This long-awaited documentary details the historic events that led to the Armenian Genocide and the rescue and unprecedented humanitarianism that followed, providing assistance to hundreds of thousands of displaced men, women, and children. The documentary makes extensive use of newly discovered film footage and archival photographs of orphans who were in Near East Relief’s care. Disclaimer: This film contains graphic images. For more information about the film, please visit theyshallnotperish.com. April 8th Screenings at The Times Center in New York: Matinee (2pm): $20/pp – Includes film and Q&A with the filmmakers and historians (group rates available for ten or more) Evening/Reception (5pm): $50/pp – Includes film, Q&A with the filmmakers and historians, and cocktail reception catered by Great Performances Panelists: George Billard – Writer & Director Shant Mardirossian – Executive Producer & NEF Board Member Peter Balakian – Expert Historian Susan Harper – Expert Historian Taner Akçam – Expert Historian & Sociologist To Purchase Tickets Please Visit: http://www.neareast.org/theyshallnotperish/ The Near East Foundation, known initially as Near East Relief, spearheaded this first great mobilization of international humanitarian assistance in the United States, in September 1915, in response to the Armenian Genocide. Driven by the conviction that ordinary citizens had the collective power to save the lives of people coping with adversity, the organization’s efforts helped save more than one million lives. As the first organization to provide direct relief to refugees, Near East Foundation’s work continues to be necessary and relevant today. All proceeds generated by this screening will go toward our current work improving lives in the Middle East. In conjunction with the premiere, The Near East Foundation’s educational partner Facing History and Ourselves will help bring the lessons learned from the film to classrooms across America. While NEF is committed to implementing economic development programs to ensure a better tomorrow, Facing History’s focus is on educating the next generation to help create a more compassionate and ethical world. As we experience the biggest refugee crisis since WWII, we hope that this partnership will call attention to what society can do to help vulnerable populations, and to the measures that can be taken to prevent similar atrocities from happening in the future. For media inquiries, sponsorships, groups over 10, or other questions about the event please contact Communications and Development Officer Andrea Crowley at acrowley@neareast.org. Follow updates on the event on Facebook and Twitter. THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Near East Foundation

An aerial view of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo: UNAMA/Ari Gaitanis 8 February 2017 – The Security Council and the United Nations political mission in Afghanistan have joined Secretary-General António Guterres in condemning the deadly attack outside of the Supreme Court in Kabul. “This attack is nothing short of an atrocity. Those responsible for planning and carrying out this horrendous act must be brought to justice,” the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, said in a statement issued earlier today. Mr. Yamamoto, who is the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), noted that the attack fits a pattern of violence against judicial authorities in recent years. Since 2015, UNAMA documented at least 74 attacks, which killed 89 people and injured 214 others. The Mission “reminds all parties that judges and staff of civilian courts – including the Supreme Court – are civilians,” the statement said. “Attacks intentionally targeting civilians are tantamount to war crimes.” At least 20 civilians, mostly female employees of the Supreme Court, were killed yesterday when a suicide attacker detonated a device outside the Court. No person or group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Calling the killings “heinous” and “cowardly,” the Council members late last night reiterated their serious concern at the threats posed by groups such as the Taliban, Al-Qaida, and the Islamic State (ISIL), on the local population, National Defence and Security Forces and the international presence in Afghanistan. They also stressed that “no violent or terrorist acts can reverse the Afghan-led process along the path towards peace, democracy and stability in Afghanistan, which is supported by the people and the Government of Afghanistan and by the international community.” (c) 2017 United Nations

A chilling new report by Amnesty International exposes the Syrian government’s calculated campaign of extrajudicial executions by mass hangings at Saydnaya Prison. Between 2011 and 2015, every week and often twice a week, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their prison cells and hanged to death. In five years, as many as 13,000 people, most of them civilians believed to be opposed to the government, were hanged in secret at Saydnaya. Human slaughterhouse: Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya prison, Syria also shows that the government is deliberately inflicting inhuman conditions on detainees at Saydnaya Prison through repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care. The report documents how these extermination policies have killed massive numbers of detainees. These practices, which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, are authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government. “The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut. “We demand that the Syrian authorities immediately cease extrajudicial executions and torture and inhuman treatment at Saydnaya Prison and in all other government prisons across Syria. Russia and Iran, the government’s closest allies, must press for an end to these murderous detention policies. The report reveals a routine of mass extrajudicial executions by hanging inside Saydnaya prison that was in place between 2011 and 2015. Every week – and often twice a week – victims were hanged in groups of up to 50 people, in the middle of the night and in total secrecy. There are strong reasons to believe that this routine is still ongoing today. Large numbers of detainees have also been killed as a result of the authorities’ extermination policies, which include repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care. In addition, detainees at Saydnaya Prison are forced to obey a set of sadistic and dehumanizing rules. The findings of the report are based on an intensive investigation, which was carried out over the course of one year, from December 2015 to December 2016. It involved first-hand interviews with 84 witnesses that included former Saydnaya guards and officials, detainees, judges and lawyers, as well as national and international experts on detention in Syria. A previous report published in August 2016, for which Amnesty International partnered with a team of specialists at Forensic Architecture, University of Goldsmiths to create a virtual 3D reconstruction of Saydnaya prison, estimated that more than 17,000 people have died in prisons across Syria as a result of the inhuman conditions and torture since the Syrian crisis began in 2011. This figure does not include the estimated 13,000 additional deaths as a result of the extrajudicial executions exposed in this report. The role of the Military Field Court Not one of the detainees condemned to hang at Saydnaya Prison is given anything that resembles an actual trial. Before they are hanged, victims undergo a perfunctory, one or two-minute procedure at a so-called Military Field Court. These proceedings are so summary and arbitrary that they cannot be considered to constitute a judicial process. Testimonies from former government officials, guards, judges and detainees helped Amnesty International shape a detailed picture of the farcical procedures that lead up to the hangings. One former judge from a Syrian military court told Amnesty International the “court” operates outside the rules of the Syrian legal system. “The judge will ask the name of the detainee and whether he committed the crime. Whether the answer is yes or no, he will be convicted… This court has no relation with the rule of law. This is not a court,” he said. The convictions issued by this so-called court are based on false confessions extracted from detainees under torture. Detainees are not allowed access to a lawyer or given an opportunity to defend themselves – most have been subjected to enforced disappearance, held in secret and cut off from the outside world. Those who are condemned to death do not find out about their sentences until minutes before they are hanged. Mass hangings Hangings at Saydnaya are carried out once or twice a week, usually on Monday and Wednesday, in the middle of the night. Those whose names are called out were told they would be transferred to civilian prisons in Syria. Instead, they are moved to a cell in the basement of the prison and beaten severely. They are then transported to another prison building on the grounds of Saydnaya, where they are hanged. Throughout this process, they remain blindfolded. They do not know when or how they will die until the noose was placed around their necks. “They kept them [hanging] there for 10 to 15 minutes. Some didn’t die because they are light. For the young ones, their weight wouldn’t kill them. The officers’ assistants would pull them down and break their necks,” said a former judge who witnessed the hangings. Detainees held in the building in the floors above the “execution room” reported that they sometimes heard the sounds of these hangings. “If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes… We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then,” said “Hamid”, a former military officer arrested in 2011. As many as 50 people can be hanged in one night. Their bodies are taken away by the truckload to be secretly buried in mass graves. Their families are given no information about their fate. Policy of extermination Survivors of Saydnaya also provided spine-chilling and shocking testimonies about life inside the prison. They evoke a world carefully designed to humiliate, degrade, sicken, starve and ultimately kill those trapped inside. These harrowing accounts have led Amnesty International to conclude that the suffering and appalling conditions at Saydnaya have been deliberately inflicted on detainees as a policy of extermination. Many of the prisoners said they were raped or in some cases forced to rape other prisoners. Torture and beatings are used as a regular form of punishment and degradation, often leading to life-long damage, disability or even death. The cell floors are covered with blood and puss from prisoners’ wounds. The bodies of dead detainees are collected by the prison guards each morning, around 9am. “Every day there would be two or three dead people in our wing… I remember the guard would ask how many we had. He would say, ‘Room number one – how many? Room number two – how many?’ and on and on... There was one time that… the guards came to us, room by room, and beat us on the head, chest and neck. Thirteen people from our wing died that day,” said “Nader”, a former Saydnaya detainee. Food and water are regularly cut off. When food is delivered, it is often scattered over the cell floors by the guards, where it mixes with blood and dirt. The very few who leave Saydnaya often do so weighing half the body weight they had when they arrived. Saydnaya also has its own set of “special rules”. Prisoners are not allowed to make any sounds, speak or even whisper. They are forced to assume certain positions when the guards come into the cells and merely looking at the guards is punishable by death. The international community, notably the UN Security Council, must take immediate and urgent action, to put an end to this suffering. “A firm decision must be made by the UN Security Council. It cannot turn a blind eye to these horrible crimes and must pass a resolution demanding that the Syrian government opens up its prisons for international monitors. The UN Human Rights Council must immediately demand an independent investigation into these grave violations of international law,” said Lynn Maalouf. “The cold blooded killing of thousands of defenceless prisoners, along with the carefully crafted and systematic programmes of psychological and physical torture that are in place inside Saydnaya Prison cannot be allowed to continue. Those responsible for these heinous crimes must be brought to justice.” __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Amnesty International

If Ukraine turns away from the Minsk Agreement, there will be no Western leverage to put pressure on Russia. Ukraine is not broken and will defend itself, writes Coynash [Volodymyr Petrov/EPA] by Halya Coynash Halya Coynash a journalist and member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group. The first Grad multiple launch rockets were fired from areas under Kremlin-backed militant control hit Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine only a day after US President Donald Trump held his first official phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. While some viewed the timing of this attack as a chilling confirmation of the new United States administration's willingness to make deals with Moscow at Ukraine's expense, neither the motives behind the sudden escalation, nor its effect on the current situation are that straightforward. There were certainly grounds for concern and the feeling of angst, only strengthened when a Kremlin spokesperson said that the recent escalation in Ukraine proved the need for "dialogue" between the US and Russia. It is implementation of the Minsk Agreement that is required, not "dialogue". This, however, includes a ceasefire, withdrawal of all heavy weapons and, eventually, the securing of the Russian-Ukrainian border. But Russia is actively trying get the Minsk-linked sanctions lifted without fulfilling the commitments it made. The fears of some Ukrainians that the new US administration may be amenable to make deals with Russia that bypass the conditions of the Minsk Agreement are not unfounded. Even if we ignore the US intelligence report demonstrating that Russia directly interfered in the US elections to get Trump elected, Trump's own statements have given Ukraine reason to fear for the future of US support to Ukraine and its commitment to the sanctions. Since Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea, Trump has on numerous occasions praised Putin, even calling Russia's aggression against Ukraine "smart". During the election campaign, he stated that they "would be looking into" recognising Crimea as a Russian territory and lifting sanctions on Moscow. He has even dismissed Russia's involvement in the downing of the Malaysian MH17 airliner over militant-controlled territory in July 2014 despite compelling evidence. It was after that disaster that hard-hitting sanctions were imposed on Russia and these sanctions were tied to Moscow's compliance with the Minsk Agreement. Trump's people have been actively meeting with Russians and fuelling Moscow's hopes that sanctions will be lifted. There is also an ongoing campaign to push the claim that sanctions "don't work" and that Ukraine may have to "give up" Crimea in exchange for some kind of a peace deal in Eastern Ukraine. The sanctions, including those over Crimea, are hurting Russia hard and the Kremlin needs them lifted. But if it hoped to steer "dialogue" on to such deals by escalating the conflict, its plan may have backfired. Russia is 'behind the Avdiivka attack' Avdiivka, a strategically important city under Ukrainian control, came under attack on January 28. A Bellingcat report has confirmed reports and videos indicating that the intensive shelling of the city was carried out from residential parts of militant-controlled Donetsk. Moscow's attempt to blame Ukraine for this escalation was largely rejected by the international community, since the scale of the attack, and the use of Grad missiles and other heavy artillery makes it inconceivable that this attack was carried out without Moscow's approval. Andrei Piontkovsky, a Russian political analyst, suggested that Russian military personnel may have been in charge of the operation. Western journalists who visited Avdiivka have also reported evidence of "a psychological warfare operation of a sophistication that suggested Russian involvement". Ukrainian soldiers, for example, were bombarded with text messages saying: "You're just meat to your commanders." Another reason for assuming Russian military involvement in this attack is that the the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) officials in Vienna were warned of a likely escalation on January 26. Daniel Baer, the former US ambassador to the OSCE, recently pointed out that even if fighting is on both sides, this is still a situation where "Ukraine is the victim and Russia the aggressor". Baer, however, was removed on January 20, and it remains to be seen whether the new US Mission to the OSCE will continue to take a firm stand on this issue. This is, after all, the critical question. Retaining a grip on Ukraine Whether or not the order came from the Kremlin directly, Ukraine is in no doubt that Moscow's primary aim remains the same - to retain its grip on Ukraine through the debilitating and destabilising effect of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics are entirely artificial creations, propped by Russian money, weapons and fighters. Real implementation of the Minsk Agreement would almost certainly lead to their collapse. The militants themselves have acknowledged having no interest in the Minsk Agreement working. Russia knows this and does not want to relinquish its control over Ukraine. The Russian-backed militants continue to delay releasing hostages and violate ceasefires. The White House was very slow in reacting to the new escalation and during his phone conversation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Trump only mentioned, rather oddly, that the US is willing to help "restore peace along the border". Nonetheless Nikki Haley, the new US Ambassador to the UN, has come out with a clear statement indicating that there is no change in policy, either on Crimea or on the Minsk agreements. This leaves Russia with the option of trying to discredit the Minsk agreements inside Ukraine or to prove that Kiev is at fault. One motive for the carnage and suffering caused in Avdiivka may have been to convince Ukrainians - and perhaps the US - that the Minsk accords are not working and should be abandoned. If the Trump administration is hoping to come to some kind of arrangement with Putin, it would probably want to avoid doing so by lifting sanctions when agreement conditions have not been met, and when other countries are standing by them. Ukraine will defend itself There are certainly voices of disgruntlement inside Ukraine, but there is understanding that the removal of sanctions against Russia will encourage its aggression further. As political commentator Serhiy Taran warned, if Ukraine turns away from the Minsk Agreement, there will be no western leverage to put pressure on Russia. Moscow may, however, have made one other miscalculation. In 2014, Ukraine was in no state to defend itself properly after four years of the Viktor Yanukovych regime. During the latest offensive, the country showed its strength. There was extraordinarily efficient cooperation between the military, government agencies and civilian organisations ensuring that people in the besieged city cut off from electricity and heating had somewhere to go. In other cities, hundreds waited patiently to donate blood. Ukraine is not broken and will defend itself. The latest offensive has, nonetheless, demonstrated how cynically Moscow will use weapons of death and destruction for its own questionable gains. This is a lesson the new Trump administration would do well to heed before attempting any deals with Putin. © AL jAZEERA 2017

The Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, expressed grave concern at the continued level of violence in several areas of South Sudan. “President Salva Kiir has made a commitment to end the violence and bring about peace, yet we still see ongoing clashes, and the risk that mass atrocities will be committed remains ever-present,” said the Special Adviser. The peace process has yet to be accompanied by a complete cessation of hostilities, undermining the likelihood that the National Dialogue proposed by the Government will be seen as credible. More than 52,000 South Sudanese fled to Uganda in January alone, coming primarily from areas in and around Yei, Morobo, Lainya and Kajo-Keji. Some 24,000 arrived between 25 and 31 January, of which 4,500 arrived in a single day, on 28 January. Many have given accounts of the killing of civilians, destruction of homes, sexual violence, and looting of livestock and property, and cite fear of arrest and torture. The Special Adviser is particularly alarmed at the situation in Kajo-Keji, Central Equatoria, (south of Juba), where civilians have fled in fear of violence en masse. The access of the United Nations peacekeeping mission to and around Kajo-Keji has reportedly been restricted despite the serious security situation, as peacekeepers were initially blocked from accessing the area. The freedom of movement of residents has also reportedly been limited. Some have reportedly been instructed to leave Kajo-Keji. Others who fled their homes and moved towards the border area between South Sudan and Uganda were reportedly intercepted by government forces. Those seeking refuge report using a number of informal border crossing points to enter Uganda, as armed groups are preventing the use of major roads, forcing them to travel through the bush often without access to food and water. Various areas in the Equatorias, among other regions, have been similarly targeted, and some 20,000 people were displaced from Wau Shilluk in Upper Nile in the last week, following violence that left many without emergency health care, safe drinking water, food and shelter. In November 2016, the Special Adviser drew attention to the dire situation in Yei River State, following his visit to Yei River town, where credible information suggested that a scorched earth campaign was underway, targeting suspected opposition members and civilian communities believed by authorities to be their supporters. He reported the expulsion of farmers from their land, looting of property and burning of villages, as well as brutal violence against civilians. Despite extensive discussions in the United Nations Security Council in November and December 2016 on a proposal to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan and increase targeted sanctions, agreement was not reached on either proposal. In the meantime, weapons have continued to flow into the country. In the margins of the January 2017 African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the African Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and the United Nations in a joint statement expressed their deep concerns over the continuing spread of fighting and risk of inter-communal violence escalating into mass atrocities. “If South Sudan is to achieve peace,” the Special Adviser affirmed, “all belligerents must urgently cease hostilities and invest in the peace process to settle their differences, before the territorial fragmentation and destruction of the social fabric of this young country become irreversible.” For media queries please contact: Taryn Lesser Office on Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/ Phone: +1 917 367 5254 Email: lesser@un.org ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide

Prime Minister Hun Sen shakes hands with Myanmar President Htin Kyaw at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh on Saturday. Facebook Prime Minister Hun Sen has reassured his Burmese counterpart that the Kingdom will not interfere in the escalating “Rohingya issue”, a day after a damning UN report revealed widespread gang rape and murder allegedly committed against the Muslim ethnic minority by Myanmar security forces. During talks at the Peace Palace on Saturday, the premier told President Htin Kyaw that “Cambodia disagrees with the attempt to internationalise the Rohingya issue, considering it as an internal issue of Myanmar, and the ASEAN Charter prohibits the interference in the internal affairs of each Member State,” according to a Facebook post from Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith. Reached yesterday for clarification, Kanharith said Cambodia could not condemn Myanmar’s actions and that “the government of each country has to settle their own issues”, though Prime Minister Najib Razak of fellow ASEAN state Malaysia recently called for the world to act to end what he characterised as “genocide”. Hun Sen’s comments came barely a day after the UN released a harrowing report in which 204 interviewees who had fled to Bangladesh testified they had seen homes burned, people killed, and women and girls raped in Rakhine state (see page 12 for more information on the report). “They held me tight, and I was raped by one of them. My 5-year old daughter tried to protect me, she was screaming, one of the men took out a long knife and killed her by slitting her throat,” a mother of three from Kyet Yoe Pyin told UN investigators. Another described how her 8-month-old baby was slaughtered with a knife before her eyes as five men raped her. More than half of the 101 women interviewed reported they were raped or subjected to other forms of sexual violence. In stark contrast to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s comments, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein called on the international community to urge Myanmar to end the atrocities. “The gravity and scale of these allegations begs the robust reaction of the international community,” he said in a statement on Friday. Dr Maung Zarni, Burmese co-author of the Slow Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas and non-resident fellow at the Sleuk Rith Institute in Cambodia, said the parallels between the human rights abuses committed in Myanmar and those which ravaged Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge should prompt the premier to be more compassionate. Prime Minister Hun Sen talks with Myanmar President Htin Kyaw at the Peace Palace on Saturday. Facebook “Myanmar’s decades-long persecution and extreme mistreatment of Rohingyas have been causing periodic and voluminous flows of persecution-fleeing refugees . . . across both South and Southeast Asia, who are in turn preyed upon by the ruthless human-trafficking criminal gangs,” Dr Zarni said. “A population having been halved as a matter of provable national policy based on extreme racism against an ethnic group is deeply troubling. This is where the international concern comes in,” he said, adding the crimes amounted to “ethnic cleansing”. Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, said the prime minister’s assurances were a form of “mutual back-scratching among rights-abusing leaders”. “The real reason [Prime Minister] Hun Sen said that is [because] he doesn’t want anyone interfering in his own rapidly intensifying crackdown on opposition party members and civil society activists.” While the ASEAN Charter outlines respect for a country’s sovereignty, it also calls on member states to respond effectively to all forms of threats and to ensure that people live in peace in a just and harmonious environment in those member states. The OHCHR’s acting regional representative for Southeast Asia, Laurent Meillan, said in an email yesterday that the report called for stronger engagement from ASEAN to address the plight of the Rohingyas. “The ASEAN principle of non-interference should be interpreted with flexibility when significant humanitarian and human rights crises occur in the region,” he said. Mohammed Rashid, a Rohingya refugee living in Cambodia, said while it was nearly impossible to reach those being persecuted in the closed-off zone, Cambodia should do anything it could to assist. “Yes, yes they should help,” he said. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY TOUCH SOKHA __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Phnom Penh Post

The issue of North Korean refugees is, ethically and legally, a global responsibility . By Lord Alton of Liverpool (Co-Chair, APPG) & James Burt (Special Advisor, APPG) Korea Joongang Daily (06.02.2017) – http://bit.ly/2kcOY9o – Displacement and suffering have shaped the human landscape of the Korean peninsula. Annexed in 1910 and occupied until 1945 by the Empire of Japan, between 4 and 6 million Koreans were forced into slavery as laborers and up to 200,000 Korean women served as sexual slaves. Come 1945, 20 percent of the Korean population had been displaced and nearly half a million had been killed. This legacy of loss and dislocation continued throughout the Korean War and forced hundreds of thousands of Koreans to migrate between the newly formed North and South Koreas. For the people of South Korea, memories of these times are still raw. The ongoing struggles over Japanese apologies, compensation and how to deal with North Korea all point to wounds that have yet to heal. But for North Koreans, memories of displacement and brutalization cannot be confined to the historical record for they are also the reality of life today. A 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry established that extermination; enslavement; torture; rape; forced abortions; sexual violence; and persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds are all prevalent in North Korea. That such abuses continue is surely one of the greatest failures of the modern era’s collective response to atrocities. One consequence of this failure has been the creation of a North Korean refugee crisis. Since the late 1990s, when significant numbers of North Koreans began to flee their homeland following severe famine, it is estimated that more than 200,000 have fled to China. In that time, just 30,000 North Koreans have successfully reached the safety of South Korea, while about 2,000 have settled in North America and Europe, including close to 1,000 in the United Kingdom. In theory, the government of China should accept North Koreans as asylum seekers and extend the many protections granted by the U.N. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. It should allow the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees access to screen, determine the status and protect those in need. And it should not practice refoulement — the forcible return of North Koreans to a country where they risk persecution. Despite this, plus many other international obligations (namely the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), China deports up to 6,000 North Koreans every year. Upon their repatriation, North Koreans, of which about 70 percent are women and girls, face torture, sexual violence, imprisonment and even execution. What can the world do to end this illegal situation? The international community has long called upon Beijing to stop the arrests and deportation of North Koreans, while numerous U.N. speeches and resolutions have called upon the Government of North Korea to respect fundamental human rights. The final report of the former United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, noted, “The Secretary-General remains concerned that women who seek to leave or have left [North Korea] are subject to trafficking and sexual abuse … serious human rights violations, including torture and ill-treatment.” That our words and concerns have failed to protect North Korean escapees is clear. Sitting thousands of miles from Northeast Asia, and facing the might of the Government of China, it would be easy to see desperate and fleeing North Koreans as a responsibility for someone else. But the issue of North Korean refugees is, ethically and legally, a global responsibility. Where vulnerable escapees face journeys that risk imprisonment or death, we are compelled to provide our support. The North Korean government is the cause of the refugee crisis and should be our long-term target, but engaging the Chinese government may provide a more feasible short-term solution. Clearly, Beijing does not want North Korean refugees on its territory, so conscientious states should begin to quietly offer an alternative to China: namely, that their embassies and consulates would, without publicity or fanfare, take custody of captured North Koreans from Chinese authorities and aid their travels to safe havens such as South Korea or Europe. In return, China would gain further leverage over North Korea, end years of negative publicity, and put a foot on the right side of history. This recommendation may appear improbable or unrealistic. But as Nelson Mandela frequently told us, the most arduous challenges seem impossible until they are conquered. That China would welcome a solution to an internal refugee crisis should not surprise us. Instead, it should encourage us to formulate new solutions. A day will come when all North Koreans are free. Until that day, we must do what we can to help refugees that fall within our grasp. *Lord Alton of Liverpool is co-chair of the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea and a crossbench member of the House of Lords. James Burt is special adviser to the group and director of research at the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea. (C) 2017 Human Rights Without Frontiers

Sednaya prison outside the Syrian capital Damascus where thousands were secretly executed, according to a report by Amnesty International. Illustrations taken from the Forensic Architecture Platform (Amnesty International) BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government secretly executed between 5,000 and 13,000 people in just one prison as part of its campaign to eliminate opposition to his rule, a new report by the watchdog group Amnesty International has found. The killings took place over a four-year period between 2011 and 2015 in the notorious Sednaya facility outside Damascus, and the bodies were later disposed of in mass graves, according to the report released Monday by Amnesty. Human rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of political prisoners have disappeared in the Syrian prison system since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in 2011, and they suspect that many of those have been tortured to death or secretly killed. The accounts of these killings are in addition to the figure of 17,000 that Amnesty counted in an earlier report on the extrajudicial killings issued last August, compounding an emerging picture of what Amnesty referred to as a policy of “extermination” against opponents of the government. The majority of those executed at Sednaya were political prisoners, including many of the ordinary people who joined in the peaceful protests against Assad, the report says. Some were rebels who took up arms, and others were officers and soldiers who defected from government forces. But for the most part they were “doctors, engineers, protesters,” one former prison official is quoted as saying. “They were somehow understood to be linked to the revolution. Sednaya is the place to finish the revolutionaries. It’s the end for them.” Former detainee Omar al-Shogre before his arrest, left, and shortly after his release from Seydnaya prison, according to Amnesty International. (Amnesty International) The report describes in chilling detail how the prisoners were taken out of their cells in batches, of up to 50 at a time, twice a week and in the middle of the night, typically on Mondays and Wednesdays. They were given only cursory trials lasting one to three minutes at one of two military field courts that offered no semblance of judicial process, with sentences typically handed down on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. When the time came for their executions, the prisoners were handcuffed, blindfolded and led to a basement cell containing 10 stands and 10 nooses. A former judge from the military court described the executions, saying it would often take up to 10 to 15 minutes for the prisoners to die. “Some didn’t die because they are light. For the young ones, their weight wouldn’t kill them. The officers’ assistants would pull them down and break their necks. Two officers’ assistants were in charge of this.” Amnesty said it based its estimate of between 5,000 and 13,000 hangings conducted this way on testimony of 31 former prisoners, four prison officials and three judges familiar with specific instances of the executions and the frequency with which they appeared to occur. They are identified in the report only by their last names because of safety concerns. Amnesty said the executions “amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity” and were authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government. “The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut. Amnesty International report: Syria carried out mass hangings at military prison Amnesty International says in its newest report that a 'systematic campaign of mass hangings' killed up to 13,000 detainees in Syria's Sednaya prison. (Reuters) The allegations come at a sensitive time for Assad, who is in the process of crushing the nearly six-year-old rebellion against his rule but still lacks international legitimacy. The findings of the report are expected to be on the agenda for the next round of Syrian peace talks, scheduled to be held in Geneva on Feb. 20, Amnesty said. It also called for an independent United Nations investigation into the atrocities. The report also contains details of what it calls the “sadistic and dehumanizing” conditions under which the prisoners are kept, including repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water and medical care. Many more prisoners die from torture and neglect, Amnesty said. “Many of the prisoners said they were raped or in some cases forced to rape other prisoners. Torture and beatings are used as a regular form of punishment and degradation, often leading to life-long damage, disability or even death,” the report says. “The cell floors are covered with blood and puss from prisoners’ wounds. The bodies of dead detainees are collected by the prison guards each morning, around 9 a.m.” __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Washington Post

Soldiers dragged a pregnant woman who was in labour out of her house in Myanmar's western Rakhine state and smashed her stomach with a stick. "They killed the baby by stomping on it with heavy boots. Then they burned the house," a 19-year-old woman witness told United Nations investigators. A five-year-old girl ran screaming to try to protect her mother as she was being gang raped, when one of the rapists pulled out a long knife and slit the child's throat. "I thought I would die but I survived," the mother told investigators. A just-released UN report based on the testimonies of Rohingya who have reached refugee camps in Bangladesh details mass gang rape, killings, brutal beatings, the torching of homes and people and disappearances in what the UN says "very likely" amounts to crimes against humanity. The report describes evidence gathered during interviews with more than 200 Rohingya in the camps as a "calculated policy of terror" by Myanmar's security forces under the guise of a military lockdown of Muslim villages. The Kutapalong Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. More than 65,000 Rohingya have fled across the Myanmar-Bangladesh border since October, after the Burmese army launched what it calls "clearance operations" in response to an attack on border police. Photo: Getty Images It states that for decades almost one million Rohingya in Rakhine have suffered systemic discrimination and policies of exclusion and marginalisation. For months Myanmar's government has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine, claiming a lawful counter-insurgency operation is underway after attacks on police posts in early October. Handout satellite images of two villages in Rakhine state, Myanmar, before and after they were destroyed: Kyet Yoe Pyin is shown at left on March 30 and November 10, 2016, and Wa Peik in 2014 and on November 10, 2016. Photo: Human Rights Watch/New York Times But the report crushes expectations that Myanmar's decades of military-led repression had come to an end when a pro-democracy movement led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide election in late 2015. The report's release in Geneva comes at a time of heightened religious and communal tensions in the Buddhist-majority country following the assassination last week of Ko Ni, a prominent Muslim lawyer and key member of the ruling National League for Democracy, who was drafting democratic reforms to Myanmar's military-authored Constitution. And security analysts fear the treatment of the Rohingya will lead to a new long-term insurgency emerging in South-east Asia, backed by international Islamic extremists. Zeid bin Raad al-Hussein, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, has called for the perpetrators of what he called the Rakhine "horrors" to be held to account, possibly through the establishment of an international commission of inquiry or the involvement of the International Criminal Court. A family who fled violence in Salipara village in Myanmar, sit by a fire in the Balu Kali Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo: Getty Images "The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable," he said. "What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother's milk?" Prince Zeid said Ms Suu Kyi, who has been widely criticised for failing to stand up for Rohingya, promised to investigate after he telephoned her on Saturday (Australian time) and urged her to use every means available to exert pressure on the military and security forces to end their operations in Rakhine. The UN's report includes testimony regarding the murder of Rohingya children. Photo: Getty Images "She said they would require further information," he said. The military still wields enormous power in Myanmar and Ms Suu Kyi's relationship with the generals who control key security ministries remains fragile. Rohingya fishermen pull a raft made of empty plastic containers along the coastline of the Bay of Bengal in Maungdaw, western Rakhine state, in January. Their usual fishing boats were outlawed three months earlier when Myanmar authorities launched a sweeping counter-insurgency campaign. Photo: AP In Yangon, presidential spokesman Zaw Htay said "these are extremely serious allegations, and we are deeply concerned". He said they would be probed by an already established investigation commission which in January downplayed reports of human rights abuses in Rakhine, despite the fact that more than 60,000 Rohingya had fled their homes since October, and the publication of numerous detailed reports of military killings and abuse in the state, including by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which obtained satellite images of the widespread destruction of Rohingya villages. Rohingya girls join a basic mathematics class in a school run by an NGO in Penang, Malaysia. Photo: Getty Images UN investigators gathered the evidence in the camps after Myanmar's government refused them unfettered access to the worst-affected areas of Rakhine. They obtained images and videos of bullet and knife wounds, burns, and other serious injuries from people they said were deeply traumatised. Yanghee Lee, UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur to Myanmar. Photo: AP Victims told how hundreds of Rohingya houses, schools, markets, shops and mosques were burned by police, the army and sometimes civilian mobs. They described the destruction of food and food sources, including paddy fields, and the confiscation of livestock. "Testimonies were collected of several cases where the army or Rakhine villagers locked an entire family, including elderly and disabled people, inside a house and set it on fire, killing them all," the report said. The report said the violence raises serious concerns that Myanmar forces are engaged in "ethnic cleansing" to force Rohingya from Rakhine, where they have lived for generations. Many Burmese ultra-nationalists claim the Rohingya are illegal immigrant "Bengalis" with no cultural, religious or social ties to Myanmar. Rohingya are routinely denied freedom of movement and other basic rights, including citizenship, in the country. More than 600 Rohingya have been arrested in the latest operations, and some are believed to have been released, but no details have been released of their fate. Intermittent violent clashes between Buddhist nationalists and Rohingya have erupted in Rakhine since 2012, forcing tens of thousands of Rohingya into squalid camps. The report quotes one survivor as saying "now is the worst it has ever been … we have heard from our grandparents that there were bad things happening in the past, but never like this". _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Sydney Morning Herald

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has voiced its consent for forming a special court to investigate the genocide in the Kurdistan Region, said spokesperson for KRG Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs. The idea was proposed by the ministry, Fuad Osman told BasNews on Saturday, adding that a committee has been set up to study the details of forming the court according to the international standards. To form the court in Kurdistan, the official added, the committee will benefit from the experience of the countries which have already installed a court of genocide. Osman said the court will look into the cases of genocide, arranging the information in a way that could facilitate the introduction of the crimes worldwide. Late 1980s, the Iraqi government conducted a series of mass executions against the Kurdish people, known as Anfal. The process conducted in several phases within a few months claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish men, women and children who were either shot or buried alive in mass graves across the southern deserts of Iraq. On March 16, 1988, nearly 5000 civilians from the Kurdish town of Halabja died of a chemical bombing by Saddam Hussein's regime. More recently, as part of the Kurdish nation, thousands of Yezidi people in Nineveh province, living in Sinjar and its parish, faced agonizing massacres at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) militants. Some countries have recognized Halabja and Anfal as genocide but as for the Yezidi massacre, since the Iraqi government is not a member of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the introduction of the crime globally seems more difficult. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Basnews

According to the Reuters report titled 'Pirates, cyclones and mud: Bangladesh's island solution to Rohingya crisis' published Friday, the island takes two hours to reach by boat from the nearest settlement and does not have mobile-phone reception. The report says, during the monsoon, the island is often flooded and, when the seas are calm, pirates roam nearby waters hunting for fishermen to kidnap for ransom. "Welcome to Thengar Char, a muddy stain in the murky waters of the Bay of Bengal, identified by Bangladesh as a short-term solution to the humanitarian crisis unfolding on its border with Myanmar, across which some 70,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled," the news agency said. According to Reuters, those refugees, escaping an army crackdown on insurgents that began in October, have joined 'more than 200,000' Rohingya already living in official and makeshift camps. "Bangladesh says the refugees bring crime and a risk of disease," it said. Dhaka's plan to move thousands of people to this uninhabited island Thengar Char in Noakhali's Hatia, about 250 km (150 miles) northwest of the border camps the Rohingyas, was 'much criticised' by humanitarian workers when it was first proposed in 2015, Reuters said. It said Bangladesh is sticking to the plan while 'most experts dismiss the scheme as impractical'. A Bangladeshi minister told Reuters this week that the government was determined to push the plan ahead, adding authorities would provide shelters, other facilities and livestock. Local administrators, however, say they have not been informed, and when Reuters visited the island the only signs of activity were a few buffalo grazing lazily on the yellow grass along its shores. "We have only heard bad things about the Rohingya. If they work with the pirates and get involved in crime - we don't want them here," Mizanur Rahman, 48, the administrator of Might Bangha village, the closest settlement to Thengar Char, told Reuters. Rahman added, however, that if the Rohingya were "good people", they should be helped on humanitarian grounds. Others from the village echoed that sentiment, saying they were fellow Muslims and deserved assistance. The crisis is the biggest challenge facing the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, straining Myanmar's relations with the countries of the region hosting large Rohingya populations such as Bangladesh and Malaysia, but also the United States. About 1.1 million Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship. Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, while the authorities in Dhaka say they are Myanmar nationals and must ultimately go back. There are currently around 30,000 Rohingya living in camps run by the United Nations near border with Myanmar, while tens of thousands more are crammed into slums that have grown up around them, without proper sanitation or healthcare, according to Reuters. The Rohingya from those settlements sometimes find employment, but most are sustained by local villagers and rations quietly distributed by international aid agencies. "We can operate here, but we can't really talk about it," one aid worker based in the border region told Reuters. The Rohingya refugees Reuters spoke to did not want to stay where they were - but neither did they want to be moved to Thengar Char. "We left everything in Myanmar," said Abu Salam from Kya Guang Taung, a village in northern Myanmar that was destroyed in the crackdown. He crossed the border in December. "That's where our home is. If only we could get citizenship, we would like to go back." © http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2017/02/03/bangladesh-island-chosen-for-rohingya-refugees-uninhabited-flooded-reuters

Supporters carry the coffin of U Ko Ni in Rangoon, Burma, on January 30, 2017. © 2017 Reuters The murder of U Ko Ni, a longtime rights and democracy activist, respected constitutional lawyer, and legal advisor for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, is a grave loss for Burma and for all those who seek to promote tolerance and respect for human rights in the country. As one of the few remaining Muslims with the stature to influence the NLD’s policies, he was a voice of reason amid a rising tide of intolerance. On Sunday afternoon, U Ko Ni was shot dead outside Rangoon airport while holding his grandson in his arms. He had just returned from accompanying a government minister on an official trip to Indonesia to discuss ways to overcome inter-religious differences. The alleged gunman was arrested while attempting to flee the scene. I first met U Ko Ni in Rangoon last June, at a Human Rights Watch news conference for the launch of a report I wrote calling on the newly elected NLD government to amend or repeal laws criminalizing peaceful speech and assembly. While he supported our call to reform Burma’s outdated and repressive laws, he stressed that changing a system developed over the course of 50 years of military rule could not all happen at once. After the news conference, we met in the hotel coffee shop. U Ko Ni, fasting for Ramadan, spoke quietly but intensely about the many ways in which Muslims are marginalized in Burma and his desire to make a difference. He raised concerns about the prevalence of anti-Muslim hate speech on social media and the need to find ways to counter it. He was thoughtful, creative, principled, and determined to fight for justice – all qualities that are much needed in Burma today. While the motive for his murder is still unknown, what is clear is that the country has lost a strong voice for tolerance and inclusion at a time when it needs it most. The many people whose lives were touched by his activism, his legal work, and his principled compassion will mourn his tragic death. But the greatest challenge falls now to the NLD, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who should honor his legacy by forcefully and consistently acting to protect the rights of the country’s increasingly persecuted Muslim population – whether ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine State or the minority communities in Burma’s urban areas. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Human Rights Watch