There are common points between the Gaza war and the Bosnian genocide Refik Hodzic

I am a journalist, writer and justice activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was deeply affected by the genocide in my country in the 1990s. Many of my family members were taken to concentration camps, and some of the most gruesome crimes of the era were committed in my hometown.

Also, for decades, I worked as a strategic communications expert in transitional justice contexts across the world, from Syria to Sri Lanka.

Israel’s ‘war against Gaza’s children’ explained

One child is killed every 15 minutes in the Israeli bombings of Gaza, according to a Palestinian NGO, highlighting the toll the current war has exacted on children.

More than 100 children have been killed every day since Israel started bombing the besieged Palestinian enclave on October 7 in the wake of the deadly Hamas attack. More than 3,400 Palestinians have been killed in the deadliest Israeli assault in decades.

“We are witnessing a genocide in real time,” a spokesperson for The Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) said.

Joe Biden owns this

So, US President Joe Biden got off a big plane in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and embraced a war criminal whose war crime-addicted military had, only hours earlier, committed yet another war crime of such horrendous nature and scale that it is destined to reverberate in memory and history.

That will be the sick, defining image of Biden’s presidency: a hug on an airport tarmac with an Israeli prime minister who has always revelled in killing Palestinians, even desperate children, women and men who thought they were beyond Benjamin Netanyahu’s malevolent reach on the grounds of a hospital in besieged Gaza that, bit by bit, is being erased in blatant acts of genocide.

This is genocide

The cataclysm that you and I are witnessing in Gaza is a genocide in the awful making.

It is not an “onslaught”. It is not an “invasion”. It is not even a “war”. It is a genocide.

The apocalyptic scenes and sounds in Gaza are proof that a cruel, occupying army is intent on achieving its overarching aim: the annihilation of what remains of an already shattered slice of land and the indiscriminate killing of helpless, exhausted children, women and men.

Over decades, a succession of immune Israeli governments and their useful proxies, the rampaging settler militias, have waged incremental genocide, bit by bit, with the explicit approval, consent, and encouragement of Western governments – who, in a predictable show of performative solidarity with a ruthless ally – have bathed their tourist attractions in blue and white or the Star of David.

Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets

As Israel engages in a massive air campaign ahead of an anticipated full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel last weekend that left over 1,200 people dead.

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

Before They Vowed to Annihilate Hamas, Israeli Officials Considered It an Asset

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said this week that, as far as the military is concerned, there is little difference between Gaza’s civilian population and Hamas, which has governed the besieged territory since 2007. “It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians [being] not aware, not involved,” Herzog said in the middle of an unprecedented Israeli bombing campaign in retaliation for Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians last week. “They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

A Jewish Plea: Stand Up to Israel’s Act of Genocide

I have by my desk a quote attributed to beloved Jewish writer and activist Grace Paley: “The only recognizable feature of hope is action.” For over a decade that has motivated my work to build a thriving moment of American Jews in solidarity with Palestinians. But where do you find hope in the midst of utter horror? My only hope in this moment is that my fellow Jewish Americans and people of conscience all across America will unite in a way we never have before to call for an end to genocide.

Israel is manufacturing a case for genocide

Israeli and American officials, like many of their supporters, have called the Hamas incursion on Saturday “Israel’s 9/11”, drawing parallels between Hamas and al-Qaeda and between Israel and the United States.

“If the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing,” President Joe Biden said, “our response would be swift, decisive and overwhelming.”  The “brutality” and “the bloodthirstiness” of Hamas, he added, “brings to mind the worst rampages of ISIS”. He even repeated the sensationalist and unsubstantiated claims that Hamas fighters had “raped women” and “beheaded babies”.

China’s ‘beautiful Xinjiang’ continues to oppress Uighurs

During his visit to the Chinese province of Xinjiang on August 26,  Chinese President Xi Jinping asserted that the predominantly Muslim Uighur region is enjoying some “hard-won social stability”, and that it is moving toward “unity, harmony and prosperity”. This image of “beautiful Xinjiang”, which Xi talked about, stands in sharp contrast with the reporting of the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

A report OHCHR released last year concluded that since 2017, the Chinese government had committed grave rights violations against millions of Uighurs and other Turkic people in Xinjiang, abuses so systematic and widespread that they “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity”.

Xi urges more work to ‘control illegal religious activities’ in Xinjiang on surprise visit

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has made a surprise visit to Xinjiang, urging officials in the region to conserve “hard won social stability” and deepen efforts in controlling “illegal religious activities”. It was only his second visit since launching an extreme crackdown on the area’s Uyghur and Turkic Muslim population almost a decade ago.

Xi arrived in the city of Urumqi on Saturday, according to Chinese state media, where he heard a government work report and made a speech to Communist party and government officials. During his visit, Xi urged officials to “more deeply promote the Sinicisation of Islam and effectively control illegal religious activities”.

China’s Xi doubles down on hardline Xinjiang policy

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the hardline approach to dealing with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang to continue, despite international criticisms.

Delivering a major speech on Saturday in Urumqi, the region’s capital city, Xi stressed that “social stability” remained the top priority there, as he highlighted the need for counterterrorism measures and further “Sinocizing” of Islam, the predominant religion for the Uyghurs who make up the majority of the indigenous population in the area.

China’s genocide against the Uyghurs, in 4 disturbing charts

China is responsible for an “ongoing genocide” against its Uyghur ethnic minority, according to the first independent legal analysis of the situation undertaken by a nongovernmental organization. The report, published this week by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy think tank in Washington, DC, brought together the findings of 50 experts in human rights and international law.

Governments around the world are also increasingly declaring that China’s persecution of Uyghurs constitutes genocide. The United States applied that label in January, and the Canadian and Dutch parliaments followed suit in February. 

Xinjiang: more than half a million forced to pick cotton, report suggests

More than half a million people from ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang have been coerced into picking cotton, on a scale far greater than previously thought, new research has suggested.

The Xinjiang region produces more than 20% of the world’s cotton and 84% of China’s, but according to a new report released on Tuesday by the Center for Global Policy there is significant evidence that it is “tainted” by human rights abuses, including suspected forced labour of Uighur and other Turkic Muslim minority people.

Israel’s ‘silent transfer’ of Palestinians out of Palestine

Occupied East Jerusalem – As more Arab countries normalise relations with Israel, it presses on with a policy of “silent transfer” – an intricate system that targets Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem with residency revocation, displacement through house demolitions, barriers in obtaining building permits, and high taxes.

Palestinian researcher Manosur Manasra notes Israel launched this policy of transfer against Palestinians in East Jerusalem almost immediately after the 1967 war and the subsequent occupation of the eastern part of the city.

Thousands of Xinjiang mosques destroyed or damaged, report finds

Thousands of mosques in Xinjiang have been damaged or destroyed in just three years, leaving fewer in the region than at any time since the Cultural Revolution, according to a report on Chinese oppression of Muslim minorities.

The revelations are contained in an expansive data project by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which used satellite imagery and on-the-ground reporting to map the extensive and continuing construction of detention camps and destruction of cultural and religious sites in the north-western region.

Genocide denial gains ground 25 years after Srebrenica massacre

At the genocide memorial centre outside Srebrenica, thousands of simple white gravestones stretch across the gently inclined hillside for as far as the eye can see.

Nearby, over a number of days in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces systematically murdered around 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys. It was the worst crime of the Bosnian war, and remains the only massacre on European soil since the second world war to be ruled a genocide.

Mass Surveillance System Flags Uighurs For Detention Camps

The watch towers, double-locked doors and video surveillance in the Chinese camps are there “to prevent escapes.” Uighurs and other minorities held inside are scored on how well they speak the dominant Mandarin language and follow strict rules on everything down to bathing and using the toilet, scores that determine if they can leave.

“Manner education” is mandatory, but “vocational skills improvement” is offered only after a year in the camps.

Voluntary job training is the reason the Chinese government has given for detaining more than a million ethnic minorities, most of them Muslims. But a classified blueprint leaked to a consortium of news organizations shows the camps are instead precisely what former detainees have described: Forced ideological and behavioral re-education centers run in secret.

'Allow no escapes': leak exposes reality of China's vast prison camp network

The internal workings of a vast chain of Chinese internment camps used to detain at least a million people from the nation’s Muslim minorities are laid out in leaked Communist Party documents published on Sunday.

The China Cables, a cache of classified government papers, appear to provide the first official glimpse into the structure, daily life and ideological framework behind centres in north-western Xinjiang region that have provoked international condemnation.

China defends internment camps for Uighur Muslims

China has issued an ardent defence of its mass internment of Muslim minorities in far west Xinjiang region, with a regional official insisting authorities were preventing “terrorism” through “vocational education” centres.

Sohrat Zakir, governor of Xinjiang, said Beijing was saving Uighur and Kazak Muslims from the lure of religious violence by teaching them job skills and to speak Mandarin, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

Myanmar Rohingya: UN says military leaders must face genocide charges

A UN report has said top military figures in Myanmar must be investigated for genocide in Rakhine state and crimes against humanity in other areas.

The report, based on hundreds of interviews, is the strongest condemnation from the UN so far of violence against Rohingya Muslims.

It says the army's tactics are "grossly disproportionate to actual security threats". Myanmar rejected the report.

At least 700,000 Rohingya fled violence in the country in the past 12 months.