A prosecutor at the International Criminal Court on Monday requested an investigation into the Filipino government’s crackdown on drug-related crime.Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said an initial probe into the issue started in February 2018 “determined that there is a reasonable basis to believe that the crime against humanity of murder has been committed” in the Philippines between July 1, 2016, and March 16, 2019.The Philippines withdrew from the ICC on March 16, 2019, because of the ICC’s initial probe.Despite the withdrawal, Bensouda, whose nine-year term as a prosecutor ends this week, said the court still has jurisdiction, as the alleged crimes took place while the Philippines was still a member.She said the initial investigation “indicates that members of the Philippine National Police, and others acting in concert with them, have unlawfully killed between several thousand and tens of thousands of civilians during that time.”She also said prosecutors investigated allegations of “torture and other inhumane acts, and related events” dating back to Nov. 1, 2011.Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte defended the government’s anti-drug policies when he announced its withdrawal from the ICC, saying it was “lawfully directed against drug lords and pushers who have for many years destroyed the present generation, specially the youth.”ICC judges have 120 days to decide whether to move forward on Bensouda’s request.
 
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China has denounced the communique issued Sunday at the end of the G-7 summit that criticized Beijing over its human rights record.
 
The G-7 statement called on China to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang, and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration,” referring to the 1997 agreement that switched control of the financial hub from Britain to China.   
 
Beijing is accused of committing serious human rights abuses against the minority Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, including the detention of more than one million Uyghurs into detention camps, widespread government surveillance and forced birth control.  
 
The Chinese embassy in London issued a statement accusing the G-7 leaders of interfering in its internal affairs, and according to Reuters, vowed to “resolutely fight back against all kinds of injustices and infringements imposed on China.”
 
The statement also said an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was first detected in China’s central city of Wuhan in late 2019, should not be “politicized” in response to the G-7’s demand for “a timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based” second probe by the World Health Organization.    
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Conservationists have praised efforts by Australian authorities to drastically reduce the amount of plastic waste and eliminate some disposable coffee cups. The New South Wales state government wants to ban many common plastic items, including straws, drinks stirrers and cutlery, as well as polystyrene cups in a bid to protect the environment and reduce waste.    Lightweight plastic shopping bags could be eliminated within six months of new laws being passed.  The reforms could be approved by lawmakers this year. Other products will be phased out at different times depending on the availability of, for example, paper and bamboo alternatives.    Officials have estimated the measures will stop about 2.7 billion items of plastic from ending up in the environment and oceans over the next 20 years.    New South Wales Environment Minister Matt Kean has warned that the world is on track to have more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050.    He told Australian television that the changes would help protect the community.  “No-one wants to be wading through plastics when they go to the beach, let alone be consuming it in their food and water, and that is what we are doing at the moment. Every day in New South Wales people are consuming over 2,000 bits of plastic. That is the equivalent of a credit card of plastic they are ingesting every week and it is largely because of the pervasiveness of single-use plastics across our environment. So, we believe that we can do something about that. Do something about it where there are alternatives available and when it does not add to cost and that is what I am looking to see,” Kean said.  In Western Australia, the state government has also announced ambitious plans to tackle waste. By the end of this year, it will ban a range of items, including single-use plastic bowls, plates, straws, polystyrene food containers and thick plastic shopping bags.  Polystyrene packaging and takeaway plastic coffee cups and their lids will be outlawed in 2022.  It is estimated that Australians throw out about a billion coffee cups each year.  The World Wildlife Fund Australia said the state governments in New South Wales and Western Australia are in a “race to the top” in waste measures and that the reforms were “a terrific outcome for the environment.”   But conservationists have warned that Tasmania and the Northern Territory were the only Australian jurisdictions “without a plan to ban problem single-use plastics.” Also, in a few weeks, it will be illegal for companies to export certain waste plastics from Australia under tough new rules. 
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The trial of ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi will hear its first testimony in a junta court Monday, more than four months after a military coup.  Near daily protests have rocked Myanmar since the generals’ putsch removed her government in February, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy.The mass uprising has been met with a brutal military crackdown that has killed more than 850 people, according to a local monitoring group.The junta has brought an eclectic raft of charges against the Nobel laureate, from illegally accepting 11 kilograms of gold to breaking a colonial-era secrecy law.On Monday, her defense team will cross-examine witnesses over charges she improperly imported walkie-talkies and flouted coronavirus restrictions during last year’s elections that her National League for Democracy won in a landslide.  Her lawyers — who have been allowed to meet with her just twice since she was placed under house arrest — have said they expect the trial to wrap up by July 26.Hearings for the case will take place every Monday.If convicted of all charges, Suu Kyi, 75, faces more than a decade in jail.”We are hoping for the best but prepared for the worst,” Khin Maung Zaw, one of Suu Kyi’s lawyers, told AFP ahead of the hearing in the capital Naypyidaw.A separate case is scheduled to start on June 15, where she is charged with sedition alongside ousted president Win Myint and another senior member of the NLD.Cloistered iconSuu Kyi spent more than 15 years under house arrest during the previous junta’s rule before her 2010 release.Her international stature diminished following a wave of military violence targeting Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s marginalized Muslim Rohingya community, but the coup has returned Suu Kyi to the role of cloistered democracy icon.On Thursday, she was hit with additional corruption charges of illegally accepting $600,000 in cash and around 11 kilos of gold.Her lawyer Khin Maung Zaw dismissed the new charges — which could see Suu Kyi hit with another lengthy prison term — as “absurd”.”There is an undeniable political background to keep her out of the scene of the country and to smear her prestige,” he told AFP last week.”That’s one of the reasons to charge her — to keep her out of the scene.”Myanmar has plunged into a “human rights catastrophe” since the coup, the UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said Friday, adding that the military leadership was “singularly responsible” for the crisis.Bachelet also slammed the sweeping arrests in the country of activists, journalists and opponents of the regime, citing credible sources saying at least 4,804 people remain in arbitrary detention.Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has justified his power grab by citing alleged electoral fraud in the November poll won by Suu Kyi’s NLD.The junta has previously said it would hold fresh elections within two years, but has also threatened to dissolve the NLD.
 
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Rallies rang out in dozens of cities across the globe Saturday to commemorate two years since pro-democracy activists surrounded Hong Kong’s legislature in a failed effort to thwart passage of a national security law.The law has dramatically expanded Beijing’s control of the semi-autonomous city. It’s passaged triggered months of anti-government protests and a violent crackdown by state security forces.Activists and political figures from 20 countries participated in the global campaign for Hong Kong, held across more than 50 cities, including several in the U.S., U.K, Canada and Australia. Virtual events were also scheduled in cities such as Bangkok and Taipei, due to the COVID-19 restrictions.Ted Hui, a pro-democracy activist and former Hong Kong legislator who fled the city after facing at least nine charges, called the rallies a “firm message” that Hong Kongers “have not given up.”On Saturday, Hui told VOA that he had shared with a crowd in his adopted home of Sydney “how I made my determination to devote myself to the movement, a lifelong mission in life.””I asked them to make more steps forward, keep the spirits high and preserve our Hong Kong identity to make our movement long and sustainable,” Hui, 39, said.In Germany, Hong Kong political and digital rights activist Glacier Chung Ching Kwong, who is also in self-exile, addressed gatherings in Berlin.“In two years, all the people I have worked with are either in jail or in exile,” she told the crowd. “The fear is real.”‘Sad and angry,’ yet ‘vigilant’The 24-year-old founder of Keyboard Frontline said, “We are all sad and angry, but we are also vigilant to not let this costly ordeal become a force that clouds us, limits our thinking and undermines the movement or the reason to fight for freedom and democracy at the first place.”“Hong Kong, as we know it, is dying, but the new Hong Kong is yet to be born,” part of her speech read.Outside the Chinese Consulate in Gothenburg, Sweden, demonstrators held Hong Kong pro-democracy banners and put posters on lampposts, photojournalist Dennis Lindbom, who attended the event, said.Nine cities were scheduled to hold events in Britain. At the Marble Arch in London, politician Sir Iain Duncan Smith addressed hundreds of protesters on stage with a flurry of British Hong Kong flags in the background.“You are the great people. Not people like me or politicians, it is your determination to stand for freedom,” the British MP said.Last year the British government offered up to 3 million Hong Kong residents the opportunity of residency, via the British National Overseas passport scheme.Protests were also scheduled to take place in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., on Saturday.In Hong Kong, where pro-democracy protests remain banned, muted demonstrations were held despite a heavy police presence, resulting in few arrests. Online calls to gather at Causeway Bay, a sprawling shopping district and key battleground during demonstrations in 2019, largely went unheeded.But according to local reports, the Hong Kong police had deployed at least 1,000 officers to counter any demonstrations. As the evening drew to a close, no large crowds had materialized as police officers remained, performing stop-and-search operations while cordoning off streets in the area.The political group Student Politicism was due to hold a pop-up booth in the residential district of Mong Kok — another flashpoint amid the months of unrest in 2019 — but its organizers Wong Yat-Chin and spokesperson Alice Wong were both arrested on Friday for allegedly inciting others to participate in illegal assembly leading up to the event.Wong Yat-Chin was only detained last week during a small demonstration to mark the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing on June 4.Earlier in the day, high-profile activist Agnes Chow was released from prison. Chow was sentenced to 10 months in jail in December a day before her 24th birthday, following her guilty plea to charges over her involvement in an unauthorized assembly in June 2019.Chow served over six months of her sentence and when released on Saturday, looking slightly worn and thinner than usual, declined to speak to the scrum of media waiting as she made her way home in a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “You are doing so great.”But the activist later posted on social media that she had endured “half a year and twenty days of pain” and that she intends to have a good rest following her release.Chow, 24, may face another jail term stemming from a separate arrest under the national security law in August 2020 for which she has yet to face charges.National security lawThe national security that triggered the 2019 protests, which eventually passed in 2020, dramatically expands Beijing’s control of the semi-autonomous city, prohibiting things such as secession and subversion, putting an end to major street demonstrations. The legislation carries maximum punishments of life imprisonment and even allows Beijing to take over “serious” cases that can still include extradition to mainland China.Since ratification, authorities have cracked down on dozens of pro-democracy activists, who have been either been arrested or jailed while others have fled the in self-exile.On June 12, 2019, Hong Kong riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the huge crowds.Footage of the clashes intensified public anger and fueled what became an increasingly violent movement calling for full democracy that raged for several months.Huge crowds rallied week after week in the most serious challenge to China’s rule since Hong Kong’s 1997 handover from the United Kingdom.Beijing’s leaders continue to dismiss calls for democracy, portraying protestors as stooges of “foreign forces” trying to undermine China.Some information is from AFP. 
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Guns and ammunition bought under Thai police and army discount plans and siphoned into the black market have been seized by Thai customs on the Myanmar border, stoking fears of a new illicit arms trade driven by Myanmar’s post-coup collapse into chaos.Myanmar’s army seized power from the civilian government Feb. 1, setting off a chain reaction of protests, bloody crackdowns and a revival of dormant conflicts with ethnic militias across the country.As democracy activists flee to jungle camps to train in armed resistance, Thai border officials fear the conflict next door is spurring a cross-border gun trade.On May 27 Thai customs seized 27 guns — including pistols, semiautomatic M12s, M4 rifles and telescopic sights — and 50,000 rounds of ammunition, in a truck attempting to cross into Myanmar at the Mae Sai border crossing in western Thailand.“The majority of the seized guns are ‘welfare guns,’” Somsak Tangcharoentam, the Mae Sai customs director told VOA, referring to the so-called welfare guns list, a fluid online catalog of guns available to the police and military, and other government officials, at a discount.“They’re guns that can be bought legally by government officers, police and soldiers, so their price is lower than the market value,” he said.Thai customs officials arrested Kyaw Phoy, a Myanmar national, and Jam Namwong, who had a Thai identification card but who is a member of the Shan ethnic group, living on both sides of the border, according to a customs press release.“This is the first time that we’ve found guns at the border, usually it’s only drugs and counterfeit goods,” Somsak said.Although it does not manufacture its own weapons, Thailand is awash with guns.A key route for weapons to reach the black market is the welfare list, which is aimed at law enforcement and other government officials, but loopholes allow the guns to seep into the black market, officials have told VOA.“If you want to buy a rifle, all you have to say is that you’ll need it for sports. The deadlier the weapon, the harder obtaining the license is, but you can pay your way in,” an army captain said, requesting anonymity.“These ‘welfare guns’ are mostly for war and conflict zones and they’re 30% to 70%  cheaper than market price.”Open bordersOn March 28, border officials at Mae Sai seized over 100 hand grenades en route via courier to Tachileik, across the border in Myanmar.Like the May gun haul, the shipment was found after random checks at an official border post in an area with a long, unpoliceable frontier with Myanmar.“You can see the pattern,” a senior Thai police source at Mae Sai, also refusing to be named, said.“It’s the second time in a few months and we’re worried this route might be used to fight the conflict in Myanmar,” he said.Even before the coup, Myanmar’s borderlands were blistered by ethnic insurgencies, funded by drug trafficking and racketeering in ungovernable zones packed with casinos, prostitution and other illicit businesses.The army’s unexpected February power grab has pitched Myanmar into chaos, fragmenting delicate alliances with rebel groups reigniting fighting between ethnic militias and the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military.In addition, scores of young, urban protesters made desperate by the violence of Myanmar’s army, have headed to the jungle camps near the Thai border to undergo military training.Their aim is to return to the cities, where peaceful protests have taken on an increasingly militant edge to fight back against soldiers who have been firing indiscriminately at demonstrators, killing, by best estimates, well over 800.To fight Myanmar’s army, they will need a supply of weapons — readily available from neighboring Thailand, where the coronavirus pandemic has crushed the economy.“The crisis in Myanmar will almost certainly act to revive an arms black market in Thailand,” said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst for Jane’s Defense publications.“Handguns for use in areas of urban conflict will be in great demand and given the depressed economic conditions that Thailand is now facing there will be no shortage of gun owners ready to sell weapons they are licensed to hold,” he said.Meanwhile the “incentive” for government officials to sell licensed guns “onto the black market will be even greater,” he added.Border officials in Mae Sai say they are stepping up patrols, but there is realistically little they can do to stop the supply, given the size of the border.“We are under pressure” from Myanmar to stop the illegal cross-border arms trade, the police source in Mae Sai said, although there is a limit on what they can do.“We’re on the border and we are separated by just a few meters and a shallow stretch of water,” the source said.
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Top U.S. and Chinese diplomats appear to have had another sharply worded exchange, with Beijing saying it told the U.S. to cease interfering in its internal affairs and accusing Washington of politicizing the search for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.Senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a phone call Friday that revealed wide divisions in several contentious areas, including the curtailing of freedoms in Hong Kong and the mass detention of Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.Calls for a more thorough investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are particularly sensitive for China because of suggestions that it might have have escaped from a laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, where cases were first discovered.Yang said China was “gravely concerned” over what he called “absurd” stories that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab.China “firmly opposes any despicable acts that use the epidemic as an excuse to slander China and to shift blames,” Yang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.“Some people in the United States have fabricated and peddled absurd stories claiming Wuhan lab leak, which China is gravely concerned about,” Yang said. “China urges the United States to respect facts and science, refrain from politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing and concentrate on international anti-pandemic cooperation.”The State Department said Blinken “stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency regarding the origin of the virus, including the need for (World Health Organization) Phase 2 expert-led studies in China.”The U.S. and others have accused China of failing to provide the raw data and access to sites that would allow a more thorough investigation into where the virus sprung from and how it initially spread.Equally contentious were the issues of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and accusations that China has arbitrarily detained two Canadian citizens in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of an executive of Chinese communications technology giant Huawei, who is wanted by U.S. law enforcement.The U.S. has “fabricated various lies about Xinjiang in an attempt to sabotage the stability and unity in Xinjiang, which confuse right and wrong and are extremely absurd. China is firmly opposed to such actions,” Yang said.FILE – People walk by a billboard reading ‘All people participate in building a line of defense against the epidemic, please get the vaccine in time’ in Beijing, May 24, 2021.“Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs,” and those found in violation of a sweeping national security law imposed on the former British colony “must be punished,” Yang said.Blinken, on the other hand, underscored U.S. concern over the deterioration of democratic norms in Hong Kong and the ongoing “genocide and crimes against humanity against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” the State Department said.He also urged Beijing to ease pressure against Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary.According to Xinhua, Yang said Taiwan involves China’s “core interests” and that Beijing “firmly defends its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”The tone of the phone call seemed to echo contentious talks in March in Alaska, when the sides traded sharp and unusually public barbs over vastly different views of each other and the world in their first face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office.At that meeting, the U.S. accused the Chinese delegation of “grandstanding,” while Beijing fired back, saying there was a “strong smell of gunpowder and drama” that was entirely the fault of the Americans.Relations between them have deteriorated to their lowest level in decades, with the Biden administration showing no signs of deviating from the established U.S. hardline against China over trade, technology, human rights and China’s claim to the South China Sea.Beijing, meanwhile, has fought back doggedly against what it sees as attempts to smear its reputation and restrain its development.On Thursday, its ceremonial legislature passed a law to retaliate against sanctions imposed on Chinese politicians and organizations, threatening to deny entry to and freeze the Chinese assets of anyone who formulates or implements such measures, potentially placing new pressure on foreign companies operating in the country.  
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The top U.S. diplomat in Hong Kong said the imposition of a new national security law had created an “atmosphere of coercion” that threatens both the city’s freedoms and its standing as an international business hub. In unusually strident remarks to Reuters this week, U.S. Consul-General Hanscom Smith called it “appalling” that Beijing’s influence had “vilified” routine diplomatic activities, such as meeting local activists, part of a government crackdown on foreign forces that was “casting a pall over the city.” Smith’s remarks highlight deepening concerns over Hong Kong’s sharply deteriorating freedoms among many officials in the administration of President Joe Biden one year after China’s parliament imposed the law. Critics of the legislation say the law has crushed the city’s democratic opposition, civil society and Western-style freedoms. FILE – Hanscom Smith, the U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong and Macau, attends a meeting in Hong Kong, China, May 17, 2021.The foreign forces issue is at the heart of the crimes of “collusion” with foreign countries or “external elements” detailed in Article 29 of the security law, scholars say. Article 29 outlaws a range of direct or indirect links with a “foreign country or an institution, organization or individual” outside greater China, covering offenses from the stealing of secrets and waging war to engaging in “hostile activities” and “provoking hatred.” They can be punished by up to life in prison. “People … don’t know where the red lines are, and it creates an atmosphere that’s not just bad for fundamental freedoms, it’s bad for business,” Smith said. “You can’t have it both ways,” he added. “You can’t purport to be this global hub and at the same time invoke this kind of propaganda language criticizing foreigners.” Smith is a career U.S. foreign service officer who has deep experience in China and the wider region, serving in Shanghai, Beijing and Taiwan before arriving in Hong Kong in July 2019. He made his comments in an interview Wednesday at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Hong Kong after Reuters sought the consulate’s views on the impact of the national security law. In a response to Reuters, Hong Kong’s Security Bureau said that “normal interactions and activities” were protected, and it blamed external elements for interfering in the city during the protests that engulfed Hong Kong in 2019. “There are indications in investigations and intelligence that foreign intervention was rampant with money, supplies and other forms of support,” a representative said. He did not identify specific individuals or groups. Government adviser and former security chief Regina Ip told Reuters it was only “China haters” who had reason to worry about falling afoul of the law. “There must be criminal intent, not just casual chat,” she said. Smith’s comments come as other envoys, businesspeople and activists have told Reuters of the chilling effect on their relationships and connections across China’s most international city. Private investigators say demand is surging among law firms, hedge funds and other businesses for security sweeps of offices and communications for surveillance tools, while diplomats describe discreet meetings with opposition figures, academics and clergy. Fourteen Asian and Western diplomats who spoke to Reuters for this story said they were alarmed at attempts by Hong Kong prosecutors to treat links between local politicians and foreign envoys as potential national security threats. In April, a judge cited emails from the U.S. mission to former democratic legislator Jeremy Tam as a reason to deny him bail on a charge of conspiracy to commit subversion. Tam, one of 47 pro-democracy politicians charged, is in jail awaiting trial; his lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. FILE – Lawmakers Jeremy Tam and Alvin Yeung of the Hong Kong Civic Party speak in front of a row of riot police officers during a demonstration against a proposed extradition bill in Hong Kong, China, June 12, 2019.”It’s appalling that people would take a routine interaction with a foreign government representative and attribute something sinister to it,” Smith said, adding that the consulate did not want to put anyone in an “awkward situation.” In the latest ratcheting up of tensions with Western nations, Hong Kong on Friday slammed a U.K. government report that said Beijing was using the security law to “drastically curtail freedoms” in the city. Hong Kong authorities also this week lambasted the European Union for denouncing Hong Kong’s recent overhaul of its political system. ‘Tough cases’ loomAlthough local officials said last year that the security law would affect only a “tiny minority” of people, more than 100 have been arrested under the law, which has affected education, media, civil society and religious freedoms among other areas, according to those interviewed for this story.Some have raised concerns that the provisions would hurt the business community, a suggestion Ip dismissed.”I think they have nothing to worry about unless they are bent on using external forces to harm Hong Kong,” Ip said. “I speak to a lot of businessmen who are very bullish about the economic situation.” Retired judges familiar with cases such as Tam’s said they were shocked at the broad use of foreign connections by prosecutors. One told Reuters he did not see how that approach would be sustainable, as the government accredits diplomats, whose job is to meet people, including politicians. Hong Kong’s judiciary said it would not comment on individual cases. Smith said Hong Kong’s growing atmosphere of “fear, coercion and uncertainty” put the special administrative region’s future in jeopardy. “It’s been very distressing to see this relentless onslaught on Hong Kong’s freedoms and backtracking on the commitment that was made to preserve Hong Kong’s autonomy,” he said. 
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Chinese state media report wildlife officials are increasingly concerned about a wandering herd of elephants in China’s southwest Yunnan Province that has captivated social media.China state broadcast and print media report the herd has been around Shijie Township in the city of Yuxi, where it has rained for the past several days. Drone video and other video and pictures of the elephants splashing in puddles and playing in the mud have been shared with hundreds of millions of people on social media.  The herd of about 15 elephants has taken a more-than-500-kilometer journey from a nature reserve in Yunnan’s mountainous southwest. State media reports one male elephant, which broke free from the herd five days ago, is now about 12 km from the rest of the herd, in a forest in Anning.Wildlife officials in charge of monitoring the elephants say they are safe and healthy. But many officials have expressed concern about the damage they have done and could do in the future as they roam around suburban towns and cities.  The elephants have already done more than a $1 million in damage to crops and have damaged buildings and raided kitchens and pantries in residential areas looking for food. The officials say while not one has been hurt, the mere presence of wild elephants poses a threat to people, as an aroused elephant or group could easily trample people, especially children.But Beijing Normal University mammal conservation and wildlife biologist Zhang Li told China’s Global Times, elephants may be disturbing the public, but they are not acting maliciously. He said they are searching for permanent habitat, where they can eat and live in peace, and they just have not found the right spot.Zhang called for better planning and creation and protection of elephant habitats within China’s national parks.  He said elephant ecological corridors should be constructed to connect habitats so they can travel among them without encountering humans.
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The United Nations high commissioner for human rights said Friday that violence in Myanmar is rising, deepening the crisis that began with the February 1 coup that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.”In just over four months, Myanmar has gone from being a fragile democracy to a human rights catastrophe,” Michelle Bachelet said in a statement in Geneva, Switzerland. Bachelet put the blame on the military leadership, known as the Tatmadaw, saying it was “singularly responsible” for the crisis and “must be held to account.”“State security forces have continued to use heavy weaponry, including air strikes, against armed groups and against civilians and civilian objects, including Christian churches,” she said. “The international community needs to unify in its demand that the Tatmadaw cease the outrageous use of heavy artillery against civilians and civilian objects,” Bachelet said.Bachelet’s office said there are credible reports that at least 860 people have been killed by security forces since February 1, and more than 4,800 people, including opponents of the junta, activists of civil society and journalists, have been arbitrarily detained.The U.N. human rights chief will brief the Human Rights Council on the situation in Myanmar during its next session in July, the office said. 
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Communities across Myanmar are forming armed bands with mostly crude guns and explosives in an increasingly violent resistance to the military junta that toppled the country’s democratically elected government more than four months ago, raising fears of a sweeping civil war.Dominated by Myanmar’s ethnic Burman majority, the military has been at war with an evolving cast of ethnic minority armies fighting for autonomy on patches of land along the borders since the country’s independence from Britain in 1948.The Feb. 1 coup has drawn the fighting deeper into the country and pitted the military against ethnic Burmans as well, as peaceful protests against the junta give way to sporadic firefights with police and soldiers, assassinations of suspected junta collaborators and bombings in the face of the military’s bloody crackdown.On the brinkThe Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Myanmar advocacy group based in Mae Sot, Thailand, claims the junta has killed more than 850 civilians in its bid to put down the resistance, although the junta disputes the figure.Reacting to the bloodshed, United Nations officials have been warning since early April that Myanmar might tip into full-blown civil war.Those fears are echoed by Myanmar’s so-called National Unity Government, a shadow administration pulling together ousted lawmakers, ethnic minorities and protest leaders to challenge the new junta.“Every village in the country, every town in the country, every city in the country, every tribe … [is] on the edge of defending themselves, because no one as human being are just [going] to wait and be killed without any defense,” NUG spokesperson Dr. Sasa, who goes by one name, told VOA recently.“Why do we say civil war? It’s not just against one group and one group. It will be one group [the junta] against … hundreds of groups, or even thousands of groups,” he said.The new armed bands sprouting up across the country go by many names, usually a “defense force” or “civil army” affixed to their city, state, or region. No one knows exactly how many there are.The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S. research organization that tracks conflict-related violence, counted nearly 70 such groups as of late May, about 20 of them active. A local think tank, The Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security, says some 120 civil defense groups have declared themselves since the coup but it cannot tell how many of them are real.A rising tideWhat is clear is that the level of violence across Myanmar is rising along with their numbers.ACLED has counted 270 attacks on civilians in the second quarter of the year to date, up 72% from the quarter before. It has also counted 578 explosions and 533 battles so far this quarter, up more than 640% and 250%, respectively.The Myanmar Institute’s executive director, Min Zaw Oo, said he and his team have counted attacks targeting the military regime and suspected collaborators in 66 towns and cities in the past two weeks alone. The vast majority have used homemade bombs, and include a sharp rise in assassinations, mostly targeting local ward administrators accused of feeding information to the junta.Min Zaw Oo said the administrators are members of the local communities and the main points of contact most citizens have with the state.“The opposition forces see them as the pillar of the regime’s governance, so they’re targeting them,” he said.A spokesperson for the junta could not be reached for comment.In Chin State, on Myanmar’s western border with India, denizens of the capital city of Hakha have formed the Chinland Defense Force, pooling their single-round “tumi” rifles once used for hunting game, and some basic explosives know-how employed for fishing or breaking rock in more peaceful days.A member of the group said seeing their friends and neighbors shot, arrested and tortured by the junta left them no choice.‘One way left’“We cannot accept [this] kind of terrorism,” the young man said, requesting anonymity for his safety. “We were thinking [of] various ways to protest and also express our voice, but there is only one way left, which is [why] we are right now holding weapons.”He claimed the group has killed more than 30 police and soldiers in and around Hakha since early May and that the group has lost five of its own to the junta’s forces. He feared worse to come.“It’s highly likely that we might experience the … very intense civil war, because the feeling and the fear of … people have exploded in terms of hating the military activities against the innocent civilians,” he said.The young man said he and the others have steeled themselves for the fight.“I am afraid that we might lose our loved people from day by day. However, if it is necessary, I think their bravery will be rewarded,” he said. “I’m worried, but I think sometimes it is necessary and we have to sacrifice.”On May 5, the NUG announced the launch of a People’s Defense Force to resist the junta and help persuade the generals to cede power. The aim is to pull together the myriad new groups under one umbrella as a forerunner to a planned Federal Union Army that will one day incorporate the country’s ethnic forces as well.At arm’s lengthSasa said the NUG was communicating and coordinating with the new armed groups “as much as possible” but would not elaborate on who or what the PDF actually consists of. He conceded it was impossible to connect with all the groups amid the turmoil and that for the time being they would have to run on their own resources.Min Zaw Oo sees little sign of much coordination either between the new armed groups and the NUG or among the groups themselves.“Some of them are linked to the NUG, some are not necessarily, but that could change in the future,” he said. “What we are observing right now is still very loosely affiliated and loosely coordinated.”He said the armed resistance away from the borderland strongholds of the ethnic armies would struggle to survive for long without some centralized chain of command. With little training and only the most modest munitions, he said they were also unlikely to tip Myanmar into a wider civil war, unless another country chose to arm them.Min Zaw Oo said Myanmar’s immediate neighbors India, China and Thailand would not do so, prizing stability in the country — or the closest thing to it — above all else.Some of Myanmar’s ethnic armies have made common cause with the NUG in its aim to oust the junta and even opened their jungle redoubts to protesters from the cities for a crash course in guerrilla warfare. However, Min Zaw Oo said they have been reluctant to arm them, either because they can’t spare the weapons or fear incurring the military’s full wrath and firepower if they do.Without a substantial and steady supply of artillery and modern weapons to the new armed groups, he said, “the low-intensity violence and clashes may continue to some extent, but we may not see the larger outbreak of … civil war.”
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The top of the world got a sunrise special Thursday — a “ring of fire” solar eclipse.  This so-called annular eclipse began at the Canadian province of Ontario, then swept across Greenland, the North Pole and finally Siberia, as the moon passed directly in front of the sun.An annular eclipse occurs when a new moon is around its farthest point from us and appearing smaller, and so it doesn’t completely blot out the sun when it’s dead center.  The upper portions of North America, Europe and Asia enjoyed a partial eclipse, at least where the skies were clear. At those locations, the moon appeared to take a bite out of the sun. The moon is seen blotting out 81 percent of the sun during a solar eclipse in Washington, D.C., Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. (Photo by Diaa Bekheet)It was the first eclipse of the sun visible from North America since August 2017, when a dramatic total solar eclipse crisscrossed the U.S. The next one is coming up in 2024.A total lunar eclipse graced the skies two weeks ago.
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