On June 13, the White House issued a statement confirming that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, against the opposition. A number of small scale attacks over the past year have caused an estimated 100-150 deaths, though given investigators’ lack of access to Syria, there is a high probability this casualty data is incomplete. The finding of chemical weapons use, which “violates international norms and crosses clear red lines that have existed within the international community for decades,” has caused the United States to change its approach to the Syrian conflict.

The Syrian government continues to deny these claims, saying the rebels are the ones using chemical weapons, but the US investigation found “no reliable, corroborated reporting to indicate that the opposition in Syria has acquired or used chemical weapons.”

“The President has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has,” the statement notes. In addition to increasing non-lethal aid to the civilian opposition, the President has authorized expanded assistance to the Syrian Military Council (SMC). “Put simply, the Assad regime should know that its actions have led us to increase the scope and scale of assistance that we provide to the opposition, including direct support to the SMC.”

The statement also affirms that the United States remains committed to seeking a negotiated settlement that will establish an authority capable of securing stability and the rights of all Syrian citizens.

The Museum has been monitoring the situation in Syria and has expressed concern about the escalating risks to civilians. A newly released UN report now estimates that the Syrian conflict has claimed at least 93,000 lives.

Read a study commissioned by the Museum examining possible scenarios for Syria’s future and assessing the risks for genocide.

View a photo gallery depicting the plight of Syrian civilians affected by the conflict.

President Obama announced on Wednesday afternoon that Susan E. Rice will become national security adviser to the Obama administration, replacing Tom Donilon. The President also named Samantha Power, a former National Security Council official, to replace Ms. Rice as American ambassador to the United Nations.

Rice has been a frequent participant in the Museum's discussions on preventing genocide and mass atrocities. In November 2012, she sat with Center for the Prevention of Genocide director Michael Abramowitz to discuss the work that the UN and the US government are doing in places most at risk of genocide today.



Power has also been a regular presence at Museum symposia, providing comments on meeting the challenges of international cooperation in genocide prevention. Her remarks at a 2010 event in Paris, France, on the role of government in preventing genocide are archived here.

Over the past two years, a humanitarian crisis has been building in the border areas between Sudan and South Sudan in the context of a civil war between the government of Sudan and rebels from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement—North. During this period, hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting, the Sudanese air force is indiscriminately bombing civilian targets, and humanitarian groups are reporting on the dangers of widespread famine because the government of Sudan has been blocking aid from reaching peoples in the Nuba Mountains. The Center for the Prevention of Genocide asked Andrew Berends, an experienced documentary filmmaker who is in the Nuba Mountains to document the war there for a new film, to share some of his photos and reflections on what he is seeing in this land that has been virtually cut off from outside assistance or eyewitnesses.

Kuti and the Antanov
Text and Photos by Andrew Berends

When the Antanov comes, you’re supposed to hit the dirt or get in a foxhole. The Antanov is a Russian-made cargo plane used throughout Africa. In the Republic of Sudan, it is used to drop poorly aimed bombs throughout the Nuba Mountains, Darfur and Blue Nile. Sudan’s government claims it is targeting rebel fighters, but the practice has forced a few hundred thousand Nuban civilians to flee to neighboring South Sudan and to mountainous areas where they can hide in caves whenever the airplane comes.

I was in the village of Jegebah to visit General Jagot Makuwar, 2nd in command of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army—North (SPLM-N). Nestled in a rocky valley, Jegebah is a beautiful, sleepy village and home to a host of rebel soldiers. My translator, Ajurad, and I were in the midst of conducting an interview when we heard the hum of the Antanov coming fast and loud. “Zook,” I yelled, and we started running toward the truck-mounted, Russian-made anti-aircraft weapon known here by that name. I wanted to film the rebel gunner firing the heavy caliber weapon. As we neared the Zook, I heard the explosions of two bombs from the Antanov landing a few hundred yards behind us. I turned to see Ajurad lying down on the ground as a single piece of shrapnel whizzed over our heads. I followed his lead and then managed to film the rebel gunner futilely fire off three bursts at the high-flying airplane.


A gunner from the Sudan People's Liberation Army—North (SPLM-N) waits to fire an anti-aircraft weapon at an Antanov airplane that dropped two bombs on the village of Jegebah in Sudan's Nuba Mountains.

There’s a part of me that wishes the gunner hit his target. In Jegebah, the only casualty was a goat. Later, however, that same Antanov proceeded to drop more bombs in other villages in the Nuba Mountains killing both rebels and civilians.

In the village of Lwere, seven-year-old Kuti’s mother and aunt had climbed a tree to collect migrating grasshoppers that they could roast for food. Kuti and his older brother Kuku were on the ground underneath the tree. Just like in Jegebah, the Antanov came in fast and dropped a series of bombs. Kuti’s mother and brother were killed almost instantly. Kuti’s aunt stayed alive, but only for a little while. According to a nurse who works at a nearby clinic, one side of her face was completely blown off and she bled to death. As for Kuti, a piece of shrapnel took off the front half of his foot.


6-year-old Kuti plays by his grandmother's hut in Sudan's Nuba Mountains. Three months earlier, Kuti was injured by a bomb dropped from an Antanov airplane by the tree pictured in the background. He lost half of his right foot. His mother, aunt and older brother were killed in the bombing.

The Antanov does most of its killing in a less direct and more insidious fashion—supporting a war effort that uses food as a weapon. The massive displacement of civilians accompanied by a poor rainy season in 2012 has led to severe food insecurity and malnutrition. The Antanov drops bombs. The civilians flee their homes. They can’t plant, and the food cycle is disrupted. Since the outbreak of hostilities in 2011, Sudan’s government has prohibited humanitarian assistance from entering the Nuba Mountains, Darfur and Blue Nile. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is managing camps in South Sudan and the World Food Programme is giving the refugees food. But they say they have to respect Sudan’s sovereignty and can’t send aid across the border where there are hundreds of thousands in need.


Aftermath of a bombing by an Antanov airplane in Sudan's Nuba Mountains.

Since Kuti’s family was decimated almost three months ago, I have traveled around the Nuba Mountains and have witnessed a lot of hungry people. Many families are out of food. They eat leaves, grasshoppers, bugs and tiny fruits to supplement whatever sorghum they can find. This is not to say that everyone is starving. Families share food, and some are better off than others. There is livestock. If you have money, you can buy food in the market. But there are days when people don’t eat, and I have seen many malnourished children. I have seen two children starve to death.

Today, Kuti is living with his grandmother on the side of a mountain about fifteen meters from the tree where his mother died. In the late afternoon, the view from their hut is majestic. The past few days the skies have been filled with stunning formations of silver-lined clouds that are usually almost entirely absent during the long dry season. Kuti’s grandmother is waiting for the rains to come so she can plant. Kuti hobbles around and wrestles playfully with his cousins, but there is sadness in his eyes even when he smiles. Not only has he lost his mother, aunt and brother, his father has gone off and joined the SPLA-N. He told me that after what happened to his family, he had no choice but to join the rebels. And in very harsh language, he told me that if he could get his hands on Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir he would slaughter him like a goat.

Today, Wednesday, May 22, the Museum is hosting a panel discussion in New York City featuring Judge Thomas Buergenthal, a survivor of the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, international jurist and law professor, and Eugenie Mukeshimana, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and founder of the Genocide Survivors Support Network. Moderated by This American Life host Ira Glass, the panelists are discussing similarities and differences in their lives before and after they were irrevocably altered by genocidal regimes.

Director of the Museum's Center for the Prevention of Genocide Michael Abramowitz (@abramowitz) joins the panel to provide perspective on what governments can do in working to prevent genocide and how the Museum’s work in genocide prevention arises from the commitment that survivors of the Holocaust made to insure that such horrific events would never happen again.

We'll have video and transcripts from the event in the coming days, but we encourage you to learn more about events discussed in the panel by exploring the following resources on our site:

Overview: Rwanda provides information on the warning signs, acts of violence and legacy of the Rwandan genocide. You can also find eyewitness testimony from survivors, journalists, and rescuers from Rwanda here.

The Museum's holocaust encyclopedia features information on both Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz, the camps where Buergenthal was interned. You can also find a transcript from a past discussion with Buergenthal on his career in international justice here.

Updating our previous post:

On Monday, May 21, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court set aside the May 10 conviction of former military ruler José Efrain Ríos Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity, ordering the trial court to reconvene the trial from where it stood on April 19.

The historic May 10 verdict had marked the first time a former head of state had been convicted by a national, rather than international, court on genocide charges.

The Constitutional Court’s decision stemmed from a constitutional challenge raised by Ríos Montt’s defense attorneys. They maintain he was denied due process when the trial court expelled his previous defense attorney, leaving Rios Montt without counsel for a few hours, during which he was represented by his co-defendant’s attorneys. On April 18, an appeals court reinstated the defense attorney and ordered the trial court to take remedial action.

On May 9, the appeals court ruled that the trial court had complied with its order, but a deeply divided Constitutional Court disagreed in a 3-2 decision. As a result, the court will have to hear again the witnesses who testified after April 18, as well as the concluding statements from both the prosecution and defense. Even these steps may not conclude the case, for the Constitutional Court has given notice that it is considering additional challenges.

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Read our update to this post here.

A Guatemalan court has convicted former military ruler José Efrain Ríos Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity committed against Mayan communities during the fiercest fighting in the country’s long civil war.

Judge Yasmin Barrios sentenced the 86-year-old former general to 80 years in prison, prompting shouts of “Justicia, Justicia” in the crowded courtroom. The court acquitted Ríos Montt’s former director of military intelligence, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, of the same charges, finding that he did not have command responsibility.

The case made history as the first time a former head of state was indicted by a national, rather than international, court on genocide charges. Many prosecution witnesses were survivors of massacres and testified in gory detail about the brutal rape and murder of their families, the burning of their villages and crops, and their struggle to survive after fleeing to the mountains.

The key question in the trial was whether Ríos Montt intentionally targeted Mayan Ixil communities during his 17-month rule in 1982-83 during a counterinsurgency campaign waged against guerrillas operating in the Ixil region. Judge Barrios said in announcing the verdict that the three-judge panel found Ríos Montt planned and ordered the campaign, knew about the massacres, and did nothing to stop them.

“We are completely convinced of the intent to destroy the Ixil ethnic group,” the judge told the courtroom in an hour-long summary of the finding. She said the Ixils “were considered public enemies of the state and were also victims of racism, considered an inferior race.” Violence against them, she added, was not spontaneous but planned.

Ríos Montt was formally charged with the killing of 1,771 Mayans during one of the bloodiest periods in a civil war between a succession of governments and insurgents. A United Nations-backed truth commission estimated more than 200,000 people were killed during the 36 years of fighting that ended in 1996, about 83 percent of them Mayans.

Ríos Montt was part of a three-member military dictatorship that seized power in a 1982 coup. Two months later, he disbanded the junta and became the sole leader. He avoided a trial for years by serving in the Guatemalan legislature, which gave him immunity from prosecution until his most recent term ended early in 2012. At the end of the trial, he spoke to the court and denied ever targeting the Mayans. Defense lawyers said they would appeal, and several challenges filed with other Guatemalan courts are awaiting rulings.

The US government has been supportive of efforts to bring Ríos Montt to justice. A recent statement from the US Embassy in Guatemala noted that justice is essential for reconciliation, and applauded Guatemala’s efforts to strengthen the justice sector and to bring those responsible for crimes during the civil war before the courts. The statement called upon all Guatemalans to respect the legitimacy and integrity of the trial.

Here is more background about the trial.

THE PROSECUTION

A parade of Mayan victims and prosecution experts testified not only about the brutality of the military but also about the destruction of the Mayan culture and forced conscription into paramilitary forces. Francisco Cobo Raimundo testified that his mother was killed by a blow to the head with a rock, his brother was strangled and hacked to pieces, and his father and grandfather also were killed. Magdalena Bernal described the military drowning her brother and two women in a river. Juan Raimundo Matón testified that his brother-in-law was shot to death trying to escape, while the soldiers smashed his uncle’s head and stabbed others to death. Women described being raped at military installations. One witness, identified by her initials, said that when she was 16 years old, she and other women from her town were taken by soldiers to the local Catholic church, where she was blindfolded and raped repeatedly over a two-hour period, during which she could hear “so many others screaming.” Nicolas Toma Matom testified that he was required to participate in a paramilitary unit following the killing by soldiers of his mother, father, 10-year-old brother, and approximately 30 others, and the disappearance of his two 4- and 5-year-old daughters. Key documents were military plans entitled “Victoria 82” and “Sofía,” which prosecutors contended targeted the Mayans. Prosecutors also said that Ríos Montt had total control over the army, and therefore was responsible for the slaughter.

THE DEFENSE

With closing arguments underway, Ríos Montt — silent until then — stunned those in court by asking to speak, and did so for about a half-hour. He said when he became the leader, “The country was dying,” facing massive political, economic and military problems. Raising his voice, the former dictator declared, “I never authorized, I never proposed, I never ordered acts against any ethnic or religious group.” He told the court there was “no evidence of my participation,” and that “there was never an intention or purpose of destroying any ethnic group.” Ríos Montt disputed testimony that he was solely in charge of military operations, saying local commanders made the decisions in their regions. He argued that zone commanders operated with autonomy, and as president, he could not be connected with the crimes and abuses that happened within a particular region. He said operational plans such as Victoria 82 and Sofía were only general outlines. Defense witness Harris Howell Whitbeck, a Guatemalan businessman and an architect of Ríos Montt’s civil action programs, testified that Ríos Montt wanted to provide food and humanitarian assistance to civilians. He told the court, “Never, never was there a single program or idea to damage anyone in the Ixil region.”

WHY THE MAYANS?

Dr. Héctor Rosada Granados, a social scientist who had been a peace negotiator for Guatemala, was an expert witness who analyzed why the Ríos Montt regime believed it could justify actions against the Ixils. He explained that the government believed that the Ixil people were the enemy, allied with the insurgents. He described the Ixil as rebellious, assertive and courageous against demands of landowners and not always willing to provide cheap labor to large plantations. As a result, he said the elites told the military to watch the Ixil. The UN-backed Commission for Historical Clarification report, “Guatemala: Memory of Silence,” said in 1999 that racism was a factor. Informally called the “Truth Commission,” the report concluded that the Mayans occasionally supported guerrilla groups, but this support was “intentionally exaggerated” by the government. The report said the army’s perception of the Mayans “contributed to increasing and aggravating the human rights violations perpetrated against them, demonstrating an aggressive racist component of extreme cruelty....” A separate report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, using data from the International Center for Human Rights, said the government strategy was to stop the insurgency by terrorizing the civilian population. It said Mayans were killed in large groups, including high percentages of women and children. The National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle said on the organization’s website that Victoria 82 made clear that “the armed forces regarded the indigenous communities as fatally intertwined with the insurgency. In order to eradicate the base, Victoria 82 promoted a scorched earth strategy, ordering the destruction of homes, local crops, animals and other potential sources of guerrilla supplies.” Prosecutors, in closing arguments, presented a manual that showed a doctrine defining Mayan groups as part of the internal enemy.

Get more information about the trial.

To learn more about Guatemala’s Truth Commission, watch a Museum event and listen to a podcast from our Voices on Genocide Prevention series.

To read the museum's statement on the verdict, click here.

A recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report describes crimes against humanity being committed against Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Arakan State as well as organized attempts to ethnically cleanse this population. Following outbreaks of violence in 2012, HRW visited numerous official and unofficial camps hosting Muslims displaced by the violence. The 153-page report draws on over 100 interviews with victims, eyewitnesses, aid workers, diplomats, and UN officials. Among its many findings, the report describes how the Burmese government, local officials, and authority figures directly and indirectly supported a “coordinated campaign to forcibly relocate or remove” the Rohingya population in Burma.

Rohingya Muslims have lived in the majority Buddhist Arakan State for many generations, yet are widely considered by the government and Burmese society to be “illegal immigrants,” and are not recognized as legal citizens of Burma. They are thus subjected to a number of restrictions and discriminatory practices. The Rohingya face restrictions on freedom of movement, education, marriage and employment. They have also been subjected to human rights abuses including arbitrary detention, forced labor, rape, torture, and forcible relocations.

Two waves of deadly violence against the Rohingya and other Muslims took place in June and October 2012, that according to the report “were organized, incited, and committed by local Arakanese political party operatives, the Buddhist monkhood, and ordinary Arakanese, at times directly supported by state [Burmese] security forces. Rohingya men, women, and children were killed, some were buried in mass graves, and their villages and neighborhoods were razed.”

Hate speech was widely disseminated during this time in the form of anti-Rohingya pamphlets and numerous public statements demonizing the Rohingya and calling for their removal from the country, sometimes even using the phrase “ethnic cleansing.”

There are at least 125,000 Rohingya and other Muslims now living in displaced persons camps as a result of the past year’s violence. Many of these camps lack adequate food, shelter, sanitation, protection, and medical care. There is a deep animosity among the Arakanese community towards the international organizations helping the displaced Muslims and many residents have blocked aid deliveries and threatened aid workers. Chances for conditions to improve are slim due to this obstruction of humanitarian aid.

Noting the absence of any significant efforts to hold accountable those responsible, address the root issues of the conflict, aid the victims, or curb or prevent future violence, the report calls for the Government of Burma to take a number of actions including:

• Fully, promptly, and impartially investigate and prosecute those responsible for the violence in Arakan State, regardless of rank or position. Agree to the establishment of an independent international mechanism to investigate serious violations of international human rights law.

• Revise legislation as necessary and ensure that state practice upholds the equal rights of Rohingya and other Muslims in Burma in accordance with international human rights law.

• Immediately lift all unnecessary restrictions on freedom of movement of the Rohingya population; ensure they are able to pursue livelihoods, purchase essentials, and return to their homes and recover property; and provide them protection as needed. Ensure that returns of displaced persons and refugees take place in accordance with international standards, on a voluntary basis with attention to the safety and dignity of the returning population.

• Provide safe and unhindered humanitarian access for UN agencies and international and national humanitarian organizations to all affected populations and detention facilities in Arakan State.

• Amend the 1982 Citizenship Act and its discriminatory practices to ensure all Rohingya have the right to acquire a nationality where otherwise they would be stateless.

Read the Report Summary and Key Recommendations

Read the Full Report

Just over one year since President Obama came to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to announce a wide-ranging strategy for preventing genocide and mass atrocities, the White House released a fact sheet as an update on the progress of these efforts.

As the fact sheet illustrates, preventing the world’s worst crimes requires a broad set of policies and actions.

To organize and coordinate these activities across government, the administration created the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) to act as a nerve center, a key recommendation of the 2008 report by the Museum-cosponsored Genocide Prevention Task Force. In addition, the fact sheet demonstrates efforts to: ensure early warning of at-risk situations around the world; increase pressure on perpetrators and enablers of mass atrocities through sanctions and other mechanisms; build capacity at home and abroad to carry out preventative actions; and deny impunity for those who commit atrocities by supporting accountability efforts.

The goal of the administration’s strategy is to make genocide and mass atrocity prevention part of the regular functioning of the US government. There are many tools available to policy makers and leveraging the right combination of prevention tools is most effective when they are used before the killing of civilians begins. By creating an organic process across different agencies involved in prevention, it will increase the ability to take action “before the wood is stacked or the match is struck,” as former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said when she spoke at the Museum last year.

As Deputy National Security Advisor Antony Blinken noted on April 29 during a discussion at the Museum’s 20th anniversary celebration, establishing processes may not seem particularly important or innovative to those outside government. However, the APB is, in his words, a “major innovation,” precisely because it calls for regular examination of the risk of genocide and mass atrocities by agencies across the government that have the ability to take early action. One year since the creation of a government-wide prevention strategy, the administration has made important changes that should help prevent future crimes and can point to some notable successes. However, currently unfolding mass atrocities indicate that this work is far from over.

Read the White House blog post about atrocity prevention efforts.

Preventing Genocide in the 21st Century
The American narrative includes stories of past generations escaping difficult times in all different parts of the world, and that history informs and shapes our actions today. As Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, Antony Blinken, noted during “Preventing Genocide in the 21st Century,” a part of the Museum’s 20th anniversary commemoration, this is certainly true in his case. In a wide ranging conversation with Mike Abramowitz, Director of the Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, Blinken described his family’s history of surviving the Holocaust, escaping communist Hungary and fleeing pogroms in Russia. Today, in his role on the National Security Council, this descendent of Holocaust survivors plays an instrumental role in formulating U.S. government policy for preventing genocide and mass atrocities.

Blinken characterized the US Holocaust Memorial Museum as a “living institution” because it gives life to those who perished by preserving their memory and their stories, and it turns the act of remembrance into a tool for preventing genocide in the future. As an example he pointed to the 2008 report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, which the Museum co-sponsored. He mentioned how that report “animated our work” and “inspired our ideas” when President Obama defined the prevention of genocide as a “core national security interest” and directed a review of the government’s prevention capabilities.

As a result of that review, the administration adopted several key recommendations of the task force, including the formation of the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB). As Blinken noted, for those outside government, it can be difficult to grasp how important processes are for day to day operations. But the APB is a “major innovation” in the way government operates because it looks over the horizon to identify areas at risk in order to act before the situation gets out of control, and it scans across the government for innovative tools to prevent genocide. Acting early is critically important, because the options narrow as situations deteriorate, and the government is then forced to react rather than respond proactively with the widest scope of actions available.

Reflecting on the US and the international community’s inaction in Rwanda, Blinken said that those who were in government, including himself, were scarred by that experience, which serves as a motivating factor for how they approach these types of problems today. He noted that while grave situations that are tremendously frustrating persist in places around the world, including Syria, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, making prevention a priority, enhancing early warning mechanisms, and strengthening prevention assets at home and abroad make a repeat of Rwanda less likely.

Commenting on the situation in Syria, Blinken asserted that the administration had taken a number of steps to confront the suffering there, but these actions were not yet enough to change the situation on the ground. These steps included: isolating the regime politically and using sanctions to reduce the availability of funds for co-opting supporters; contributing the largest amount of humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees and reducing the impacts on host nations; building up the capacity of the opposition; and preparing for the day after the Assad regime falls to prevent the state from collapsing and fragmenting. Blinken recognized that more than a decade of war has made both the public and policy makers cautious about engaging in another conflict in this region of the world. He indicated that the president is continuing with his deliberate attempts to drive this situation toward a managed transition, thereby avoiding a failed state situation with the potential for dangerous weapons to end up in the wrong hands.

As examples of effective prevention, Blinken talked about the separation of Sudan and South Sudan without a relapse to war, the removal of the former president of Cote d’Ivoire after he was defeated in national elections but threatened to hold power through force, and the international intervention to prevent an impending mass atrocity in Benghazi, Libya.

Blinken also talked about accountability for mass atrocity crimes as a moral and strategic imperative that is a vital component of the US government’s prevention strategy. Citing impunity as a driver of mass atrocities, he emphasized the importance of efforts to deny perpetrators the ability to get away with impunity, such as increasing cooperation between the US and the International Criminal Court.

Abramowitz summed up the discussion by indicating that over the last twenty years, the world has taken important strides toward ending genocide, but there is still much work to be done to make good on the promise of “never again.”

In today's Washington Post, opinion writer and former U.S. Holocaust Museum Council member Michael Gerson focuses attention on the inflammatory rhetoric of Iranian leadership, suggesting that it is not only hate speech, but may also border on incitement to genocide.

Michael Abramowitz, director of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, is quoted in the piece: "How many other states do we know that talk about other human beings in the way the Iranian leadership speaks of Israelis and Jews? They are conditioning generations of young people in their own country and the broader Middle East to think of Jews as subhuman, which makes acts of terror by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah seem more thinkable.”

Read Michael Gerson's article "Iran's incitement to genocide."