Tag Archives: Human Rights

Australia causing refugees ‘severe and lasting harm’: Human Rights Watch

refugee advocates

By Tom Westbrook

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s poor treatment of refugees in offshore detention camps is “draconian” and is causing lasting damage to refugees and to Australia’s reputation as a rights-respecting country, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.

Conditions in the camps are abusive and detainees “regularly endure violence, threats and harassment”, Human Rights Watch said in the Australian chapter of its annual global report.

Under Australian rules, anyone intercepted while trying to reach the country by boat is sent for processing to camps in the Pacific Island nation of Nauru and at Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea (PNG). They are never eligible to be resettled in Australia.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration, asked about the report before its release, declined to comment but referred to earlier department assertions that conditions at the camps were adequate and were the responsibility of Nauru and PNG.

Those governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Australia said in November it had agreed with the United States to resettle some of the refugees in the Nauru and PNG camps, in return for Australia taking refugees from Central America. But subsequent White House comments cast doubt on whether the new U.S. administration would proceed with the deal.

The arrangement offered “no solution” in any case, Human Rights Watch said, adding Australia should close the camps and better protect refugees.

Australia’s tough policy has drawn strong criticism from the United Nations and other international rights organizations amid a global debate on how to manage huge numbers of asylum seekers displaced by conflict.

Successive Australian governments have supported the policy, which they say is needed to stop people drowning at sea during dangerous boat journeys.

More than 1,990 asylum seekers have drowned on voyages to Australia since January 2000, according to Monash University’s Australian Border Deaths Database.

More than a third of the deaths occurred between 2007 and 2012, when Australia suspended its offshore detention program, including an accident in 2010 when 50 people were killed when their boat was thrown onto rocks at Christmas Island.

That accident swung political and public opinion behind the offshore detention policy, which has enjoyed bipartisan and public support in Australia.

Human Rights Watch also criticized PNG for police brutality, after officers opened fire on student protesters in June.

PNG was also “one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman”, and the government had failed to address corruption, Human Rights Watch added.

Australia and PNG agreed to close the Manus Island camp in August, but gave no date and it remains open. It held 871 people and the Nauru camp 383 people, according to the most recent statistics released by Australia in November.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Robert Birsel)

U.S. blacklists North Korean officials over rights abuses

Kim Jong Un leader of North Korea leading a meeting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department has added seven senior North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, to its sanctions list because of human rights abuses and censorship by the communist nation.

The department said in a statement on Wednesday that its Office of Foreign Assets Control added six men and one woman, all officials of the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, along with the Ministry of Labor and the State Planning Commission, to the Specially Designated Nationals List.

“The North Korean regime not only engages in severe human rights abuses, but it also implements rigid censorship policies and conceals its inhumane and oppressive behavior,” acting OFAC Director John Smith said in the statement, adding that the move aimed to expose the individuals responsible for the abuses.

The U.S. State Department said in a separate statement that the action coincided with the release of its second report on North Korean human rights abuses and censorship, which it called among the worst in the world.

Pyongyang “continues to commit extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor, and torture. Many of these abuses are committed in the political prison camps, where an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 individuals are detained, including children and family members of those subject to persecution and censorship,” the State Department statement said.

Among seven individuals on the Treasury Department blacklist is Kim Yo Jong, 27, who it said is the younger sister of leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the vice director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Propaganda and Agitation Department.

Also on the list is Minister of State Security Kim Won Hong, whose agency the department said “engages in torture and inhumane treatment of detainees during interrogation and in the country’s network of political prison camps.”

(Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Tom Brown and Steve Orlofsky)

Aleppo assault likely a war crime, says U.N. as evacuation stalls

Boys stand amid the damage in the government-held al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo, during a media tour, Syria

By Laila Bassam, Lisa Barrington and John Davison

ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Plans to evacuate besieged rebel districts of Aleppo were under threat on Wednesday as renewed airstrikes and shelling rocked the Syrian city in a bombardment the United Nations said “most likely constitutes war crimes”.

Iran, one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main backers, imposed new conditions on a ceasefire deal, saying it wanted the simultaneous evacuation of wounded from two villages besieged by rebel fighters, according to rebel and U.N. sources.

There was no sign of that happening. Instead airstrikes, shelling and gunfire erupted in Aleppo and Turkey accused government forces of breaking the truce agreed less than a day before. Syrian state television said rebel shelling killed six people.

There were clashes on the ground later in the day, with rebels saying they launched an attack against government forces using suicide car bombs.

A ceasefire brokered by Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally, and Turkey was intended to end years of fighting in the city, giving the Syrian leader his biggest victory in more than five years of war. The evacuation of rebel-held areas was expected to start in the early hours of Wednesday, but did not materialize.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, said he was appalled that the deal appeared to have collapsed.

“While the reasons for the breakdown in the ceasefire are disputed, the resumption of extremely heavy bombardment by the Syrian government forces and their allies on an area packed with civilians is almost certainly a violation of international law and most likely constitutes war crimes,” he added.

There was no immediate indication when the evacuation of civilians and rebel fighters might take place but a pro-opposition TV station said it could be delayed until Thursday. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed in a phone call to make a joint effort to start the process, Turkish presidential sources said.

There was no sign of Iran’s conditions being met. Insurgents fired shells at the two majority-Shi’ite villages from which Tehran wanted wounded to be evacuated, Foua and Kefraya, in Idlib province west of Aleppo, causing some casualties, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted that rebel resistance in Aleppo would last no more than two or three days. The defense ministry in Moscow said the rebels now controlled an enclave of only 2.5 square km (1 square mile).

Civilians fill containers with water in a rebel-held besieged area of Aleppo, Syria

Civilians fill containers with water in a rebel-held besieged area of Aleppo, Syria December 14, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

RAPID ADVANCES

Nobody had left by dawn under the plan, according to a Reuters witness waiting at the departure point, where 20 buses stood with engines running but showed no sign of moving into rebel districts.

People in eastern Aleppo had packed their bags and burned personal belongings, fearing looting by the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed militia allies.

Officials in the military alliance backing Assad could not be reached immediately for comment on why the evacuation had stalled.

U.N. war crimes investigators said the Syrian government bore the main responsibility for preventing any attacks and reprisals in eastern Aleppo and that it must hold to account any troops or allied forces committing violations.

In what appeared to be a separate development from the planned evacuation, the Russian defense ministry said 6,000 civilians and 366 fighters had left rebel-held districts over the past 24 hours.

A total of 15,000 people, including 4,000 rebel fighters, wanted to leave Aleppo, according to a media unit run by the Syrian government’s ally Hezbollah.

The evacuation plan was the culmination of two weeks of rapid advances by the Syrian army and its allies that drove insurgents back into an ever-smaller pocket of the city under intense air strikes and artillery fire.

By taking full control of Aleppo, Assad has proved the power of his military coalition, aided by Russia’s air force and an array of Shi’ite militias from across the region.

Rebels have been supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, but the support they have enjoyed has fallen far short of the direct military backing given to Assad by Russia and Iran.

Russia’s decision to deploy its air force to Syria 18 months ago turned the war in Assad’s favor after rebel advances across western Syria. In addition to Aleppo, he has won back insurgent strongholds near Damascus this year.

The government and its allies have focused the bulk of their firepower on fighting rebels in western Syria rather than Islamic State, which this week managed to take back the ancient city of Palmyra, once again illustrating the challenge Assad faces reestablishing control over all Syria.

FEAR STALKS STREETS

As the battle for Aleppo unfolded, global concern has risen over the plight of the 250,000 civilians who were thought to remain in its rebel-held eastern sector before the sudden army advance began at the end of November.

The rout of rebels in Aleppo sparked a mass flight of terrified civilians and insurgents in bitter weather, a crisis the United Nations said was a “complete meltdown of humanity”. There were food and water shortages in rebel areas, with all hospitals closed.

On Tuesday, the United Nations voiced deep concern about reports it had received of Syrian soldiers and allied Iraqi fighters summarily shooting dead 82 people in recaptured east Aleppo districts. It accused them of “slaughter”.

The Syrian army has denied carrying out killings or torture among those captured, and Russia said on Tuesday rebels had “kept over 100,000 people in east Aleppo as human shields”.

Fear stalked the city’s streets. Some survivors trudged in the rain past dead bodies to the government-held west or the few districts still in rebel hands. Others stayed in their homes and awaited the Syrian army’s arrival.

“People are saying the troops have lists of families of fighters and are asking them if they had sons with the terrorists. (They are) then either left or shot and left to die,” said Abu Malek al-Shamali in Seif al-Dawla, one of the last rebel-held districts.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam in Aleppo and Tom Perry, John Davison and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Writing by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Editing by Giles Elgood and Pravin Char)

Aleppo could fall ‘at any moment’, U.N. reports civilian slaughter

Free Syrian Army fighters fire an anti-aircraft weapon in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, Syria.

By Laila Bassam and Stephanie Nebehay

ALEPPO, Syria/GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations said on Tuesday it had reports that Syrian soldiers and allied Iraqi fighters had summarily shot dead 82 children, women and men in recaptured east Aleppo and a military source said the last rebel pocket could fall “at any moment”.

The Syrian army has denied carrying out killings or torture among those captured, and its main ally Russia said on Tuesday rebels had “kept over 100,000 people as human shields”.

The rout of rebels from their ever-shrinking territory in Aleppo has sparked a mass flight of civilians and insurgents in bitter weather, a crisis the United Nations said was a “complete meltdown of humanity”.

Hopes for a last-ditch deal to end the fighting by withdrawing fighters also seemed in doubt, with Moscow rejecting calls for an immediate ceasefire as concern grew over the fate of civilians.

“The reports we had are of people being shot in the street trying to flee and shot in their homes,” said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. office. “There could be many more.”

France said it had called for an immediate U.N. Security Council meeting over the alleged atrocities to focus on possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Behind those fleeing was a wasteland of flattened buildings, concrete rubble and bullet-pocked walls, where tens of thousands had lived until recent days under intense bombardment even after medical and rescue services had collapsed.

Colville said the rebel-held area was “a hellish corner” of less than a square kilometer, adding its capture was imminent.

The Syrian army and its allies could declare victory at any moment, a Syrian military source said, predicting the final fall of the rebel enclave on Tuesday or Wednesday, after insurgent defences collapsed on Monday.

“WANTON SLAUGHTER”

Turkish and Russian officials will meet on Wednesday to examine a possible ceasefire and opening a corridor, a senior Turkish official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

But Moscow, the Syrian government’s most powerful ally, rejected any immediate call for a ceasefire. “The Russian side wants to do that only when the corridors are established,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.

A man carries a child with an IV drip as he flees deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria

A man carries a child with an IV drip as he flees deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria December 12, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

The spokesman for the civil defence force in the former rebel area of Aleppo reckoned rebels controlled an area of less than three sq km. “The situation is very, very bad. The civil defence has stopped operating in the city,” he told Reuters.

A surrender or withdrawal of the rebels from Aleppo would mean the end of the rebellion in the city, Syria’s largest until the outbreak of war after mass protests in 2011, but it is unclear if such a deal can be struck by world powers.

By finally dousing the last embers of resistance burning in Aleppo, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military coalition of the army, Russian air power and Iran-backed militias will have delivered him his biggest battlefield victory of the war.

However, while the rebels, including groups backed by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, as well as jihadist groups that the West does not support, will suffer a crushing defeat in Aleppo, the war will be far from over.

“The crushing of Aleppo, the immeasurably terrifying toll on its people, the bloodshed, the wanton slaughter of men, women and children, the destruction – and we are nowhere near the end of this cruel conflict,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement.

“FLEEING IN PANIC”

Aleppo’s loss will leave the rebels without a significant presence in any of Syria’s main cities, but they still hold much of the countryside west of Aleppo and the province of Idlib, also in northwest Syria.

Islamic State also has a big presence in Syria and has advanced in recent days, taking the desert city of Palmyra.

The army and its allies were advancing towards the Sukkari, Tel al-Zarazir and parts of Seif al-Dawla and al-Amariya districts, the Syrian military source said. “When the army regains control of these areas, its operation in the eastern areas of the city… will have finished”.

After days of intense bombardment of rebel-held areas, the rate of shelling and air strikes dropped considerably late on Monday and through the night as the weather deteriorated, a Reuters reporter in the city said.

However, rocket fire pounded rebel-held areas, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, reported. Rebels and government forces still fought at points around the reduced enclave, the Observatory said.

Smoke rises as seen from a government-held area of Aleppo, Syria

Smoke rises as seen from a government-held area of Aleppo, Syria December 12, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF cited an unnamed doctor in Aleppo as saying that many unaccompanied children were trapped in a building that was under attack, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had no knowledge of the incident.

“Artillery shelling is continuing but because of the weather the aerial bombing has stopped. Many of the families and children have not left for areas under the control of the regime because their fathers are from the rebels,” said Abu Ibrahim, a resident of Aleppo in a text message.

Colville said he feared retribution. “In all, as of yesterday evening we have received reports of pro-government forces killing at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children,” Colville told a news briefing, naming the Iraqi armed group Harakat al-Nujaba as reportedly involved in the killings.

The military official said the rebels were fleeing “in a state of panic”, but a Turkish-based official with the Jabha Shamiya insurgent group in Aleppo said on Monday night that they had established a new frontline along the river.

“The bombardment is not on the frontlines, the greater burden of the bombardment is on the civilians, and this is what is causing a burden on us,” the official said.

Terrible conditions were described by city residents.

Abu Malek al-Shamali, a resident in the rebel area, said dead bodies lay in the streets. “There are many corpses in Fardous and Bustan al-Qasr with no one to bury them,” he said.

“Last night people slept in the streets and in buildings where every flat has several families crowded in,” he added.

Celebrations on the government side of the divided city lasted into Monday night, with fighters shooting rounds into the sky in triumph.

TIDE OF REFUGEES

A daily bulletin issued by the Russian Defence Ministry’s “reconciliation center” from the Hmeimin airbase used by its warplanes, reported that more than 8,000 civilians, more than half of them children, had left east Aleppo in 24 hours.

State television broadcast footage of a tide of hundreds of refugees walking along a ravaged street, wearing thick clothes against the rain and cold, many with hoods or hats pulled tight around their faces, and hauling sacks or bags of belongings.

One man pushed a bicycle loaded with bags, another family pulled a cart on which sat an elderly woman. Another man carried on his back a small girl wearing a pink hat.

At the same time, a correspondent from a pro-Damascus television station spoke to camera from a part of Aleppo held by the government, standing in a tidy street with flowing traffic.

In some recaptured areas, people were returning to their shattered homes. A woman in her sixties, who identified herself as Umm Ali, or “Ali’s mother”, said that she, her husband and her disabled daughter had no water.

They were looking after the orphaned children of another daughter killed in the bombing, she said, and were reduced to putting pots and pans in the street to collect rainwater.

In another building near al-Shaar district, which was taken by the army last week, a man was fixing the balcony of his house with his children. “No matter the circumstances, our home is better than displacement,” he said.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam in Aleppo, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Editing by Pravin Char and Peter Millership)

Ohio lawmakers pass ‘heartbeat’ abortion legislation

Protesters demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on the morning that the court took up a major abortion case focusing on whether a Texas law that imposes strict regulations on abortion doctors and clinic buildings interferes with the constitutional right of a woman to end her pregnancy in Washington

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Ohio lawmakers approved a bill that bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks after conception, clearing the way for one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the United States if it becomes law.

The Republican-led state House of Representatives and Senate passed the so-called “heartbeat” measure late on Tuesday, sending it to be signed into law by Republican Governor John Kasich.

Kasich, an abortion opponent, has in the past questioned whether such legislation would be constitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide more than four decades ago, but states were allowed to permit restrictions once a fetus was viable. Some states, particularly those governed by Republicans such as Ohio, have sought to chip away at a woman’s right to end a pregnancy.

Lower courts have struck down similar “heartbeat” laws in North Dakota and Arkansas and the Supreme Court refused to hear appeals on those rulings in January.

But now, with Republican President-elect Donald Trump having the opportunity to fill at least one Supreme Court vacancy, conservatives in Ohio hope that the legislation can withstand a challenge in court.

“A new president, new Supreme Court appointees change the dynamic, and there was consensus in our caucus to move forward,” Senate President Keith Faber told the Columbus Dispatch.

“It has a better chance than it did before,” Faber said of the bill’s chances of surviving a constitutional challenge,
according to the Dispatch.

The heartbeat legislation has been approved twice before by the state’s lower house only to fail in the Senate.

The abortion legislation was part of a wider bill on reporting child abuse. It does not make exceptions for rape and incest, though it does allow for abortions that would save the mother’s life, according to text of the legislation.

Some women’s rights groups were swift to condemn the approval of the bill. The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion rights and tracks abortion legislation, said it would be one of the most restrictive abortion laws if enacted.

“Banning women from getting a medical procedure is out of touch with Ohio values and is completely unacceptable,” abortion-rights advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; editing
by Richard Lough)

North Korea says will treat U.S. detainees under ‘wartime law’

A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency.

By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Monday it has told the United States it will sever the only channel of communication between them, at the United Nations in New York, after Washington blacklisted leader Kim Jong Un last week for human rights abuses.

All matters related to the United States, including the handling of American citizens detained by Pyongyang, will be conducted under its “wartime law,” the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

The move is the latest escalation of tension with the isolated country, which earlier on Monday threatened a “physical response” after the United States and South Korea said they would deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea.

“As the United States will not accept our demand for the immediate withdrawal of the sanctions measure, we will be taking corresponding actions in steps,” KCNA said.

“As the first step, we have notified that the New York contact channel that has been the only existing channel of contact will be completely severed,” it said.

“The Republic will handle all matters arising between us and the United States from now on under our wartime laws, and the matters of Americans detained are no exception to this.”

It was not clear how “wartime laws” would affect the handling of the two Americans detained. But North Korea has indicated in the past that wartime laws would mean that detainees will not be released on humanitarian grounds.

The North and the United States remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Washington sided with the South, ended only with a truce.

The two Americans known to be detained in North Korea include Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March for trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan, according to North Korean state media. The other, Korean-American Kim Dong Chul, is serving a 10 year sentence for espionage, state media said.

A University of Virginia spokesman said the university remains in touch with Warmbier’s family but did not have additional comment.

The so-called New York channel has been an intermittent point of contact between the North and the United States, which do not have diplomatic ties, to exchange messages and, less frequently, hold discussions.

North Korea said last week it was planning its toughest response to what it deemed a “declaration of war” by the United States after Washington sanctioned Kim.

On Saturday, the North test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, but it appeared to have failed after launch.

ESCALATING TENSION

The United States and South Korea said on Friday that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system will be used to counter North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.

The announcement was the latest move by the allies against the North, which conducted its fourth nuclear test this year and launched a long-range rocket, resulting in tough new U.N. sanctions.

“There will be physical response measures from us as soon as the location and time that the invasionary tool for U.S. world supremacy, THAAD, will be brought into South Korea are confirmed,” the North’s military said early on Monday.

“It is the unwavering will of our army to deal a ruthless retaliatory strike and turn (the South) into a sea of fire and a pile of ashes the moment we have an order to carry it out,” the statement carried by KCNA said.

The North frequently threatens to attack the South and U.S. interests in Asia and the Pacific.

South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun warned the North not to take “rash and foolish action”. Otherwise, he said, it would face “decisive and strong punishment from our military.”

The move to deploy the THAAD system also drew a swift and sharp protest from China.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday that THAAD exceeded the security needs of the Korean peninsula, and suggested there was a “conspiracy behind this move.”

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday the THAAD system was not intended to target any third country but was purely aimed at countering the threat from the North, in an apparent message to Beijing.

A South Korean Defence Ministry official said selection of a site for THAAD could come “within weeks,” and the allies were working to have it operational by the end of 2017.

It will be used by U.S. Forces Korea “to protect alliance military forces,” the South and the United States said on Friday. The United States maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war.

(Additional reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Tony Munroe)

U.S. sanctions North Korean leader for first time over human rights

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un posing with school children

By David Brunnstrom and James Pearson

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the first time, citing “notorious abuses of human rights,” in a move diplomats say will infuriate the nuclear-armed country.

The sanctions, the first to target any North Koreans for rights abuses, affect property and other assets within the U.S. jurisdiction. They include 10 other individuals besides Kim and five government ministries and departments, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

“Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and torture,” Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam J. Szubin said in the statement.

But inside North Korea, adulation for Kim, 32, is mandatory and he is considered infallible. A 2014 report by the United Nations, which referred to Kim by name in connection to human rights, triggered a strong reaction from Pyongyang, including a string of military provocations.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a new law requiring U.S. President Barack Obama to deliver a report within 120 days to Congress on human rights in North Korea. It had designate for sanctions anyone found responsible for human rights violations. Kim Jong Un, the third generation of his family to rule the Stalinist state, topped the list.

The U.S. Treasury Department identified Kim’s date of birth as Jan. 8, 1984, a rare official confirmation of the young leader’s birthday.

Many of the abuses are in North Korea’s prison camps, which hold between 80,000 and 120,000 people including children, the report said.

The five agencies designated were two ministries that run North Korea’s secret police and their correctional services, which operate the prison camps. Also named were the ruling Workers’ Party’s Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), a key bureau used by Kim to wield control of the party and the government.

The sanctions also named lower-level officials, such as Minister of People’s Security Choe Pu Il, as directly responsible for abuses.

FORCED LABOR

Senior U.S administration officials said the new sanctions showed the administration’s greater focus on human rights in North Korea, an area long secondary to Washington’s efforts to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

The report was “the most comprehensive” to date on individual North Korean officials’ roles in forced labor and repression.

They said the sanctions would be partly “symbolic” but hoped that naming mid-level officials may make functionaries “think twice” before engaging in abuses. “It lifts the anonymity,” a senior administration official told reporters.

The North Korea mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

South Korea, which cut off all political and commercial ties with its own sanctions against the North in February, welcomed the move, saying it will encourage greater international pressure on the North to improve its human rights record.

China’s foreign ministry, asked about the new sanctions, reiterated its policy of opposing unilateral sanctions.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, visiting Beijing on Thursday, said he is very concerned about rising tension on the Korean peninsula and called on North Korea to refrain from making any provocations.

MORE SANCTIONS TO COME

Using sanctions against a head of state is not unprecedented. In 2011, the United States sanctioned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and six other senior Syrian officials for their role in Syria’s violence. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was also sanctioned.

Policymakers often worry that targeting a country’s leader will destroy any lingering chance of rapprochement, former diplomats say.

It is a sign “there probably isn’t much of a hope for a diplomatic resolution,” said Zachary Goldman, a former policy adviser in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

The new sanctions follow a long list of measures that have had little effect in pressuring North Korean leaders to change, experts who study the North’s political system said.

“The sanctions from today will do nothing whatsoever to alter North Korea’s strategic calculus and only underscore their thinking that the U.S. has a ‘hostile policy’ against their country,” said Michael Madden an expert on the North Korean leadership.

“Considering the sanctions name Kim Jong Un, the reaction from Pyongyang will be epic,” he said. “There will be numerous official and state media denunciations, which will target the U.S. and Seoul, and the wording will be vituperative and blistering.”

Peter Harrell, a former State Department sanctions official, said the measures would signal to companies in China, as well as others doing business with North Korea, the U.S. would continue escalating sanctions.

Harrell added it was unlikely any assets would be blocked, however “given the realities of where Kim Jong Un and his cronies likely hide their assets.”

In March, the U.N. Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the country in response to its nuclear and missile tests.

That same month, Obama imposed new sanctions on North Korea after it conducted its fourth nuclear test and a rocket launch that Washington and its allies said employed banned ballistic missile technology.

Those steps froze any property of the North Korean government in the U.S. and essentially prohibited exports of goods from the U.S. to North Korea.

“The United States has maintained sanctions and pressure against the North for 65 years since the Korean War, but there’s not been a single case where the intended result was accomplished,” said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

“How much time is left in the Obama administration? There may be the wish to prove the policy of ‘strategic patience’ against the North has not failed, but when it comes to practical results, there won’t be much to show,” Yang said.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Yeganeh Torbati and Joel Schectman in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Bill Tarrant)

Russia calls for swift resumption of Syria peace talks

Boys on motorcycle near rubble

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Russia called on Tuesday for a swift resumption of stalled Syrian peace talks, saying it was the only way to halt “massive violations” of human rights perpetrated in the five-year-old conflict.

Russia, a strong ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched air strikes in September to support the Syrian army and its militia allies battling rebels and Islamic State fighters, and is backing an offensive on rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo.

It supports proposals for a political settlement under which some Syrian opposition figures would be brought into a Syrian unity government – steps which rebels and their foreign backers say do not go far enough.

“The only way to find a solution to the Syria crisis and stop the massive violations is to promptly convene talks with a broad spectrum of Syrian opposition which includes Syria Kurds,” Aleksei Goltiaev, senior counselor at Russia’s mission to UN in Geneva, told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“Only Syrians, without diktat, have the right to decide (their future),” Goltiaev said.

The main Syrian Kurdish political group, the PYD, was left out of Geneva peace talks which ground to a halt in late April without results.

Goltiaev’s comments followed an appeal by United Nations war crimes investigators for world powers to pressure the warring sides to return to the negotiating table.

Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the U.N. independent commission of inquiry on Syria, said that the Syrian government was conducting daily air strikes, while militant groups including Islamic State and the Nusra Front also carried out indiscriminate attacks.

“We need all states to insist time and time again that influential states and the (U.N.) Security Council unconditionally support the political process,” Pinheiro said.

U.S. ambassador Keith Harper did not refer to resumption of talks, but called for Damascus to release some of the “tens of thousands” of imprisoned Syrians. Many are subjected to “torture, sexual violence and denial of fair trials”, he said.

Pinheiro said schools, hospitals, mosques and water stations “are all being turned into rubble” and tens of thousands of people were trapped between frontlines and international borders.

Syria’s ambassador Hussam Aala accused regional powers of “supporting terrorism” and “causing the failure of intra-Syrian talks in Geneva”.

He said schools and hospitals in Aleppo were being destroyed and civilians killed by missiles provided by Turkey and Qatar to the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian branch.

In a report last week, the U.N. investigators said that Islamic State is committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the religious community of 400,000 people through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.

“As we speak, Yazidi women and girls are still sexually enslaved in Syria, subjected to brutal rapes and beatings,” Pinheiro said on Tuesday.

Vian Dakhil, the only female Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, told a news briefing in Geneva: “We need the Security Council to bring this report to the Criminal Court.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Iraq makes arrests over reports of Sunni executed in Falluja

A military vehicle of the Iraqi security forces is seen next to an Iraqi flag in Falluja

By Isabel Coles and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq said on Monday it had made arrests as it investigates allegations that Shi’ite militiamen helping the army retake Falluja had executed dozens of Sunni Muslim men fleeing the city held by Islamic State.

Iraqi authorities “are following up on the violations and a number of arrests have been made,” government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said after a regional governor said 49 Sunni men had been executed after surrendering to a Shi’ite faction.

Sohaib al-Rawi, governor of Anbar province where Falluja is located, said on Sunday that 643 men had gone missing between June 3 and June 5, and “all the surviving detainees were subjected to severe and collective torture by various means.”

The participation of militias in the battle of Falluja, just west of Baghdad, alongside the Iraqi army had already raised fears of sectarian killings.

Iraq’s Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi said four military personnel were arrested after video footage showed them abusing people displaced from Falluja. He pledged on Twitter to prosecute any serviceman involved in such acts.

“Harassment of IDPs (internally displaced persons) is a betrayal of the sacrifices of our brave forces’ liberation operations to expel Daesh (Islamic State) from Iraq,” he said.

Falluja is a historic bastion of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces that toppled Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003, and the Shi’ite-led governments that followed.

In the north of the country, troops fought with Islamic State militants in the village of Haj Ali for the second day in a row, an Iraqi officer taking part said.

Haj Ali is near the Qayyara, a town under Islamic State control which has an airfield that Baghdad’s forces seek to use as a staging ground for a future offensive on Mosul, about 60 km (40 miles) north.

STRICT ORDERS

“Strict orders were issued to protect the civilians,” government spokesman Hadithi said, adding that these instructions were also given to the Hashid Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces, the coalition of mostly Shi’ite militias backed by Iran which are involved in the fighting.

The United Nations said last week it knew of “extremely distressing, credible reports” of men and boys being abused by armed groups working with security forces after fleeing Falluja.

Iraqi authorities routinely separate males aged over 15 from their families when they manage to escape Falluja, to screen them to ensure they do not pose a security risk and check if they may have been involved in war crimes.

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said screening was legitimate but should not be done by paramilitary groups.

“The country must avoid further divisions or violence along sectarian lines, lest it implode completely,” he said on Monday.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said the Baghdad government was aware of the abuses.

“We know that the prime minister has come out and said that he believes that these abuses have happened and that he … has demanded accountability of any perpetrators,” Colonel Chris Garver said. “We think that is the right course of action.”

The Iraqi army launched the offensive on Falluja on May 23, with air support from the U.S.-led coalition. The United Nations has said up to 90,000 people are trapped in the city with little food or water.

Repeated phone calls to three spokesmen of the Popular Mobilisation Forces were not answered. Last week, one of them, Kareem Nuri, said past accusations of human rights violations were “politically motivated and baseless”.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

U.N. Human Rights Chief urges alternatives for migrants

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Al Hussein arrives for the 31st session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. human rights chief on Monday decried a “worrying rise” in detentions of migrants in Greece and Italy and urged authorities to find alternatives to confining children while asylum requests are processed.

More than one million migrants, many fleeing Syria’s war, have arrived in Europe through Greece since last year. More than 150,000 have come in 2016 so far – 38 percent of them children, according to United Nations refugee agency data. Italy has also set up mandatory detention centers.

“Even unaccompanied children are frequently placed in prison cells or centers ringed with barbed wire. Detention is never in the best interests of the child – which must take primacy over immigration objectives,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“Alternatives to the detention of children must be developed,” he told the start of a three-week council session.

Zeid said it was possible for Europe to create “well-functioning migration governance systems”, with fair assessment of individual requests for international protection while removing what he called “hysteria and panic from the equation”.

Zeid deplored anti-migrant rhetoric “spanning the length and breadth of the European continent … This fosters a climate of divisiveness, xenophobia and even – as in Bulgaria – vigilante violence”.

In April, Bulgarian police arrested a local man who had posted video on social media showing how he tied up three migrants near the Turkish border.

The migrant influx has drawn a rising public backlash, in part because of strains it has imposed on housing and social services. Concerns have also been raised in some EU countries about their ability to integrate many mostly Muslim migrants.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles/Mark Heinrich)