Kenya should protect and assist Somali refugees and asylum seekers facing ongoing conflict and a humanitarian crisis in Somalia, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. In line with a recent High Court decision, the authorities should abandon their decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp and publicly declare that the more than 249,000 Somali refugees living there can remain in Kenya until conditions exist for them to return in safety and with dignity. On March 24-25, 2017, Kenya will host an Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) summit that will bring together Eastern African heads of state to discuss the situation of Somali refugees in the region, as the threat of pervasive drought and food insecurity in Somalia looms. Kenya’s role as host is marred by its continued insistence on closing Dadaab refugee camp, host to over 249,000 Somali refugees, by May. Somali refugees waiting to board buses that will take them back to Somalia after the Kenya government annouced the closure of the Dadaab refugee camps in 2016. © 2016 Laetitia Bader/Human Rights Watch “Kenya should demonstrate leadership by declaring that Dadaab will remain open and that it will resume prima facie recognition of Somali refugees,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Kenya and neighboring Eastern African countries, supported by international partners, should urgently assist and protect refugees facing continuing conflict and drought in Somalia.” In May 2016, the Kenyan government removed prima facie refugee status – meaning recognizing refugee status based simply on nationality – for Somalis and disbanded its Department of Refugee Affairs, charged with processing asylum claims. It also announced plans to speed up the repatriation of Somali refugees, and to close Dadaab camp in north-eastern Kenya by November, subsequently extended to May. On February 9, Kenya’s High Court ruled that the government’s May 2016 directives were unconstitutional and discriminated against Somalis. The High Court also ordered the Kenyan government to restore the administration of refugee affairs to the status quo prior to the government’s decision. The Kenyan government has not taken steps to carry out the ruling. On March 8, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya repeated that Kenya’s decision to close Dadaab camp was final. In 2016, Kenyan authorities, with officials from the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, stepped up a 2013 “voluntary” repatriation program. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International research in Dadaab and interviews with more than 100 Somali refugees found that Kenya had not given them a real choice between continuing to receive asylum in Kenya and returning to Somalia, and that the program violated the international principle of non-refoulement – forced return of people to places where they would face persecution, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, or other threats to their lives or freedom – which is binding on Kenya as party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1969 African Union Refugee Convention. Registration of refugees in Dadaab has been sporadic since 2011 and has been entirely suspended, with some exceptions, since August 2015. In 2016, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International spoke to many unregistered people in Dadaab, including new arrivals and people who had already returned under the repatriation program but then fled back to Dadaab. The people interviewed said they feel particularly vulnerable both due to their lack of legal status and because of their lack of access to food rations. Most recently, in mid-March, over 100 Somali refugees and asylum seekers were arrested in a security operation in Dadaab. According to a refugee agency, those with refugee documentation were released, while 28 Somali asylum seekers were charged with unlawful presence. Under Kenya’s Refugee Act, the Commissioner of Refugee Affairs must recognize people as refugees if they meet the definition of the 1969 African Union Refugee Convention. The African Union definition includes people fleeing events seriously disturbing public order. The lack of sufficient international support for Kenya, including through consistently underfunded UN humanitarian appeals and very limited refugee resettlement, has contributed to the appalling situation in Dadaab, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said. The World Food Program has repeatedly cut food rations to people in Dadaab due to funding shortfalls. The most recent cut, in December, reduced rations by 50 percent. Refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in 2016 who had signed up to return to Somalia often cited the ration cuts as a factor influencing their decision to return, and to accept a one-time UNHCR repatriation package – despite fears for their security and survival in Somalia. An aerial picture shows a section of the Hagadera camp in Dadaab near the Kenya-Somalia border, May 8, 2015. © 2015 Reuters UNHCR’s own assessments indicate that conditions in south-central Somalia are not conducive to mass refugee returns due to ongoing conflict, insecurity, and humanitarian conditions. In May 2016 UNHCR’s guidelines on returns to Somalia found that: “Civilians continue to be severely affected by the conflict, with reports of civilians being killed and injured in conflict-related violence, widespread sexual and gender-based violence against women and children, forced recruitment of children, and large-scale displacement.” The humanitarian situation remains dire. According to the UN, half of Somalia’s population – 6.2 million out of 12.3 million people – are currently in need of humanitarian assistance. Many of the communities affected by the 2011 famine are once again at risk. More than 260,000 people have been displaced by the drought within Somalia since November, adding to the country’s 1.1 million internally displaced people, who live in deplorable and unsafe informal displacement camps in the country’s main towns. Most of those recently displaced in south-central Somalia have fled into Baidoa and Mogadishu, among the areas to which UNHCR is facilitating returns from Dadaab. The UN has also recorded an increase in displacement into neighboring Ethiopia, which currently hosts 245,500 registered Somali refugees. So far, contrary to the period leading up to the 2011 famine, very little movement into Kenya has been recorded. According to UN data on returns, over half of those returning from Dadaab to Somalia said they would not return to their areas of origin. Returning refugees, especially those unable to return to their home areas or those who have been gone for many years, risk ending up internally displaced in Somalia, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others, have continued to document serious abuses against internally displaced communities in Somalia at the hands of government and non-state actors, including sexual violence and violent forced evictions from their temporary shelters. According to a UN monitoring network, forced evictions increased in late 2016, with more than 60,000 new evictions since November alone. “Given the ongoing drought and security crisis in Somalia, it’s high time Kenya’s international partners help to ensure that Somalis can find safety and humanitarian assistance in neighboring countries,” said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International. “International community and donor countries should guarantee adequate technical and financial support to the Kenyan government and civil society to come up with sustainable, long term durable solutions for refugee integration into the country. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Human Rights Watch

Skulls suspected of belonging to victims of combat between soldiers and a rebel militia in Kasai-Central Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. AARON ROSS / REUTERS KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The emergence on Monday of several videos that appear to show uniformed soldiers shooting Congolese civilians has added urgency to calls for an international investigation of recently discovered mass graves in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Last week, the Congolese military’s auditor general announced that seven officers had been arrested and charged with war crimes after a video surfaced last month depicting soldiers shooting a group of civilians in Kasai-Central Province, a massacre that left at least 13 dead. Now at least five new videos that appear to show members of Congo’s military shooting civilians are circulating on social networking platforms. Amid mounting accusations of violence against civilians, and the discovery of 10 mass graves dug in January and February in Kasai-Central, the chief of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo urged the United Nations Security Council this week to press the government to open an investigation into possible rights violations. The chief of the mission, Maman Sambo Sidikou, urged Congo’s government on Tuesday to investigate the recent reports “to ensure that the perpetrators of these acts are held fully accountable and that justice is done,” according to Charles Bambara, Mr. Sidikou’s spokesman. In Congo, elected officials and rights advocates are calling for an international investigation. On Wednesday, Claudel André Lubaya, a member of Parliament representing Kasai-Central, said an independent international panel was needed to investigate the eight mass graves in his province, “as well as the possibility of other mass graves in all areas where clashes have been reported.” Jonas Kabiena, the national coordinator of a network called the New Congolese Civil Society, also called for an international inquiry and said on Wednesday, “We condemn the excessive use of force against populations without means of defense.” The Congolese Army has been carrying out operations against a militia in the region. Fighting between soldiers and rebels has left hundreds dead and displaced hundreds of thousands of people since August. A government spokesman, Lambert Mende, told Reuters this week that the bodies in the mass graves were those of militia fighters, and that the group’s fighters, not the army, had buried them. The government denies that its soldiers have used disproportionate force against the often lightly armed fighters. Militia members could not be reached for comment, Reuters said. Kasai-Central Province is volatile, with frequent clashes despite the presence of United Nations peacekeepers. This month, two United Nations officials, an American and a Swede, were among six people abducted in the area. On Saturday, the United Nations mission in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, released a statement expressing concern about reports of renewed fighting and restrictions on the movements of its peacekeeping forces. In response to that statement, the government angrily criticized the United Nations mission on Tuesday for making “imprecise allegations” that hampered “the discovery of the truth.” But Mr. Lubaya said the inaction of provincial and national officials regarding the mass graves amounted to contempt for the victims, their families and the nation. He added that an investigation was needed to determine who had been killed and how, adding that the victims should be given a dignified burial. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

There was something especially obscene about Turkish president Erdogan’s comparison of Angela Merkel’s Germany with the Nazis. “Nazi practices” were going on in Germany, he said, after Berlin banned Turkish political demonstrations – something which Erdogan does regularly. It’s not just that Germany daily repents its destruction of Europe’s Jews in the Second World War. Nor that Merkel’s extraordinary and humane – and, for her, politically damaging — decision to allow the Middle East’s refugees to enter her country was the greatest act of contrition for Hitler’s crimes. It’s that Erdogan’s own nation stayed heroically neutral in World War Two. Even though the Brits helped to train Turkish pilots in 1940, Ismet Inonu, Erdogan’s more diplomatic predecessor at the time, actually sent Turkish officers to occupied Europe as guests of the Nazi Reich to tour the Eastern Front and the Atlantic Wall opposite Britain – a happy trip during which, so the Turkish visitors later reported, they were treated with much respect and given unexpected access to Wehrmacht military planners. Thank heavens Turkey still has historians to expose such little nuggets of history, if they are not locked up today in Erdogan’s prisons. The Nazis, whom Erdogan pretends to hate so much, rather liked Turkey. Not only did Turkey stay neutral in the war, but the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter and other Reich dailies had, since the early 1930s, devotedly praised the "Turkified" state which had emerged from the ruins of the First World War. This was a thinly-layered reference to Ottoman Turkey’s "racial purity" after the genocide of one and a half million of its minority Christians in 1915 – a holocaust which deeply influenced Hitler in his own decision to destroy the Jews of Europe. In several newspaper interviews before the war, Hitler referred to Europe’s own forgetfulness of the Armenian massacres. He even asked who “now remembers” them, in a meeting with his generals before invading Poland in 1939 – an open invitation to kill Jews, who then constituted 30 per cent of the population of Warsaw alone. Several of Hitler’s diplomats and Wehrmacht officers had earlier been advisers to the Ottoman Turks and actually witnessed the Armenian killings in 1915. They later turned up in the occupied Soviet Union as German officers after June of 1941, where the Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews by the tens of thousands. And while Merkel’s Germany has constantly expressed its remorse for the Jewish Holocaust, Erdogan will not even admit to Turkey’s Holocaust of its Armenian citizens in 1915. Modern day Turks who have mentioned this terrible precedent in genocide have been threatened with imprisonment by the Turkish state. Even today, the great Armenian cathedral of Gaziantep is used as a mosque – I saw part of its "Islamic" restoration a few weeks ago – yet Merkel’s Germany has restored the Jewish synagogues which the Nazis destroyed on Kristallnacht in November 1938. Quite coincidentally, a remarkable book is to be published in the United States this summer with the hitherto unheard story of a young Armenian who served in the Turkish army while its soldiers were slaughtering his own people – indeed, his own family. Forced into Genocide is Yervant Alexanian’s own frightful account of his people’s suffering, with unimpeachable documentation – in vast enough amounts to prevent the usual Turkish ‘genocide deniers’ (twins of the European ‘deniers’ of the Jewish Holocaust) of denouncing the book as a forgery. It has a generous foreward by Israel Charny, Israel’s own principal genocide scholar, and is edited by Adrianne Alexanian, the daughter of Yervant, who died in 1983. It is a story which Erdogan should be reading – and publicising – right now, for it involves more “Nazi practices” than the new Sultan of Istanbul would ever want to acknowledge. Yervant, who would survive to emigrate to the US and later campaign in a series of letters to American congressmen at Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the assassination of his people. His own story, told in his own words, is both heroic and deeply moving. Armenians were weeded out of the Turkish army and themselves butchered in 1915, but a few survived in the ranks, with the help of friends and occasionally by honourable Turkish officers. Even Yervant eventually had to convert to Islam to survive. The book contains all his military documentation, but what ultimately enabled him to survive was his ability to play the bugle. He was the only man in his Turkish army unit who could play the instrument. There is even a photograph of Yervant in full Turkish Ottoman uniform holding his precious bugle. But it is his account of the Armenian Holocaust which should shame Sultan Erdogan. His family agreed that if he could survive by avoiding the death march on which the Turks were to send them, he should stay behind alone in the Turkish city of Sipas. Here is his description of the last day: “The worst day of my life was 3 July 1915 when I watched 51 members of my family disappear over the hill. I remember it as if it was yesterday – after spending the night on the banks of the Halys River, the grisly caravan that included my family was woken and driven up the Kartashlar Yokush Hill. They were scaling the Armenian Golgotha. I stood there and watched my mother and entire extended family climb over that hill never to be seen again. In total, I lost 51 members of my family that day.” Most of the Armenian men of Yervant’s city of Sipas were executed by rifle or, Isis-style, with knives. The women and children were driven into the deserts to be raped and murdered. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Independent

Judges arrive at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Share In a statement, the court said that victims and civil parties in the case would receive reparations in the form of project funding at the request of the Cambodian government. The Khmer Rouge tribunal plans to spend millions of dollars in reparations to the victims of the regime who were included in Case 002/02 if the former regime officials are found guilty later this year, the court has said. In a statement, the court said that victims and civil parties in the case would receive reparations in the form of project funding at the request of the Cambodian government. The proposed projects include health care, including mental health care, reconciliation work, education, the preservation of memorials and naming of existing infrastructure, and public remembrance ceremonies. Neth Pheaktra, court spokesman, said more funding was required for the projects. “These projects will cost more than $6 million and from what I understand ... other relevant stakeholders have only half,” he said. Sum Rithy, a civil party to the case, said he disagreed with the plans, saying many felt personal reparations to individuals would be a better use of the money, “It’s hard to accept because it’s of no use to the victims, more than 3,800 people, as they struggle and spend their own money during the trials,” he said. A torture survivor, Rithy, said despite life sentences for a few senior members of the regime, he was not satisfied because many of the regime’s killers had walked free. Nushin Sarkarati of the Center for Justice and Accountability, which assists victims of the Khmer Rouge, however, said the reparations process would ensure a lasting legacy. “Given that the crimes heard before the ECCC are serious crimes affecting a large population, collective (rather than individual reparations) are better suited to address the needs of the survivor community,” he said in an email. “There are nearly 4,000 civil parties participating in this trial and more victims continue to be impacted to this day.” Peter Maguire, a law professor and author of “Facing Death in Cambodia”, said that the scale of reparations was too small, suggesting that money would be better spent on dedicated non-governmental projects, such as the Documentation Center of Cambodia. The U.N.-backed court has spent some $270 million so far to try just three Khmer Rouge leaders since 2006. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 voacambodia

srael plans to build 6,000 new housing units in Palestinian areas [Mikkel Bahl/Danwatch] The UN's special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories has decried how Israel's "illegal settlement enterprise has moved at an alarming pace" this year Michael Lynk pointed on Monday to announcements by Israel to build 6,000 new housing units in Palestinian areas, accompanied by "high rates of demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem". He accused Israel of "the subjugation of [Palestinians'] humanity", and also cited a UN Security Council resolution in December that called the establishment of settlements in the West Bank a "flagrant violation" of international law. Lynk made the statements in a report presented to the UN rights council during the Geneva-based body's mandated session on Israel, known as Agenda Item Seven. The US Department of State criticised the UN council on Monday for holding its Israel debate and vowed in a statement "to vote against every resolution put forth under this agenda item". The United States also boycotted Monday's session saying the regular review showed the council's "long-standing bias against Israel", which threatens the "credibility" of the body. Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, denounced that Israel was the only country on the 47-member council's calendar. "It is not Syria, where the regime has systematically slaughtered and tortured its own people," she said. "It is not Iran, where public hangings are a regular occurrence. It is not North Korea, where the regime uses forced labour camps to crush its people into submission. It is Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East." A letter from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to advocacy groups, obtained by the AP news agency last week, said the US would not continue participating unless the council undergoes "considerable reform". In the more than 230 country-specific resolutions at the council since it was founded 11 years ago, more than one-quarter have been focused on Israel, whose policies in Palestinian areas have raised rights concerns for decades. (c) Al Jazeera 2017

The Islamic State (also known as ISIS) executed and dumped the bodies of possibly hundreds of detainees at a site near Mosul, Human Rights Watch said today. Multiple witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the bodies of those killed, including bodies of members of Iraqi security forces, were thrown into a naturally occurring sinkhole at a site known as Khafsa, about eight kilometers south of western Mosul. Local residents said that before pulling out of the area in mid-February, ISIS laid improvised landmines at the site, which are sometimes referred to as improvised explosive devices or booby traps. “This mass grave is a grotesque symbol of ISIS’s cruel and depraved conduct – a crime of a monumental scale,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Laying landmines in the mass grave is clearly an attempt by ISIS to maximize harm to Iraqis.” raqi authorities should make it a priority to mark and fence the site for the protection of the mass grave and those in the area, until deminers can clear the site, Human Rights Watch said. Residents said that water runs through the bottom of the sinkhole, which may make it difficult to exhume the human remains there. If exhumation is possible, the process should be carried out under international standards. Authorities should turn the site into a memorial and support families of victims seeking justice for the executions. The site is one of dozens of ISIS mass graves found between Iraq and Syria, but could be the largest discovered thus far, Human Rights Watch said. While it is not possible to determine the number of people executed at the site, the estimates of residents, based on executions they witnessed and what ISIS fighters in the area had told them, reaches into the thousands. Iraqi forces seized control of the site in mid-February 2017. Human Rights Watch visited the site on March 7, but did not inspect the sinkhole closely due to the landmines. An improvised explosive device left at the sinkhole killed a journalist and at least three Iraqi security forces on February 25. Residents said they had seen multiple mass executions at the 35-meter-wide sinkhole, sometimes on a weekly basis starting in June 2014 until May or June 2015. They said they heard ISIS fighters talking about other executions, including of former police, former Iraqi Security Force members, and members of the Awakening Force (Sahwa), the Sunni force that fought extremist fighters from 2007 to 2008. Some of the victims may also have been detainees at Badoush Prison, 10 kilometers west of Mosul, which ISIS captured on June 10, 2014. On that day, ISIS fighters executed about 600 prisoners at a ravine in the nearby desert, nine survivors told Human Rights Watch. On March 11, 2017, the Iraqi Security Forces announced that they had found another mass grave, about two kilometers from Badoush prison, that held between 500 and 600 men – though it is unclear how they determined these numbers. On March 13, Human Rights Watch spoke to an Iraqi military commander who had visited the site four days earlier and had witnessed Iraqi forces exhuming bodies there. On March 15, a general in the Iraqi military’s 9th division told Human Rights Watch that under the division’s supervision, medical experts from Baghdad had exhumed about 400 bodies from the site. Fawaz Abdulameer of the International Committee for Missing Persons, an international organization working to establish effective procedures for protecting mass graves and conducting exhumations, told Human Rights Watch: “These excavations are unacceptable. They must be carried out by trained teams with sufficient experience, because they are dealing with human remains at a crime scene.” This is the second report of ad hoc and unprofessional exhumations taking place without authorization. Widespread or systematic murder carried out by a state or organized group as part of an attack against a civilian population – as part of a policy to commit murder – constitutes a crime against humanity. The deliberate killing of civilians and civilian or military prisoners during an armed conflict constitutes a war crime. To facilitate accountability for these crimes, Iraq should ratify the Rome Statute, giving the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity there, and should incorporate the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide into its domestic law. All parties to the conflict in Iraq should respect the 1997 Ottawa (Mine Ban) Treaty, which Iraq has ratified. “The strong desire to exhume the remains of loved ones from ISIS mass graves is perfectly understandable, but hastily conducted exhumations seriously harm the chances of identifying the victims and preserving evidence,” Fakih said. “While exhuming the remains of those killed at Khafsa may be difficult, authorities should do what they can to make sure that those who lost their loved ones there have access to justice.” The Killings at Khafsa Five residents from villages near Khafsa told Human Rights Watch that on June 10, 2014, they saw ISIS fighters bring four large trucks filled with blindfolded men, with their hands bound, to the sinkhole. Two residents of al-Athba, a village three kilometers from Khafsa, two residents of Swada, a neighboring village, and a resident of Irbid, three kilometers away, who were able to see the site, described what they saw. The witnesses said the fighters unloaded the men, lined most of them up on the edge of the sinkhole, and opened fire so that the bodies fell in. Fighters shot a smaller number of people a short distance away and threw their bodies into the hole, the witnesses said. One of the men from al-Athba and the man from Irbid said ISIS fighters later told them that the men they had executed were prisoners from Badoush. The killings at the Khafsa sinkhole apparently continued regularly from late 2014 to mid-2015. One of the residents from Swada, a shepherd, said that in September 2014, he was near Khafsa and saw male ISIS fighters arrive in a pickup truck with at least 13 women, all with full face coverings and cloaks and blindfolds, with their hands bound. He said the ISIS fighters shot the women on the precipice of the pit. He said he witnessed three more group executions subsequently, including the execution of three of his relatives. One of al-Athba residents, also a shepherd, said he witnessed one execution at the end of 2014, after ISIS fighters called on the residents of al-Athba to come to the sinkhole over the mosque loudspeaker. Fighters brought three of his friends and his cousin to the site because they were accused of having shared GPS coordinates of ISIS positions with the Iraqi forces, he said. The fighters beheaded the men on a wooden block in front of the town residents, and then threw the bodies into the pit. He said fighters told him they had killed another of his cousins, an army officer, and dumped him in the pit. The shepherd from al-Athba said that at another time, at the end of 2014, he was with his sheep in the area and saw ISIS fighters arrive in two cars and drag out a very large, strong man. They walked him up onto the precipice of the sinkhole, and as they were about to shoot him, he grabbed one of the fighters and jumped into the hole, holding him. Two witnesses of multiple executions said that fighters started carrying out executions further from the precipice after that because of the fighter they had lost. Another shepherd from al-Athba said that in February 2015 he was about 30 meters from Khafsa with his sheep when he saw six ISIS fighters arrive in a large bus and march at least 20 men to flat ground near the sinkhole. They lined the men up and shot them, then threw their bodies in, he said. In March 2015, the man said, he was again in the area with his sheep and saw two fighters pull up in a car, take four prisoners out, and shoot them near the pit, then throw their bodies into the sinkhole. Human Rights Watch interviewed a family from Kudila, 60 kilometers southeast of Khafsa, who had fled their home in March 2016. The husband, a former Iraqi soldier, said that ISIS had imprisoned him for 18 days in Qayyarah in March 2015 for selling cigarettes. He said that fighters took several prisoners from the facility while he was there, and he overheard guards saying they were taking them to Khafsa for execution. The prisoners did not return. Another man from Sawda said that in early 2015, he saw fighters driving 11 freezer trucks toward the sinkhole, and heard from local ISIS fighters that as many as 1,000 people transported to the site in those trucks had been executed that day. The five people living near Khafsa said they had heard estimates of between 3,000 and 25,000 people executed at the site. They said they often heard screams and gunfire. By early 2015, the stench from the bodies had become unbearable and families were telling ISIS fighters that they would need to move to Mosul if it persisted. One of al-Athba residents said: “It was summer so we had to sleep on the roof, but we were not able to sleep because the stench of the dead was so strong. The smell was overwhelming.” Another said, “The smell was disgusting, we were inside our houses but the smell still reached us.” In response to the complaints, fighters brought several cranes and dumped the contents of several large trailers into the hole then filled the rest of the pit with earth using several excavators, according to two of the residents Human Rights Watch interviewed. One said, “They [ISIS] told us the trailers were also full of bodies.” ISIS did not carry out any more executions at the site after it was filled in, all the locals said. They said the smell of decomposing bodies diminished after that. Satellite imagery analyzed by Human Rights Watch shows that the sinkhole was filled in sometime between March and June 2015. By the time Iraqi government forces retook the area around the sinkhole in February 2017, the filled-in earth had started to subside. Images taken then by international journalists show the remains of what look like two cars in the middle of the filled-in pit. The location was already labeled on the open-source online map, Wikimapia, as an ISIS mass grave in April 2014 by an unnamed user, before the area had fallen to ISIS-control, but when there was already a strong ISIS presence in the area. The two shepherds from al-Athba and a federal police officer said that as early as 2004, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor group to ISIS, had used the sinkhole to dump bodies of people they executed for allegedly collaborating with the Americans or the Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Governments. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Human Rights Watch

115th CONGRESS 1st Session H. RES. 220 Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding past genocides, and for other purposes. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES March 22, 2017 Mr. Trott (for himself, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Valadao, Ms. Speier, Mr. Pallone, Ms. Judy Chu of California, Ms. Jackson Lee, Mr. Bilirakis, Mr. Sarbanes, Mr.Royce of California, Mr. Engel, Ms. Clark of Massachusetts, Mr. McGovern, Mr. Carbajal, Ms. Eshoo, and Mr. Costa) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs RESOLUTION Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding past genocides, and for other purposes. Whereas the lessons of past genocides should be applied to help prevent future war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; Whereas, on March 17, 2016, the Department of State declared that “Da’esh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims”, and is “also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases against Sunni Muslims and Kurds and other minorities”; Whereas the House of Representatives, on March 14, 2016, passed H. Con. Res. 75, which concluded that “the atrocities perpetrated by ISIL against Christians, Yezidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide”; Whereas the Senate, on July 7, 2016, passed S. Res. 340, which concluded that “the atrocities perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against Christians, Yezidis, Shi'a, and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide”; Whereas the United States has a proud record of protesting and providing relief to Armenian and other Christian survivors of the Ottoman Empire’s genocidal campaign; Whereas President Woodrow Wilson encouraged the formation of the Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which raised $116,000,000 (over $2,500,000,000 in 2017 dollars) between 1915 and 1930, the Senate adopted resolutions condemning these massacres, and United States diplomats organized and led protests of these crimes; Whereas the United States is on record as having officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, in the United States Government’s May 28, 1951, written statement to the International Court of Justice regarding the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, through President Ronald Reagan’s April 22, 1981, Proclamation No. 4838, and by House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, and House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984; and Whereas the proper commemoration and consistent condemnation of the Armenian Genocide will strengthen our international standing in preventing modern day genocides: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States, in seeking to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against Christians, Yezidis, Muslims, Kurds, and other vulnerable religious and ethnic groups in the Middle East, should draw upon relevant lessons of the United States Government, civil society, and humanitarian response to the Armenian Genocide, Seyfo, and the broader genocidal campaign by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Greeks, Pontians and other Christians upon their biblical era homelands. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 H Res 220

Mason Dunn of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition spoke at a February rally to support transgender students. One-third of hate crimes and bias incidents reported in Boston in 2016 were directed at members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Members of the LGBT community are the most frequently reported targets of hateful acts in Boston, enduring more assaults, threats, and harassment than any other group, a Globe analysis of police data shows. The number of reported hate crimes and bigoted actions last year against the LGBT community surpasses those aimed at Muslims, Jews, Latinos, and Asians combined, Boston Police Department figures indicate. And it is a trend that appears to be persisting: Numbers from the first two months of this year indicate a similar pattern. But the analysis of Boston data also suggested a bit more heartening news: Reports of hateful acts overall in New England’s biggest city declined — by 9 percent — in 2016 compared with the year before, even as they surged in several other big cities, according to a review of local data and a nationwide study. Brian Levin, a professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, recently analyzed reported hate crimes in 15 of the nation’s largest urban areas, including Boston. He found increases in nine of those cities, including a 62 percent surge in Washington, D.C., and a 50 percent jump in Philadelphia in 2016 compared with the previous year. The latest Boston police data show 275 hate crimes and bias incidents were reported in 2016 — down from 301 in 2015. Of that total, about one-third were directed at members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Black people were the second most common targets. After police investigated each incident, they determined that about half rose to the level of hate crimes, which are defined as criminal acts coupled with behavior motivated by bigotry or bias. Across the country, scrutiny of hate crimes has intensified amid mounting reports of violence in recent months against transgender people, Muslims, and South Asians, and a spate of bomb threats leveled at Jewish organizations and swastikas scrawled on homes and in schools. Nationally, blacks by far have been the most common victims of hateful acts for the past quarter-century, Levin said. Yet Levin is seeing an ominous spike in hateful acts against people in the LGBT community in several cities, including New York and Washington. In the borough of Queens last week, a man was charged with a hate crime in connection with an attack on two transgender women outside a McDonald’s. Levin said transgender people appear to be particularly vulnerable. “We are extremely worried about this,” he said. The Trump administration in February revoked federal protections for transgender students, scrapping guidelines that advised schools to treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity. Levin said this action, and earlier comments regarding protections for the LGBT community during last year’s divisive presidential campaign, may be fueling some of the increase in hateful acts. Criminologists who track hate crimes say Boston’s police department is known nationwide as a model for combating the incidents. The department was among the first, decades ago, to establish a unit dedicated to the issue. “What you’ll find is that Boston has the highest per capita number of hate crimes, and that, ironically, is a good thing,” Levin said. “It shows Boston is doing a good job of identifying and responding to these crimes.” Boston Sergeant Detective Carmen Curry, supervisor of the department’s Civil Rights Unit, which investigates suspected hate crimes, said she doesn’t know why reported hate crimes overall in the city decreased last year. But Curry said the reports of hate crimes against LGBT individuals may reflect longstanding efforts by the department to bolster relations with the community, which have made victims feel more comfortable stepping forward. “We have a really good relationship with the LGBT community,” Curry said. “We have an LGBT public safety committee, and we meet monthly with LGBT organizations to come and talk about issues they are concerned about.” But an official with a leading LGBT social service agency said the reports to police likely represent only a fraction of the actual incidents. “Not that much is reported to law enforcement, as opposed to what happens in the LGBT community, because of mistrust of law enforcement,” said Cara Presley, manager of the Violence Recovery Program at Fenway Health. “But those relations have improved over time.” Presley said her program, which helps about 220 people each year, has tracked an increase in people seeking help because they were hate crime victims. Last year, 55 people came to her program saying they were targeted, compared with 49 in 2015, Presley said. “A minimal number of the people we serve report to law enforcement,” she said. That also tends to be true for people of color reporting racially motivated crimes, said Jorge Martinez, executive director of Project RIGHT, an antiviolence organization in Grove Hall. Martinez said he hears from residents who say they don’t believe the police have taken their reports seriously. “We haven’t gotten enough responses and felt comfortable with the system,” he said. While Boston police data show a decline last year in reported hate crimes for most categories, incidents targeting Muslims rose. Reports of such episodes, while small in number, nearly quadrupled, from 5 in 2015 to 19 in 2016. “These trends are disturbing, but not surprising, as they mirror what we’ve been seeing nationally during the past two years,” said John Robbins, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group. Donald Trump, while running for president in December 2015, cited a “great hatred toward Americans by large segments of the Muslim population,” and called for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. “The toxic anti-Muslim rhetoric from the campaign trail, and now from the White House, has greatly emboldened those who would commit acts of violence against Muslims,” Robbins said. The council’s Massachusetts chapter does not have data for anti-Muslim incidents, but Robbins said the national council tracked a 400 percent increase last year in calls across the United States. Criminologists say national events can trigger a spike or drop in reported hate crimes, but rarely do such events affect all areas of the country equally. While reported incidents aimed at Muslims jumped in Boston last year, they fell by 44 percent in Los Angeles. Criminologists also say tracking patterns in hate crimes can be difficult because the incidents tend to be underreported, and with such small pools of data, conclusions drawn from just a couple of years may not be representative. Breakdown of reported hate crimes Of all the reported hate crimes and bigoted actions reported to the Boston Police Department, from January 2015 through February of this year... ...many were targeting members of the LGBT community. The number of reported anti-Muslim acts tripled from 5 to 19 between 2015 and 2016. All the reported hate crimes and bigoted actions reported from January 2015 through February of this year, by bias: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Boston Globe Media Partners

A white man from Maryland who told police he traveled to New York to kill black men turned himself in on Wednesday, about 24 hours after he fatally stabbed a man he encountered on the street, officials said. Authorities described the suspected attacker as someone who had long harbored feelings of hatred toward black men before violently acting on them this week. Police said he carried out the attack in a way that intended to draw attention. “The reason why he picked New York is ’cause it’s the media capital of the world,” said William Aubry, assistant chief of the New York City Police Department. “And he wanted to make a statement.” New York police said they charged James Harris Jackson, 28, with murder. Police said Jackson encountered 66-year-old Timothy Caughman shortly after 11 p.m. on Monday and stabbed him multiple times. Caughman went to a police precinct for help and was brought to Bellevue Hospital, where he died, police said. Early Wednesday morning, a little more than 24 hours after the attack, Jackson walked into the police substation in Times Square and announced that he was wanted for murder. James Harris Jackson, in white, is escorted out of a police precinct in New York on Wednesday. (Seth Wenig/AP) “‘I’m the person you’re looking for,'” Jackson told the patrol officers there, Aubry said at a briefing later Wednesday. Jackson also told them he had knives in his pockets, and police searched him and took him into custody, Aubry said. Police recovered what Aubry called a 26-inch “black mini-sword,” which he said police believe is the weapon used to stab Caughman in the back. The attack is “extremely distressing,” James P. O’Neill, the New York City police commissioner, said at the same briefing. Police gave few details of Aubry’s background on Wednesday, identifying him only as a Baltimore resident and military veteran. Jackson was in the Army for more than three years, deploying to Afghanistan between December 2010 and November 2011, according to Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson, an Army spokesperson. His service record did not include any badges reflecting combat interaction with any enemy during that time. Jackson served as a military intelligence analyst and left the service in August 2012 with the rank of specialist. It did not appear late Wednesday afternoon that Jackson had been arraigned, and it was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney. Baltimore police said they do not have records of any interactions with Jackson, and his name did not appear in a search of Maryland court records. Authorities also said that Jackson traveled to New York from Baltimore on a Bolt Bus on Friday, staying at a hotel in midtown until Monday afternoon, at which point “he proceeded to wander through the city,” Aubry said. Aubry said the initial investigation gave detectives little question about what prompted the stabbing. “Based on statements that he made as well as a preliminary review of video, it reveals that the attack on Timothy Caughman was clearly racially motivated,” he said. Aubry went on to say that Jackson “was specifically intending to target male blacks for assault.” While Aubry did not elaborate on what Jackson said to police about what motivated the stabbing, he did say that Jackson “has been harboring these types of feelings for quite some time,” adding: “It’s well over 10 years that he’s been harboring these feelings of hate towards male blacks.” New York Mayor bill de Blasio (D) issued a statement calling the attack “more than an unspeakable human tragedy” and an assault on the city’s “inclusiveness and our diversity.” “Now it’s our collective responsibility to speak clearly and forcefully in the face of intolerance and violence — here or across the country,” he said. “We are a safe city because we are inclusive. We are a nation of unrivaled strength because we are diverse. No act of violence can undermine who we are.” Melissa Mark-Viverito (D), speaker of the New York City Council, called Jackson a white supremacist. She also tied the attack to a recent spike in reports of hate crimes both in the city and nationwide and invoked the election of President Trump, saying in a statement that the attack highlighted a growing divide that he “has only made worse.” Officials say they are looking into Jackson’s background, relatives and his social media history, and detectives traveled to Maryland to speak with people there. Police said they have not found many interactions with law enforcement. New York police are working with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to see if they can upgrade the charges against Jackson to include that it was motivated by hate or racism, Aubry said. Jackson “was very forthcoming” with detectives and “knew what he was doing when he came up here,” Aubry said. Aubry said the stabbing appeared to be random, saying that Caughman “happened to be going through garbage on the sidewalk, and he happened to be the unfortunate one” who Jackson encountered. Julie Tate and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Washington Post

(Associated Press) The Trump administration did not attend a regional human rights hearing that examined how U.S. policies are hurting asylum claims or triggering other alleged immigration abuses. For decades, U.S. administrations have enthusiastically supported the Inter-American Human Rights Commission as it defended rights throughout the hemisphere, especially in repressive countries like Cuba and Venezuela. But no U.S. official attended Tuesday's hearing, which examined Trump's executive actions to restrict the admission of refugees and restrict travel from six mostly-Muslim nations. The commission also heard cases from the Obama administration involving U.S. Border Patrol agents accused of turning back migrants seeking to cross the border to apply for asylum. Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said State officials decided not to attend on the advice of government lawyers who said any testimony by them could harm pending litigation. "This was deemed not appropriate by our legal experts," Toner said. He said the United States has "tremendous respect" for the commission's role "in safeguarding human rights and fundamental freedoms throughout the hemisphere, including the United States." Human rights advocates said only the administration's proposed travel ban has been blocked in federal court, not the border cases, and a U.S. delegate would not have to give testimony but could simply observe. Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America, which has worked on some of the border cases, said the U.S. absence sent a message that the Trump administration was uninterested in how its policies affected human rights. "It is alarming because [the commission] is one of the last resorts for many of these people," she said. The commission is the autonomous human-rights branch of the 35-nation Organization of American States, the hemisphere's most important alliance. It was the second time this week that the U.S. skipped an international human rights forum. On Monday, the Trump administration announced it was boycotting a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva because of what it described as an anti-Israel bias in the discussion of Israeli abuse of Palestinians. Toner said comparing the two events was "apples and oranges." __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Los Angeles Times

In a new report published today, John Prendergast, Founding Director of the Enough Project, offers an historical review of corruption and profiteering in South Sudan, detailing how a legacy of violent kleptocratic leadership has led the world’s newest nation into a crisis of famine, war, and potential genocide. The Enough Project report, “How The World’s Newest Country Went Awry: South Sudan’s war, famine and potential genocide” details the history of South Sudan, describing a “den of thieves,” in which battles by profiteers over power and the corrupt spoils of power, including an “oil-fueled gravy train,” have fueled endless cycles of conflict. The current situation in Sudan is described as a violent, greed-fueled kleptocracy, in which institutions of accountability have been deliberately undermined, and calls for hard-target “follow the money” investigations into the looting of the nation. The report further provides a series of critical recommendations to address the root causes of famine, destabilization and war, and to dismantle the violent kleptocratic system that is driving the suffering of the South Sudanese people. Selected report highlights: “War has been hell for South Sudan’s people, but it has been very lucrative for the country’s leaders and commercial collaborators, South Sudan’s war profiteers.” “In South Sudan today, war crimes pay. There is no accountability for the atrocities and looting of state resources, or for the famine that results.” “Corruption isn’t an anomaly within the system; it is the system itself, the very purpose of the state.” “Ethnicity has been used as the main mobilizer for organized violence.” “The history of conflict and mass atrocities in Sudan and South Sudan is driven in large part by unchecked greed, manifesting itself primarily in the accumulation of wealth and power by the country’s leaders.” “The competing kleptocratic factions are fighting over a lucrative prize: control of the state, which in turn brings control over oil and other natural resource revenues, patronage networks, some foreign aid, massive corruption opportunities, immunity from prosecution and accountability, control over the army and other security organs, the ability to control or manipulate banks and foreign exchange, the opportunity to manipulate government contracts, and the chance to dominate the commercial sector.” “South Sudan is not wildly different here. The leading accelerator of most African conflict is greed-fueled kleptocracy in which state institutions have been hijacked for personal enrichment by a small group of leaders and their commercial collaborators internally and internationally, often using extreme violence. The networks are usually composed of leading government officials, generals, businessmen, foreign investors, banks, oil and mining company representatives, money transfer entities, and others connected to the international financial system. They disempower and destroy the viability of those state institutions because they want to avoid both accountability and transparency, and they brutally suppress all forms of dissent and independent expression or political activity.” “In South Sudan (and Sudan), ethnic-based militias are recruited and armed to attack the communities perceived to be opponents. This practice goes back to the British colonial era, when identities were politicized, just as the Belgians did in colonial Rwanda, establishing ‘tribal authorities.’” Key report recommendations: “The missing ingredient in the international response is the creation of sufficient leverage or influence to shift the calculations of these violent kleptocrats from war to peace, from atrocities to human rights, from mass corruption to good governance. The surest way for the international community to build influence is to hit these “thieves of state” in their wallets.” “What is needed is a hard-target search for the dirty money, the ill-gotten gains from the last decade of looting. Choking the illicit financial flows of the kleptocrats is the key point of leverage available to the international community, given the vulnerability of stolen assets that are offshored in neighboring countries or around the world in the form of houses, cars, buildings, businesses, and bank accounts.” “Conflict can be transformed when hijacked governing institutions—first and foremost the military, which is simply a mishmash of ethnic militias—are reformed. Establishing measures of accountability is key. There must be financial accountability for the stolen assets; legal accountability for crimes against humanity; and political accountability which could exclude those responsible for the worst abuses from a future government. “The most promising policy approach would combine creative anti-money laundering measures with targeted sanctions aimed at kleptocratic networks, the combination of which would be robustly enforced with the objective of not just freezing a few assets, but rather freezing those willing to commit mass atrocities out of the international financial system altogether… This is revolutionary, because it would suddenly give international policymakers and diplomats a major point of leverage to impact the calculations of those willing to commit mass atrocities to maintain or gain power.” “Given the dominant position of the United States in the international financial system, and the extreme vulnerability to which the assets of South Sudan’s kleptocrats are exposed within that system, the United States is uniquely positioned to help alter the incentives for South Sudan’s leaders away from grand corruption and war, and to give peace a chance in that embattled and long-suffering land.” “Ultimately, South Sudanese people will drive reform and determine their future. From the outside, the United States, Europe, the United Nations, the African Union, and other concerned actors around the world can provide support and solidarity to the efforts of South Sudanese people who are on the front lines of efforts to build peace, good governance, and accountability.” Link to full report: http://eno.ug/2mZwPjE ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 South Sudan News Agency

Stories of horror from Myanmar's Rakhine State 04:40 Their homes burned and relatives killed, Rohingya have been fleeing northern Myanmar since October. They trek for miles along a dangerous route -- risking drowning, disease and capture by the military -- to cross the border into neighboring Bangladesh, where refugee camps provide temporary shelter. Tens of thousands of members of Myanmar's Muslim minority have left in this fashion, and their treatment may amount to "crimes against humanity," warns UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee. "When there's 77,000 people running away from their home towns, leaving everything ... the international community should really step up to the plate," she told CNN. Lee has visited northern Rakhine State, which has been largely off limits to journalists and NGO workers since early October, and spoken to many refugees. "What really struck me was when old men started to break down in tears in front of me and sob," she said, when interviewed on CNN's Newstream on Monday. "(They were) telling me they've seen their whole family killed in front of their eyes." Myanmar government spokeswoman Aye Aye Soe said the administration is "deeply concerned by reports of potential human rights abuses and have already set up an Investigation Commission led by Vice President U Myint Swe." Inside the Rohingya resistance 03:26 Violence The Myanmar government did not respond to a request for comment about Lee's claims. In a 4,000-word statement given to CNN in February, Aye Aye Soe denied allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine. "What is happening in Rakhine now is only security clearance sweeps being carried out with restraint and within rules and regulations against armed perpetrators," she said. "The instigators are using this situation to portray a disproportionate picture of 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing'." The violence began on October 9, when according to state media, a group of around 300 armed men attacked soldiers and police, sparking an intense crackdown by the Myanmar military. "We attacked them using our machetes, swords, and knives, and we seized their weapons to use against them," Atah Ullah -- leader of the Harakat al-Yaqeen, or "Faith Movement," which carried out the attack -- told CNN earlier this year. "We, the vulnerable and persecuted people, have asked the international community for protection against the atrocities by the government of Myanmar, but the international community turned its back on us," he said. "Finally, we cannot take it anymore." 16-month-old dies fleeing Myanmar violence 01:48 Abuses With the Myanmar military arresting hundreds of people in Rakhine, deploying attack helicopters and allegedly setting fire to villages, thousands of Rohingya refugees have poured over the border to camps in Bangladesh. Amnesty International said it has documented "a wide range of human rights violations" since the crackdown began, while Human Rights Watch accused the military of "numerous abuses ... including widespread arson, extrajudicial killings, and systematic rape and other sexual violence." In a piece for CNN Opinion in December, Matthew Smith of Thailand-based Fortify Rights warned that the world may be "watching a possible genocide unfold" in Rakhine. "I would not use (the word genocide) right now but it could amount to crimes against humanity," said Lee. She called on the international community to "walk the talk" on Myanmar, adding that Aung San Suu Kyi -- the country's long term democracy icon and de facto head of state -- "could and should speak up a little more." Suu Kyi has been widely criticized for failing to address alleged human rights abuses in Rakhine. Suu Kyi has asked for more "time and space" to resolve the problems, and many have pointed out that the country's military, rather than the civilian government, oversees the region. "It is important that the Investigation Commission is allowed to complete its work, and to demonstrate that Myanmar's own institutions are able to address our human rights challenges," Aye Aye Soe said. "In the meantime, we will continue to seek long term solutions to bring about lasting peace and stability in Rakhine." _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 CNN