Former Rwandan military police officer who fled to France after the 1994 genocide and started a new life under a false identity is going on trial in Paris charged with crimes against humanity.

Philippe Hategekimana, 66, fled to France five years after the genocide, under a fake name, Philippe Manier.

He worked as a security guard at a university in the western city of Rennes and gained French citizenship in 2005.

Hategekimana left France and headed to Cameroon in late 2017 after learning that the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR), which is among the current plaintiffs, had filed a charge against him.

Police arrested him in the capital, Yaounde, in 2018 and he was extradited to France where the charges were filed.

He is accused of participating in massacres of the Rwandan genocide, which took place between April and July 1994 and killed 800,000 people, most of them ethnic Tutsis.

Hategekimana is charged with involvement in the murder of dozens of Tutsis and also setting up roadblocks to stop Tutsis who would then be killed in and around the southern provincial capital of Nyanza, where he worked as a senior police official. He has denied the charges.

Plaintiffs have accused him of “using the powers and military force conferred to him through his rank in order to … take part in the genocide”.

He is suspected of being involved in the murders of a nun and the mayor of the town of Ntyazo who opposed the killings. He is also accused of having a role in the killing of 300 Tutsi refugees on a hill called Nyamugari, and in an attack on another mount called Nyabubare in which around 1,000 civilians were killed.

The case beginning on Wednesday is the fifth trial in France of an alleged participant in the Rwandan genocide, after years of tensions between Paris and Kigali over the role played by France before and during the killings. Kigali accused France of not doing enough to halt the genocide, and later of not doing enough for the justice process.

For years, Kigali accused France – which was one of the top destinations for fugitives from the massacres – of shielding Rwandan genocide suspects. France has generally refused requests to extradite suspects to Rwanda, prompting the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, to say Paris was denying Rwanda jurisdiction.

The first Rwanda genocide trial in France took place in 2014 when a former spy chief was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Two ex-mayors, a former hotel chauffeur and a former top official have faced similar trials since then. Another Rwandan, a doctor called Sosthene Munyemana who has been living in France since 1994, is due to face trial in Paris later this year.

A report commissioned by Kigali found in 2021 that France “bears significant responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 because it remained “unwavering in its support” of its allies even though officials knew the slaughter was being prepared.

Hategekimana’s trial in Paris will last until 30 June.

Read more at the Guardian 

Protests are ongoing nationwide, and at least one person has been killed, following the arrest of Imran Khan.

Mr Khan was arrested by security forces at the High Court in the capital, Islamabad.

Dramatic footage showed dozens of officers arriving and detaining the 70-year-old, who was bundled into a vehicle and driven away.

He was appearing in court on charges of corruption, which he says are politically motivated.

Mobile data services in the country were suspended on the instructions of the interior ministry on Friday as protests grew, many of them taking place in front of army compounds.

Pakistan's army plays a prominent role in politics, sometimes seizing power in military coups, and, on other occasions, pulling levers behind the scenes.

Mr Khan was ousted as PM in April last year and has been campaigning for early elections since then.

General elections are due to be held later this year.

Mr Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party called on its supporters to protest. In the hours after he was detained, violence was reported from cities including Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar.

On the streets of Islamabad, hundreds of protesters blocked one of the main highways in and out of the capital.

Read more at BBC news 

Airstrikes carried out by Myanmar’s military on a civilian crowd have sparked widespread condemnation.

The initial death toll stood at 53 from Tuesday’s attacks on a village ceremony in Sagaing region at which women and children were present, but later tallies reported by independent media raised it to 170.

Myanmar’s air force dropped multiple bombs while attack helicopters strafed the civilian gathering of several hundred people, said Duwa Lashi La, acting president of the National Unity Government (NUG), which was set up to oppose junta rule.

Singapore's foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan has labeled airstrikes carried out by the Myanmar Armed Forces on a village that killed civilians as "reprehensible".

Indonesia's statement as Asean Chair called for the end of all forms of violence immediately, especially the use of force against civilians.

Nabila Massrali, a spokesperson for EU foreign affairs and security policy, said: “The EU is deeply shocked by reports of the latest atrocity committed by the military regime in Sagaing, taking the lives of dozens of innocent civilians. We will continue to work to hold those responsible fully accountable.” The Guardian reports. 

UN rights chief Volker Türk said he was “horrified” by the airstrikes whose victims he said included schoolchildren performing dances, with the global body calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.

Tom Andrews, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, criticised the international response to the crisis in Myanmar: “The Myanmar military’s attacks against innocent people, including today’s airstrike in Sagaing, is enabled by world indifference and those supplying them with weapons. How many Myanmar children need to die before world leaders take strong, coordinated action to stop this carnage?”

The military took responsibility for the airstrike but denied it had killed civilians, claiming instead it had targeted “terrorists”. In response to accusations of abuses, the military government often accuses pro-democracy forces of terrorism.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, “strongly condemns the attack by the Myanmar Armed Forces today”, according to a statement by his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. Guterres “reiterates his call for the military to end the campaign of violence against the Myanmar population throughout the country”, Dujarric added.

The military, which seized power in a coup in February 2021, has abolished 40 political parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

The military has deployed brutal violence to try to suppress determined opposition from the public, and much of the country is engulfed in conflict as an armed resistance seeks to overthrow the generals. Military airstrikes are now an almost daily occurrence and more than 1.38 million people have been displaced by fighting since the coup, according to the UN.

Read more at the Guardian

The military, which seized power in a coup in February 2021, has abolished 40 political parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

The military imposed the law and began compiling voter lists in preparation for promised elections. Analysts say any vote held under the regime would be widely considered invalid.

The registration law imposed by the junta set various tough requirements for national parties. They included recruiting 100,000 members within 90 days of registration – far more than the previous requirement of 1,000 members. Parties must also open offices in at least half of all 330 townships within 180 days, contest at least half of all constituencies and hold funds of 100m kyat (£40,000).

The NLD, the country’s most popular party, won elections by a landslide in 2020, though the military refused to accept the results. The junta seized power in February 2021, detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and others, and alleging electoral fraud – a claim rejected by independent observers.

Aung San Suu Kyi has since been sentenced to a total of 33 years in prison.

The military has deployed brutal violence to try to suppress determined opposition from the public, and much of the country is engulfed in conflict as an armed resistance seeks to overthrow the generals. Military airstrikes are now an almost daily occurrence and more than 1.38 million people have been displaced by fighting since the coup, according to the UN.

Japan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it was “seriously concerned that the exclusion of the NLD from the political process will make it even more difficult to improve the situation”. The Guardian reports,

“Japan strongly urges Myanmar to immediately release NLD officials, including Suu Kyi, and to show a path toward a peaceful resolution of the issue in a manner that includes all parties concerned.”

The UK also condemned the dissolution of the NLD and other parties, calling it an “assault on the rights and freedoms” of the Myanmar people.

“We condemn the military regime’s politically motivated actions and their use of increasingly brutal tactics to sow fear and repress opposition,” a UK Foreign Office spokesperson said.

The Australian government said it was concerned about the “further narrowing of political space in Myanmar” resulting from the imposition of the new political party registration law.

“The people of Myanmar continue to show their courage and commitment to a democratic country in the face of increasing repression and violence by the regime,” it added.

Sri Lanka continues to maintain close connections with the military regime.

Former President Maithripala Sirisena has cited a shared adherence to Theravada Buddhist philosophy as a guiding factor in the two countries' political alliance, whilst extremist and racist Buddhist monks in both countries have held longstanding close ties.

The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called on member states of the Human Rights Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court.

The UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar was set up in March 2017 and headed by Marzuki Darusman who also co-authored the 2011 report produced by a panel of experts on mass atrocities in Sri Lanka. “The world’s attention may have moved away from Myanmar since [the] coup, but civilians continue to pay a high price. The military’s ongoing assault on civilians in eastern Myanmar has been widespread and systematic, likely amounting to crimes against humanity,” said Rawya Rageh, Senior Crisis Adviser at Amnesty International.

In April 2021, Sri Lanka was also met with widespread protests and condemnation as a result of its invitation to Myanmar's military junta to the 5^th Bay of Bengal Initiative of the Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Co-operation (BIMSTEC) summit, that was being held on the island. 

Read more at the Guardian 

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian premier, Vladimir Putin, for war crimes committed during his illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The court focused on the charge of unlawful deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, which amounts to a war crime. Whilst the Russian foreign ministry has dismissed the warrant as “legally and void”, it has acknowledged the transferring of 2,000 children. Ukrainian officials claim however that this figure stands at 16,000 cases. A warrant was issued for Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, the public face of the Kremlin-sponsored program that transfers children out of Ukraine.

Speaking to the BBC, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan noted “children can't be treated as the spoils of war, they can't be deported".

Responding to the court’s warrant, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a video statement:

“It would be impossible to carry out such a criminal operation without the order of the top leader of the terrorist state”.

Whilst it is unlikely that Russia’s president will stand trial in the Hague, the warrant means that Putin could face arrest in any of the 123 countries that have signed on to the ICC, thereby restricting his travel. The ICC is reliant upon signatory countries to arrest those whom the court has issued warrants for.

New York Times, London bureau chief, Mark Landler has described the court’s decisions as “a  highly symbolic step that deepened his isolation and punctured the aura of impunity that has surrounded him since he ordered troops into Ukraine a year ago”.

In a speech on 21 February, Tunisian President Kais Saied made racist remarks about Black African migrants inciting violent anti-Black mobs. 

In his speech at the National Security Council meeting, Saied stated "hordes of irregular migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa" had come to Tunisia "with all the violence, crime, and unacceptable practices that entails." He claimed that the Black immigrants would "turn Tunisia into just another African country that doesn't belong to the Arab and Islamic nations anymore." 

According to Amnesty International, after President Saied's xenophobic remarks, Tunisian men, sometimes armed with "batons and knives," took to the capital's streets and attacked Black migrants or raided their homes.

While Amnesty International has documented countless cases in which Black African migrants were attacked, targeted and arrested by the police, the Tunisian government has denied any anti-Black violence has occurred in Tunisia.

According to Avocats sans Frontières (ASF), at least 840 Black African migrants were rounded up across Tunisia. Further, several organizations have reported that hundreds of Black migrants were intimidated into returning to their own countries. 

Amnesty International has called on Tunisian authorities to "investigate and hold perpetrators to account, including, in particular, where police officers were involved in the assault. They should release all arbitrarily detained migrants and ensure that they are not involuntarily returned."

"President Saied must retract his comments and order investigations to clearly signal that anti-Black racist violence will not be tolerated," Amnesty International's Heba Morayef stated.

Read more from Amnesty International here.

60 people including 12 children have been killed after a wooden sailing boat carrying migrants to Europe crashed against rocks near the southern Italian coast according to authorities. 

The crash occured in the early hours of 25 February near Steccato di Cutro. 

The boat was sailing from Turkey and carried migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and several other countries.

Speaking to Reuters, a provincial official stated that 81 people had survived the shipwreck. Twenty of those who survived were hospitalized with one person being in intensive care. 

According to Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, there might still be around 20-30 people who are still missing. Reports from survivors indicate that the vessel was carrying between 150 to 200 migrants. 

Italy's anti-immigrant far-right Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, blamed the deaths on human traffickers who profit whilst offering migrants "the false prospct of a safe journey". 

Meloni continued "the government is committed to preventing departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies, and will continue to do so, first of all by calling for maximum cooperation from the countries of departure and of origin".

Spanish migrant rescue charity Open Arms emphasized that "stopping, blocking and hindering the work of non-governmental organizations will have only one effect: the death of vulnerable people left without help". 

Read more here

Dozens of Australia’s leading social justice and civil society bodies are launching a new partnership to support the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum.

The Fred Hollows Foundation, Oxfam Australia, the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss) and First Nations advocacy organisation Antar will lead nearly 150 organisations in the Allies for Uluru Coalition, which will be launched in Melbourne on Tuesday. The group will campaign for a yes vote in the referendum and includes members from the health, justice, human rights, environment, youth and housing sectors, including Unicef and Save The Children.

Although the voice body would be recognised in Australia’s constitution it would be a purely advisory body with no formal powers.

Details about how its membership would be selected and how the government would consult with it are unclear, says Dr Stewart Jackson, a senior lecturer in Australian politics at the University of Sydney.

He says it remains to be seen whether it will be truly representative of “the full range of diverse voices within the indigenous community” and how the government would manage differences of opinion within the voice body, should they be split on an issue.

Although campaigning is just beginning, the issue has already caused considerable upset in Australian politics, with a prominent Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe recently quitting the Australian Greens and her role as indigenous affairs spokesperson in order to campaign against the voice body.

Ms Thorpe, along with some indigenous groups, believes that the government should prioritise a treaty between indigenous peoples and the state before the proposed voice. Such a treaty would “sets the terms” for future negotiations about indigenous representation and reconciliation, she said.

Read more at the Guardian 

Uganda has stated that it will not be renewing the mandate of the United Nations human rights office, the Ugandan government argues that it has sufficient capacity to monitor rights compliance.

On 3 February, the Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The letter cites Uganda's progress regarding developing a domestic capacity for monitoring rights as the primary driver behind its decision not to renew the OHCHR mandate.

The letter states that "the ministry wishes to convey the government's decision not to renew the mandate of the OHCHR Country office in Uganda beyond the current term."

President Yoweri Museveni's government has faced heavy criticism by the opposition, human rights activists, and Western nations for several human rights violations including illegal detentions, torture, and extrajudicial killings of opponents and critics.

Officials in Uganda have denied the majority of accusations levied against them, stating that security forces implicated in human rights abuses have been held accountable.

The letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stated that the government has gained a sufficient commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights.

According to the Ministry, there is "peace throughout the country, coupled with strong national human rights institutions and a vibrant civil society."

Read more here

Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land.

The president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recently declared an emergency after photos emerged of emaciated children and elderly people in the region and the Sumaúma news platform revealed 570 Yanomami infants died from preventable diseases during Bolsonaro’s term, an increase of 29% on the previous four years.

In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking the rainforest and spawning Brazil’s worst health crisis in living memory.

In a wide-ranging interview, Silva said Bolsonaro should be held accountable. “I think he should be investigated for committing genocide,” she said. “The ministry of justice itself is already forwarding the action.”

Silva served as environment minister during the first Lula administration from 2003 to 2006 and put in place policies that led to an 83% reduction in Amazon deforestation. She said Bolsonaro had “annihilated” environmental policy, which had a severe impact on forest dwellers and set back the country’s goals to conserve nature and reduce carbon emissions.

Read more at the Guardian 

Descendants of victims of the genocide in Namibia have called on Germany to “stop hiding” and discuss reparations with them directly, as they take their own government to court for making a deal without their approval.

The Herero and Nama people have gone to Namibia’s high court, rejecting an apology made in 2021 after years of talks between Namibia and Germany, which they say falls short of atoning for the 1904 to 1908 genocide, the first of the 20th century.

“We were not involved at any stage. The government set the agenda, it discussed what it discussed and never disclosed it until we saw a joint declaration last year,” said Prof Mutjinde Ktjiua, chief of the Herero.

The declaration included a German pledge of €1.1bn (£980m) in development projects over 30 years but Ktjiua said the tribes want direct reparations to address the poverty and marginalisation that resulted from the genocide.

The German empire unleashed a campaign of killing and torture after the tribes rejected colonial rule in 1904. An estimated 80% of all the Herero people and 50% of Nama were killed; estimates vary between 34,000 and 100,000 people. They are now politically marginalised minorities in Namibia.

A spokesperson for the German foreign office said only the Namibian government had the mandate and “democratic legitimacy” to negotiate with Germany, but the federal government had sought the voices of the descendants of victims, including through an advisory committee of five people who worked with the Namibian negotiator, who was himself Herero.

“The federal government calls the crimes committed against the Herero, Nama, Damara and San by their name: genocide. The fact that we use this term in its historical rather than its legal sense is because the Genocide Convention of 9 December 1948 cannot be applied retrospectively,” the spokesperson said.

Karina Theurer, an adviser to the Namibian lawyers, said Germany has argued against responsibility, referring to the historical legal position when European powers distinguished between “civilised nations and the savage or wild nations”.

“You cannot today rely and base your legal arguments on such a racist distinction,” she said, adding that the case could “open the floodgates” for other former colonies to demand reparations against occupying powers.

Read more at the Guardian 

The Indian government has invoked emergency laws to block a BBC documentary examining the role of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, during riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002.

An adviser in India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Saturday said that Twitter and YouTube have been asked to block links sharing the BBC documentary, India: The Modi Question, which the government earlier labelled as a “propaganda piece“.

On Monday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that ordering social media platforms to block the documentary constitutes “an attack on the free press that flagrantly contradicts the country’s stated commitment to democratic ideals”.

“Authorities must immediately restore full and unrestricted access to the documentary and withdraw regulations under the Information Technology Act that imperil press freedom and freedom of expression online,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia programme coordinator.

Modi was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat when it was gripped by communal riots that left more than 1,000 people dead – most of them Muslims. The violence erupted after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59.

The BBC also uncovered memos showing that Modi’s conduct was criticised at the time by western diplomats and the British government, including in a government report which found that the riots had “all the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing”.

Police were accused of standing by and Modi of not doing enough to protect the minority community from the Hindu mobs and even tacitly supporting the Hindu extremists. He has denied accusations he failed to stop the rioting and in 2013 a supreme court panel said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

According to the documentary, released on Tuesday, the inquiry team claimed that Modi had prevented the police from acting to stop violence targeted at Muslims and cited sources as saying Modi had specifically ordered authorities not to intervene.

Read more at the Guardian

Officials say about 1,500 people have been arrested following the storming of the National Congress in Brasília.

Supporters of the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed Congress and other official buildings including the presidential palace and the Supreme Court on Sunday.

Newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was not there when the invasion happened, but he has since flown back from visiting flood victims in Sao Paulo state to inspect the damage

Invaders left a trail of destruction leaving windows broken, furniture overturned and flooded parts of the National Congress.

Fred Arruda, Brazil’s ambassador in London told the Guardian: “What happened in Brasília yesterday was a grotesque and failed assault on our institutions. As President Lula put it, democracy requires people to respect the institutions.”

Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a tight-fought election in October but his supporters have refused to accept the result and camped out near military facilities, alleging the election was stolen, even though there is no evidence to back up their claim.

Read more at the Guardian

The National Liberation Army (ELN), says it is not part of a ceasefire with the goverment that had been announced by the Presidient last week.

On New Year’s Eve, President Gustavo Petro made a bold pronouncement on Twitter: Five of the country’s illegal armed groups had agreed to a six-month ceasefire.

“Total peace will be a reality,” Petro wrote, echoing his promises to bring the country’s decades-long armed conflict to an end.

But on Tuesday, the ELN issued a statement refuting claims that it had agreed to the ceasefire.

“The ELN Dialogue Delegation has not discussed any proposal for a bilateral ceasefire with the government of Gustavo Petro,” the ELN wrote in a press release. “Therefore, no such agreement exists.”

The ELN was founded by far-left priests in 1964 and grew to 2,400 to 4,000 members. It has financed its operations through drug trafficking, illegal mining and other elicit activities, expanding into territory formerly controlled by FARC.

Petro — a former rebel fighter who turned to politics, becoming a senator and mayor of the capital, Bogota — promised to bring “total peace” to Colombia when he was sworn in as the country’s first left-wing president in August.

Conflict has gripped the country since the 1960s with the government, leftist guerrilla groups and far-right paramilitary forces all vying for power. Colombia’s Truth Commission estimates that more than 450,664 people have been killed in the six decades of fighting.

The ELN and government representatives met in Venezuela in November to try to end the conflict. Countries including Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Cuba and Norway had also been invited to participate as “guarantors”, helping to oversee the talks and ensure that any commitments are observed.

Read more at Al Jazeera