Tag: Crimes Against Humanity

‘Mama we’re dying’: Only able to hear her kids in Gaza in their final days | Israel War on Gaza

Bethlehem, occupied West Bank – Hanan al-Qeeq sits next to a hospital bed in Beit Jala Hospital, her sad, pale face seconds away from tears at all times, even when she tries to muster up a smile of greeting.

Sitting beside the exhausted woman is her husband, Mazen, 56, a Gaza Ministry of Education employee who left his work to come to the occupied West Bank, where their son Fadi is being treated.

Fifty-year-old Hanan says she carries a heavy burden. As she and Mazen kept their vigil by Fadi’s bedside, praying for his healing, Israel’s war on Gaza took four of their other children from them.

“What can I say beyond what happened?” said Mazen, who did not want to, or perhaps could not, speak more.

The couple had seven children.

Four daughters: Iman, 31, who is married and lives in Canada, Malaka, 24, Nuran, 23, and Tala, 15.

Three sons: Fayez, 33, who is married and lives in the United States, Fadi, 30, and Muhammad Awad, 17.

Now they have three children: Fadi, Fayez, and Iman.

Because Malaka, Nuran, Muhammad Awad and Tala had to stay behind when Hanan and Mazen left Gaza for Fadi’s medical care and they were killed when Israel bombed the shelter they were hiding in.

Remembrance of those lost

Hanan scrolls through photos of her children on her phone, something she does with a sad familiarity as she talks about them.

Hanan shows a photo of Nuran on her phone [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera]

“Malaka was sweet and generous, always ready to help out. Nuran loved everyone, loved life, and was loved in return, especially by her fiance in Morocco … they were going to get married after Eid al-Adha.”

As for Tala, their mother said, “I likened her to the Virgin Mary, so calm and soft, a real princess. And Muhammad Awad, he worked so hard. He had a note up by his desk reminding himself: ‘I want to get 97 percent in the high school exams so my dad is happy and I can study engineering overseas.’”

Their bustling, content family life came to a screeching halt last April when Fadi plunged five storeys while at work plastering the exterior of a building. He became quadriplegic.

Mazen initially accompanied Fadi to Haifa for treatment. He has since been moved from hospital to hospital.

It took months before Hanan was able to join them; by then the treatment was taking place at Tel Aviv’s Reuth Hospital. Hanan was meant to stay with Fadi while Mazen returned to Gaza, but she was worried about Fadi and intimidated by dealing with the Israeli hospital system, so she asked him to stay.

Little did she know, she said, that by asking him to stay, she would save his life.

Displaced Palestinians targeted during attempt to return to northern Gaza

The war begins

When Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, the distraught parents were still trying to find the treatment Fadi needed. He had been transferred from Haifa to Tel HaShomer Hospital in Tel Aviv, where he received some surgeries, but they were thrown out because they could not afford to complete the treatment there.

Hanan spoke to her children as often as she could, listening to them as they trembled on the phone in fear, and listening to their screams whenever a projectile landed nearby.

“They would cry on the phone: ‘Mama, we’re dying,’” she said.

“I would try to reassure them to tell that it would be over in a few days, like the wars before it did. ‘No harm or danger will befall you,’ I told them,” she said, scrubbing tears away from her eyes.

A week after the war started, Hanan’s fear for her children grew and she emailed her sisters to ask them to take care of them, writing: “My daughters’ lives are in your hands. Take care of them.”

Her older sister, who goes by Umm Fadi, sent a car to take the children from Remal in north Gaza to her house in Tal al-Hawa in the southwest.

Hanan wheels Fadi into his hospital room [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera]

By then, Hanan’s appeals to Palestinian officials and the community were working and she managed to get the Palestinian Authority to take on Fadi’s treatment expenses and got him admitted to a hospital in Bethlehem by October 20.

The children stayed at their aunt’s house for nearly a month, till the Israeli army stormed the neighbourhood and they fled to az-Zawayda with everyone who was in the house: their aunt, her sons with their wives, her daughters with their husbands, and all their children.

On December 13, Fadi underwent surgery at the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah before being transferred to Beit Jala Hospital in Bethlehem, where he is still being treated.

Throughout, Hanan and Mazen were sleeping in hospital wards and eating whatever the hospital gave them until the people of Bethlehem learned of their plight.

A community member gave them a furnished house, the couple recounted, and told them that the house was theirs for the duration of Fadi’s treatment. “We found safety among our people,” Hanan said.

While Hanan in Bethlehem worried about her children left behind in Gaza, they worried about their parents and asked about their brother Fadi’s health every time they spoke.

Hanan’s sister and the 29 people she was with – including Hanan’s children – were heading back to her home in Tal al-Hawa after hearing the Israeli army had withdrawn. So extensive was the damage they left behind that the group had a hard time finding their way back to the house, the children told her on the phone.

Hanan holds up a photo of Fadi before his accident to compare with how he looks now [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera]

Just weeks later, the Israeli army pounced again, sending the family fleeing to Jalaa, then Remal, and back to Jalaa, where they ended up sheltering with 200 people in a school building. But the group continued to move from place to place as they sought safety, until one day Hanan heard that 16 relatives had been killed in an Israeli attack in Jalaa.

Hanan hung on to the other end of the phone, sick with worry. She nearly lost her mind when the children’s phones were off, but she heard from her niece Sahar that all was well and eventually the surviving family was able to leave once again to Tal al-Hawa.

“Imagine what it was like,” Hanan said, scrolling sadly through the photos, “to have Malaka tell me: ‘Mama, we will be martyred. Don’t cry if that happens. I would rather that than us be paralysed or lose our limbs.’”

Then she lost touch with them for days, maybe a week. Hanan lost count as she desperately tried to get through to anyone who might know what was happening. On the last night of her search, she did not sleep, up all night sending message after message to Malaka.

Hanan and Mazen had reached out to the ICRC and the Palestine Red Crescent Society, begging them to go to the house and check on the children. But Hanan did not realise that they had an answer until she walked into Fadi’s hospital room one day and saw a group of doctors and staff waiting for her.

One of the women in the group started gently asking her questions, but something told her there was another reason for their presence.

“I asked: ‘Have you received anything? My children, has something happened to them? Were they martyred?’

“I saw tears in their eyes, and one of them answered, she was wearing a Red Crescent uniform: ‘I would have loved to tell you that they weren’t martyred, but this is God’s will.’

The emergency services had finally gotten to the house on December 21, 2023, to find that everyone there had been killed about three days prior.

“I stood there in the middle of the room, begging them: ‘OK, tell me, who was martyred? Who’s still alive? Malaka? Tutu [Tala]? Muhammad?’

“She replied that everyone had been martyred, that they had been found under the rubble.

“I started screaming, just screaming, until I collapsed in their midst.”

Hanan had been working on getting the family out of Gaza before Fadi’s accident. Painstakingly, she got the children’s passports and was waiting for the war to stop so they could travel, but it was all in vain now.

“My children … my children! They were waiting for their brother Fadi to recover and for us to return,” she wept.

Now, she does not want to return to Gaza at all.

“No, I have neither people nor stones left there. The house has collapsed and my children have been martyred. To whom will I return?

“Everyone has gone and my children [and] my sister have been martyred, so many of my relatives.”

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Indigenous survivors pursue justice at genocide trial in Guatemala | Crimes Against Humanity News

Warning: This article contains details of violence that may be upsetting.

Guatemala City, Guatemala – Jesus Tecu remembers wrapping his little brother in his arms in an attempt to protect the two-year-old from the horrors unfolding around them.

It was March 13, 1982, and their village of Rio Negro — a Maya Achi community situated along a river in central Guatemala — was under attack. Guatemala was in the midst of a grisly civil war, and army and paramilitary forces had been stalking the countryside, razing Indigenous villages to the ground.

Already, Tecu’s parents had been among the dozens of Rio Negro residents slaughtered just one month prior in another village. But now soldiers and paramilitary patrolmen were in the town, and 10-year-old Tecu hoped to shield his brother from the killings and rapes they were witnessing.

A patrolman decided to take Tecu to be his household servant, but he did not want to bring home a toddler too. Ignoring Tecu’s desperate pleas, the patrolman grabbed the two-year-old from his arms, smashed him against rocks and threw his body into a ravine.

An estimated 107 children and 70 women died in Rio Negro that day. Tecu and 16 other children survived only because they were chosen to be servants.

Now, Tecu hopes a criminal case in Guatemala can offer a shred of accountability for atrocities thousands of Indigenous people experienced during that period.

“We have never stopped seeking justice,” said Tecu, who has spent the last 30 years as a human rights activist and advocate for community rebuilding.

On Friday, Manuel Benedicto Lucas Garcia, the former head of Guatemala’s army, is slated to stand trial for genocide. It is the latest chapter in the country’s fitful, stop-and-start efforts to achieve justice for the systematic killing of Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples.

An estimated 200,000 people were killed during the war, which stretched from 1960 to 1996. More than 80 percent were Indigenous Maya.

A United Nations-backed truth commission found that the military committed acts of genocide against five of the country’s 22 different Maya peoples between 1981 and 1983. That period overlaps with Lucas Garcia’s tenure as the chief of the general staff of the army.

For seven months between 1981 and 1982, Lucas Garcia helmed Guatemala’s forces, as part of the administration of President Romeo Lucas Garcia, his brother. He now stands accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, forced disappearances and sexual violence.

But Tecu points out that time is running out for survivors to find justice. Decades have passed since the war’s end. Alleged perpetrators like Lucas Garcia, 91, are growing old — and in many cases, dying.

“The importance of this case is that there is an intellectual author alive,” Tecu told Al Jazeera. “He needs to be held accountable for what happened with the deaths of so many children, women and men.”

Benedicto Lucas Garcia, second from right, walks with a fellow military leader, Manuel Callejas, on their way to court in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on November 25, 2019 [Moises Castillo/AP Photo]

Delay tactics

Lucas Garcia, however, has denied wrongdoing. Rather, in a live video feed on March 25, he told Guatemala’s High Risk Court A, “I am a national hero”, though he later clarified he meant it in reference to accomplishments unrelated to the armed conflict.

The March 25 hearing came after a year of postponements. Expecting the trial to start, genocide survivors had gathered outside the courthouse in Guatemala City to hold a ceremony in support of the proceedings.

But one of Lucas Garcia’s two lawyers had announced her resignation just days ahead of the hearing, and then the other quit too — something critics believe was a tactic to further delay the trial.

Ultimately, Lucas Garcia accepted to use a public defender and was permitted to continue to attend hearings by video conference while recovering from surgery. The trial’s start date was rescheduled for April 5, to give the new lawyer time to prepare.

“We know these are all manoeuvres and strategies that Benedicto Lucas Garcia is using,” said Diego Ceto, a Maya Ixil leader providing support for witnesses and survivors during the trial.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on the courthouse steps right after the postponement, Ceto explained that other defendants have likewise used stalling techniques to evade justice.

After all, one of Lucas Garcia’s co-defendants — a former head of military operations — died in 2020. And in January, another — a former head of military intelligence — was found mentally unfit to stand trial and will face separate proceedings.

“They look for any justification to avoid the start of the trial,” Ceto said. “Nevertheless, as Ixils we will continue to insist on the pursuit of the truth.”

Maya Ixil women take part in a ceremony outside the Guatemala City court complex on March 25, before the genocide trial of Benedicto Lucas Garcia was postponed to April 5 [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera]

From the Ixil region and beyond

The area Ceto is from is at the heart of the ongoing case. Prosecutors are focusing on crimes allegedly committed in the Maya Ixil region, 225km (140 miles) northwest of the capital.

More than 30 massacres were carried out under Lucas Garcia’s command and at least 23 Ixil villages were completely destroyed, the plaintiffs’ lawyers have said. The prosecution plans to present more than 80 experts and 150 witnesses as part of the trial.

Evidence also includes forensic reports from exhumations and military documents lawyers say will help establish the genocidal intent behind the crimes.

Atrocities in the Maya Ixil region also formed the centrepiece of another historic trial: that of the late military ruler Efrain Rios Montt, who took power from Romeo Lucas Garcia in a military coup.

In 2013, Guatemala made history when a court convicted Rios Montt of genocide. But the verdict was overturned soon after in a widely-questioned ruling, illustrating the difficulties of prosecuting such a case.

Rios Montt died before a partial retrial could end in 2018. On September 27 of that year, a tribunal ruled the military did commit genocide, but no one was convicted.

Advocates, however, emphasise that the atrocities perpetuated by Rios Montt and others extended beyond the Mayan Ixil people, also targeting other Indigenous peoples, unions, clergy, student movements and other groups.

For example, in a separate case from 2018, Lucas Garcia was convicted of rape, forced disappearance, and crimes against humanity for actions taken against an activist and her family. He was sentenced to 58 years in prison.

In June 2023, however, an appeals court ordered Lucas Garcia’s release, along with that of his co-defendants. However, he remained in custody due to a pretrial detention order in the genocide case.

In another case that has yet to go to trial, Lucas Garcia is one of several former officials accused of crimes in connection with more than 550 human remains exhumed from mass graves on a military base.

“Right now we are on the Ixil case, but the destruction was not just in the Ixil area,” said Eleodoro Osorio, a representative of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), an organisation of survivors and relatives from five of the hardest-hit Indigenous regions.

More than 200,000 people, most of them Indigenous Maya civilians, were killed during the armed conflict in Guatemala between 1960 and 1996 [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera]

Power of grassroots movements

Osorio’s group formed in 2000. That same year, it filed a formal legal complaint against Romeo Lucas Garcia for genocide, followed by one against Rios Montt the following year. Those legal actions eventually led to the prosecutions of Rios Montt and Benedicto Lucas Garcia, the army leader currently facing charges.

AJR has joint plaintiff status in Lucas Garcia’s trial, allowing its own legal team to intervene on behalf of victims alongside the prosecution.

The group’s participation improves the outlook for a successful conviction, according to Naomi Roht-Arriaza, a law professor at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco.

She pointed out that grassroots movements can help exert pressure on Guatemala’s legal system, which has seen the erosion of judicial and prosecutorial independence in recent years.

“In the trials that we’ve seen in Latin America, that has been the case. It’s been the lawyers for the victims that have basically carried the lion’s share of the actual work,” said Roht-Arriaza, who was a legal adviser in a similar case brought against Rios Montt in Spain.

She sees the pursuit of justice in Guatemala as part of a broader regional phenomenon.

“I think Latin America has been the leader in holding national trials around massive violations of human rights. So it’s not just Guatemala. It’s also Argentina and Chile, Colombia, [and] to some extent Peru,” she told Al Jazeera.

The bulk of genocide prosecutions have been in international courts, not domestic ones, according to Mark Berlin, a political science professor at Marquette University in Wisconsin whose research focuses on accountability for human rights violations and war crimes.

He explained that “atrocity crimes” — including genocide and crimes against humanity — are usually committed by state actors, and states are unlikely to prosecute themselves.

So when a country does prosecute genocide within its own borders, it is often the result of shifting power dynamics in the government itself.

“It’s usually when a group that was previously targeted is able to come to power and use that power to then target for prosecution those who were previously in power,” Berlin told Al Jazeera, pointing to the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide as an example of that dynamic.

The situation in Guatemala was different, though, he said. “Given that those conditions do not exist in Guatemala, the odds were stacked against the possibility for Guatemala to be able to carry out genocide prosecutions.”

Still, Berlin said other factors, including foreign assistance and forensic work, helped enable the genocide prosecutions to move forward.

“Guatemala did have kind of a perfect storm of other kinds of factors that did make it able to carry out these prosecutions,” he said.

“One was — or continues to be — the existence of a very active and well-organised social movement, a very tenacious and persistent social movement that has been calling for accountability for decades.”

Grassroots movements are credited with driving legal campaigns to prosecute the civilian deaths and forced disappearances during the decades-long Guatemalan civil war [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera]

Half the battle

But now that Lucas Garcia is about to be brought to trial, efforts to secure a conviction present new hurdles.

Prosecuting genocide is considered more complex than it is for other human rights violations and crimes against humanity, due to legal elements set out in the 1948 Genocide Convention and incorporated into Guatemala’s criminal code in 1973.

“You have to demonstrate that the actor or the accused had the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a group of people,” said Geoff Dancy, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.

“That is very difficult to demonstrate and has only been successfully demonstrated in a few cases, really.”

There have been about 105 trials involving genocide charges in 15 countries around the world, according to Dancy, who is a principal investigator in a research project compiling and analysing global data on transitional justice mechanisms, including human rights prosecutions.

But even if prosecutors are not successful in convicting figures like Lucas Garcia of genocide, Dancy said the trials can still be useful tools for justice.

He pointed out that even though leaders like Guatemala’s Rios Montt, Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet died while prosecution efforts were still under way, the cases were still incredibly important, helping to unearth injustices and put them into the public record.

Ultimately, Dancy said, it is “really important to get these things on the map and have the evidence produced and considered by a court”.

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US says Israel has not violated international law during Gaza war | Gaza

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After Israel killed seven aid workers in Gaza, the US says it has not found any incidents of Israel violating international humanitarian law in the past six months. An Al Jazeera probe concluded the World Central Kitchen vehicles were deliberately hit.

Published On 3 Apr 2024

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Al Jazeera Sanad probe: Israeli forces deliberately hit WCK convoy | Israel War on Gaza News

Israeli army deliberately targeted World Central Kitchen convoy with three consecutive attacks, Al Jazeera concludes.

An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency has found that the Israeli army intentionally targeted an aid convoy belonging to the World Central Kitchen (WCK) in three consecutive air raids on Rashid Street, south of Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

On Monday at 10:43pm (19:43 GMT), journalists reported an Israeli shelling targeting a vehicle on Rashid Street, which resulted in casualties. This matches the account of a displaced individual interviewed by Al Jazeera, who confirmed multiple bombings between 11:00 and 11:30pm (20:00 – 20:30 GMT).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that the attack had been executed by Israeli forces, saying they had “unintentionally [hit] innocent people in the Gaza Strip … it happens in war.”

 

The Sanad investigation has found that the attacks were, in fact, intentional. Basing the research on open-source information, witness testimonies, and images from the site, a chronological and geographical timeline of the events was constructed.

WCK said in a statement on Tuesday that its workers had been leaving the Deir el-Balah warehouse after delivering 100 tonnes of food aid and that “despite coordinating movements with the [Israeli army], the convoy was hit”.

The shelling targeted three vehicles belonging to WCK, one at a time – two armoured and one unarmoured – killing seven relief workers of various nationalities, including a Palestinian driver, Saif Abu Taha, from Rafah.

Hasan al-Shorbagi, a displaced individual from Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip [Sanad/Al Jazeera]

Hasan al-Shorbagi, a displaced Palestinian who lives with his family near the bombing site, about 4.7km (2.9 miles) from the warehouse, told Al Jazeera the first car was hit by a projectile, completely burning it. This is consistent with the image of the burned armoured car.

According to al-Shorbagi’s testimony, the injured were transferred from the first targeted car to another armoured vehicle to expedite their transport.

A statement from WCK confirmed that the convoy left its warehouse in Deir el-Balah – shown on Google Maps at coordinates 31°24’54.7″N 34°22’05.1″E – and headed towards Rashid Street.

 

The second targeted vehicle at coordinates 31°24’41.97″ N 34°19’22.95″ E [Sanad/Al Jazeera]

This distance along the route from the warehouse to Rashid Street was about three kilometres (1.9 miles) and the first car was targeted about 1.7km (one mile) down the road.

The Sanad investigation found that the second vehicle was targeted approximately 800 metres (2,525 feet) away from where the first was hit.

The third car was targeted about 1.6km (nearly a mile) away from the second car, based on its location after being bombed.

Images taken from the bombing sites show that the vehicles were clearly marked on their roofs and windshields as belonging to WCK, indicating that they were in compliance and there had been prior coordination between WCK and the Israeli army about the movements.

A charred vehicle is shown at coordinates 31°25’00.43″ N 34°19’44.78″ E [Sanad/Al Jazeera]

Analysis of images of the second and third targeted vehicles showed signs of a projectile entering from the top and exiting through the bottom, suggesting that the cars were targeted from the air.

The Israeli army acknowledged its responsibility for the tragic incident involving the killing of relief workers in Gaza Monday night in an Israeli air raid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the Israeli army “unintentionally” struck innocent people in Gaza.

The incident drew global condemnation. WCK said its team was travelling in a “deconflicted” area at the time. It called on Israel to stop “this indiscriminate killing” in Gaza and announced it was suspending operations in the region.

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Unarmed Palestinians killed in Gaza | Gaza

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Exclusive video and witness testimony obtained by Al Jazeera have revealed how Israeli forces killed two unarmed Palestinians in Gaza.

Published On 28 Mar 2024

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How is renewed violence in Myanmar affecting the Rohingya? | Rohingya News

The Rohingya are yet again bearing the brunt of renewed fighting and military air strikes in Myanmar, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres warned this week.

The latest wave of fighting by rebel groups who want to overturn the country’s 2021 military coup flared up in October last year. The military extended the country’s state of emergency in January and announced a new, mandatory conscription programme in mid-February, which is also feared may disproportionately affect the Rohingya people.

Not only are the Muslim-majority Rohingya being bombed “indiscriminately” but they are also being forcefully drafted into the army even though they are not recognised as citizens and have long been subject to persecution by the State Administrative Council (SAC) – or the military government – activists say.

Here’s what we know so far:

What is happening in Myanmar?

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was under military rule for five decades until the 2015 election, when democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory. However, the military removed her in a coup on February 1, 2021, prompting an armed uprising by rebel groups which has continued since.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) has reported that 4,680 people have been killed by the Myanmar military since the start of the coup.

Most recently, the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a collective of armed anti-coup resistance groups – the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) – launched a major offensive in October 2023.

Codenamed Operation 1027, the attack by the alliance on October 27 last year led to the fall of more than 100 military posts as the military retreated and left heavy weapons and significant ammunition behind.

In November 2023, the military announced that it had lost control of Chinshwehaw, which borders China’s Yunnan province and is central to the flow of trade from Myanmar to China, after days of fighting with armed groups.

In January, the Arakan Army, one of the armed rebel groups, said it had taken full control of a key western town, Paletwa, in Chin state, having overrun several military outposts.

The military has responded with force. “The Myanmar junta has been indiscriminately bombing Rohingya areas in different townships in Rakhine state,” said Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, a global network of Rohingya activists.

Quoting local sources, Nay San Lwin said on Monday, 23 Rohingya, including children and a religious scholar, were killed during the bombardment of the western Minbya township. Additionally, 30 Rohingya were injured. “These attacks on Rohingya are happening everywhere,” said Nay San Lwin.

Other factors, such as a declining economy and depleting natural gas reserves, which are a crucial revenue source for the military government, have further brought its legitimacy into question.

A recent mandatory conscription order has triggered panic throughout Myanmar, with many residents looking for ways to escape. For the Rohingya, however, avoiding the draft is particularly difficult due to their restricted mobility.

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are a Muslim-majority ethnic group in Myanmar. Myanmar is ethnically diverse, with 135 major ethnic groups and seven ethnic minority states, according to the international human rights organisation, Minority Rights Group. Among these, the Burmese are the largest and most dominant group.

The Rohingya are not acknowledged in this list of 135 groups and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982. Nearly all the Rohingya live in the coastal state of Rakhine, which was called Arakan until 1990.

While Aung San Suu Kyi’s electoral victory was initially viewed as a desperately needed reprieve from a long period of unjust military regimes, she remained silent on the issue of the Rohingya.

The Myanmar military has repeatedly cracked down on the Rohingya in Rakhine since the 1970s. This has resulted in a mass exodus of Rohingya refugees to neighbouring Bangladesh. In 2017, a violent military crackdown forced more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees across the border. During crackdowns, refugees have often reported rape, torture, arson and murder by Myanmar security forces.

How does the new conscription law affect the Rohingya?

On February 10, the Myanmar military government announced that it would enact the People’s Military Service Law which makes conscription mandatory for young men and women, but which had lain dormant since it was passed under a previous military administration in 2010.

The UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said on February 21 that the imposition of the mandatory draft was a sign of the military’s “weakness and desperation”.

Men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 can be drafted into the armed forces for two years at a time, and this term can be extended to five years when a national emergency is declared.

Nay San Lwin told Al Jazeera that local sources had reported at least 1,000 people from the Rohingya community being taken by the military from three towns – Buthidaung, Sittwe and Kyaukphyu. Nay San Lwin added that some have completed two weeks of training and have been taken to the battlefield. “Dozens have been killed on the battlefield while being used as human shields in Rathedaung township,” he added. The Myanmar military has previously used porters as human shields.

Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify these accounts of conscription of the Rohingya.

The Rakhine state has experienced communications blackouts since at least 2019. A blackout was reinstated in January this year with only limited access to communications since then.

Zaw Win, a human rights specialist at the independent Southeast Asia-based rights group, Fortify Rights, said that during these limited periods, the group has received phone calls from Rohingya people saying they have witnessed friends and family members being taken from camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Rakhine by the military.

Zaw Win added that his team had interviewed a man who had “witnessed how the junta military took away the Rohingya youth from Ward 5, Buthidaung. The military came in their vehicle and caught the Rohingya”, he said.

However, he said that Fortify Rights has not been able to independently verify these reports so far.

Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and the president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK in London, also highlighted reports of forced recruitment via his account on X.

The military government has not issued any official statement about the recruitment of the Rohingya into the armed forces, but Nay San Lwin said it had issued a denial that young Rohingya were “forcibly recruited, arrested and then taken to military battalions for training” via state newspapers in both English and Burmese.

It is especially difficult for the 600,000 Rohingya living in camps and villages in Rakhine to leave Myanmar in order to escape conscription, activists say.

To move from one village to another, individuals must obtain permission from the village administrators who are also Rohingya but act under orders from the military. This process can be long and costly, requiring approvals from several different local government departments.

Activists claim recruiting the Rohingya is designed to create communal tensions between the Rohingya and the Rakhine Buddhists.

Videos surfaced on social media on March 19 showing the Rohingya apparently protesting against the Arakan Army. However, many X users speculated that this was a military government-sponsored protest. In an X post, Aung Kyaw Moe, cabinet member of the National Unity Government Myanmar – the elected MPs who were removed in the coup – wrote, “Junta is using the Rohingya as a proxy to protest against AA [Arakan Army] in Buthidang is not definitely organic.”

Myanmar’s 2017 military crackdown on the Rohingya has been under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2019. However, there has been a lack of progress in the case.

“It has been three years since the coup, and not a single ICC member state has referred Myanmar to the ICC. I think that’s a practical failure, it’s a moral failure. But it’s one that can be rectified,” said Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights.

A separate case was also filed by The Gambia in 2019 at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya. While the ICJ issued orders for provisional measures to be taken by Myanmar to protect the Rohingya, Nay San Lwin and Smith said that no action has been taken.

“The UN Security Council should regard the Myanmar military flouting the provisional measures as a reason for action,” said Smith.

Nay San Lwin said that the Rohingya crisis could be resolved if a civilian government which acknowledges the plight of the Rohingya comes to power. Furthermore, he said: “If the international community takes serious action against the military, we will not suffer.”

 



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How Yazan starved to death amid Israel’s war on Gaza | Israel War on Gaza

Rafah, Gaza – The loss of nine-year-old Yazan, or Yazouna as his mother called him, hangs like a dark cloud over the el-Kafarna family’s tiny living space.

They huddle together in a shelter that Sharif el-Kafarna rigged up out of bits of wood, cardboard and sheeting in front of the third-floor door to the elevator in an UNRWA school in Rafah.

It is tidy inside and a string of Ramadan bunting hangs on one wall, but nothing can hide the fact that the family of five sleeps, prays, eats and spends all day in a space about eight metres square (80 feet square).

Breaking down, his mother wept: “This is our first Ramadan without Yazan, God has ordained this for us and we cannot complain, we can only praise him and have faith.”

Yazan died on March 4 at the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, hooked up to breathing machines and IV drips, his body having wasted away to nothing during five months of relentless war during which his family ran from one supposed “safe place” to another, terrified, destitute and hungry.

He would have turned 10 on June 4.

Yazan’s family spend all their time in the cramped shelter his father was able to build in front of an elevator door on a school landing [Screengrab/Sanad/Al Jazeera]

A protected childhood

Yazan was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a month-old infant, amid an earlier Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in 2014.

His parents took great pains to structure his life in Beit Hanoon where they lived before the war so he had the food, supplements and healthcare he needed.

“Yazan needed special vitamin mixes for his mental acuity and these injections to keep his body strong, as well as physiotherapy which he needed regularly.”

“He needed healthy food as well, eggs, vegetables, fruits, dairy. He would also eat baby cereal and we would puree foods for him so he could eat,” his father, Sharif said.

He also received physiotherapy at home by therapists from various associations who would visit the family home regularly. There were also therapists who worked with him to provide psychological support and some basic learning.

“He enjoyed his sessions, you could see it in his eyes. He would smile, sometimes he’d clap, too, and his eyes would follow what was happening, like the trainers talking to him or shows on a screen that we’d show him,” his father said.

The little boy was thriving, and his parents celebrated him as much as they protected him.

Yazan’s mother broke down as she spoke to Al Jazeera about the loss of Yazan [Screengrab/Sanad/Al Jazeera]

“We’d have birthday parties for Yazan. He would smile, he would clap when he heard music, he was moving well, thank God.

“We’d do the whole thing, with a birthday cake and party food, just like we did for the other kids,” his mother said.

Understanding and love

The couple has three surviving children, eight-year-old Mouin, four-year-old Wael and four-month-old Mohamed, who was born weeks after Israel began its assault on Gaza on October 7.

Mouin was the closest of the brothers to Yazan, his mother told Al Jazeera.

“He would sit with him and watch him for me when I had to be in another room. He didn’t change his diapers or anything like that, but he would spend hours with him just watching something or chattering,” she said.

Because Yazan could not speak, he made different sounds depending on what he needed, his father said.

“I couldn’t understand what he wanted to, well, his mum was the one who knew what he wanted based on the sound he was making,” he said.

Yazan’s mother smiled fondly at the memory of her relationship with her eldest.

“He was closer to me … such a good kid, our relationship was great and I always understood him. He’d make a particular noise when he was hungry, another one if he was startled.

Yazan’s father, Sharif, is still devastated at what happened to Yazan [Screengrab/Sanad/Al Jazeera]

“I took him with me everywhere, to market, to my family’s places, he just came along. We went to the beach, too, but I didn’t put him in the sea because I always worried he’d get too cold, I’d just bathe him in the tub.”

Memories of that past life bring fleeting smiles to her face as she describes their two-bedroom home with its big living room and kitchen where the children had space to play – now they huddle with their parents in a tiny space all day.

“Fridays we’d have a big family meal, then take our afternoon siestas and go out to visit our families, either we’d go to my family or to my in-laws’,” she said.

Sharif used to work as a driver, earning enough money to provide everything the family needed, especially Yazan.

“I tried to do the same here,” he said. “We’re from Beit Hanoon, we were displaced to Jabalia, then Nuseirat, then Deir el-Balah, and when we got here, I made sure we had our own space, so Yazan would be as comfortable as I could manage for my son,” Sharif continued.

War brings the beginning of the end

“I was so happy when I was watching my son growing day by day when he had the food and medicines he needed. But then when the war started, he couldn’t get the treatment or the right food any more,” Sharif said.

Yazan was alert and thriving before the war, thanks to his family’s efforts to take care of him [Courtesy of the el-Kafarna family]

They tried, he continued, as hard they could to secure what Yazan needed to survive – soft, nutritious food that could be eaten by the little boy – but first, the supplies dwindled, then the black market prices rose alarmingly, then finally, there was no more of the food to be found.

Yazan’s health began to deteriorate in front of his parents’ horrified eyes as they carried him in their arms from one supposed “safe” place of displacement to another.

No amount of softened bread scraps they gathered for him could help keep him alert and strong, and his already thin frame began to waste away.

“He started to deteriorate day after day. We didn’t have enough medicine so I’d try to skip days to make what we had stretch further,” his father said sadly.

“We took him to the hospital and he lived his last days on life support at Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital. By then he was no longer able to respond to anything, not even his mother.”

Yazan spent 11 days in the hospital before he died on March 4.

“I can never forget Yazan,” his mother said, in tears.

“He’s in my heart and mind every minute of every day. Look at what’s happening to our children!”

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Not just the UNRWA report: Countless accounts of Israeli torture in Gaza | Israel War on Gaza News

Though it has yet to respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment, Israel continues to push back against the accusations of torture levelled at its armed forces in an unpublished report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The report details the extensive use of torture against Palestinians taken prisoner by the Israeli military in Gaza, including 21 UNRWA staff members and 15 family members of UNRWA staff,  an accusation Israel has denied.

Findings in the report tally with testimonies Al Jazeera has gathered from people detained in Gaza and tortured by Israel since the beginning of its war on the besieged enclave.

There have also been well-documented cases in which arbitrarily detained Palestinians were subjected to deeply degrading treatment, a circumstance that was also detailed in the UNRWA report.

According to the February report, UNRWA had documented the release of 1,002 detainees – ranging in age from six to 82 – by Israel at the Karem Abu Salem crossing (called Kerem Shalom by Israel) between December 18 and February 19.

The released detainees included UNRWA staff, women, children, the elderly and vulnerable people living with conditions like Alzheimer’s and cancer – all of whom were taken from Gaza and held at various locations within Israel.

To help these individuals, UNRWA set up a reception facility at Karam Abu Salem where they provide food and water to the released persons and help them try to reach their families.

“In most instances, the released detainees are extremely disoriented, hungry, physically exhausted and exhibit visible signs of physical and mental trauma, and are wearing dirty clothes, sometimes with visible blood stains.

“They are often unaware that war is continuing, on occasion do not realize they have returned to Gaza, and they do not know the whereabouts or fate of their loved ones,” the report stated.

However, UNRWA noted, the releases it documented are only part of the overall number of people being detained and mistreated by Israel in Gaza, as there are many more who are taken, tortured and released within Gaza – it provided an estimate of some 4,000 people overall.

Torture

In detention, the people taken were interrogated, with UNRWA staff being of particular interest to Israeli interrogators who reportedly tried to coerce confessions of complicity with Hamas or the October 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,139 people and the capture of 253 who were taken back to Gaza.

Practices recorded by UNRWA include the use of a nail gun on prisoners’ knees, sexual abuse against both men and women and the insertion of what appears to be an electrified metal stick into prisoners’ rectums.

Mahmoud Abd Rabbu in UN-provided clothing at the hospital where he was being treated after his release [Screegrab/Al Jazeera]

“They were beating me with an extendable metal bar. There was blood on my trousers and when they saw it, they beat me there. They used a nail gun on my knee. These nails were kept in my knee for about 24 hours until I was transported to Naqab prison,” one 26-year-old male told UNRWA of his 56 days in Israeli custody.

Mahmoud Abd Rabbu, 62, from Jabalia, told Al Jazeera he had been displaced to the Indonesian Hospital and, during the last days of the Israeli siege on the hospital, he was told everyone should move to the south.

He headed for a checkpoint that had been determined as “safe” by Israeli forces where he and one other man were picked out of a group of 80 people and detained.

He recounts being held in a group of more than 100 men who all endured days of “beatings, hunger and cold”, adding that they were kept blindfolded, not allowed to sleep and were forced to spend most of the day kneeling.

“If someone lifted the blindfold off their eyes,” he said, “he would be called over by the soldiers and beaten then strung up on the barbed wire fence.”

Another detained man told UNRWA: “They made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire – I have burns [in the anus]. The soldiers hit me with their shoes on my chest and used something like a metal stick that had a small nail on the side,” he said.

“They asked us to drink from the toilet and made the dogs attack us,” he recalled, before describing how he had seen the bodies of “maybe nine” people who had been detained and killed, including one who had died after they had “put the electric stick up his [anus]. He got so sick, we saw worms coming out of his body and then he died,” he said.

Khaled el-Nabreis from the Khan Younis refugee camp told Al Jazeera that he and several other men spent three days with no food or water, “only beatings, and when we slept they would cover us with wet blankets in the bitter cold” after they were detained by Israeli forces, taken to a location he did not recognise.

Several of the individuals tortured and then released by Israel told Al Jazeera the soldiers tormenting them were asking the same kinds of questions, including: “Where are the tunnels?”, “Where is [Hamas leader] Sinwar?”, “Where are the captives?” and “Who do you know who is a Hamas fighter?”

Rami Abu Daqqa saw his brother shot in front of his eyes and then endured weeks of torment in Israeli detention [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]

Rami Abu Daqqa from Bani Suhaila in Gaza told Al Jazeera that he and his family had tried to return to their home from Rafah in late January. As they approached the house, he said, Israeli snipers opened fire, shooting him in the leg. His voice breaking, he added that his brother, Hani, was shot and killed in the same barrage.

He went on to describe how  Israeli soldiers both administered first aid for the gunshot wound in his leg and beat him to get him to confess to knowing Hamas fighters. Then he was transferred to an Israeli hospital, where a platinum plate was inserted into his leg, all the while he was blindfolded, handcuffed around the clock and interrogated regularly.

The accounts of mistreatment released detainees gave Al Jazeera at the hospital where they were being treated matched those in the UNRWA report. The report went further to say that all of the released detainees needed medical attention and were transferred to hospital immediately from the border crossing wherever possible, given the dire condition of Gaza’s health sector after nearly six months of Israeli attacks.

In one case that the report detailed, urgent medical transport was arranged for a child who was released at Karam Abu Salem with dog bites visible on his body and a bruised face.

Speaking at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week, the body’s international expert on torture, Dr Alice Jill Edwards, told Reuters she had asked to visit Israel to investigate widespread reports of torture against both sides within the conflict.

Stacking the deck

In January, Israel accused several UNRWA employees of participating in the attacks of October 7

In a reported attempt to coerce confessions to support the accusations, Israeli interrogators tortured UNRWA staff they detained in Gaza, some of whom they took as they were carrying out their duties as staff of the international relief agency.

In detention, the UNRWA staff endured “severe physical beatings; waterboarding; exposure to dogs; threats of violence … rape, and electrocution; verbal and psychological abuse; threats of murder, injury or other harm to their family members; humiliating and degrading treatment; being forced to strip naked and subjected to photographs,” according to the report.

A probe was launched by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) into the already highly audited agency to determine the extent of any alleged complicity in the October attack and nine UNRWA employees were dismissed as a result of the allegations.

Nine of the agency’s principal funders, including the US and UK, announced the immediate suspension of donations worth $450m, the equivalent of about half the agency’s annual budget.

Khaled el-Nabreis speaks to Al Jazeera with a neck brace on due to his extensive injuries [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]

A Freedom of Information Request to the UK Government, which said it had based the decision to suspend UNRWA contributions on the Israeli report, has yet to be delivered to Al Jazeera English, despite being promised for March 6.

However, according to diplomats within the United Nations, an interim report earlier this month into the allegations made by Israel against the agency contained no new information beyond the earlier unsubstantiated claims of UNRWA complicity.

Sweden, the EU and Canada announced that they were resuming donations while other countries, including the US, have said they will wait until investigations into the agency were complete before they review their decision to suspend funds.

Israel has long begrudged the presence of UNRWA within Gaza. It has blamed the agency’s reports of its forces targeting civilian infrastructure, including its schools and first responder stations for the criticism during the International Court of Justice’s preliminary judgement on 26 January, when South Africa charged Israel with committing genocide during its war on Gaza. This prospect grows more likely as aid is blocked and the besieged population is tilted ever further towards famine.

On Monday, the Times of Israel reported that the country’s forces intended to unilaterally dismantle UNRWA within Gaza, with its functions hived off to other agencies of the military’s choosing.

While it was not clear which agencies the Israeli military had designated, or if negotiations were under way, the report did note that this move against the agency came as the latest in a longstanding campaign to discredit it, which goes back to UNRWA’s 1949 founding, mandating the agency to support displaced Palestinian refugees until they could return home.

As hunger worsens, with 15 children reported to have starved to death in recent days, UNRWA’s role in helping prevent what agencies are warning of a “humanitarian crisis” grows increasingly vital.

Other agencies, such as the Danish Refugee Council have warned that neither they nor other NGOs still operating in Gaza can replicate UNRWA’s role.

Al Jazeera will continue to pursue its request that the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office share the Israeli allegations against UNRWA it received.

Israeli soldiers stand by a truck packed with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees, in Gaza on December 8, 2023, in the corner is what appears to be the wheel of a wheelchair [Moti Milrod/Haaretz/AP Photo]

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Iran committed crimes against humanity during protest crackdown, UN says | Human Rights News

Tehran’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests and discrimination against women and girls triggered serious rights violations, many amounting to crimes against humanity, a United Nations fact-finding mission has concluded.

Iran was rocked by widespread demonstrations sparked by the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress rule for women.

Anger over her death rapidly expanded into weeks of taboo-breaking protests in an open challenge to the Islamic republic’s system of government under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In November 2022, the UN Human Rights Council created a high-level investigation into the deadly crackdown.

In its first report, the independent international fact-finding mission on Iran said on Friday that many of the violations uncovered “amount to crimes against humanity – specifically those of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts”.

It added that the committing of such crimes, in the context of a deprivation of fundamental rights and inflicted with discriminatory intent, “leads the mission to the conclusion that the crime against humanity of persecution on the grounds of gender has been committed”.

“These acts form part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Iran, namely against women, girls, boys and men who have demanded freedom, equality, dignity and accountability,” said Sara Hossain, who chairs the three-member mission.

“We urge the government to immediately halt the repression of those who have engaged in peaceful protests, in particular women and girls.”

‘Obfuscated the truth’

Rather than conducting a proper investigation into Amini’s death, Tehran “actively obfuscated the truth”, the mission said.

The mission said people “who merely danced” or honked car horns were arrested in the crackdown on protests, while hundreds of children, some as young as 10, were also detained.

The mission found the Iranian security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force, resulting in the unlawful killing and injuries of protesters who posed no imminent threat of death or serious injury.

Dozens of people were blinded, the mission added, saying it also found evidence of extrajudicial killings.

The mission found Tehran had arbitrarily executed at least nine young men from December 2022 to January 2024, while dozens remain at risk of execution or a death sentence in relation to the protests.

Credible figures suggest that as many as 551 protesters were killed by the security forces, among them at least 49 women and 68 children, the mission said, with most deaths caused by firearms.

“Pervasive and deep-rooted structural and institutionalised discrimination against women and girls … was both a trigger and an enabler of the widespread serious human rights violations and crimes under international law,” the report concluded.

“Given the gravity of its findings, the mission urges the Iranian authorities to halt all executions and immediately and unconditionally release all persons arbitrarily arrested and detained in the context of the protests or for non-compliance with or advocacy against the mandatory hijab.”

Iran should stop the judicial harassment of protesters and their families, repeal laws that discriminate against women, “in particular those on the mandatory hijab”, and disband the “persecutory system” of its enforcement, it said.

The mission urged Tehran to provide “justice, truth and reparations” to victims of rights violations in connection with the protests.

It also said countries should explore avenues for legal accountability outside Iran, given the absence of effective remedies within the country, and that other states should also grant asylum and humanitarian visas to people fleeing persecution for defending rights in Iran.

The Iranian authorities refused to cooperate with the mission.

The report will be formally presented to the Human Rights Council on March 15.

The release of the report is unlikely to change the trajectory of Iran’s government, now more firmly in the hands of hard-liners after a low-turnout vote last week put them back in charge of the country’s parliament.

However, it provides further international pressure on Tehran amid wider Western concerns about its advancing nuclear programme, Iran’s arming of Russia in Moscow’s war on Ukraine and the continued harassment and imprisonment of activists, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi.

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Kites fill Rafah’s skies, a symbol of hope amid Israel’s war on Gaza | Israel War on Gaza

Rafah, Gaza Strip – The colourful kites fluttering in the skies of Rafah belie the reality they soar over: ragged tents packed tightly together, and lines of people trying to find food, water, and firewood. Running in and out of it all are children, brief smiles illuminating their exhausted faces as they look up at their flying miracles.

That such a simple toy can bring them moments of joy is in and of itself a miracle – and proof of the undefeatable spirit of children who manage this in the midst of rubble, death, displacement, hunger, and freezing cold as Israel’s brutal war on Gaza nears five months.

More than 1.3 million people are displaced in Rafah right now, a density that is in the top three worldwide. Only these people are not living in highrises or modern cities: they are packed tightly together in makeshift tents.

‘We were screaming’

Tariq Khalaf, 12, has a kite, and he’s very proud of the fact.

“When the sun rose, I came out of the tent to sit here on the sand,” he says. “I saw some kids flying kites and I asked them how I could get one, too.

“I had sticks, but didn’t have the paper so I found someone who had some paper and asked him. He made one for me and one for his son and now I can come out and play all day with my kite.

Cheerful kites bobbing on the air’s currents belie the loss and sadness they fly over [Ruwaida Amer/Al Jazeera]

“It’s so nice to watch it rise into the sky with the wind, and to run along with it, me and my friends from the tents nearby.”

Pride and happiness are in Tariq’s words, showing how much he missed playing and being outside doing everyday things with friends.

“We can’t play … we used to play football but there’s no space here between the tents. You can’t play and run like I used to in the field next to our house.”

Tariq and his family were displaced from their home in Nassr in Gaza, to al-Shifa Hospital, then to Khan Younis. Finally, they ended up in Rafah.

“We left the house because of the bombing … we were screaming from the sound of the explosions,” he says. “My father was [always] trying to find food through aid or people distributing food to the displaced.

“I would spend my time running around the schoolyard [in Khan Younis] or just sitting in the corner waiting for the night so I could sleep.”

‘My kids have aged’

Salem Baraka has gotten in on the kite game as well, but mostly for his children, he says.

‘We were screaming from the sound of the explosions,’ Tariq said of his family’s displacement [Ruwaida Amer/Al Jazeera]

The 40-year-old from Abasan east of Khan Younis came to Rafah early on in the war, given how used he has become to being displaced whenever Israel launches an assault on Gaza.

“I left my land and my house to save my children from death … I have six children, the youngest is Louay, he’s nine.

“The kids are so scared and at the same time so bored, and it only gets worse as the war progresses. Some have become violent and aggressive and can’t bear to speak to anyone.

“My kids had their own rooms; they used to play with their cousins. Now they sit in front of the tent, suspending their lives.”

When kites became popular, Salem says, Louay asked him to make one for him, but it did not fly, so Salem bought one from somebody else in the encampment.

“Look,” he says, pointing up. “They make the sky look nice instead of the usual smoke from the bombings.”

“My kids have aged during the war, their personalities changed,” the father adds, looking concerned.

Saeed Ashraf bought this kite for himself and his younger brother, Murad [Ruwaida Amer/Al Jazeera]

“The kites keep them busy,” he notes. “I see Louay talking to his kite, screaming when it falls and cheering when it rises in the sky. I was happy he found something to play with instead of sitting in the sand and crying out of boredom.”

‘I worry I’ll get lost among the tents’

Another kite flyer is 13-year-old Saeed Ashraf, who also came to Rafah from Khan Younis.

He bought his kite from one of the children in the camp who are making and selling them to earn some cash and help their families out.

“I bought one for myself and my brother Murad, who’s nine,” Saeed said.

“Now, we leave the tent every day whenever the weather is good for kite-flying. We don’t go far, though, because the place is so full of tents that I’m afraid that we could get lost if we go too far.

“So, Murad and I stay near the tent and fly our kite. It makes us happy, and my dad sits nearby, watching us. I think it makes him happy, too.

“I miss our home in Khan Yunis and I hope the army will leave soon.”

Saeed says that when the war is over, “I’ll take these kites back with me to fly them in our neighbourhood with my brother and our neighbours.”

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