We at Darfur Women Action Group DWAG are outraged about the Nertiti massacre and the continuous violence and brutality of the Sudanese government in Darfur. On January 1, 2017, the Sudanese Armed Forces in uniform viciously attacked the city of Nertiti. This brutal attack resulted in a massacre that killed 11 and wounded over 70 civilians, the majority of who were children under 18. In addition, countless of disappearances have been reported. The Nertiti massacre shocked the world's conscience with resultant urging of the United Nation Security Council (UNCS) to act. This brutal incident has inflicted unspeakable physical and psychological harm on the victims and their families and has terrified many in the Diaspora whose families fell victim. The massacre of the Nertiti people today is yet another horrific incident in the 13 year old presence of ongoing violent killings, rapes, arrests and torture that have devastated the lives of the innocent civilians of Darfur.Countless men, women, and children have lost their lives while having to endure unimaginable suffering, with nowhere to turn. While stationed in Nertiti, UNAMID forces were not far from the scene of the incident, yet did nothing to stop civilians from being massacred. The United Nations African Union mission that was deployed 10 years ago to protect civilians is failing regrettably as does not fulfill its mandate by allowing the government of Sudan to continue its surge of violence unreported. President al- Bashir is an internationally known criminal, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, due to the inaction and silence of the international community, he remains free to continue his genocidal attacks; this most recent massacre is testimony to this fact. Even as millions have been forced to flee their homes for over a decade, they remain under brutal attack. Furthermore, the Nertiti massacre underscores the reality that the international engagement with Sudan has emboldened President al-Bashir and has enabled him to get away with slaughter with impunity. In 2016 the European Union (EU) engaged in a new collaborative initiative with the government of Sudan to stop the flow of African refugees into Europe. It is extremely dismaying that the EU majority in the ICC (which legally requires the arrest of al-Bashir), has dismissed its responsibility and has, instead initiated a collaboration that allows giving funding to Sudan. We believe that the corrupt Sudanese regime will use funds from the EU to purchase more weapons, instead of aiding refugees. On December 27th, the US State Department issued a statement praising Khartoum's promise to improve humanitarian access in Sudan. The Obama Administration's State Department spokesman said that "the Government of Sudan's recent efforts to improve humanitarian access (https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/12/266095.htm) and that it "represent a significant step toward improving humanitarian access. instead of demanding more access or as proof of what Bashir has promised It's worth noting that, these kinds of statements about a government that has murdered its own people and denied humanitarian access for years will only serve as painting a nice picture of them and will only embolden and enable the regime to continue its actions against its people. It is particularly important that we speak up and demand that our leaders be vigilant and stand up to injustice where ever it is - at home or internationally. From speaking with a Nertiti resident, we have learned that the massacre was ordered by the Governor of West Darfur, Gaafar Abdulhakam, who is a well known criminal and who continued to implement al-Bashir's plan in Darfur. Thus, he has been rewarded to become a State Governor. We call on the United Nations Security Council members and urge them to demand an investigation and to authorize UNAMID to use its mandate to protect civilians and bring the perpetrators to face justice. We demand that UNSC press for immediate humanitarian access to enable medical treatment for wounded civilians. We call on the ICC to investigate and bring charges against Gaafar Amdulhakam, the Governor of West Darfur to face justice for ordering the attack on Nerteti and to implement the pending arrest warrant against al-Bashir to end the cycle of violence in Darfur. We call on the UNSC to send a delegate and fact finding mission to Sudan to investigate and report the details of the massacre and the use of chemical weapon as reported by Amnesty International. We call on the US Government to publicly condemn the massacre and call for accountability of the perpetrators DWAG urges its supporters to continue to speak out and hold our leaders accountable, demanding that they must not stay silent in the face of this kind of brutality. We implore that you urge the international media to cover Darfur to bring this human suffering to the world's attention. The people of Darfur have suffered far too long and we must not allow them to suffer any longer as the crimes against innocent civilians continues unpunished.

How the international community is failing to protect the Rohingya people. At this moment, a genocide is happening in Myanmar of which most of the world is unaware. On 9 October 2016, three border posts were attacked in Western Myanmar by an unknown armed group, killing nine policemen. Following the attack, Myanmar government forces have been conducting a coordinated attack on the civilian population which includes mass killing, rape, torture and the burning of houses and crop fields. Because security forces have locked down the whole area, it is difficult to verify the reports of violence. Utilising independent sources, Voice of America has reported that the death toll could be 150 to 300 so far. Based on satellite imagery, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has observed that 1,250 houses or buildings have been destroyed as of 18 November. As a result of the military crackdown, thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes; many are attempting to enter neighbouring Bangladesh by crossing the Naaf river. However, the Bangladeshi government has refused to accept more Rohingya, stating that the highly-populated country is already hosting half a million Rohingya who have fled the previous violence. The attacks on the Rohingya people in Myanmar are not a new phenomenon. The Rohingya have had an uneasy relationship with the state since Myanmar's independence in 1948. The Rohingya are an ethno-linguistic-religious minority group in Myanmar. They are followers of Sunni Islam in the Buddhist-majority state. The northern Rakhine State (formerly Arakan) where most Rohingya people live is in the middle of South East Asia and South Asia. The Myanmar government argues that the Rohingya people have migrated from neighbouring Bangladesh and so denies them citizenship rights. However, the Rohingya people can trace their origin in the Rakhine State back for hundreds of years. Rakhine State was once an independent Arakan kingdom comprising north-western Myanmar and south-eastern Bangladesh before being taken over by Burma in 1784. Within an independent Burma/Myanmar, the Rohingya people have faced widespread persecution in 1978, 1991-92, and 2012. This is in addition to continued discrimination and the denial of basic rights including freedom of movement, the right to livelihood, education, childbirth (the Rohingya are restricted to two children per family), and many aspects of everyday life. As a result, many of the Rohingya have left home and undertaken dangerous journeys in search of safe shelters. There are a significant number of Rohingya people in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Thailand, and Indonesia. Some have reached as far as Australia by boat though many died on the journey there. Still, there are 1.1 million Rohingya people left in Myanmar and the government wants to drive them out. A recent study by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School demonstrates that the actions and inactions of the government satisfy the criteria for genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. Another study by Human Rights Watch in 2013 found strong evidence of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya committed by the Burmese authority, local Arakanese people, and Buddhist mobs. The report notes an incident on 23 October 2013 where at least 70 Rohingya were killed in a massacre in Yan Thei village in Mrauk-U Township by Arakanese mobs; state security forces indirectly helped in the massacre rather than protecting people. The death toll included 28 children who were hacked to death, including 13 under the age of 5. A research article published in the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal in 2014 also concluded that there is a slow burning genocide in the Rakhine State. Of the five acts of genocide mentioned in the 1948 Convention on Genocide, four have been committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar since 1978. The article concludes that: “the ruling Burmese, both the Buddhist society and the Buddhist state, have committed the first four acts, including intentional killing, harm to body and mind of the victims as a group, inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and preventing births.” Researchers from the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) at Queen Mary University of London School of Law, after months of field work in the Rakhine State last year, also concluded that “Myanmar state’s policies are genocidal.” It’s clear that there’s an ongoing genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. The state has not only failed in their duty to protect but also occasionally participated in the atrocities. However, that has not stopped powerful states and large corporations boosting business ties with Myanmar. The Myanmar state counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has clearly failed to stop the mass destruction of people and take any action against the military forces. The international community has done little to stop the suffering of the Rohingyas. They have criticised Myanmar for human rights violations and asked for an independent investigation. However, it’s naïve to ask authorities to investigate the very crimes they support or even perpetrate themselves. Once the Rohingya people took arms to solve their problems. However, the post-9/11 'war on terror' has made armed Muslims guerrilla-terrorists in the eyes of global media and western states. In consequence, there is currently no strong movement among the Rohingya people. Myanmar’s neighbours and regional powers, such as China and India, are busy securing the country’s untapped market. The UN and human rights organisations focus on the humanitarian aspect of the problem: urging the Bangladeshi government to provide shelter to the fleeing Rohingyas. However, these organisations often lack the strong voice needed to deal with the violence in Rakhine state. Myanmar will not heed calls for human rights if such calls aren't backed by credible hard power. The regional and global players are not sincere enough to engage with Myanmar strongly. Perhaps the only remaining solution lies in the hands of the people, who can put pressure on their governments to take immediate and serious action.

(Reuters/Thaier Al-Sudani)A photo of Iraqi Christians praying during a mass on Christmas (Dec. 25, 2016) at St. Joseph Chaldean church in Baghdad, Iraq. Violent persecutions of Christians living in Islamic countries and in the world's two most populated countries, India and China, are set to increase in 2017, according to Release International. As per Release International's annual report, the greatest area of concern is the Islamic world, where persecution has risen from both the state as well as the Islamic militants. In India, records of the dramatic increase of attacks from Hindu militants have been reported. In China, unregistered churches are put under a lot of pressure. In the Middle East, the conflict in Syria and Iraq has forced many Christians to flee their homes. Escaping Christians have also reported how the Islamic State has tortured, sexually abused and even crucified people who refused to renounce their Christian faith. In Iran, the state is continuing to clamp down on underground Christian churches. Christian leaders who face arrest, imprisonment and torture are forced to face pay expensive bail bonds amounting up to $10,000 or more. Although Boko Haram and the Islamic State are suffering military defeats in Nigeria, Christian communities in north and central Nigeria continue to face widespread violence because of heavily armed Fulani militants. In Pakistan, Christians are also facing widespread discrimination in the legal system, and the country's blasphemy laws are still open to widespread abuse. In 2017, more discrimination, forced conversions and forced marriages are to be expected. According to the Catholic Herald, Prince Charles has stated, on Radio 4's Thought for the Day, that the anti-Christian persecution is being overlooked. The Prince noted that religious freedom was an urgent problem worldwide and that it has become "a daily stark choice between life and death. " The Prince went so far as to add that the current spread of violence and intolerance echoed "the dark days of the 1930s." "Whichever religious path we follow, the destination is the same: to value and respect the other person, accepting their right to live out the peaceful response to the Love of God," the Prince said. © 2016 The Christian Times

Eleven Nobel peace prize winners have urged the UN to "end the human crisis" of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims in a letter criticising Aung San Suu Kyi. In the open letter, the group said the government crackdown on the population amounted to "ethnic cleansing". More than 34,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee military operations in Rakhine state, according to the UN. Ms Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto leader, is accused of failing to protect the minority group. "A human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity is unfolding in Myanmar," the group, which includes South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, wrote in a letter to the UN Security Council. "If we fail to take action, people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets," it added. The group, consisting of Nobel laureates, politicians, philanthropists and activists, said it was "frustrated" that Ms Suu Kyi, herself a Nobel laureate, "has not taken any initiative to ensure full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingyas". At least 86 people have been killed in operations in Rakhine state, launched after armed militants attacked border posts in Maungdaw on 9 October, killing nine policemen. Earlier this month the government of Myanmar was criticised by the UN over its treatment of the minority Rohingya Muslim population. Myanmar's government said it was conducting counter-terrorism operations in the region and has denied reports of killings and other abuses. Most of the displaced Rohingya have fled across the border into Bangladesh. On Friday, director general of Myanmar's ministry of foreign affairs, Kyaw Zaya, told Reuters news agency that Myanmar recognised that 2,415 of its citizens were in Bangladesh, adding that they were welcome to return. Who are the Rohingya? The estimated one million Muslim Rohingya are seen by many in mainly Buddhist Myanmar as illegal migrants from Bangladesh. They are denied citizenship by the government despite many having lived there for generations. Communal violence in Rakhine state in 2012 left scores dead and displaced more than 100,000 people, with many Rohingya still remaining in decrepit camps. They face widespread discrimination and mistreatment. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented Rohingya are estimated to live in Bangladesh, having fled Myanmar. Copyright © 2017 BBC. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Full text: Dear President and Members of the Security Council, As you are aware, a human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity is unfolding in Myanmar. Over the past two months, a military offensive by the Myanmar Army in Rakhine State has led to the killing of hundreds of Rohingya people. Over 30,000 people have been displaced. Houses have been burned, women raped, many civilians arbitrarily arrested, and children killed. Crucially, access for humanitarian aid organisations has been almost completely denied, creating an appalling humanitarian crisis in an area already extremely poor. Thousands have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, only to be sent back. Some international experts have warned of the potential for genocide. It has all the hallmarks of recent past tragedies - Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo. The head of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the Bangladesh side of the border, John McKissick, has accused Myanmar’s government of ethnic cleansing. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Yanghee Lee has condemned the restricted access to Rakhine State as “unacceptable.” The Rohingyas are among the world’s most persecuted minorities, who for decades have been subjected to a campaign of marginalisation and dehumanisation. In 1982, their rights to citizenship were removed, and they were rendered stateless, despite living in the country for generations. They have endured severe restrictions on movement, marriage, education and religious freedom. Yet despite the claims by government and military, and many in society, that they are in fact illegal Bengali immigrants who have crossed the border, Bangladesh does not recognise them either. Their plight intensified dramatically in 2012 when two severe outbreaks of violence resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands and a new apartheid between Rohingya Muslims and their Rakhine Buddhist neighbours. Since then they have existed in ever more dire conditions. This latest crisis was sparked by an attack on Myanmar border police posts on 9 October, in which nine Myanmar police officers were killed. The truth about who carried out the attack, how and why, is yet to be established, but the Myanmar military accuse a group of Rohingyas. Even if that is true, the military’s response has been grossly disproportionate. It would be one thing to round up suspects, interrogate them and put them on trial. It is quite another to unleash helicopter gunships on thousands of ordinary civilians and to rape women and throw babies into a fire. According to one Rohingya interviewed by Amnesty International, “they shot at people who were fleeing. They surrounded the village and started going from house to house. They were verbally abusing the people. They were threatening to rape the women.” Another witness described how her two sons were arbitrarily arrested: “It was early in the morning, the military surrounded our house, while some came in and forced me and my children to go outside. They tied my two sons up. They tied their hands behind their backs, and they were beaten badly. The military kicked them in the chest. I saw it myself. I was crying so loudly. When I cried, they [the military] pointed a gun at me. My children were begging the military not to hit them. They were beaten for around 30 minutes before being taken away”. She has not seen them since. Despite repeated appeals to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi we are frustrated that she has not taken any initiative to ensure full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingyas. Daw Suu Kyi is the leader and is the one with the primary responsibility to lead, and lead with courage, humanity and compassion. We urge the United Nations to do everything possible to encourage the Government of Myanmar to lift all restrictions on humanitarian aid, so that people receive emergency assistance. Access for journalists and human rights monitors should also be permitted, and an independent, international inquiry to establish the truth about the current situation should be established. Furthermore, we urge the members of UN Security Council to put this crisis on Security Council’s agenda as a matter of urgency, and to call upon the Secretary-General to visit Myanmar in the coming weeks as a priority. If the current Secretary-General is able to do so, we would urge him to go; if not, we encourage the new Secretary-General to make it one of his first tasks after he takes office in January. It is time for the international community as a whole to speak out much more strongly. After Rwanda, world leaders said “never again”. If we fail to take action, people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets, and we may end up being the passive observers of crimes against humanity which will lead us once again to wring our hands belatedly and say “never again” all over again. Sincerely, Professor Muhammad Yunus 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate José Ramos-Horta 1996 Nobel Peace Laureate Máiread Maguire 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu 1984 Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias 1987 Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate Tawakkol Karman 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Malala Yousafzai 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate Sir Richard J. Roberts 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Elizabeth Blackburn 2009 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Emma Bonino Former Italian Foreign minister Arianna Huffington Founder and Editor, The Huffington Post Sir Richard Branson Business Leader and Philanthropist Paul Polman Business Leader Mo Ibrahim Entrepreneur and Philanthropist Richard Curtis SDG Advocate, Film Director Alaa Murabit SDG Advocate, Voice of Libyan Women Jochen Zeitz Business Leader and Philanthropist Kerry Kennedy Human Rights Activist Romano Prodi Former Italian Prime Minister

2016 was a very productive year for Genocide Watch. We organized a new Genocide Working Group in Washington, DC to bring together congressional staffers, State Department officials, and NGO’s that seek justice in Iraq and prevention of future genocide there and in Syria. We testified before Congress and the European Parliament on the genocide of ISIS. We helped lead the coalition that obtained declarations in 2016 by the US Congress, the European Parliament, and the State Department that the acts of ISIS constitute genocide. We had many meetings at the State Department and at the UN. We wrote the Resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars concerning the ISIS genocide, which was adopted in 2016. In April 2016, Dr. Stanton traveled to Iraq to interview eyewitnesses to the ISIS genocide and to work with Iraqi organizations to prosecute ISIS. He will travel there again in January 2017. We are helping to lead a world campaign to stop the genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya. We will hold hearings in the UK House of Lords and in New York in 2017 about this genocide. Genocide Watch has maintained the most actively updated and heavily used website on genocide on the internet. Our interns publish contributions to our website from the 65+ member organizations of the Alliance Against Genocide, as a communications site for the Alliance, which we coordinate. Our interns built a dynamic new website at www.genocidewatch.com. They designed an interactive world map of countries at risk or with active mass killing, with embedded videos by experts on each country. We also use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with the thousands of people who follow our work. In the seventeen years since Genocide Watch was founded in 1999, we have spent a total of $85,000. That is $5000 per year. No member of the Genocide Watch staff has ever received a salary. Our low operating costs have been made possible by our affiliation with George Mason University. Genocide Watch has played a key role in the creation of two international tribunals, proposed and helped to persuade UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to create the Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and built the Alliance Against Genocide. We have provided early warning to policy makers to prevent or stop genocide in East Timor, Macedonia, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. We are now working with the International Association of Genocide Scholars on a project for genocide prevention in Iraq. The Alliance Against Genocide, which has grown to over 65 organizations, will become more directly integrated into the activities of Genocide Watch. In the future we will add additional country experts to our distinguished Board of Advisers as resources for our websites and Genocide Alerts. We will increase our connections with policy makers and civil society leaders. We will build a stronger Board of Directors to help us plan and support an effective anti-genocide movement. Our purpose is to be a catalyst to encourage the organization of local, national, and regional anti-genocide organizations around the world, and to coordinate a network of those organizations. Dr. Stanton will devote time to writing and publishing a short, inexpensive textbook on the stages of genocide for secondary school students, to be used in curricula on genocide in the US, Canada, the UK, and eventually in translation around the world. Dr. Stanton will remain with Genocide Watch as Founding President and Chair of the Board of Directors. He will devote himself to working with other Directors to raise the money and expert support to build the educational programs of Genocide Watch and the Alliance Against Genocide. Respectfully submitted December 30, 2016 Dr. Gregory H. Stanton Founding President Chair of the Board of Directors Genocide Watch, Inc. ​

The U.S. State Department yesterday issued a statement praising Khartoum’s promise to improve humanitarian access in Sudan. But as the actual language of the statement makes clear, nothing has actually changed on the ground. The Obama administration State Department spokesman speaks of “the Government of Sudan’s recent efforts to improve humanitarian access” (full text below). But what are these efforts, other than promises of the sort we have heard countless times before? The same National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime that last week “amended the Directives and Procedures for Humanitarian Action” can change them at the drop of a hat, as it has done on innumerable occasions. It is simply disingenuous to declare that that “these revised directives represent a significant step toward improving humanitarian access in Sudan”: again, nothing has changed on the ground. So just how trustworthy are President Omar al-Bashir and his brutal henchmen in the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime? In twenty-seven years of ruthless tyranny they have never abided by a single agreement with any Sudanese party or actor—not one, not ever. The highly conditional, not to say speculative characterization of what Khartoum has done is revealing: “We believe when implemented, these revised regulations will facilitate humanitarian actors’ efforts to get aid to those in need.” The possibility of future implementation is all that is being celebrated. Let’s remember that the UN, African Union, and Arab League put together a proposal for humanitarian access to South Kordofan in early 2012. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North immediately accepted the joint proposal; for its part, Khartoum declared its acceptance but promptly reneged on that commitment. And for the past five years the regime has dithered, dodged, reneged on various commitments, and shown continuing bad faith. During this time great numbers of people have suffered terribly and died for lack of humanitarian access. The regime has continued to give encouraging diplomatic signs but in the end simply outwaited an international community that tired of its efforts. A severely malnourished young child in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan—one of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese that the Khartoum regime has deliberately cut off from international humanitarian relief Again disingenuously, the Obama administration spokesman declares: We also welcome the recent access given to a U.N. interagency team to travel and conduct a multi-sector assessment in Golo, Central Darfur, which included the first civilian aircraft to land in Golo in five years. First, we need to ask about the implications of a five-year humanitarian embargo and what it reveals of the character of a regime that would impose such an embargo. Secondly, we need to remember that this year’s massive military offensive in Jebel Marra (where Golo is located) was largely successful: access is being permitted only because of a military triumph that included the indisputable use of chemical weapons in egregious violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (see Amnesty International, “Scorched Earth, Poisoned Air: Sudanese Government Forces Ravage Jebel Marra, Darfur,” 109 pages; released September 29, 2016). This blatant violation of international law is nowhere mentioned in celebrating access to Golo, or how Golo came to be firmly in regime hands. A victim of Khartoum’s use of chemical weapons in its devastating assault this year on Jebel Marra—and military seizure of Golo, which had been denied humanitarian access for five years. Finally, the statement declares: Access to this conflict-affected area has allowed the U.N. to conduct a full assessment; and—if sustained—regular air access would enable the international humanitarian community to support relief efforts to Golo and surrounding areas. Of course the critical phrase is “if sustained.” And judging by the failure of resolve on the part of the international community over the past 14 years in Darfur—including watching UN Security Council resolutions flouted regularly and contemptuously—we have every right to be deeply skeptical about whether Khartoum will feel obliged to “sustain” these efforts longer than international pressure remains. The regime is deeply hostile to international humanitarian organizations in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan. Some thirty organizations have been expelled by the regime or forced to leave because of threats directed at them and intolerable security conditions—insecurity that the regime has deliberately cultivated (“Chaos by Design,” in the words of Human Rights Watch). President Omar al-Bashir and his cronies have declared some of the world’s finest relief organizations to be spies for Israel and the CIA, to be “covers” for various international powers, to be engaged in espionage, to countenance corruption…the list of absurd accusations is long and frequently repeated. International workers have been beaten, raped, and intimidated by violence on innumerable occasions. One notorious incident from 2007 speaks volumes about Khartoum’s attitude and the freedom of intimidation if accords its security officials: Aid workers have described how they watched helplessly as Sudanese police officers dragged a female United Nations worker from an aid agency compound in Darfur and subjected her to a vicious sexual attack. Staff say they feared for their lives when armed police raided their compound in Nyala [South Darfur], dragging one European woman out into the street by her hair and savagely beating several other international staff before arresting a total of 20 UN, aid agency and African Union staff. (“Aid workers tell of brutal attack by Darfur police on female colleague”) We heard nothing from the Obama administration at the time. The regime has long ago declared that it would be vigorously pursuing a policy of “Sudanizing” humanitarian work in Darfur and elsewhere; this is little more that a cover for ensuring the final removal of all remaining international organizations, and thus international eyes on the ground. Khartoum has been engineering what Human Rights Watch has called “chaos by design” for over a decade; even so, the primary instrument of ethnically-targeted civilian destruction remains village destruction, which continues to this day. Given this shameful history of abuse, slanderous accusations, and expulsions of these humanitarian organizations, it is highly irresponsible of the Obama administration to celebrate the merely nominal commitments of Khartoum, whether in Jebel Marra, other regions of Darfur, or the large SPLM/A-N-controlled territories in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Denial of humanitarian access on such a scale amounts to crimes against humanity under the terms of the Rome Treaty that is the statutory basis for the International Criminal Court (see my article “On the Obstruction of Humanitarian Aid,” African Studies Review, Volume 54, Number 3 | December 2011), pages 165 – 74 | http://wp.me/p45rOG-I6 ). Praising those guilty of such terrible crimes for mere promises is expediency of the worst sort. [Eric Reeves has written extensively on Sudan for almost two decades; he is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights] ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “U.S. State Department Praises Khartoum’s ‘Promises’ of Improved Humanitarian Access,” Huffington Post 28 December 2016 | Top News, Selected Formal Publications, Briefs & Advocacy: 2016 | Author: ereeves | 1348 words “U.S. State Department Praises Khartoum’s ‘Promises’ of Improved Humanitarian Access” Huffington Post, December 28, 2016 | http://wp.me/p45rOG-20d By Eric Reeves The U.S. State Department yesterday issued a statement praising Khartoum’s promise to improve humanitarian access in Sudan. But as the actual language of the statement makes clear, nothing has actually changed on the ground. The Obama administration State Department spokesman speaks of “the Government of Sudan’s recent efforts to improve humanitarian access” (full text below). But what are these efforts, other than promises of the sort we have heard countless times before? The same National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime that last week “amended the Directives and Procedures for Humanitarian Action” can change them at the drop of a hat, as it has done on innumerable occasions. It is simply disingenuous to declare that that “these revised directives represent a significant step toward improving humanitarian access in Sudan”: again, nothing has changed on the ground. So just how trustworthy are President Omar al-Bashir and his brutal henchmen in the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime? In twenty-seven years of ruthless tyranny they have never abided by a single agreement with any Sudanese party or actor—not one, not ever. The highly conditional, not to say speculative characterization of what Khartoum has done is revealing: “We believe when implemented, these revised regulations will facilitate humanitarian actors’ efforts to get aid to those in need.” The possibility of future implementation is all that is being celebrated. Let’s remember that the UN, African Union, and Arab League put together a proposal for humanitarian access to South Kordofan in early 2012. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North immediately accepted the joint proposal; for its part, Khartoum declared its acceptance but promptly reneged on that commitment. And for the past five years the regime has dithered, dodged, reneged on various commitments, and shown continuing bad faith. During this time great numbers of people have suffered terribly and died for lack of humanitarian access. The regime has continued to give encouraging diplomatic signs but in the end simply outwaited an international community that tired of its efforts. A severely malnourished young child in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan—one of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese that the Khartoum regime has deliberately cut off from international humanitarian relief Again disingenuously, the Obama administration spokesman declares: We also welcome the recent access given to a U.N. interagency team to travel and conduct a multi-sector assessment in Golo, Central Darfur, which included the first civilian aircraft to land in Golo in five years. First, we need to ask about the implications of a five-year humanitarian embargo and what it reveals of the character of a regime that would impose such an embargo. Secondly, we need to remember that this year’s massive military offensive in Jebel Marra (where Golo is located) was largely successful: access is being permitted only because of a military triumph that included the indisputable use of chemical weapons in egregious violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (see Amnesty International, “Scorched Earth, Poisoned Air: Sudanese Government Forces Ravage Jebel Marra, Darfur,” 109 pages; released September 29, 2016). This blatant violation of international law is nowhere mentioned in celebrating access to Golo, or how Golo came to be firmly in regime hands. A victim of Khartoum’s use of chemical weapons in its devastating assault this year on Jebel Marra—and military seizure of Golo, which had been denied humanitarian access for five years. Finally, the statement declares: Access to this conflict-affected area has allowed the U.N. to conduct a full assessment; and—if sustained—regular air access would enable the international humanitarian community to support relief efforts to Golo and surrounding areas. Of course the critical phrase is “if sustained.” And judging by the failure of resolve on the part of the international community over the past 14 years in Darfur—including watching UN Security Council resolutions flouted regularly and contemptuously—we have every right to be deeply skeptical about whether Khartoum will feel obliged to “sustain” these efforts longer than international pressure remains. The regime is deeply hostile to international humanitarian organizations in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan. Some thirty organizations have been expelled by the regime or forced to leave because of threats directed at them and intolerable security conditions—insecurity that the regime has deliberately cultivated (“Chaos by Design,” in the words of Human Rights Watch). President Omar al-Bashir and his cronies have declared some of the world’s finest relief organizations to be spies for Israel and the CIA, to be “covers” for various international powers, to be engaged in espionage, to countenance corruption…the list of absurd accusations is long and frequently repeated. International workers have been beaten, raped, and intimidated by violence on innumerable occasions. One notorious incident from 2007 speaks volumes about Khartoum’s attitude and the freedom of intimidation if accords its security officials: Aid workers have described how they watched helplessly as Sudanese police officers dragged a female United Nations worker from an aid agency compound in Darfur and subjected her to a vicious sexual attack. Staff say they feared for their lives when armed police raided their compound in Nyala [South Darfur], dragging one European woman out into the street by her hair and savagely beating several other international staff before arresting a total of 20 UN, aid agency and African Union staff. (“Aid workers tell of brutal attack by Darfur police on female colleague”) We heard nothing from the Obama administration at the time. The regime has long ago declared that it would be vigorously pursuing a policy of “Sudanizing” humanitarian work in Darfur and elsewhere; this is little more that a cover for ensuring the final removal of all remaining international organizations, and thus international eyes on the ground. Khartoum has been engineering what Human Rights Watch has called “chaos by design” for over a decade; even so, the primary instrument of ethnically-targeted civilian destruction remains village destruction, which continues to this day. Given this shameful history of abuse, slanderous accusations, and expulsions of these humanitarian organizations, it is highly irresponsible of the Obama administration to celebrate the merely nominal commitments of Khartoum, whether in Jebel Marra, other regions of Darfur, or the large SPLM/A-N-controlled territories in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Denial of humanitarian access on such a scale amounts to crimes against humanity under the terms of the Rome Treaty that is the statutory basis for the International Criminal Court (see my article “On the Obstruction of Humanitarian Aid,” African Studies Review, Volume 54, Number 3 | December 2011), pages 165 – 74 | http://wp.me/p45rOG-I6 ). Praising those guilty of such terrible crimes for mere promises is expediency of the worst sort. [Eric Reeves has written extensively on Sudan for almost two decades; he is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights] ************ Africa: Sudan Issues New Humanitarian Directives Press Statement Mark C. Toner Deputy Department Spokesperson | Washington, DC December 27, 2016 The United States welcomes the Government of Sudan’s recent efforts to improve humanitarian access. Last week, Sudan amended the “Directives and Procedures for Humanitarian Action.” These revised directives represent a significant step toward improving humanitarian access in Sudan. We believe when implemented, these revised regulations will facilitate humanitarian actors’ efforts to get aid to those in need. We recognize this as a positive step and we expect to see sustained gains in humanitarian access. We also welcome the recent access given to a U.N. interagency team to travel and conduct a multi-sector assessment in Golo, Central Darfur, which included the first civilian aircraft to land in Golo in five years. Access to this conflict-affected area has allowed the U.N. to conduct a full assessment; and—if sustained—regular air access would enable the international humanitarian community to support relief efforts to Golo and surrounding areas. The United States, as part of its longstanding commitment to the people of Sudan, will continue to support humanitarian efforts there, and will work with all parties to remove remaining impediments to full humanitarian access.

Read the repatriation agreement here.

In the 8th Century A.D., Rakhine State of modern Myanmar was the Kingdom of Arakan, populated by the Rohingya. But with increasing frequency over time, in 1784, 1942, 1977, 1991, 2012, and 2014, waves of Muslim minority Rohingya fled Rakhine due to extreme forms of repression from various Buddhist-majority Burmese governments. The resulting Rohingya diaspora of 1.5 million is global, and outnumbers the 1.3 million living in Myanmar itself. The plurality of Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh, where 300,000 to 500,000 now live in squalid settlements. in the Rakhine region of Myanmar. , and . If the Myanmar government dislikes that idea and wants to keep Rakhine State, it should rapidly correct its provision of human rights to the Rohingya and repatriate the Rohingya refugees. (FILES) In this photograph taken on November 26, 2016, a Myanmar Rohingya refugee carries her child through a refugee camp in Teknaf, in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, on November 26, 2016. Over 25,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh following violence in Myanmar. MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images The Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country, is under attack by their own government. What the Myanmar military has called “clearance operations” and a senior U.N. official calls “ethnic cleansing” has been revived against the Rohingya over the past three months. Myanmar is riddled with racism against Muslims, and the Myanmar military, unlike most professional militaries, could have financial incentives to cause the Rohingya to flee. The military uses land it takes from peasants for private agri-business. In the last few months, extensive evidence emerged that the Myanmar military is committing what I would call a campaign of terror against its defenseless Rohingya minority. Murders, rapes, and restricting the right of the economically precarious Rohingya to fish in their ancestral fishing grounds are likely meant to clear land by forcing the Rohingya out of Myanmar. In 2012, clashes between Rohingya Muslims and Myanmar Buddhists led to the displacement of 125,000 people. Some allege that the Myanmar military looked the other way, or participated against the Muslims. The military has since torched 1,200 homes, and forced 150,000 into what one Time Magazine reporter calls “concentration camps”. Hundreds of thousands of the Muslim minority were disallowed from voting in the last election. This recurring and recently renewed atrocity has caused an additional 25,000 Rohingya to flee into Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia since 2012. The camps are a new strategy by Myanmar against the Rohingya, and are ringed withgovernment checkpoints. Residents must obtain government permission to leave. The military bars journalists and most aid groups from entry. Food and medical care is scarce, and Rohingya deaths from easily-preventable illnesses and malnutrition are rising. These camps are a contemporary and brutal manifestation of the failed strategic hamlet strategy of 1960s Vietnam, meant to isolate a developing Rohingya insurgency. It is unconscionable for Myanmar to again cause the flight of Rohingya. Myanmar has agreed in writing on multiple occasions in the past that the Rohingya are residents of Myanmar. To welch on those agreements now puts Myanmar into a category of country that violates international norms and laws. Amnesty International has called such activities by Myanmar potential “crimes against humanity.” One Time Magazine author has called it a “genocidal terror.” The Myanmar government must immediately correct its human rights violations in Rakhine State, or lose all legitimacy and the goodwill of the international community. Given persistent Burmese attacks, the Rohingya people have a moral right, and perhaps even a duty, to nonviolently protect their own society from the government.

If South Africa possesses finer political analysts than RW “Bill” Johnson, I’ve yet to discover them. The former anti-Apartheid activist, Rhodes Scholar and Oxford Don was the first to highlight financial risks caused by President Jacob Zuma’s network of patronage. Last year’s masterful book “How Long Will SA Survive” predicted the country’s credit rating is fast heading for junk, to be followed with bankruptcy and eventually a bailout by the International Monetary Fund. That message is now being universally heeded, the credit rating becoming a rallying cry for reformers. He remains optimistic the nation will emerge stronger from these trials – but warns the next few years will be extremely turbulent, especially for everyone’s favourite target, the white sector of the population. Major reason, Johnson argues, is a ruling political party ill-equipped to cope with the vote-eroding path it has chosen, so has started to employ crude racist tactics to shore up sliding popularity. Another superb contribution to help us understand where the country is headed and why. This is republished with the permission of Mr Johnson and Politicsweb.co.za, where it first appeared. – Alec Hogg South Africans have, for several months now, been enduring an exceptional torrent of accusations and counter-accusations of racism. Such accusations have, of course, provided much of the steady badinage of South African politics for twenty years, but even when seen against that background the recent period has been special. Bill Johnson as his readers will best imagine him – framed by thousands of books in his personal library. Penny Sparrow, a South Coast estate agent, provided a convenient initial focus with her virtually Neanderthal depictions of blacks as monkeys: what the French would call le racisme primaire. Thereafter all manner of essentially harmless folk have been caught up in the storm and have suffered penalties of one sort or another for a few words or sentiments a mite out of place – or not even that. The situation has now become so ridiculous that when Helen Zille says how pleased she is by the heavy usage of Cape Town’s municipal libraries, she is accused of racism for having implied surprise that blacks read books. On many university campuses there is a frankly anti-white frenzy. We have seen delighted declarations that “whiteness is burning” when valuable pictures are torched. What to conclude from this? A first conclusion might be, for god’s sake avoid social media. Almost everybody who has found themselves in trouble has done so as a result of some unwise and trivial post on Twitter and Facebook. One only has to remember how her addiction to Twitter undermined Helen Zille’s leadership of the DA to see what a hostage to fortune such media constitute. Why all the fuss over racism? But what is this hyper-sensitivity about? The answer is not simple. For many years it has been commonplace that black commentators insist that “we must debate race”. On the face of it, there is little to debate. We all know that biologically speaking, no such thing as race exists. It is also common cause that black people have suffered badly from segregation and oppression by whites. Nobody wishes to defend or exculpate apartheid. So what is the debate about? Usually, it seems, debate is just the wrong word: most often what seems to be meant is a further opportunity to rehearse all the multiple ways in which black South Africans still feel aggrieved. This is not a debate, nor even truly a conversation and very seldom is there anything new to say. It is also purely backward-looking. All the heat and energy is about past grievances (student radicals frequently attack their opponents for the mistreatment of their parents or even grandparents): there seems to be little constructive thought about the future – or even much interest in it. The picture has been further clouded by attempts to reify “whiteness”, philosophically and sociologically a very dubious notion. The key factor: ANC failure The main new fact driving the current hypersensitivity is just that the ANC is visibly failing. No one is in any serious doubt now about this. It even passes the taxi driver test: take a taxi from OR Tambo and the driver will soon tell you that the ANC will soon lose power, either nationally or a least in Joburg. It’s literally on the street. The ANC elites, anxiously aware of this, feel the cold whiff of change in the air. Hence Gwede Mantashe’s paranoid mutterings about the role of the US embassy in allegedly fostering regime change. It has now dawned on the ANC leadership, that far from being in place “until Jesus comes”, they could meet their Maker quite a lot sooner than that. It is not clear, after, all, how the ANC’s claim to rule would survive the loss of Pretoria and/or Joburg. Hence, too, the much sharper focus now on the possibility of relegation to junk bond status. When I brought out my last book in May 2015 (How Long Will South Africa Survive? The Looming Crisis) the notion of such a relegation was rather recherché stuff. The oddity was that although almost nobody was willing to review the book, its central ideas quickly passed into the main conversation. The possibility of relegation to junk bond status thus became the key symbolic test of whether ANC government had failed. The result, belatedly, was to make every ANC spokesman vow to avoid such a relegation at almost any cost. The notion of ANC government as an evident failure triggered complex psychological reactions. Since this was South Africa’s first African government its imminent failure was seen as an enormous symbolic defeat for the black race by certain black intellectuals – first and foremost in their own eyes. This in itself was almost unbearably painful, as can be seen in innumerable letters to the editor from black readers saying how personally humiliated and let down they feel by the government’s failure. Second, many black intellectuals were quick to imagine whites sitting on their verandahs of an evening, gin and tonic in hand, saying “I told you so” – an almost unbearable image. Third, and for that very reason, this produced a renewed anti-white animus, a determination that, if the ship was to go down, at least the whites must go down with the ship too. Julius Malema, with his usual unerring instinct, taunted the ANC with the thought that some whites were actually enjoying the prospect of a black government failing. The hardening of opinion There is a smidgeon of truth in this. It is undeniably true that under the weight of government incompetence and corruption, much white opinion has hardened. This is obvious in a host of ways and certainly to any reader of the PoliticsWeb comment section. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of white South Africans still want their country to succeed, irrespective of politics. Yet at the same time there has always been a tiny fringe of white apologists for black racism – it will be hard to convince future generations how much of the damage was done by whites. Frequently such folk will find sophistical arguments for the proposition that only whites can be racists, although ordinary common sense shows plainly enough that this is a disease that anyone can catch. Blacks and whites can both be racists in the same way that blacks and whites can both be fast food addicts, both be thieves, both be religious nuts and so on. What seems to drive such folk, oddly, is a strong sense of collective guilt. They would all insist that their own treatment of black people has been blameless (so individually they are not guilty) but they believe that all white people should feel collective guilt about the past. This despite the fact that all the churches, the UN and no end of judicial eminences have declared that the doctrine of collective guilt – used by anti-Semites down the ages to justify their persecution of the Jews – is not only invalid but an offense against humanity. The doctrine of collective guilt was invoked by the Nazis when they murdered whole communities in reprisal for the acts of a few resistants. It is a deeply inhuman and reactionary doctrine. So guilt can only be individual. No doubt we should all examine our own consciences, but that is far as one can go. The history of non-racialism When the ANC was in its pomp under Mandela, it was proudly non-racial and did not stoop to anti-white racism. The person who really reintroduced racism to South African public life was Thabo Mbeki who repeatedly conjured up loathsome visions of blacks as dirty, diseased, plundering and rapacious folk, an imagined white stereotype, though one which Mbeki himself found weirdly believable. Mbeki relied more and more on “campaigns against racism” (read anti-white mobilizations), held a World Conference Against Racism and said this would be the guiding theme of his entire presidency. This was all very telling. With the Mandela magic gone, Mbeki felt paranoid and insecure and his first instinct was to fall back on anti-white racism. Zuma was, at first, much better. With Mbeki’s defeat at Polokwane, anti-white racism faded from the scene. But as the cumulative weight of the ANC’s economic blunders became apparent, this has changed. When the ANC has to fight for survival its last card is racial nationalism: vote for us because we are black, vote against them because they are white. This situation has been dramatically transformed by the emergence of the EFF. The ANC has always most feared attacks from its left and it can see Malema’s radical anti-white rhetoric gaining traction. This panics it completely and its response is to attempt to ensure that, whatever else, it will not be outflanked on that theme. It must fight to ensure that racial nationalism works in its favour, and not in Malema’s. Thus whites find themselves on the wrong end of a Dutch auction on anti-white racism. It must be understood that this is all part of the logic of multi-party proportional representation. A new development to the Left of the ANC will have a ricocheting effect right across the system as one billiard ball after another feels the colliding motion of the next. The eruption of an anti-ANC left has immediately set up a new field of force right across the system. The eclipse of the old Left Most obviously, of course, it has had dire effects on the SACP and Cosatu – the old ersatz Left. Nobody bothers to mention the National Democratic Revolution any more. Indeed, the NDR seems to be just as dead as the NDP (the National Development Plan), which is to say, as dead as a dodo. If there is a radical vision held out to the radical young it is Malema’s furious return to the Freedom Charter with forced expropriation of all white assets.(Malema carefully omits the Charter’s strongly non-racial stance.) The SACP can’t compete with that. The best it can do is just stay quiet – rather like Blade Nzimande, who is staying as deliberately invisible as possible during the current university troubles. So much for the SACP’s vanguard role. In effect, neither the SACP nor COSATU brings anything very substantial to the ANC now. They continue purely on sufferance. The hoary old mythology was that the ANC relied on Cosatu to mobIlize the urban vote for it. But the ANC is losing precisely in the cities, and is relying more every year on the great vote banks of the old bantustans, in which Cosatu plays no role. The budget has set the stage for a further intensification of racial nationalism. As Anthony Butler commented, its boundaries were “set by cronyism, the power of public sector unions, antipathy towards the private sector and public discontent about the economy”. That is, Gordhan could not go further without disturbing or dislodging the patronage networks on which Zuma’s rule depends. The ANC clock: always slow The result is weirdly reminiscent of the National Party dramas of the 1970s and 1980s when enormous pressures for change would be met by the fact that the NP’s clock was set not by those pressures but by the purely internal consideration of the relative strengths of the verligtes and verkramptes. It is the same now with the ANC. It can proceed only at the pace set by its internal clock, which depends on the balance between its factions, its patrons and their clients. This is way behind the pace required by the international political economy of which South Africa is part. In effect what this means is that the ANC is simply not able to carry out the sort of reforms necessary to guarantee its own survival. Instead it has adopted a defensive crouch which it will maintain through possible local election losses and a further ratings downgrade. As these things occur its mood will get increasingly sour, panicky and paranoid. Its recourse to racial nationalism will become increasingly shrill. It will be a good time to remember the old adage that “sticks and stones may break my bones but hard words will never hurt me”. But, of course, it is playing with fire and, as recent university incidents have shown, it is all too easy for this sort of racial mobilization to tip over into inter-racial violence. Should that occur on any scale it would undo the whole post-1990 settlement and leave the country in no man’s land. The conundrum of student protest Finally there is the difficult question of how to interpret the current wave of student protest. While this younger generation is just as affected as others by the emotional consequences of ANC failure, there are clearly extra factors – grievances over fees, over accommodation, over the language of instruction, over exclusion because of indebtedness, as well as fear of academic failure born of poor schooling and a weak culture of study, discomfort (of some) at finding themselves in a mainly “white” environment for the first time, unhappiness at the sight of white and Indian students often scoring higher marks and anxiety over the high rate of youth unemployment. As if this wasn’t enough, the student movement has quickly been hijacked by out-sourced workers wanting to be in-sourced and by ambitious black academics wanting more affirmative action in academic hiring and promotion. On top of that there is a general fear that ANC fat cats have feathered their own nests by selling out the next generation, a fear sometimes phrased as the Mandela generation selling out to “white monopoly capital”. That is already eleven separate factors and doubtless there are more. It is this hydra-headed nature which accounts for both the protest movement’s power and its confusion. However, as the political theorist Michael Oakshott argued, no political movement is born or exists in a vacuum. In practise it intimates its new meanings and demands in terms of the existing political traditions in that society. In that sense the students had to choose between three competing traditions: The Freedom Charter’s non-racial stance – “South Africa belongs to all those who live in it, black and white, and no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people”. The PAC/Black Consciousness alternative. Although Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko both insisted that they did not believe in black domination or racial animosity towards whites, their followers have generally interpreted this tradition to mean just that. In addition, BC enthusiasts generally favour de facto racial segregation, with separate racially-based organisations for black students, lawyers, businessmen etc. The radical “Struggle” tradition inherited from the ANC’s thirty years in exile when the party fought for the total overthrow of the system, the “conquest of power”, and a full-on socialist programme. Once the negotiated settlement was reached at Codesa this tradition was cut short but it continued in the popular mind and various leaders bid for its leadership – Chris Hani, Peter Mokaba, Winnie Mandela and Julius Malema among others. Although Nelson Mandela invoked the first (non-racial) tradition in 1994 as the basis of the new settlement, the truth was that it belonged to the period of Albert Luthuli’s leadership of the ANC and had largely been eclipsed since his death. But strong traces of it remain for it is still the presumptive base of the Constitution and the entire post-1994 dispensation. In essence Luthuli was a Christian liberal. The black and white students who joined together to pray for peace on their campuses lay exactly within that tradition. In practice most student activists seem to mix the second and third traditions with little regard for theoretical coherence, just as Malema attempts to combine the (incompatible) first and third traditions. In truth, the situation is confused. The third tradition has been formally ended; the second was defeated by the ANC and is thus not in power, while the first, though theoretically the basis of the present dispensation, is widely ignored and flouted. The result is literally anarchic. Thus although some of the activists believe we need to revisit the 1994 settlement and change it, the situation is now quite different from 1990-1994. That period was dominated by the approaching certainty of an irresistible ANC hegemony. Today that hegemony finds itself under assault from all directions with no real certainty about what the new balance will be. We thus have a period of rough water ahead of us – which could be quite prolonged. It will be a time for vasbyt, for holding fast, for remembering that whatever the accompanying noise, the vast majority of South Africans simply want peace and growth, and remembering too that the country has come through far worse times during the Anglo-Boer War, during the Depression of the 1930s, during the Second World War and during apartheid. It is a resilient country in which it is rational to be an optimist. This story is republished with permission from Politicsweb where it first appeared. © Copyright 2016 BizNews.com

Around the issue of Rohingya, the merging of the anti-Rohingya racist society (all classes), the ruling military, the semi-autonomous NLD leadership, and most influential leaders of the Buddhist Order parallels the rise of Nazism in Germany and the stacking of the building blocks of German Society. The consequences will go beyond the destruction of the Rohingya people as a self-identified group. In the early years of the rise of Nazism post-WWI, the German Army was funding thuggish Nazi networks out of the army's secret funds. Those who don't fully comprehend and appreciate the gravest danger of their various roles in the formation of this new Nazi-like force as cheer-leaders, participants, collaborators, demagogues, legitimizers, whitewashers, functionaries, advisers, etc. will live to regret their contributions to the conceivable demise of a Burmese society as we know it. Against this backdrop the talk of 'democratization' 'economic development' 'civil society initiatives', etc. ring hollow, to me. Lest we forget Adolf Hitler too talked about economic recovery, making the country great again, purifying the Master Race (in Burma, that is "Myanmar Buddhists", faith-defined identity), national unity, integration (at gunpoint), etc. Remember Suu Kyi's delusional narrative of Myanmar overtaking Singapore in 20 years? Hitler also talked about 'no personal gains' for himself, but for the common good of the entire German people. This is the shared discourse among the country's powerful military, religious and political organisations. - See more at: http://www.maungzarni.net/2016/12/myanmars-nazi-parallel-merging-of-power.html#sthash.RZTzhhpm.dpuf

​FB Source: https://www.facebook.com/state.counsellor/posts/943699265764290​ ​The above is the screen shot of Aung San Suu Kyi's Office FB page - tweeted by her spokesperson ex-Major Zaw Htay (former Thein Sein spokesperson). Also Suu Kyi's office is run by Kyaw Tint Swe, the career diplomat, (1 of only 2) who were entrusted by the Burmese military to defend its human rights records at the UN (New York and Geneva), including decades of persecution of the Rohingyas. Another is Rakhine Win Mra, who now heads the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission and a member of the Kofi Annan Commission on Rakhine. ============================================= OIC envoy: Malaysians must protest Rohingya oppression Saturday, 24 December 2016 | MYT 12:20 PM The Star ===================================== Is This the Real Aung San Suu Kyi? The Nobel laureate has shocked the world by failing to speak up for persecuted minorities. Some believe she is showing her true colors. BY JON EMONT December 22, 2016 ========================================= ‘We Cannot Believe Aung San Suu Kyi’: Why Many in Burma Are Losing Hope of Peace Paul Vrieze / Lawa Yang Nov. 23, 2016 TIME =======================================

Beware of Myanmar's Attempt to absolve itself of criminal responsibility and jump on the West's 'war on terror' wagon. Rohingya Crisis: Why Reporters Are Scared To Cover Story – OpEd Eurasia Review "In a bid to legitimize its actions in the international media the Burmese authorities have labelled the Rohingyas as jihadists. With increasing focus on the radical Islamic threat in the west, this is a subtle subterfuge to shift the pivot of media attention from the serious humanitarian crisis facing the Rohingyas; being denied food, medical aid and the right to live in dignity in the conflict torn zone, the Rohingyas are staring at extermination in the presence of a couldn’t care (or wouldn’t care) less world." ============================ "Two weeks ago, 70 British parliamentarians wrote to the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, urging the government to intensify its pressure on the Myanmar government to allow full humanitarian aid and access to Rakhine state. We are still waiting for a reply. Britain, along with the international community, needs to urgently listen to these voices and increase its efforts to ensure that alleged abuses are investigated, and that the violent campaign against Rohingya Muslims is ended. Minorities in Myanmar deserve the chance to live in peace." Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are suffering. The world mustn’t look away Rushanara Ali Friday 23 December 2016 12.10 GMT Aung San Suu Kyi’s election into office brought fresh hope for the virtually stateless minority. But if anything, their treatment has got worse since then Two sets of high-definition images of Myanmar taken from outer space: both are shot in the morning, both show the same villages populated by Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state. The first set, collected from 2014, displays a small collection of homes where the virtually stateless minority has settled. The buildings, lying between trees and set back from dirt roads, number more than 100. In the second set of images, taken in the past two months, the homes have vanished, and all that remains is square patches of burnt earth. Provided by Human Rights Watch, the images reveal 430 buildings that have been destroyed in three different villages, and support the claim from a United Nations official that Myanmar is seeking the “ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya” from its territory. After nine border officers were killed on 9 October, the region’s Muslim minority – already excluded, impoverished and persecuted – has once again fallen victim to a sharp increase in targeted violent attacks. Over the past two months, around 10,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh and, according to Amnesty International, eyewitness accounts from those refugees suggest that “Myanmar’s security forces, led by the military”, are “torching hundreds of homes”. The human rights group has also accused the Myanmar military of “firing at villagers from helicopter gunships,” carrying out “arbitrary arrests” and “raping women and girls”. The UN has added torture, summary executions and the destruction of mosques to this list. In Rakhine state, the camps where Rohingya Muslims had been forced into living were horrific There are an estimated 1 million Rohingya Muslims – just one of many ethnic minorities groups – living in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Despite living in Rakhsne state for generations, Rohingya Muslims are seen by many in the country not as fellow citizens but as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. A series of violent clashes in 2012 left 100,000 displaced. The following year I visited Myanmar with Refugees International and the Burma Campaign UK. During this trip we heard stories of how Rohingya communities had fled from violent attacks to the remote areas of the countryside. In Rakhine state, the camps where Rohingya Muslims had been forced into living were horrific, and in many cases people were cut off from life-saving humanitarian aid and access to healthcare. I travelled by boat to a UNHCR-supported camp in Pauktaw, and have vivid memories of the shores near the camps being covered in faeces, with dead rats floating just metres from where children were bathing to keep cool in the unbearable heat. I can also remember the exhaustion, the trauma and the fear on the faces of so many who had only known lives of segregationand are subjected to racial discrimination everyday. I also remember being told of stories of loved ones being killed, of children dying for lack of access to healthcare, and of women dying at child birth. Since Myanmar passed the citizenship law in 1982, full citizenship in Myanmar is based, according to Burma Campaign UK, on being a member of the “national races” – a category awarded only to those who are “considered to have settled in Myanmar prior to 1824, the date of the first occupation by the British”. In Myanmar’s national census of 2014, the Muslim minority group was initially allowed to self-identify as “Rohingya”, but the government later reversed this freedom and deemed that they could only be identified as “Bengali”. This has left the Rohingya open to discrimination and mistreatment. Denied the right to education and equal employment, and given only limited access to healthcare, they have endured intolerable conditions. In Myanmar in 2013, I walked around hospital wards that segregated the sick by their religion. Many Rohingya Muslims flee Myanmar by boat from the Bay of Bengal in the hope of reaching Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia. As their situation has continued to deteriorate over the last year, thousands have attempted to cross a stretch of water that is three times more deadly for refugees than the Mediterranean. According to the UN, they are often “stranded at sea on overcrowded boats, controlled by traffickers and people smugglers”, with many “beaten and held hostage for ransom”. Myanmar's Rohingya campaign 'may be crime against humanity' Despite last year’s historic elections – which supposedly began the end of 50 years of military rule – the rights and freedoms of Rohingya Muslims have not improved. Eight months before polling day, the president of Myanmar revoked all temporary registration cards, leaving many Rohingya Muslims without any form of identity document and hence unable to cast their vote. Despite her election victory, human rights campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi – who’d been under house arrest for 15 years – was prevented from becoming president and instead assumed the role of “state counsellor”. There was a great sense of hope that once in office, the Nobel peace prize winner would stand up against any rights violations against Rohingya and other persecuted minorities. However, with control over national security still in the hands of the military, not much has changed – in fact the treatment, support and defence of Rohingya Muslims has deteriorated. Journalists are not allowed to enter the region. Two weeks ago, 70 British parliamentarians wrote to the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, urging the government to intensify its pressure on the Myanmar government to allow full humanitarian aid and access to Rakhine state. We are still waiting for a reply. Britain, along with the international community, needs to urgently listen to these voices and increase its efforts to ensure that alleged abuses are investigated, and that the violent campaign against Rohingya Muslims is ended. Minorities in Myanmar deserve the chance to live in peace.