GENEVA: Myanmar’s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, the United Nations’ top human rights official said on Tuesday, adding that more were fleeing despite an agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh to send them home.
Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that none of the 626,000 Rohingya who have fled violence since August should be repatriated to Myanmar unless there was robust monitoring on the ground.
Myanmar’s Ambassador Htin Lynn said that his government was working with Bangladesh to ensure returns of the displaced in about two months and “there will be no camps.”
Zeid, who has described the campaign in the past as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing,” was addressing a special session of the UN Human Rights Council called by Bangladesh, which is struggling to accommodate Rohingya who have fled.
He described “concordant reports of acts of appalling barbarity committed against the Rohingya, including deliberately burning people to death inside their homes, murders of children and adults; indiscriminate shooting of fleeing civilians; widespread rapes of women and girls, and the burning and destruction of houses, schools, markets and mosques.”
“Can anyone — can anyone — rule out that elements of genocide may be present?” he told the 47-member state forum.
The United Nations defines genocide as acts intended to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. A UN convention requires all countries to act to halt genocide and to punish those responsible.
Shahriar Alam, Bangladesh’s junior foreign affairs minister, told the session in Geneva that his country was hosting nearly one million “Myanmar nationals” following summary executions and rapes “as a weapon of persecution.”
Mainly Buddhist Myanmar denies the Muslim Rohingya are its citizens and considers them foreigners.
These crimes had been “perpetrated by Myanmar security forces and extremist Buddhist vigilantes,” Alam said, calling for an end to what he called “xenophobic rhetoric..including from higher echelons of the government and the military.”
Zeid urged the Council to recommend that the UN General Assembly establish a new mechanism “to assist individual criminal investigations of those responsible.”
Prosecutions for the violence and rapes against Rohingya by security forces or by civilians “appear extremely rare,” Zeid said.
Marzuki Darusman, head of an independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said by video from Malaysia: “We will go where the evidence leads us...Our focus is on facts and circumstances of allegations in Myanmar as a whole since 2011.”
His team has interviewed Rohingya refugees, including children in the Bangladeshi port city of Cox’s Bazar, who recounted “acts of extreme brutality” and “displayed signs of severe trauma.”
Myanmar has not granted the investigators access to Rakhine, the northern state from which the Rohingya have fled, he said. “We maintain hope that it will be granted early in 2018.”
Pramila Patten, special representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, who interviewed survivors in Bangladesh in November, said: “I heard the most heart-breaking and horrific accounts of sexual atrocities reportedly committed in cold blood out of a lethal hatred of these people solely on the basis of their ethnicity and religion.”
Crimes included “rape, gang rape by multiple soldiers, forced public nudity and humiliation, and sexual slavery in military captivity,” Patten said.
Myanmar denies committing atrocities against the Rohingya. Its envoy Htin, referring to the accounts, said: “People will say what they wanted to believe and sometimes they will say what they were told to say.”
Kelley Currie, US ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council, said the Rohingya’s lack of Myanmar citizenship was “the fundamental root cause of this crisis,” adding: “Stop denying the seriousness of the current situation.”
UN: Myanmar forces may be guilty of genocide against Rohingya
UN: Myanmar forces may be guilty of genocide against Rohingya
UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser
- Powell, who was chief of staff to former PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, was an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process
- He faced criticism for his part in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq
LONDON: The UK’s Labour government has appointed Jonathan Powell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, as its new national security adviser.
Powell, who served as chief of staff to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a decade between 1997 and 2007, was deeply involved in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2014, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him the UK’s special envoy to Libya, in an attempt to promote dialogue between rival factions embroiled in the nation’s civil war.
Many political figures in the UK welcomed Powell’s latest appointment at a time of escalating international conflicts. Some expressed hopes that he will be able to help British authorities forge a positive relationship with Donald Trump when he takes over as US president in January.
However, Powell faced criticism for his role in the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, and for later promoting the need to engage in dialogue with extremist groups. In 2014, at the height of Daesh’s bloody occupation of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, he argued that UK authorities should open channels of communication with them.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Powell’s experience of negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement and his other work related to some of the world’s most complex conflicts make him “uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead, and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.”
Powell said he was honored to be given the role at a time when “national security, international relations and domestic policies are so interconnected.”
Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says
- Trump's transition team have yet to sign agreements required by the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations
- The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees
WASHINGTON: A good-governance group is warning of severe consequences if President-elect Donald Trump continues to steer clear of formal transition planning with the Biden administration — inaction that it says is already limiting the federal government’s ability to provide security clearances and briefings to the incoming administration.
Without the planning, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, “it would not be possible” to “be ready to govern on day one.”
The president-elect’s transition is being led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. They said last month that they expected to sign agreements beginning the formal transition process with the Biden White House and the General Services Administration, which acts essentially as the federal government’s landlord.
But those agreements are still unsigned, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees. That could limit the staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It also means Trump appointees can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.
The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, which was enacted in 2022. They mandate that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations.
In that act, Congress set deadlines of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office. Both deadlines have long since come and gone.
Stier, whose organization works with candidates and incumbents on transitions, said on a call with reporters on Friday that a new administration “walks in with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet.”
“In order to do that effectively, they absolutely need to have done a lot of prework,” he said, adding that Trump’s team “has approached this in a, frankly, different way than any other prior transition has.”
“They have, up until now, walked past all of the tradition and, we believe, vital agreements with the federal government,” Stier said.
In a statement this week, Lutnick and McMahon said Trump was “selecting personnel to serve our nation under his leadership and enact policies that make the life of Americans affordable, safe, and secure.” They didn’t mention signing agreements to begin the transition.
A person familiar with the matter said that the congressionally mandated ethics disclosures and contribution limits were factors in the hesitance to sign the agreements.
Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said Friday that the team’s “lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”
“We will update you once a decision is made,” Hughes said.
The Trump team’s reluctance has persisted despite Biden’s White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reaching out to Lutnick and McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the Biden administration and GSA play in beginning a presidential transition.
“We’re here to assist. We want to have a peaceful transition of power,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We want to make sure they have what they need.”
The unorthodox approach to the presidential transition process recalls the period immediately after Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016. Days later, the president-elect fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out a transition playbook he’d been compiling.
But Stier said that, even then, Trump’s team had signed the initial agreements that allowed the transition to get started — something that hasn’t happened this time.
“The story’s not finished. But they’re late,” he said. “And even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done.”
50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals
- The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from
UN: The World Health Organization and some 50 countries issued a warning Friday at the United Nations about the rise of ransomware attacks against hospitals, with the United States specifically blaming Russia.
Ransomware is a type of digital blackmail in which hackers encrypt the data of victims — individuals, companies or institutions — and demand money as a “ransom” in order to restore it.
Such attacks on hospitals “can be issues of life and death,” according to WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who addressed the UN Security Council during a meeting Friday called by the United States.
“Surveys have shown that attacks on the health care sector have increased in both scale and frequency,” Ghebreyesus said, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation to combat them.
“Cybercrime, including ransomware, poses a serious threat to international security,” he added, calling on the Security Council to consider it as such.
A joint statement co-signed by over 50 countries — including South Korea, Ukraine, Japan, Argentina, France, Germany and the United Kingdom — offered a similar warning.
“These attacks pose direct threats to public safety and endanger human lives by delaying critical health care services, cause significant economic harm, and can pose a threat to international peace and security,” read the statement, shared by US Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger.
The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from.
At the meeting, Neuberger directly called out Moscow, saying: “Some states — most notably Russia — continue to allow ransomware actors to operate from their territory with impunity.”
France and South Korea also pointed the finger at North Korea.
Russia defended itself by claiming the Security Council was not the appropriate forum to address cybercrime.
“We believe that today’s meeting can hardly be deemed a reasonable use of the Council’s time and resources,” said Russian ambassador Vassili Nebenzia.
“If our Western colleagues wish to discuss the security of health care facilities,” he continued, “they should agree in the Security Council upon specific steps to stop the horrific... attacks by Israel on hospitals in the Gaza Strip.”
China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws
- Laws aimed at reinforcing Philippine rights to territory, resources
- China unlikely to recognize laws, senator says
BEIJING/MANILA: China summoned the Philippines’ ambassador on Friday to express its objection to two new laws in the Southeast Asian nation asserting maritime rights and sovereignty over disputed areas of the South China Sea, its foreign ministry said.
China made “solemn representations” to the ambassador shortly after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act into law to strengthen his country’s maritime claims and bolster its territorial integrity.
The Maritime Zones law “illegally includes most of China’s Huangyan Island and Nansha Islands and related maritime areas in the Philippines’ maritime zones,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, using the Chinese names for Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands respectively.
Beijing has rejected a 2016 ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration which said its expansive maritime claims over the South China Sea had no legal basis, in a case that was brought by Manila. The United States, a Philippine ally, backs the court’s ruling.
Marcos said the two laws he signed, which define maritime entitlements and set designated sea lanes and air routes, were a demonstration of commitment to uphold the international rules-based order, and protect Manila’s rights to exploit resources peacefully in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“Our people, especially our fisher folk, should be able to pursue their livelihood free from uncertainty and harassment,” Marcos said. “We must be able to harness mineral and energy resources in our sea bed.”
But Beijing said the laws were a “serious infringement” of its claims over the contested areas.
“China urges the Philippine side to effectively respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, to immediately stop taking any unilateral actions that may lead to the widening of the dispute and complicate the situation,” Mao said.
China, which also has sovereignty disputes with the other countries in the region, has enacted domestic laws covering the South China Sea, such as a coast guard law in 2021 that allows it to detain foreigners suspected of trespassing.
Beijing, which uses an armada of coast guard ships to assert its claims, routinely accuses vessels of trespassing in areas of the South China Sea that fall inside the EEZs of its neighbors, and has clashed repeatedly with the Philippines in the past year.
Philippine officials acknowledged the challenges they face in implementing the new laws, with one author, Senator Francis Tolentino, saying he did not expect a reduction in tensions.
“China will not recognize these, but the imprimatur that we’ll be getting from the international community would strengthen our position,” Tolentino told a press conference.
The United States on Friday backed the Philippines.
“The passage of the Maritime Zones Act by the Philippines is a routine matter and further clarifies Philippine maritime law,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Chad accuses Sudan of aiding rebel forces
LIBREVILLE: Chad on Friday accused Sudan of arming and financing rebel groups on Chadian territory with the aim of destabilising its neighbor.
Chad claims Sudan is aiding a rebellion by members of the Zaghawa ethnic group operating out of Sudan’s southwestern El Facher region.
“Sudan is financing and arming terrorist groups operating in the sub-region with the aim of destabilising Chad,” foreign affairs minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said in a press release.
The Zaghawa rebels based in Sudan are led by Ousman Dillo, the younger brother of Chadian opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djerou, who was killed by Chadian military forces earlier this year.
In February 2008, a Zaghawa rebel group based in Sudan launched a lightning offensive in Chad along with other groups, forcing former president Idriss Deby Itno to take refuge in his presidential palace, before he was able to repel them with help from France.
In 2021, Idriss Deby Itno died fighting other rebel forces near the border with Libya and the army named his son Mahamat Idriss Deby as president.
Sudan’s government has accused Chad of meddling in its own civil war by helping to deliver weapons from the United Arab Emirates to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary forces, which Chad and the UAE have denied.
The Sudanese war, which pits the army against the RSF, broke out in April 2023 and has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders, monitors say.
