CRINmail 204
In this issue:
Teenage students are believed to be among more than 60 people arrested at a military school in Turkey for their alleged involvement in the coup attempt earlier this month. Government figures claim 232 people died, including 145 civilians, by the end of the failed revolt, in which a rogue faction deployed tanks to the streets and targeted key infrastructure. On 21 July, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the decision to place the country under a state of emergency. It orders the closure of thousands of private educational institutions, hospitals, and clinics, and associations allegedly linked to a movement inspired by Fethullah Gülen, a cleric the government blames for a violent coup attempt on July 15-16. Human Rights Watch described the state of emergency as arbitrary and discriminatory. As many as 60,000 civil servants – including judges, prosecutors, police, teachers, and bureaucrats – have already been suspended from their jobs without a disciplinary investigation. More than 15,000 education staff have been suspended, and the licences of 21,000 teachers working at private institutions revoked. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: "We will continue to clean the virus from all state bodies because this virus has spread. Unfortunately like a cancer, this virus has enveloped the state."
Thousands of children in conflict-affected countries have been detained without charge for months or even years as national security threats, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. In addition to those arrested for actual criminal offences, many are rounded up in massive sweeps or arrested based on flimsy evidence, groundless suspicion, or alleged terrorist activity by family members. In countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria, the authorities may have hundreds of children in detention at any given time for alleged conflict-related offences. Many are denied access to lawyers or relatives, or the chance to challenge their detention before a judge. They are often detained in appalling conditions, confined in overcrowded cells with adults, and with grossly inadequate food and medical care. In Nigeria and Syria, an unknown number of children have died in detention from a lack of medical care, starvation, dehydration, or as a result of torture. In Afghanistan, security forces torture children more frequently than adults, according to interviews conducted by the UN.
In June a judge ruled that eight of Guatemala’s former military leaders will stand trial for massacres, torture and disappearances they ordered or helped orchestrate at a military base in the city of Cobán between 1981 and 1987. The bulk of the evidence for the trial comes from exhumations undertaken by a team of forensic anthropologists over two decades at a former military base, where they uncovered 84 graves and 565 bodies. One grave held 64 men and boys, and just yards away, in another grave, lay 41 women with 22 children under the age of four. The team looked for causes of death, identified bodies and brought their remains back to families who have been searching for parents and children for decades. In 1996 Guatemala emerged from a 36-year-long civil war which pitted leftist, mostly Mayan insurgents against the army, which - backed by the US - waged a vicious campaign to eliminate the guerrillas. More than 200,000 people - most of them civilians - were killed or disappeared.
The Colombian government and FARC rebels have signed an agreement giving specific guarantees to women, girls and members of the LGBT community, as part of a peace accord. Women displaced by the conflict have often led the struggle for land rights, and suffered sexual violence. A commission will be set up to look into sexual violence during the 50-year conflict. The Colombian government also promised to guarantee the security of women and girls recruited into the ranks of the FARC - believed to make up about 30 percent of an estimated 7,000 FARC fighters. The agreement also guarantees economic, social and cultural rights of women and LGBT persons in the rural sector and promotes women's participation in spaces of representation, decision-making and conflict resolution. The agreement adds that crimes of sexual violence, forced displacement and recruitment of children will not be subject to amnesty.
President Juan Manuel Santos has said he expects a full peace accord to be signed in the next few months.
In South Sudan renewed violence has forced 37,491 people to flee to Uganda after fighting broke out between troops loyal to the country's rival leaders, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). More than 90 percent of the refugees are women and children. Heavy fighting involving tanks and helicopters raged in South Sudan's capital Juba for several days between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and those backing Vice President Riek Machar earlier this month. At least 272 people were killed before the leaders ordered a ceasefire. The UN also says there have been at least 120 cases of sexual violence and rape against civilians in Juba. South Sudan's conflict, which erupted in December 2013, has led to one of the world's worst displacement situations. Some 1.69 million people are displaced inside the country, while South Sudanese refugees abroad now number 831,582, mainly in Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda.
In the first six months of this year, 5,166 civilians were either killed or maimed in Afghanistan, according to a UN report. The casualties include1,509 children, 388 dead and 1,121 injured, a figure the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described as “alarming and shameful,” particularly as it represents the highest numbers of children killed or wounded in a six-month period since counting began in 2009. The report also documents other serious human rights violations and abuses, including the deliberate targeting of women in the public sphere, use of children in armed conflict, sexual violence against boys and girls, attacks on educational and health facilities, abductions and summary executions. Human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and judges have also been targeted, in some cases being labelled by the Taliban as “military targets”. The report highlights the need for accountability and justice for all human rights violations and abuses, underlining that victims and family members must not be required to submit written complaints for the authorities to initiate investigations, particularly in view of the low literacy rates in the country.
Following the on-camera murder of a 12-year-old boy in Aleppo and the killing of more than 20 children killed during air strikes in Manbij, UNICEF has called for an immediate end to all forms of violence against children in Syria and urged all parties to the conflict there to make every effort to avoid the loss of civilian lives. A video circulating on social media appears to show Syrian rebels beheading a Palestinian boy who they accuse of being a pro-government fighter. The video shows a group of men in the back of a truck cutting off the head of the boy. Before the murder, the men accuse the boy of being a member of the Liwa al-Quds (Jerusalem brigade), a Palestinian armed group fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. The Jerusalem brigade posted a statement on its official Facebook page on Wednesday, identifying the boy as 12-year-old Abdullah Issa, who they said was not a fighter. The rebels have been identified as members of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki Movement. UNICEF estimates that 35,000 children are trapped in and around Manbij, in eastern rural area of Aleppo Governorate, with nowhere safe to go. Since the intensification of fighting in the last six weeks, about 2,300 people, including dozens of children are reported to have been killed.
UN Secretary-General (SG) Ban Ki-moon has asked Saudi Arabia for information on actions it is taking to prevent the killing and wounding of children in Yemen in response to the government’s claim that it is conducting military operations with "great care." The meeting between Ban and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, which took place in New York two weeks ago, followed the SG’s decision to remove the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen from his annual blacklist of those who violate children’s rights in armed conflict. The SG criticised Riyadh for exerting “unacceptable pressure” by threatening to cut funding to the UN. The coalition, which has fought in Yemen since March 2015 against Iran-allied Houthi rebels, has been responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in the conflict last year, killing 510 and wounding 667, according to the UN. Read an open letter from a group of human rights groups criticising the SG’s decision to let Saudi Arabia off the hook.
Ukraine is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, according to the new “Trafficking in Persons Report” from the US Department of State. People living in conflict-affected areas in eastern Ukraine are especially vulnerable to exploitation. According to the Organization of Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, children as young as 15 have been recruited into the ranks of separatist forces. According to the report, the recruitment of children by armed groups takes place on territory not under the control of the government. Separatist groups have also been using children as informants and human shields. The report urges the government to vigorously investigate and prosecute trafficking offences, including public officials complicit in trafficking crimes.
More than 300 schools run by the UN have been attacked, damaged or rendered inoperable by armed conflict and violence in the Middle East over the past five years, disrupting the education of thousands of children, according to a new report by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. In Syria, more than half of schools run by UNRWA have ceased to function due to damage, access restrictions or the need to use the premises as shelters for displaced families. More than 400 qualified teachers have left the country, forcing UNRWA to hire untrained teachers, the report says. Most schools have been looted of equipment and learning materials. Dozens of UNRWA schools in Gaza suffered devastating damage during the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in the summer of 2014. Altogether, almost half of UNRWA’s 700 schools in Syria, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan have been badly disrupted by conflict.
More than half the school-age Syrian children in Lebanon are not enrolled in formal education, according to the latest report from Human Rights Watch (HRW). The new research estimates that more than half of the 500,000 Syrian refugee children currently in the country are missing out on schooling as their parents face problems with their residency status or cannot afford costs related to education, including transport, uniforms and books. The report suggests the removal of barriers to enrolment and anend to violence against children in the form of corporal punishment and raids on schools in refugee camps.
A new report released by UNICEF documents the scale and complexity of the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. “Children in Iraq are in the firing line and are being repeatedly and relentlessly targeted,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Iraq Representative. A total of 1,496 children have been abducted over the past two and a half years. The report also shows that almost ten percent of Iraqi children – more than 1.5 million – have been forced to flee their homes because of violence since the beginning of 2014, often multiple times. Nearly one in five schools is out of use due to conflict and almost 3.5 million children of school-age are missing out on an education.
Earlier this month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that it is essential the Iraqi authorities step in to halt uncontrolled militias, specially the so-called Islamic State (IS) from continuing to take revenge on civilians fleeing towns recaptured from IS. He also urged the Iraqi authorities to take immediate action to locate and free more than 600 men and boys reportedly abducted by a militia group involved in the recapture of Fallujah from IS in June.
Demonstrators took to the streets in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on 9 July after security forces killed Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a young commander for the Hizbul Mujahedeen, a Kashmiri rebel group. Security forces have been accused of human rights abuses while struggling to contain the insurgency and its aftermath. The police statement said protesters throughout the valley had attacked police stations, police cars, a fire truck and a railway station, setting fire to security vehicles and government property. A curfew was imposed in the entire valley of Kashmir on Sunday; mobile internet and train services were suspended.
Hospitals in Kashmir received more than 400 injured, said Dr. Adil Ashraf of the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar, who added that his hospital alone had received more than 130 wounded people in the past two days, most with pellet and bullet injuries. Children are among thevictims of pellet guns used by government forces. The latest victims are eight-year-old Asif Rashid and 13-year-old Mir Arafat, both hit by pellets fired by government forces to disperse protesters. Insha Malik, a resident of south Kashmir’s Shopian district, was blinded in both eyes by pellets fired by forces on 12 July. A 14-year-old was hit by nearly 100 pellets in her home in Sedow village. Four-year-old Zuhra Majeed was hit by pellets in her legs and abdomen after her family was targeted by police outside their home on 10 July.
A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli soldiers who fired rubber-coated bullets at demonstrators near Jerusalem, said the Palestinian health ministry. The Palestinian suburb in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem is cut off from Jerusalem by a separation wall built by Israel. The boy was hit in the chest by a rubber-coated bullet which caused cardiac arrest. Violence in the Palestinian territories and Israel since last October has killed at least 217 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese person, according to an AFP count.
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Closing
“The situation [in Aleppo, Syria] is devastating and overwhelming. We hear that dozens of civilians are being killed every day and scores more injured from shells, mortars and rockets. The bombing is constant. The violence is threatening hundreds of thousands of people's lives, homes and livelihoods. [...] No adult, let alone child, should have to live through this. People are trying to survive in the most desperate of circumstances. All parties to the conflict, and all those with influence over them, must stop ignoring the laws of war. Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected”
Marianne Gasser, head of delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria.
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