, U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Khartoum: • http://www.france24.com/en/20170624-sudan-has-made-positive-steps-meeting-sanctions-terms-us-envo • https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/us-official-meets-with-sudan-speaker-explains-sanctions-decision ) I will occasionally “re-cycle” previous, more lengthy analyses from the past couple of years that seem to me to be of continuing relevance, or the basis for noting changes or related developments—e.g., mortality and displacement in Darfur, military activity by the SAF and/or RSF, aerial bombardment of civilians and humanitarians, Khartoum’s continuing relations with and support of radical Islamic militants, regime corruption and gross mismanagement of the Sudanese economy, and—centrally—humanitarian access, the denial of which has made of the cholera epidemic a national catastrophe. For those interested in searching the contents of my website’s Archives (going back to January 1999, although this website did not come into being until 2003), I recommend using either Google or Bing, with the “cache” function activated (the search engine on my website, while having some advantages, has no “cache” function). For an autobiographical/biblographical snapshot, see | http://sudanreeves.org/about-eric-reeves/. For a variety of reasons as well, my focus for some time has been on Sudan, not South Sudan. I find it simply impossible to keep fully abreast of issues in both countries, as they continue to diverge historically following the secession of South Sudan six years ago. I would, however, call attention to an “Open Letter to Salva Kiir” of June 2013, signed by myself, Ted Dagne, John Prendergast, and Roger Winter, warning of the disastrous consequences of a continuing refusal to address serious issues of military violence, corruption, and governance. The entire letter appears below and was delivered to President Kiir over six months before the catastrophic events of December 2013; I am aware of no comparable public warning coming from any quarter, despite the anticipatory “insights” claimed by many after the fact. (The letter was published in Sudan Tribune, July 7, 2013 | http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article47220 ) I hope to stay active in the cause for a just peace for all of “greater Sudan” for as long as possible. As many of my readers are aware, a fourteen-year battle with leukemia and its grim, often highly debilitating consequences have left me, as I approach 70 years of age, without the stamina and resources I might wish to have. A highly compromised immune system has prevented my traveling again to any part of greater Sudan, including the Nuba Mountains, which I came to love immediately on traveling there in January 2003. Occasional lengthy analyses will continue to be published on this site, but they will be very occasional indeed. I will send a link via Twitter and Linked-In when this is the case. Salaam, Eric Reeves | Senior Fellow, Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights ************************************* June 24, 2013 His Excellency Salva Kiir Mayardit, President of the Republic of South Sudan Office of the President Juba, South Sudan Dear President Kiir: We write to you, individually and collectively, as friends of South Sudan—longstanding friends who have committed more than two decades of our lives to the great cause of a just peace for the people of South Sudan. We have lobbied government officials, student organizations, media and nongovernmental groups to build a strong constituency for South Sudan in the United States. We have done our best to highlight the suffering of the people of South Sudan during the long civil war, and to offer our perspectives on the difficult road to completing a true peace. Some of us have communicated our concerns with you individually and confidentially in the past, always as friends. At this moment, our friendship dictates that we express our concerns about the increasingly perilous fate of South Sudan. From our various vantages, we have all come to conclude that without significant changes and reform, your country may slide toward instability, conflict and a protracted governance crisis. As friends, it is our responsibility to express our serious concerns directly and to offer constructive suggestions for the way forward. We must first state that over the past several years—but the last six months in particular—South Sudan government security forces have engaged in a campaign of violence against civilians simply because they belonged to a different ethnic group or they are viewed as opponents of the current government. This violence is shocking and has included rape, murder, theft, and destruction of property. We are particularly concerned about the evidence emerging of abuses by government forces in Jonglei. These terrible crimes occur because government forces believe they have the power to act with impunity. We joined you in your fight against these very abuses by the Khartoum regime for many years. We cannot turn a blind eye when yesterday's victims become today's perpetrators. We were deeply encouraged by the statement by President Kiir on May 17, 2013: It is a sad day for South Sudan to see and receive reports about abuses carried out by ill-disciplined elements of our own armed forces. Many of our comrades fought and died to achieve freedom and justice for our people. It is important that we honor that sacrifice. At the same time, these atrocities are not isolated incidents but among many deliberate measures taken by soldiers on the instruction of senior commanders and government officials. Some may argue that the failure here lies in the chain of command, but the evidence makes clear that these orders are indeed coming from senior commanders. We urge you to take swift and decisive action against not only those who carried out these heinous acts, but those who gave the orders. And there must be justice. Crimes by government officials often go unpunished. Many attacks against civilians, including the killing of foreign businessmen, a teacher from Kenya, South Sudanese journalists, and many others, have gone unpunished. We have authoritative reports that government security forces have abused those who allow themselves and their cars to be searched. Many people, including government officials, have faced harassment and have been beaten up by security forces. Again, no one has been held accountable. This inevitably creates a climate of impunity. There are also many South Sudanese and some foreign nationals languishing in prison, a large number of them facing death sentences. Many of these did not receive a fair trial because the justice system is riddled with incompetence. We strongly urge that the government immediately issue a moratorium on all executions until these cases are reviewed and those convicted given a fair and transparent trial. We further urge you to abolish the death penalty in South Sudan, as more and more countries are doing. None of this will happen unless the Government of the Republic of South Sudan engages in profound reform. After almost nine years of self-rule, the government is still failing to meet the basic needs of its people. Despite claims that vast sums have been expended on investment in infrastructure, there is very little to show in the way of roads, medical services, and education for millions of South Sudanese who greeted the prospect of independence with eagerness and hope. Those who have benefited—who have become wealthy by misappropriating government funds—have often sent their families outside South Sudan, their children to private schools abroad, and have obtained the best medical services available in the world. This occurs while ordinary citizens who remain in South Sudan cannot afford even basic health services or modest educations for their children. Corruption is at the heart of the many problems facing South Sudan. In a remarkably short period of time, the name of your country has become synonymous with corruption. As President Kiir declared in a letter to his ministers and senior officials: The people of South Sudan and the international community are alarmed at the level of corruption in South Sudan. Many people in South Sudan are suffering, yet government officials seem to care only about themselves. And yet to date, not a single government official has been tried on corruption charges. Again, the absence of justice encourages a climate of impunity, and makes halting corruption all the more difficult. This is the light in which we have examined the findings of the World Bank, which after a long investigation presented to the Ministry of Justice—almost a year ago—presents clear evidence of massive corruption. And yet the Ministry of Justice has not yet prosecuted a single individual. The Office of the President in the past several months has ordered two important investigations and has suspended senior officials, including two Federal Ministers, from office pending the completion of the investigation. Widespread outrage at the extraordinary levels of corruption and at those who are benefiting from that corruption is very high and continues to grow. This is the source of potentially serious civil unrest, just as it was in the Middle East and North Africa over the past few years. OUR RECOMMENDATIONS These problems cannot be resolved overnight, but an immediate commitment can be made to re-shape what now seems a dangerous and crisis-filled future for South Sudan. • The Ministry of Justice must be revamped and key personnel who have enabled corruption and crimes against civilians to go unpunished must be removed. • All senior army officials should be put on notice that attacks on civilians are completely unacceptable and will be severely punished up the entire chain of command. • Existing alleged human rights abuses should be fully investigated and prosecuted. • Clear oil infrastructure priorities should be set, especially now in light of a financial picture that is extremely grim. The fact that there are no refineries in the South, no oil storage facilities, and nothing in the way of progress towards a southern oil export route reflects an absence of planning and has left oil revenues at the mercy of the National Congress Party regime. As evidence from the past two years has made clear, the regime in Khartoum is perfectly willing to engage in duplicitous negotiations, commit to agreements in bad faith, and simply renege on agreements whenever it wishes, even if it punishes its own failing economy. All this could have been predicted from past behavior, and must certainly guide thinking going forward. • Schools, medical services, clean water, and roads must top the list of priorities of internal spending. Until the people of South Sudan have ready access to education and health services—services that will need a transport infrastructure—they will be exceedingly vulnerable to disease, and will have little chance to contribute to a modern economy. And without a functional agricultural sector, South Sudan will always be dependent on others. • South Sudan confronts serious external security threats, and will almost certainly do so as long as the current regime controls Sudan. Nevertheless, the army must begin to make plans to be trimmed substantially, made more efficient, and receive training in international human rights law. Security is paramount, but that security will be squandered if the army does not become more responsive to the needs of its people and to its broader obligations to protect the rights of civilians. • The demands here are great, we well understand. But unless you begin to address them now, the tasks will only grow greater. Again, as friends of South Sudan, we urge you to confront these challenges on an urgent basis, and with all possible resolve. Sincerely, Roger Winter, Eric Reeves, John Prendergast, and Ted Dagne—Friends of South Sudan CC: The Honorable Riek Machar Teny, Vice President The Honorable James Wani Igga, Speaker _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 SUDAN Research, Analysis, and Advocacy

(Wikimedia Commons/Jialiang Gao)The 12th-century Gawdawpalin Pahto (Temple) with Ayeyarwady (Irrawady) River on its background, Bagan, Myanmar. A mob of Buddhists reportedly attacked Christian villagers in Myanmar for holding late-night church services to celebrate and welcome new converts. According to Morning Star News, about 150 Buddhists and monks threw stones and broke into houses of Christians in Thi Taw village in northwest Burma's Sagaing Region on July 6. Three men and four women reportedly suffered injuries on their heads, faces and backs, and three motorbikes were destroyed in the attack. The Buddhists complained that the Assembly of God Church members, visiting from neighboring Chin state, held services for three days, singing and preaching late into the night to celebrate and welcome new Christians. Two families reportedly left Buddhism and converted to Christianity on July 4. Prior to the attack, a monk in Thi Taw had asked the Christians to be quiet and stop making noise late at night, according to several residents. "They made noise every night when neighbors were asleep," a local Thi Taw official, Soe Thura Hlaing told Morning Star News. "They were clapping, and dancing until late at night. On the third day, neighbors were angry and went to attack them. They took sticks and stones with them," he continued. Several witnesses said that the mob got very angry after being told by local police to stop attacking the houses of the Christian villagers. The mob got more infuriated when the police shot into the sky to warn and frighten the assailants. "When we turned on the torch [light] toward them [the assailants], they threw stones also toward us," said Hlaing, who tried to help the authorities stop the attackers. "So a policeman in our group fired the gun in the air three times. When they heard gunfire, they become more aggressive and threw more stones at us," he added. Hlaing said that he and the police asked other monks to help them stop the attack. "When the monks arrived, we shouted for them not to throw stones. And the monks took pastors and injured people and sent them to local clinics," Hlaing recounted. Local press noted that monks and authorities had tried to pressure the newly converted Christians to return to Buddhism by giving them a choice to either re-convert or be banished from the village. The Christian families have been relocated to a compound owned by a local church until their houses can be rebuilt. Radical Buddhists have been known to carry out attacks on minority groups in Myanmar, particularly the Rohingya Muslims. On July 5, a mob of Buddhists in the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe stoned a Rohingya Muslim to death and wounded six others. According to persecution watchdog group Open Doors, an organization of radical monks have stepped up its campaigns against religious minorities, and it has helped introduce four laws for the "Protection of Race and Religion," in an effort to build hurdles for conversions and religiously mixed marriages. Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has recently set up a commission led by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan to investigate how sectarian tensions in the country can be solved. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Christian Times

It was a loud day in Krasnohorivka on May 28. The Donetsk Oblast city of 15,000 people, 715 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, was shelled in a barrage that battered the hospital, a school and a local apartment building. Olga Valeryevna, the owner of an apartment that took a direct hit during the shelling, had been living with a friend in a different building since the apartment lost running water. After seeing photos of the bombardment on the internet, she headed over to the building. Where the third and fourth floor apartments once stood, there was now a gaping hole facing the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk to the east. "If anybody had been inside, they would have been destroyed," Olga Valeryevna said. She did not give her last name, fearing retaliation from local authorities. The apartment owner and Krasnohorivka native is now joining dozens of other Ukrainians in suing the government for compensation over homes, land and property damaged during the Russian-backed war in the Donbas. With help from Right to Protection, a United Nations High Commission for Refugees-funded and Ukrainian-run group that provides legal support and advocacy on behalf of displaced people and others, Olga Valeryevna is part of a group moving to set a precedent under Ukrainian law that could see the government compensate people whose property has been damaged due to the war. "In some cases, people in these situations can find other sources of housing," said Vladimir Oleksenko, Right to Protection's Mariupol regional director. "In other cases, these people become homeless." Right to Protection has so far filed around Hr 11 million ($423,800) in claims over property damaged by the war. The US Agency for International Development has supported similar litigation, funding the Ukraine Helsinki Human Rights Union in another effort to win compensation through the country's courts, while law firm ILF has done pro bono work in the European Court of Human Rights on the issue. Not at war? Ukrainian citizens, like those in Krasnohorivka, are legally entitled to compensation for property damaged during war. But the government often does not recognize that right, and fails to pay compensation. "Even if a person wins in a domestic court, the country doesn't have the money to pay him," said Andriy Kristenko, an attorney at ILF law firm who works on compensation cases. Ukraine could be forced to fulfill its obligation through a victory at the European Court of Human Rights - as the country is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, it is obligated to guarantee the protection of its citizens' property during war. But Ukraine has not officially declared war against Russia or its proxy armies. Rather, the country enacted terrorism laws in August 2014 that provided the legal basis for the officially declared anti-terrorism operation. Those laws also contain a provision stating that the Ukrainian government must compensate people for property damaged by the actions of terrorists. And according to Darina Tolkach, advocacy coordinator at Right to Protection, the anti-terrorism laws only provide "motivation" to convince the court to rule in favor of compensation, but lack a concrete legal procedure for payouts. "The basic problem for executing these decisions is that the government does not have a line in the budget allocating money for compensation," she said. Tolkach described a clunky process for getting compensation. Since there is no money in the budget to provide for it, Donbas residents with damaged property effectively sell the rights to their bombed out homes to the government. "The person with the destroyed land or destroyed house can no longer use the property, and the state provides compensation," Tolkach said. Right to Protection has won two cases in lower courts that the government may appeal, out of a total of 11 filed in court. "The idea is to take the cases to the final point and identify the gaps in the execution of the decisions," Tolkach said. "If it's not possible to execute, then we will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights." Hurdles Iryna Grigorievna, another Krasnohorivka resident working with Right to Protection, has had her home shelled twice since the war began - once in 2014, and once in 2016. "During the second hit, everything I had burned away," she said. As her son lives in Krasnohorivka and her grandchild attends school in the town, she explained, there's little desire to leave. "We aren't planning to go anywhere," she said. She is now filing paperwork to collect compensation for the damage. Since the appraisal has not yet been completed, it's not clear how much she stands to gain in compensation. But with four years until she can collect her pension, any help is sorely needed. Tolkach said that it can take up to eight months to prepare this kind of claim for court. And with a statute of limitations of three years on these kinds of damage claims, that puts the onus on local residents to beat the clock. "What is needed is a strategy and a very coherent and clear and concrete procedure," Tolkach said. Should the European Court rule in favor of the Donbas residents, Ukraine will have to find a way to pay compensation to people who live in the Donbas's bombarded cities. The country could sue Russia for backing the separatists and receive its own compensation that way. But that process could take years. For people like Olga Valeryevna, the apartment owner, the reality of shelling means that help cannot come fast enough. "Apart from this, I have nothing," she said, pointing to the destroyed apartment. Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the government has not yet appealed Right to Protection's two court victories in compensation cases. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(c) 2017 HRWF

Swe Win receiving an award from Information Minister Pe Myint in 2016. Photo: MOI A prominent Myanmar journalist was detained as he tried to leave the country after an ultra-nationalist group filed a suit against him, a colleague said Sunday. Swe Win, the editor of Myanmar Now, was detained by police at Yangon airport on Sunday evening as he tried to fly to Bangkok. “I got contact with Swe Win around 6:30pm and he told me on the phone that he had been arrested at the airport and was now at the police station,” his colleague Htet Khaung Lin told AFP. He added that Swe Lin was being held over a complaint filed by a member of the ultra-nationalist Ma Ba Tha movement over articles he had written about its leader, the firebrand monk Wirathu. Another colleague told Frontier that Swe Win believes he will be transferred to Mandalay’s Obo Prison today. The broadly worded law under which Swe Win is being held — Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Act — bans uploading false or insulting information and has been frequently used against journalists both by the state and in private cases. Police at Mingladon township, where Swe Win was taken, did not respond to requests for comment. Many had hoped press freedoms would flourish under the new civilian government of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi but criminal and civil cases against journalists, cartoonists and satirists have instead increased. Last month three journalists were detained by the military after they spoke to members of an armed rebel group. Suu Kyi’s government later defended the detentions and the trio remain in jail awaiting trial. Ma Ba Tha are a small but vocal ultra-nationalist group who often rail against Myanmar’s beleaguered Muslim community. The country’s top religious body has ordered them to disband but that move has done little to blunt their movement. In March, Kyaw Myo Shwe, a Ma Ba Tha supporter, filed a case against Swe Win over a Facebook post in which he suggested that Wirathu should be expelled from the monkhood for lauding the murder of NLD legal advisor Ko Ni. He then told media that he would be withdrawing the suit, only to ultimately backtrack again and state that he would be going forward with the case. A former anti-junta activist, Swe Win spent several years as a political prisoner in the 1990s. Last year, he was honored by the president’s office for his reporting on the years-long abuse suffered by two domestic maids in downtown Yangon. If Swe Win’s arrest on Sunday is related to Kyaw Myo Shwe’s suit, it is unclear why police did not act until now. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Coconuts Yangon

The international community continues not only to be challenged by its failure to prevent armed conflicts before they occur, but also in addressing them in a timely and effective manner. The ongoing crises in Burundi, Syria and Yemen, to highlight a few, emphasize the need for renewed leadership and engagement in putting prevention up front. A wide range of treaties and norms are available to address the root causes of armed conflict and prevent its recurrence. In 2015 the United Nations carried out high-level reviews of its Peacebuilding Architecture, UN Peace Operations and the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The subsequent synthesis of these three reports provides a basis for renewed efforts in preventing armed conflicts, including the prevention of mass atrocity crimes. The reviews drew linkages between the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect norm, the inclusion of women in peacebuilding and peacekeeping, and the ratification and implementation of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court as tools and mechanisms for the prevention of armed conflict and ensuring lasting peace. They also underscored that systematic violations of human rights, in particular of women’s rights, and prevailing impunity for mass atrocity crimes, are among the root causes of armed conflicts and their recurrence. Further, they reminded us that participation of women constitutes a crucial dimension of broadening inclusion for sustaining peace and that peace negotiations and accords that are truly locally owned and inclusive of civil society and women have at least a 50% greater chance to succeed than those that do not. The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) norm offers a range of measures to reinforce national sovereignty and prevent the commission of mass atrocity crimes. RtoP is now widely understood to include three pillars of responsibility: (1) the responsibility of states to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing); (2) the wider international community’s responsibility to encourage and assist individual states in meeting that objective; and (3) If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter. Implementing RtoP is needed now more than ever if the international community is determined to prevent mass atrocities once and for all. Ensuring that the scope of the Responsibility to Protect norm includes a gender and accountability lens will further address the root causes of mass atrocity crimes, hence enhancing the RtoP preventive efforts. Through preventing discrimination and the violation of women’s rights, national stakeholders support the long-term prevention of atrocity crimes and their recurrence. Furthermore, linking RtoP with the UN’s Women, Peace and Security agenda reinforces the international community’s ability to assist states to fulfill their responsibility to protect, under pillar two of the norm. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325, which gave rise to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, was a landmark decision in addressing the gender gap in the peace and security arena. It recognized not only that women and girls are disproportionally affected by armed conflicts, but also that women are poorly represented in formal peacebuilding and peacemaking processes. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 RtoPWeekly

Mohammed Ismail, a second-generation Rohingya refugee, during a soccer game in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh this month. His parents fled violence in their native Myanmar. CreditAllison Joyce for The New York Times Mohammed Ismail prickled with adrenaline. With one defender between him and the goal, he surged from the left wing, dodging pockmarks in the yellow-dirt soccer field. He stroked the ball with the outer edge of the shoes his father had bought him and, quick as a whip, unleashed a shot that left the goalkeeper gaping. Mr. Ismail, 24, is a second-generation Rohingya refugee, born in this ramshackle camp in Cox’s Bazar on the southern tip of Bangladesh after his parents fled violence in their native Myanmar. And this was his moment, a joyful escape from painful realities. “When I play football the sadness and anger is far away,” he said, smiling. “But after I finish, it always comes back.” The soccer field lies on an elevated plain with a sweeping view of the Kutupalong refugee camp: mud-walled hovels and split bamboo structures laced with open sewers. Cockerels and car horns sound from the nearby road. The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group, are not recognized as citizens in their native Myanmar even though they have lived there for hundreds of years. They have endured periodic persecution at the hands of the Myanmar armed forces and the majority Buddhist population, who mostly see them as illegal immigrants who should go home to Bangladesh. Showering after playing a game. Soccer is a prized diversion, helping players and spectators forget about their exile. CreditAllison Joyce for The New York Times Mr. Ismail’s family arrived in 1992 with the first wave of Rohingya refugees, when about 250,000 Rohingya fled abuse at the hands of the Myanmar military. About 33,000 of them remain, living in official United Nations refugee camps in Kutupalong and Nayapara, south of Cox’s Bazar along the Myanmar border. Bangladesh, a vastly overpopulated country, stopped registering new refugees after 1992, hoping that taking a hard line would deter Rohingya from coming, but it was wrong. Since 2012, 200,000 more refugees have come, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, creating an unofficial camp alongside the official one. The latest wave began in October, when the Myanmar military began a deadly counterinsurgency campaign after Rohingya militants attacked three border posts, killing nine police officers. Refugees fleeing the military sweep, which was accompanied by arson, murder and rape, more than doubled the size of the unofficial camp, to 75,000 from an estimated 34,000 in 2013, according to the International Organization for Migration. The Bangladeshi government has denied the refugees education and work permits “because we want them to return” to Myanmar, said Najnin Sarwar Kaberi, a local official for the governing party, the Bangladesh Awami League. “If they settle here the size of our population will become unbearable.” Soccer is a prized diversion, helping players and spectators forget about their exile, at least for a few hours. Ziabur Rohaman, who plays for the unregistered camp in Kutupalong, fled Myanmar with his wife and three children. CreditAllison Joyce for The New York Times Mohammed Farouque, a refugee who runs a Rohingya soccer club in Malaysia, another destination for the refugees, said that soccer was virtually prohibited to the Rohingya in Myanmar. Most cannot afford the bribe of about $4 required to leave their village, making competitions impossible. In Malaysia and Bangladesh, most Rohingya are stateless, but at least they can hold soccer competitions. “This is one of the few freedoms we have,” Mr. Farouque said. In Bangladesh, 16 teams — eight from the unofficial camp and eight from the official camp — play in an annual World Cup-style competition. Mr. Ismail said that the unofficial camp teams would be stronger this year now that they had more players to choose from but there was a pervasive feeling that the registered refugees were better equipped. The registered teams have been around long enough to collect periodic handouts of athletic equipment from the United Nations or have been able to earn enough money to buy their own. Unregistered players often wear flip-flops or play in bare feet. “Ismail’s team beat us last time because they had boots and we didn’t,” said Ziabur Rohaman, 32, who fled Myanmar with his wife and three children in October and plays for the unregistered camp in Kutupalong. “They got them from the U.N.H.C.R. but because we arrived recently most of our players didn’t have boots.” The Kutupalong camp, where mud-walled hovels and split bamboo structures are laced with open sewers.CreditAllison Joyce for The New York Times The U.N.H.C.R. says that it provides “limited support regardless of whether the refugees are registered or not.” Vivian Tan, the agency’s regional press officer, said the agency had provided balls, trophies, track pants and refreshments. However, the agency is authorized by the Bangladeshi government to provide formal assistance only to registered refugees. That assistance, which includes shelter, cash for food, relief supplies, water, sanitation facilities, basic health care and education up to seventh grade, is prohibited for the unregistered refugees. The winner of the Kutupalong competition plays a team from the Nayapara camp, 50 miles away, to claim the title of best Rohingya team in Bangladesh. Last year, Kutupalong beat Nayapara, 3-0, a proud moment for Mr. Ismail. “I scored one of the goals, and my teammates voted me man of the match,” he said, sitting in a rough wooden tea shop surrounded by admiring teenagers. Like most people at the camp, he has had his share of tragedy and hardship. Last fall, his uncle was killed by the Myanmar Army, he said, forcing his aunt and several cousins to join his family in Bangladesh. Last December, he tried to smuggle himself to Malaysia, where, through family connections, he might have been able to attend a university. The Kutupalong camp. The Bangladeshi government has denied the Rohingya refugees education and work permits. CreditAllison Joyce for The New York Times But the smuggler who promised to help him escape stole his money, about $3,700, and disappeared. The payment “was all my savings plus money I borrowed and money my mother gave me after selling her jewelry,” Mr. Ismail said. At the tea shop that afternoon, you wouldn’t think he had any cares. He is one of those people whose face defaults to a smile. But his smile is not always joyful: Half the time it’s a working smile, doing the job of holding it all together. The assembled guys all said their favorite player was Lionel Messi, the Argentine forward, considered by some to be the best player in the world. “I love how he cuts through the defense,” said Mr. Ismail, who is also a forward. “He’s lethal.” Mr. Ismail will most likely never see a pro game in person, but a big excursion for him is playing with the Cox’s Bazar team in the official Bangladesh league. Rohingya teams are not allowed to play in the official league, but their best players, including Mr. Ismail, are sometimes recruited. “We don’t tell their opponents that I’m Rohingya because they might not agree that I’m eligible to play,” he said. When he kicked the goal later that day, the ball shot through the rusting posts and bounced off the roofs below. Ismail looped back to his team. They clapped his back and laughed. Already several youngsters were in pursuit of the ball, stumbling in the twilight, eager to be the one to return it. The official refugees beat the team from the unofficial camp, 2-0. After the match, he asked me to put my Facebook details into his phone so he could stay in touch. The screen still had the last search term he had entered: “Football hero Messi.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(c) 2017 The New York Times

Congolese refugees who fled the violence in the Kasai waited for their daily food ration in Kikwit.CreditJohn Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images They are everywhere. Here next to a house, where a woman is hanging clothes to dry. There in a field, where children are playing. They are graves, filled with hundreds of bodies. In the town of Nganza, in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the dead have been decomposing for months. Now it may be too late to identify them. The ground that covers them has turned almost smooth again. The only sign that there are people buried here are the government soldiers in red berets and aviator sunglasses, posted nearby with AK-47s. They are deployed not for protection but to stop anyone from investigating witnesses’ claims that the security forces went door to door here in March, gunning whole families down in their homes and then closing the doors behind them. The slaughter in Nganza was part of a wider conflict that has engulfed the Kasai, a region in the center of this vast country, where government forces are fighting a militia opposed to President Joseph Kabila. The violence, rooted in political and economic grievances, was ignited last August when troops killed the group’s leader, a hereditary chief who went by the name of Kamwina Nsapu (pronounced ka-MEE-na SA-poo) meaning “black ant.” His followers, many of them children, retaliated, and the conflict spread like wildfire. The Roman Catholic Church, one of the few institutions in the country that provides reliable statistics, estimates that at least 3,300 people have been killed in the region since October. More than 1.4 million people have been displaced internally or are flooding into Angola. “It’s the worst humanitarian and human rights crisis in a decade, when both sides have committed serious crimes,” said Jose Maria Aranaz, who leads the human rights division of the United Nations mission in Congo, called Monusco. There is a pattern of prosecuting rank-and-file individuals but not commanders, he said. Unless military and political leaders are held to account, he said, “the cycle of impunity will continue.” On Wednesday, the United Nations human rights chief named three international experts to investigate reports of the killings in the Kasai, and he called on Congo’s government to cooperate. That coincided with the release of a report by the human rights office in Congo that for the first time accused “elements” of the Congolese Army of digging most of the mass graves it has identified. The violence is feeding into a worsening national political crisis, in which Mr. Kabila is delaying elections in an attempt to cling to power. The government cites violence in the Kasai as one reason not to hold a vote this year, but critics accuse the president — who has already been in power for 16 years — of trying to buy time to allow him to change the Constitution and run for a third term. The government has sent thousands of troops to crush the rebellion here, bringing in commanders from eastern Congo who are notorious for their brutality. It even enlisted the help of a former warlord whose methods are so violent that the government, battling him in the past, once sentenced him to death. Congolese women walked by a mass grave, in the background. The United Nations has so far identified 80 mass graves in the Kasai region since violence erupted last year. The government has denied having a hand in the massacres. CreditKimiko de Freytas-Tamura/The New York Times The mayhem and lawlessness have spawned other armed groups, based on ethnicity. Many of them are backed by government forces as they try to quash the Kamwina Nsapu militia. United Nations representatives have so far discovered 80 mass graves in the region. But they cannot exhume the bodies; that is the responsibility of the national authorities, which the United Nations is mandated to support, Mr. Aranaz said. In March, two United Nations experts were killed trying to investigate the graves. The identities of their attackers are disputed. The Congolese government says the graves are those of militia fighters, buried by fellow members, and were not meant for civilians. If any are in them, it says, they are victims of recent cholera and yellow fever outbreaks, not government-sponsored killings. It is possible that at least some of the graves contain militia members. But the government has consistently refused access to independent investigators and has barely carried out its own examinations. (There is only one qualified forensic analyst in Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, according to Mr. Aranaz.) In Nganza, a commune of Kananga, the capital of the Kasai, recent interviews with witnesses and residents painted a picture different from the government narrative. In late March, soldiers and police officers, directed to flush the town of militants, went door to door, hauling away valuables such as television sets, cellphones and even farm animals, the witnesses said. They extorted large sums of money from residents, many of whom live on less than $1.25 a day, and shot them dead if they did not offer enough. Newborns, the elderly, and people with disabilities were slaughtered in their beds and living rooms. More than 500 civilians are thought to have been killed in Nganza during that three-day period, an unprecedented level of violence that residents call, simply, “the war.” During clashes with militants, rocket attacks destroyed houses. A family of 12 burned alive after one struck their home. Its walls were blasted away, and on a recent visit, black traces of smoke on the remains hinted at the intensity of the flames. The place was swarming with so many soldiers, residents said, that some even climbed up avocado trees to gain a better vantage point to shoot at people. The United Nations accuses the army of using disproportionate force. These skulls are believed to be from victims of the fighting between soldiers and the Kamwina Nsapu, a rebel militia. CreditAaron Ross/Reuters Ntumba Kamwabo, 29, was out washing in a nearby river when she heard gunfire. She rushed home, where her two daughters, 7 and 10 years old, had been with her brother-in-law, who was disabled. “When I arrived, a police officer kicked open the door of the house, and soldiers rushed in, shooting,” Mrs. Kamwabo said. When she tried to stop them, one of them knocked her down. A bullet hit her right eye, then she was shot again in her arm. She re-enacted the scene during a recent interview, a dark cavity where her eye used to be. “I don’t understand why they did this,” she said, hugging her surviving child on her lap. She said: “I thought soldiers were fighting the militia. I’m a civilian. I’m innocent.” Her husband, Mwamba Konyi, buried their two children and his brother outside their home. “I am suffering,” he murmured, before falling silent. Jean-Pierre Kapinga, another Nganza resident, buried 10 of his neighbors at the request of a local priest. The smell of death had become unbearable. In his neighborhood alone, he and other residents recorded 53 deaths; each person had been shot. The list of victims includes Michele Betu, 2 years old; Mujinga Ntambue, 3 months; and Paul Kenakudia, 78. When the massacre was over, a military official, Brig. Gen. Asumani Issa Umba, who soon afterward was named by President Kabila to lead security operations for the entire Kasai region, paid a group of men to bury the bodies in graves. The men said in interviews that hundreds of people were buried in at least nine different areas. One of the men, speaking on the condition of anonymity for his safety, said he and the other men had been given around $50, spades, gloves and lime powder to sprinkle on the bodies. They went house to house, guided by flies and the stench of rot, pulling out bodies that had been decomposing for days. Most of the victims had been shot, and some had their throat slit. Others had been partially eaten by pigs. The man pointed out a stark, sandy patch in the middle of a field where he said there were 120 bodies buried. Children were playing there. Relatives watched over a family member who fell ill while fleeing the conflict in the Kasai region.CreditJohn Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images If the situation has since calmed down in Nganza, the violence continues elsewhere in the Kasai, where recent clashes have forced tens of thousands of people to flee to the relative safety of Kananga. Mbale Ruphin, 50, arrived one recent morning, wheeling a creaky bicycle loaded with cooking utensils and some bedding. He had his wife and seven small children in tow. The family traversed about 160 miles over nine days from Kamonia, the scene of recent violence. The Luba population there was being targeted because they speak Tshiluba, he said, the language spoken by Kamwina Nsapu members. Mr. Ruphin, a shopkeeper originally from the neighboring Katanga region, which he fled a few years ago because of violence, said soldiers had tried to dress him up as a Kamwina Nsapu militia member and get him to work as their informant. “They tied me up and brought me a red shirt to wear,” he said (the color red is the militia’s symbol). Fortunately for him, he started speaking Swahili, a language common among soldiers, and they eventually let him go. On their way to Kananga, Mr. Ruphin and his family passed by scores of deserted villages, some littered with skeletons, he said. They were stopped at random checkpoints on the national highway, some manned by Kamwina Nsapu members, others by pro-government militias. “If you carry an electoral card, the Kamwina Nsapu consider you on the side of the government,” Mr. Ruphin said. He saw a militia member bring a machete down on a man’s head just because he had pulled out his cellphone, he said. They had thought he was calling soldiers for help. “The Kamwina Nsapu and the government are just as bad as one another,” Mr. Ruphin said wearily. Tshibola Yamama, 15, from Nganza, was until very recently a member of the Kamwina Nsapu. She was lured into the group with the promise of jobs and “millions of dollars.” But after a year of fighting and watching close friends get mowed down, she quit. The cultlike militia has recruited hundreds of children like Ms. Yamama into its ranks, giving them alcohol and drugs and then initiating them by making them walk through fire. Its followers are assured that even if they are killed, they will magically come back to life. Ms. Yamama, who was part of a unit of 10 girls trained to shoot by a former policeman and then given orders over their cellphones, believes she has killed at least 45 people, some of them civilians. When her friends were killed, she said. “I waited and waited for them to come back alive.” When the days passed without her friends’ revival, she came to her senses. To her parents’ great relief, she has gone back to school. “I realized this was all a scam,” she said, staring blankly into the distance. “It was all for nothing.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

A mob in Kyaukpadaung stands next to a crane brought in to demolish a home on Thursday evening, after rumours spread the building would be used as a mosque. (Supplied) Authorities in Kyaukpadaung have demolished an under-construction house in order to quell an angry mob that believed it was a mosque – despite the central Mandalay Region town apparently having no Muslim residents. Although the property in Thayar Aye Ward is owned by a Buddhist, rumours began spreading three days ago that the building was a mosque, said Mandalay Region Hluttaw lawmaker U Aye Khaing (National League for Democracy, Kyaukpadaung-1). “I cannot think of how the rumour started in a town that takes pride in the fact that there is no believers of religions other than Buddhism. We could not have been able to confirm reports that among the rumourmongers there were strangers – people who were not residents,” Aye Khaing said. He told Frontier that a crowd of around 100 people had gathered outside the house Thursday morning and grew throughout the day. By nightfall there were more than 1,000 people outside the property threatening to torch it to the ground. Officials from the General Administration Department and security forces, together with local MPs, checked the house and confirmed that it was not a mosque. Aye Khaing said the mob refused to accept their word though so they decided that in order to restore order it had to be demolished. Heavy machinery was brought and pulled it down by 9:15pm, he said. “Due to the fact that the house was being built without municipal approval and to avoid unrest in town, responsible township officials decided to dismantle it,” said Aye Khaing, who was present as the officials tried to bring the situation under control. Union government spokesman U Zaw Htay confirmed that the house in Kyaukpadaung had been dismantled because of rumours it was a mosque. “For the moment it is only known that the house belongs to a 19-year-old movie director. It was caused by the mistaken belief that it was a mosque,” Zaw Htay told Frontier last night, adding that the authorities expected to know more, including who started the rumour, by this morning. “It would be reasonable if it is a place with Muslims. But Kyaukpadaung is a town without any mosques and mosques are not allowed to be built. The owner of the house is a Buddhist. So we are inquiring as to how it all started,” he said. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Frontier

Many State Department officials agree there are too many special envoys, so there's plenty of support for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's overall desire to slim the numbers. As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson moves to restructure the State Department, he wants to slash dozens of positions known collectively as special envoys — ambassadors-at-large, coordinators and others who deal with specific issues such as food security, labor and LGBT rights. That ambition, however, is running into a fact of Washington life: the power of interest groups and members of Congress willing to fight any threat to their favored causes. On Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider legislation that will give lawmakers a greater say over how special envoy jobs are filled. In the meantime, as word spreads that Tillerson has left certain envoy positions vacant or is mulling cutting them altogether, a slew of critics have emerged to protest. Jewish organizations and many lawmakers are furious that Tillerson hasn't yet named a new special envoy to combat anti-Semitism. Digital gurus are unhappy that Tillerson may chop the slot focused on cyber issues. Tillerson's attempt to discard the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan spurred such an outcry among South Asia watchers that he went ahead and named someone to the role temporarily. "The reaction is like, 'This is my turf. I want to protect it,'" said Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. “Tillerson and his aides are not consulting widely in their decision-making process, so they generate opposition." The State Department’s ranks include 67 special envoys, depending on how you count them. That's far too many, say critics who see a bloated diplomatic bureaucracy and question the need for a special coordinator for Haiti, a position focused on post-earthquake reconstruction, when there's an ambassador supposed to be based there. The special envoys "do more harm than good," said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during a hearing earlier this month. "I think that they hurt the culture of our professional Foreign Service officers candidly because I think they see them in many cases as a work around ... I hope that we'll do away with all of them that are unnecessary. And I think most of them are unnecessary." Many of the posts were created to deal with specific crises or because there was a sense that a topic needed attention beyond what traditional State Department bureaus could offer. Congress has mandated 11 of the slots and authorized the creation of another seven, according to Hill aides. Even many State Department officials agree there are too many special envoys and that some of them duplicate work done elsewhere, so there's plenty of support for Tillerson's overall desire to slim the numbers. But there's less agreement on which special envoy slots to abandon. That was clear earlier this month during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, when members grilled Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan about Tillerson's plans for the envoys. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), at first conceded that the job of special envoy for Northern Ireland may seem obsolete given that it was created more than 20 years ago, before a peace agreement in the region. But Markey went on to argue that Britain's plan to leave the European Union is reigniting tensions that may merit filling the vacant position, as some are demanding. Sullivan disputed reports that Tillerson has decided which positions to cut or keep. But he couldn't deny that many of the envoy positions have been left empty since President Donald Trump took office. He also said even slots mandated by Congress are subject to Tillerson's plans to restructure the department, although he promised nothing would change without input from lawmakers. "Some of those offices were created to address serious issues which over time have diminished in significance or importance," Sullivan said. "Others, whether it be global women's issues, fighting anti-Semitism, are enduring issues that are of extreme importance to us, not only in the State Department, but as Americans." On Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert also addressed the future of the envoys. "Every single function of a special representative of this or that, all of those issues will still be addressed," she said. "We’re not going to stop caring about Afghanistan, for example, if there’s not a special representative. The functions will still be done." An aide to Corker said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider State Department authorization legislation Thursday under which "the department would be required to notify Congress which special envoys it would like to keep in place and nominate all special envoys for the Senate’s approval going forward." Trump and many of his top advisers are suspicious of State Department employees, viewing them as part of a "deep state" opposed to the president’s agenda. So staffing State has not been a priority, and virtually all leadership slots in Foggy Bottom are still empty, as are many ambassadorships. Trump also wants to slash State's budget by one-third, meaning Tillerson's restructuring will likely include major cuts to many divisions. Given all those factors, it's not a surprise that special envoys are on the chopping block. "The real problem is that the foundations of the State Department are being allowed to crumble," said Tom Malinowski, a former assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration. "If the administration believes that the work of the State Department should be conducted primarily by assistant secretaries and ambassadors in the normal chain of command, then the first thing it ought to do is to nominate some assistant secretaries and ambassadors." Several special envoys reflect Obama administration policy priorities that are now defunct under Trump. The president opposes closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, so the special envoy slot devoted to that is likely doomed. The administration has already indicated that it won't appoint a special envoy for climate change, an issue Trump has called a “hoax." It's also expected to slash the position that oversees the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal, an agreement the president loathes, moving those responsibilities elsewhere. Perhaps most controversial are envoys focused on sexual and religious identity. In February, the State Department crossed evangelicals by confirming that Tillerson would keep in place Randy Berry, the openly gay Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons issues. That position was created under Secretary of State John Kerry in 2015. And the Trump team's failure to appoint an envoy dedicated to combating anti-Semitism — a role mandated by Congress — has stirred anger across the political spectrum. Last week, the Anti-Defamation League delivered a petition with thousands of signatures demanding that Tillerson fill the slot. Lawmakers from both parties are pushing a bill to elevate that position to an ambassadorship. (A separate special envoy is dedicated to Holocaust issues.) Christian organizations have meanwhile been miffed that Trump has not named an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. That envoy frequently speaks out in support of besieged Christian communities in the Middle East and beyond. Late Wednesday, Trump announced he would nominate Sam Brownback, currently the Republican governor of Kansas, to take on that role. Other positions that have received outside support include one that deals with war crimes; activists say eliminating that unit as Trump reportedly plans to do is just another sign that the president doesn't care about human rights. Some lawmakers also want to keep the envoy dedicated to dealing with Sudan and South Sudan, where conflict and looming famines are deepening misery. Brett Schaefer, a Heritage Foundation analyst, applauded the Senate committee’s focus on the issue. "Congress really needs to get a hold of this process and formalize it in some way,” he said. But Schaefer warned that if a foreign crisis emerges before Tillerson has filled core State Department leadership positions, Congress may call for a new special envoy to step in. Complicating the Trump administration's message to lawmakers are its mixed signals on whether special envoys are worthwhile. Earlier this month, Tillerson tapped Kurt Volker, a former NATO ambassador who is hawkish on Russia, to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine. Volker's mission? To help bring peace between Russia and Ukraine. It's anyone's guess how long that will take, or how long that position will exist. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Politico

The mother of Huang Qi, the journalist who created the 64 tianwang human rights website and won the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Prize in the Cyber-Dissident category in 2004, fears that the Chinese authorities could let him die in detention, as they did with Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. On 11 July, two days before Liu Xiaobo’s death in detention, Huang’s mother posted a video calling for her son’s release on humanitarian grounds. Aged 54, he has a kidney ailment that requires a great deal of treatment and frequent hospitalization. His lawyers have repeatedly but unsuccessfully requested his release for medical reasons. Huang Qi won the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Prize in the Cyber-Dissident category in 2004. His health has been destroyed by mistreatment and violence during a total of eight years in prison. His current spell in detention, which began last October, is his third. The authorities began hounding him because of what he wrote about the crackdown on the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests. After the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province, which left 70,000 dead and 18,000 missing, he published a much quoted article alleging that the shoddy construction of schools contributed to the toll. His latest spell in detention began in late October 2016, when the police abducted him at the same time as Liu Feiyue, the founder of the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch website. Huang was taken into custody on 28 November and was formally arrested on 16 December. New crackdown on online journalists The authorities are meanwhile continuing to persecute other journalists who write for 64 tianwang. Yang Xiuqiong was arrested on 23 June and, like Huang, has been charged with “providing state secrets.” Wang Shurong’s six-year jail sentence on a charge of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” was upheld on 4 July. There is still no news about Lian Huanli, a 64 tianwang journalist who went missing in May. Awarded the RSF Press Freedom Prize in 2016, 64 tianwang was one of the last bastions of freely-reported news and information in China until it finally stopped posting new information on 25 November 2016. The offensive against the website began in April when one of its women reporters, Wang Jing, was sentenced to four years and ten months in prison, and intensified with the arrests of five more women reporters in September, when China was hosting the G20 summit in Hangzou. As well as 64 tianwang, the current offensive targets anyone who dares to post freely-reported information. Liu Shaoming, a human rights activist held since May 2015, was sentenced on 7 July to four and a half years in prison for articles about Tiananmen. An appeal court has upheld the three-year jail terms imposed on three bloggers, Su Changlan, Chen Qitang and Chen Yunfei, who were arrested in 2014 for writing about illegal land seizures. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reporters without Borders