genocide

“Pravac Potocari” or “Direction Potocari” were the words used by former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic as he entered Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.

Mladic was referring to the nearby village of Potocari, which hosted a United Nations peacekeeping base and was the initial gathering point for Bosniak refugees during the war in Bosnia. Under Mladic’s command, Bosnian Serb forces committed a genocide against thousands of Bosniak men and boys in the days that followed.

“Pravac Potocari” was also the slogan the fans of the Serbian football team Red Star chose on Sunday to honour the so-called “butcher of Bosnia”, who died in The Hague, the Netherlands, on August 27, while ⁠serving a life sentence for ‌genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. During a match against city rivals Partizan in the Serbian capital, the supporters also unveiled a giant image of Mladic and observed a minute of silence in his memory.

The tribute came days after European football governing body UEFA fined Red Star a total of 98,250 euros, or $114,100, over a banner -“General, eternal glory and thanks” – dedicated to Mladic that was unveiled by the club’s ultras during a Europa League playoff away leg in Plzen, in the Czech Republic.

The penalty included a ban on Red Star supporters travelling to the club’s next two European away fixtures, in Lugano, Switzerland on October 15 and Ghent, Belgium on November 26.

It was not the first time Red Star supporters had expressed support for Mladic during a European match. Nine years earlier, fans displayed similar messages during a Europa League tie against Belarusian club BATE Borisov.

‘Most shameful event this stadium has seen’

For Slobodan Georgiev, a news director at TV Nova S in Serbia, the minute of silence at Belgrade’s Marakana stadium marked a qualitative shift rather than a repeat performance.

“Glorifying a convicted war criminal is nothing new, but officially paying tribute to him with a minute of silence is new – and it’s the most shameful event this stadium has witnessed,” Georgiev said. “Displaying the shameful slogan ‘Pravac Potocari’ cannot be justified, though in the coming days we’ll surely see attempts to do so.”

He placed the display in a much longer lineage. “Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, the terraces have served as a recruitment centre for paramilitary formations, and in various forms that haven’t changed to this day,” he said. “The worst messages have always travelled through the terraces – everything the authorities didn’t dare say themselves, they most often said through the stands, as they did … at the Red Star–Partizan match.”

But what made Sunday’s so-called “eternal derby” notable was not only the Red Star display.

Partizan’s own hardcore supporters, the Grobari, had raised their own banner in tribute to Mladic – reading “General, thank you” – just a week earlier, on August 31, during a Serbian Super Liga match against OFK Beograd, with Mladic’s flag flying over the north stand for the full 90 minutes.

For Georgiev, the fan groups are not an autonomous phenomenon, but an instrument. “The state, through its secret services and through criminal groups, has always managed these groups and used them for the worst tasks: Mobilisation in war, crime in peacetime, and delivering the ugliest political messages,” he said. “A stand that boasts it was founded by Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, and that sings in praise of Ratko Mladic without facing any legal consequence for it, speaks for itself.”

Georgiev was referring to Arkan, the Serbian paramilitary leader whose unit committed atrocities during the Yugoslav wars and who, before his assassination in Belgrade in 2000, was closely associated with Red Star’s hardcore fan base, the Delije – a group he is widely reported to have helped organise.

‘Clearest indication issue deeply ingrained’

Sasa Djordevic, a senior analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), sees the same continuity Georgiev described, tracing it back further still. “The connection between football hooliganism, nationalism and politics in Serbia dates to the late 1980s and became particularly evident during and after the breakup of former Yugoslavia,” he said. “Certain elements of the hooligan scene have since been exploited as a political ‘rent-a-mob,’ and some group leaders have reaped benefits from political protection or business opportunities.”

What worries him most now is not the display itself, but how unremarkable it risks becoming. “Incidents like those that occurred at Marakana last night risk being perceived as routine rather than serious manifestations of hate speech,” he said. “Public debate has nearly vanished, and society seems increasingly desensitised to violence and hate speech in stadiums. When such behaviour starts to feel normal, it may be the clearest indication that the issue has become deeply ingrained.”

Ivana Jeremic, an editor at the Balkan Insight publication, pointed to why sports venues serve that function so well. “Stadiums have long ceased to be merely sporting arenas – they are fertile ground for sending messages that can’t be spoken publicly, or that come wrapped in a softer form,” she said. “Matches involving Partizan, Red Star, and the national team stand out in particular for this.”

The political ties, she argued, are an open secret. “The political connections between the fans leading the stands and those in power are something of a public secret, with a number of documented examples of direct influence. What we hear or see on the terraces could hardly happen without some form of ‘permission’ from the authorities,” Jeremic said. “When it comes to Mladic, we’ve seen a rise in such messages in recent days. Red Star’s fans, as well as the club itself, are currently perceived as a mouthpiece of the government.”

On Thursday, a Serbian government plane carried Mladic’s body from The Hague to Belgrade for burial, where it was received with military honours.

From the terraces to paramilitary structures

Djordevic traced the mechanism behind this convergence to the same period cited by Georgiev. “During the breakup of Yugoslavia, football stadiums became spaces for nationalist mobilisation, and for some young men the step from organised football violence to paramilitary structures was short,” he said. “Hooligan groups since then cultivate loyalty, hierarchy, readiness to use violence and rapid mobilisation to achieve their extremist views that go beyond strictly football supporter beliefs.”

That structure is not unique to Serbia, but it is particularly acute there. GI-TOC’s regional research examined 122 fan groups, identifying 78 as ultras – and found 21 groups combining violent hooliganism with links to extreme politics. “The most problematic situation was in Serbia, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Djordevic said, while cautioning against overreach. “The term ‘terrorism’ should be used cautiously: The evidence points to particular groups or individuals linked to violent extremism and paramilitary structures, not supporter groups as a whole.”

UEFA’s disciplinary decision detailed the layers of the punishment: A  50,000-euro ($58,000) fine for transmitting a message unfit for a sporting event, an 8,250-euro ($9,580) fine for team misconduct, and the activation of a suspended sanction originally imposed in April 2025 over racist conduct by Red Star fans – a suspended stadium ban now converted into a one-match travelling ban, conditionally extended for a further two years.

But fines on paper, Djordevic said, rarely reach the people who are actually liable. “The problem is that fines imposed on clubs do not necessarily affect those responsible for the incidents,” he said. “If hooligans remain untouched, financial penalties can become simply another cost of doing business rather than a tool for changing behaviour. That does not mean clubs do not care. They respond when sanctions are certain, substantial, and consistently enforced, as seen more clearly in basketball games than in football.”

The gap, he argued, is not a lack of rules. “Serbia already has a solid legal framework,” he said. “The real issue is enforcement. Sanctions need to be applied quickly, consistently and without exceptions, both to clubs and to individuals responsible for violence and hate speech.”

George Orwell’s dystopian foresight could easily find new expressions in the ongoing Israeli wars of genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. Much like “war is peace”, the Biden administration and the European Union have contributed to creating phrases such as “aggression is self-defence,” “murder is collateral damage”, “safe areas are death traps” and “humanitarian aid is a starvation diet.”

After enduring a full year of Israeli terror, extreme torment and military occupation, fear never conquered Gazans. Despite the complete Israeli blockade – abetted with the help of the Egyptian regime – and the stark imbalance in military power, Gaza’s collective resistance, by all means necessary, remained steadfast and resilient.

Notwithstanding the above, Benjamin Netanyahu has not succeeded in achieving any of his declared objectives. For instance, less than seven per cent of the freed Israeli captives were recovered by force. Perhaps because the Israeli prime minister’s undeclared Zionist objectives, such as land grabs in the West Bank under the shadow of the Gaza genocide, took precedence over pursuing a proven venue for the release of Israeli prisoners.

Netanyahu’s war success can be only measured by Israel’s scale of vengeance, as the toll of the murdered and injured has reached 150,000. Gaza has been turned into a living hell. A war that pervasively and systematically diminished Gaza’s economic capacity, following an 18-year blockade that crippled the economy and forced upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency.

Yet, Israel failed to bring any part of Gaza into submission. As a result, several Israeli generals, led by former national security adviser Israeli Maj-General Giora Eiland, contrived a new approach, the “General’s Plan”, to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza.

The General’s Plan is not exclusively a military strategy but rather an orchestrated noncombatant action, euphemistically termed to mask its true intention: genocide and ethnic cleansing through starvation. It calls first for the complete isolation of northern Gaza from the rest of the Gaza Strip. Second: compartmentalise northern Gaza into separate quarters and declare each section a war zone, forcing civilians to leave or become legitimate military targets.

The initial phase, which began in early October, blocked aid trucks from reaching the north and then segregated the Jabalia camp from its surroundings. In other words, genocide by attrition, one quarter at a time, in a slow motion.

READ: Israel is playing even more dirty to force people out of Jabalia

As part of the General’s Starvation Plan, Israel bombed the only UN distribution center in Jabalia camp on Monday, murdering ten civilians queuing to receive food aid. Since last October, around 400,000 civilians remain in northern Gaza out of the original 1.2 million. Many refuse to evacuate despite the unbearable conditions. They know from historical experience that evacuation is an Israeli alias for ethnic cleansing. Once they leave, they may never return, as happened in 1948. They also saw what happened to those who evacuated, many were killed as they “moved south”, while others were murdered in the Israeli death traps, otherwise known as designated “safe areas.”

The Biden administration has been whitewashing Israeli use of starvation as a method of warfare since 9 October, 2023 when the Israeli minister of war declared “no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” However, on Tuesday, a little over a year after the minister’s declaration, the American secretaries of state and defence sent Israeli officials a letter giving them another grace period of 30 days to allow food aid into north Gaza or risk a restriction of US military assistance to Israel.

The new warning feels like a classic case of a déjà vu. In April 2024, the Biden administration issued a similar warning to Israel ahead of a report that was being prepared by American officials examining Israel’s violation of the Leahy Law, particularly subsection 6201(a). The law stipulates that the US should not provide assistance to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

Following that warning, US government agencies and officials concluded that Israel was blocking American humanitarian aid to Gaza. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) notified the State Department of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction and impediments” of American aid to Gaza residents. In addition, the State Department’s refugee bureau issued a similar opinion stating that “facts on the ground indicate US humanitarian assistance is being restricted.”

Even after those palpable reports from the two US agencies, the Israeli Sayanim and American Secretary of State, told Congress on 10 May that Israel does not restrict “the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza.

Empowered by Washington, the General’s Starvation Plan aims to block the delivery of medical aid, food, fuel and water to the besieged quarter, currently Jabalia camp where more than 20,000 people live. This is part of what appears to be a gradual genocide, while creating the illusion of allowing aid trucks into the northern area, as the US ambassador informed the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

The entry of aid trucks does not guarantee the delivery of food to the starving population. It means that Israel retains complete control over what section is fed and who is left to starve. It also confirms that American officials continue to be Israel’s willing enablers to carry on with its General’s Starvation Plan in a systematic and phased mini-genocide.

READ: UN: 345,000 Palestinians in Gaza face ‘catastrophic’ hunger levels this winter

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Truth commission to be established after two expert reports failed to agree whether scheme constituted genocide.

Greenland is establishing a truth and reconciliation commission surrounding a decades-long forced contraceptive scheme against Indigenous girls and women, after two expert reports failed to agree whether it constituted genocide.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, at least 4,000 Greenlandic Inuits – including girls as young as 12 – received intrauterine devices (IUDs) or contraceptive injections, often without their consent or knowledge, a joint Danish-Greenlandic inquiry found last year.

That inquiry found the practice was intended to reduce birth rates and family sizes, which Danish authorities at the time viewed as a way to improve living standards and social and health conditions in Greenland, an Arctic island and semi-sovereign territory of Denmark, with a population of 57,000.

Greenland’s government tasked a four-member commission in 2024 with investigating the campaign, which led some victims to suffer serious infections, scarring of the fallopian tubes or removal of the uterus. Some were later unable to have children.

But the experts could not reach a unanimous conclusion, Greenland’s Justice Minister Marianne Paviasen told reporters on Friday, with one report stating there was no genocide and the other saying the extent of the violations could not be established.

“We cannot say, on behalf of the government, whether there was genocide. This is something we can continue to debate,” Paviasen said.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the reconciliation commission would “not be about assigning blame, but about uncovering the truth with a view to genuine reconciliation”.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Copenhagen would “handle the political process together with the government of Greenland”.

The Greenlandic Siumut Party, however, urged the genocide question to be settled by “a competent and independent international court”.

“Today we could have been far more Greenlanders,” the party added.

‘Treated like animals’

Victims have questioned why no Greenlandic Inuit were appointed as experts while recounting painful histories dug up by the panel.

“For me, this is not just about history or politics. It’s my body, my life, and my right to self-determination,” Henriette Berthelsen told the AFP news agency.

“And once again, I see that it is others who will investigate and define what was done to me and to other Inuit women,” she added.

Inger Platou, 70, told Reuters she had woken up from what she had been told was a minor operation only to discover an IUD had been inserted without her consent.

“It turns out we were treated like animals,” she said. “Without consent, they just wanted to stop women from giving birth or having children. It was a very inhumane act.”

Complications from the coil left her unable to become pregnant, she said.

Denmark apologised for the scheme last year, with Frederiksen describing “systematic discrimination” against Greenlanders.

On Thursday, the Danish parliament agreed that women affected by the forced contraception campaign can claim compensation of up to 300,000 Danish crowns ($46,758) each.

Ratko Mladic, a war criminal convicted over the first genocide on European soil since the second world war, has died prison in The Hague at the age of 84.

Earlier this year, Serbia requested that Mladic be allowed to receive medical treatment outside prison, saying his health condition was “serious” and that he “required serious medical treatment”.

The United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals said that Mladic was receiving adequate medical care while in detention.

Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, Mladic was one of the best-known and most notorious military commanders of the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.

International courts convicted him of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was sentenced to life in prison

The most notorious part of his criminal legacy is linked to the genocide in Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, near the border with Serbia.

Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic’s command seized Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the UN declaring the municipality a “safe area”. After the enclave fell, more than 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys were killed by Mladic’s forces in the days that followed.

Some of the civilians were captured and executed at locations in and around Srebrenica. Others were killed after attempting to flee through the forests towards territory controlled by the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The bodies of victims were later discovered in numerous mass graves, while many were identified years after the war. The remains of around 1,000 victims are still being sought. International courts established that the killings constituted genocide.

Srebrenica has remained a symbol of one of the gravest crimes committed in Europe since the second world war.

From the Yugoslav army to commander of the army of Republika Srpska

Mladic was born in the village of Bozanovici near Kalinovik, about 40km (25 miles) south of Sarajevo.

He began his military career in the Yugoslav People’s army and gradually rose through the military’s command structure.

When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in the spring of 1992, following Slovenia and Croatia, Bosnian Serbs established their own political and military structures and proclaimed Republika Srpska, which controlled territory covering roughly half of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time.

In May 1992, Mladic was appointed commander of the Republika Srpska’s army. Over the next three and a half years, he sought to seize parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina controlled by the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the capital Sarajevo, devastating areas in his path. However, his forces failed to achieve major territorial gains in several key areas.

The political and military leadership of Republika Srpska sought to separate Serb-controlled territories from Bosnia and Herzegovina and create a separate, territorially contiguous Serb state within the country. Republika Srpska would formally become one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two entities under the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement.

Mladic’s forces were involved in a large number of atrocities across Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In addition to the Srebrenica genocide, international courts found Mladic responsible for a campaign of terror against Sarajevo’s civilian population, the hostage-taking of UN peacekeepers and other crimes.

The Siege of Sarajevo

Sarajevo was surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces for almost 44 months. From positions on the surrounding hills, they shelled the city and used snipers against its residents.

More than 11,500 people from all ethnic groups were killed, while many others were wounded or displaced.

The Sarajevo Siege, which Mladic directed, became one of the defining episodes of the Bosnian war and one of the longest sieges of a capital city in modern history.

After the war ended in 1995, Mladic evaded arrest and spent almost 16 years in hiding. He became one of Europe’s most wanted fugitives accused of war crimes.

He was arrested in Serbia in May 2011 in the village of Lazarevo, near Zrenjanin, at the home of a relative. Several days later, he was transferred to The Hague, where his trial began before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

His arrest was one of the key conditions set by the international community for Serbia’s progress towards closer relations with the European Union. Belgrade faced political and financial pressure from Western countries to cooperate with the tribunal and transfer Mladic to The Hague.

In 2017, the tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment. The courts established his individual criminal responsibility for a number of crimes.

Mladic in Serbia

Although his convictions were final, Mladic continues to have support among sections of the Serbian public and political circles in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In Banja Luka, Belgrade and other areas with predominantly Serb populations, murals depicting him can still be seen. Some members of the public continue to portray him as a military hero rather than a convicted war criminal.

That attitude towards Mladic is part of a broader problem of confronting the legacy of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While international courts have established facts concerning the genocide and other crimes, political and social divisions over the country’s wartime past remain deeply entrenched.

Denial of the Srebrenica genocide and the glorification of convicted war criminals remain serious problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to data from the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, 149 cases of public denial of the Srebrenica genocide were recorded during the first quarter of 2026, including statements by public figures. That represents an increase compared with 2025, when 99 such cases were recorded.

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in May 2024 establishing July 11 as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.

The resolution was intended to preserve the memory of the victims and promote a culture of remembrance, while also reaffirming the importance of confronting genocide denial and preventing the recurrence of such crimes.

August 25 is an incredibly painful day for the Rohingya. It marks the anniversary of the 2017 genocidal campaign by the Myanmar military. Babies and young children were thrown into fires. Women and young girls were systematically gang-raped and mutilated. Entire families were slaughtered as they fled. Others were trapped inside their homes and burned alive. More than 700,000 of our people were forced to flee to Bangladesh.

The Rohingya, who are an ethnic Muslim-majority group who speak their own language from the Indo-Aryan family, have long faced discrimination and persecution in Myanmar.

Today, about 1.2 million Rohingya remain trapped in camps in Bangladesh, while a new wave of persecution is forcing more Rohingya from their homes in Rakhine state. Others are risking their lives at sea in a desperate search for safety.

In this desperate situation, there is a ray of hope raised by international justice proceedings in Argentina and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Still, the international community is falling short in fulfilling its commitments to ensure accountability and protect the Rohingya.

The genocide never stopped

Over the past two years, the balance of power in Rakhine has dramatically changed. The Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, now controls most of the state, including the main Rohingya areas in the north. But the brutality and persecution Rohingya face have not ended.

As the AA has consolidated its control, evidence has mounted of mass killings and targeted attacks on civilians, documenting what Rohingya communities have been warning of.

Rohingya also face forced recruitment, forced labour, detention and severe restrictions on movement. Sexual violence, a hallmark of the Rohingya genocide, is continuing under AA authority.

Rohingya in Rakhine report that the violence and oppression they now face from the AA is just as brutal as the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing in 2017. Taken together, we see these abuses as part of a deliberate strategy to drive Rohingya from their homes and continue their erasure from Myanmar.

The same anti-Rohingya racism that drove decades of persecution by the Myanmar military is also at the heart of the AA’s treatment of the Rohingya. The perpetrators may have changed, but the dehumanisation and denial of our identity and rights continue.

The AA is completing what the Myanmar military started. Rohingya are being driven from their villages and prevented from returning, while their land is confiscated and new Rakhine settlements are built on it, sometimes by Rohingya coerced into forced labour. The possibility of return is being destroyed in real time.

Nowhere safe to go

More than 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late 2023, just as international humanitarian funding for refugees is being slashed. Learning centres in Cox’s Bazar have closed and essential services are being cut. Children who fled genocide are growing up without education or hope for their future. Others were born in the camps and have never known a life outside them. The international community is allowing an entire generation of Rohingya children to be abandoned.

Rohingya are being forced to choose between continuing persecution in their homeland and hunger, insecurity and an increasingly desperate existence in camps.

For those forced to flee, there is often no safe route to protection. The very people forcing Rohingya to flee are often involved in and profiting from their trafficking as they try to escape. In July, two boats carrying more than 500 Rohingya, including children and young people, sank after leaving Rakhine. No one would put their children on such a dangerous journey unless staying was even more dangerous.

Meanwhile, there is growing anti-Rohingya sentiment in countries that host them as refugees. Governments talk about Rohingya returning home while more are being forced out and the land they would return to is being taken. We want to go home. But we want to go home with our rights: citizenship, equal rights and the right to return to our own land.

Nine years of impunity

For nine years, the Myanmar military leaders responsible for genocide against Rohingya have faced no real consequences. The architects of the genocide remain free, while the same military has gone on to commit atrocities against communities across Myanmar. Accountability is not only about the past. It is about stopping the violence happening now and preventing further atrocities.

The world cannot repeat the same failure with the Arakan Army. We have seen this pattern before and know where it leads. The longer the Myanmar military and AA are allowed to act with impunity, the closer we come to the complete erasure of the Rohingya from Rakhine.

Rohingya survivors and organisations have spent years documenting crimes, giving evidence and fighting for accountability. We had to pursue justice on the other side of the world because governments and international institutions failed to deliver it.

That fight is finally producing results. My organisation, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), brought a universal jurisdiction case in Argentina which has resulted in international arrest warrants for 22 Myanmar military officials and three civilians, including the military government’s leaders Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and General Soe Win, for genocide and crimes against humanity. We are also pursuing reparations for Rohingya survivors.

A judgement is also expected in the coming months in the genocide case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar at the ICJ.

Rohingya are getting closer to justice in international courts but at the same time are being pushed further from our homeland. Legal progress means little if Rohingya continue to be killed, forced out and stripped of the land to which they hope one day to return.

We have fought for years to get this far. Now governments must act. Every possible pressure point must be applied.

States must enforce the Argentinian arrest warrants whenever those wanted enter their jurisdictions, and Interpol must act on Argentina’s request for red notices. Governments must impose coordinated targeted sanctions on the AA and the Myanmar military, alongside restrictions on arms, aviation fuel and revenue streams that enable further atrocities. Maximum international pressure must be applied on the AA to end its persecution of Rohingya and ensure our protection and equal rights.

The United Nations Security Council must act. The United Kingdom, as penholder on Myanmar, must push for an urgent council meeting on the atrocities taking place in Rakhine and the continued failure to protect the Rohingya.

Governments must restore and increase humanitarian funding for Rohingya in Bangladesh and Rakhine, facilitate cross-border aid and pressure the Myanmar military and the AA to end restrictions on humanitarian access.

Governments must pursue every available route to justice and accountability for crimes by the Myanmar military and the AA. They must also be ready to respond to the forthcoming ICJ judgement.

Justice and accountability delivered years too late will mean nothing if there are no Rohingya left in Myanmar.

Justice is not only about what happens in courtrooms. For Rohingya, it means being able to return to our villages and our land. It means restoring the citizenship and rights that have been taken from us. Above all, it means being able to live freely and as equals in Myanmar, without ever again facing persecution and genocide.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Attacks on Palestinian communities by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, which are often supported by Israeli forces, have gathered pace over the past month since settlers from the Havat Gilad settlement attacked Palestinian homes on the eastern edge of Tal, southwest of Nablus.

On Sunday and Monday, the Israeli military raided multiple towns, villages and refugee camps across the occupied territory, and reports of arrests, home searches and settler attacks have continued to mount.

A 15-day siege on three families comprising 15 people, including two children, in the village of Qusra, which is ongoing, drew a rare public condemnation this month from the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel and its West Bank settlements.

Israel is also pushing ahead with plans for the so-called E1 settlement expansion close to Jerusalem, which human rights organisations warn would essentially sever the West Bank in two, further hampering the freedom of movement of Palestinians on either side of it and endangering the possibility of a Palestinian state.

The West Bank attacks increasingly fit the definition of a pogrom, experts said. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese described these Israeli attacks against Palestinians as “pogroms against defenceless civilians”.

So why are experts calling settler attacks pogroms, and do they fit the formal definition of one?

What’s happening in the West Bank?

Settlers, frequently supported by the Israeli military, have been attacking Palestinian homes, businesses, and agricultural fields across the occupied West Bank. Such attacks have been commonplace for decades as settlements have expanded across the territory, but they gathered pace after October 7, 2023 when Israel launched it genocidal war on Gaza, and have become particularly violent and frequent over the past month.

Israeli settlements across the West Bank are illegal under international law.

According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, however, Israeli settlers now number roughly 780,000 across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, living among 192 settlements and 400 outposts, rising to 71 percent of Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control, and 91 percent of the Jordan Valley.

Settlers often set up outposts without formal approval around Palestinian villages from which they launch a campaign of harassment, including killing livestock, cutting supply lines and damaging property, in order to drive local residents out. Once they establish a more formal settlement, they often receive retrospective approval from the Israeli government for the settlement.

In some places more recently, illegal settlers have laid siege to individual family homes – such as in the Ras al-Ein area of Qusra – cutting off water and other supplies and damaging orchards or harming livestock.

This has set a new pattern: settlers establish a tent adjacent to individual homes; Palestinians’ homes are besieged, with essentials cut off; and Israeli soldiers arrive not to remove the settlers, but rather to remove the family – through arrest or ostensibly for their “protection”.

In Qusra, the three besieged families were forced together into one of the family houses. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have occupied one of the other homes for use as a military post and thrown furniture and belongings from its windows, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The UN humanitarian affairs office recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank between January and late July this year, averaging six a day and marking the fastest pace since the agency began systematic tracking two decades ago.

Separately, a UN-appointed commission of inquiry has found that the Israeli authorities have repeatedly failed to prevent foreseeable settler attacks and, in some cases, have directly enabled them through army protection and the provision of weapons and funding.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has found that settler attacks, demolitions and evictions forcibly displaced more Palestinians in the first four months of this year than in the whole of 2025.

OCHA reported that 107 communities, comprising 5,900 Palestinians, had been completely or partially displaced as a result of settler violence since January 2023. It also found that the Israeli military have expelled another 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank since January 2025, essentially emptying the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.

What is the definition of a pogrom?

Major US and UK dictionaries vary to some degree on the definition of a “pogrom”.

The British Collins Dictionary identifies a pogrom as “organised, official violence against a group of people for racial or religious reasons”, with a notable inclusion of official, or state-backed violence.

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary calls it “the organised killing of large numbers of people, because of their race or religion”, without mention of state-sanctioned violence.

Merriam-Webster says it is “an organised massacre of helpless people” – “specifically: such as a massacre of Jews”.

Cambridge Dictionary says it is “an act of organised cruel behaviour or killing that is done to a large group of people because of their race or religion”.

The word is understood to have been introduced via Yiddish and was at first used to describe the wave of violent, organised mob attacks on Jewish communities in the Russian Empire following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

It is important to note that unlike legal terms including “crimes against humanity” or “genocide,” “pogrom” has no established legal definition under international law.

Can attacks in the West Bank be referred to as pogroms?

Besides Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, who has described Israeli attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as “pogroms against defenceless civilians”, Israeli officials themselves have described such attacks as “pogroms”.

On February 26, 2023, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked Huwara and surrounding Palestinian communities after two Israeli settlers were killed. A Palestinian was killed, hundreds were injured, and homes, businesses and cars were burned.

The Israeli military’s then-commander in the occupied West Bank, Yehuda Fuchs, called the settlers’ attack a “pogrom”, and it was also recorded as such by the US State Department.

Israeli-Palestinian human rights group B’Tselem has also previously described Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank as “pogroms”, especially after the February 2023 attacks. Later, it followed up with a report titled, “The pogroms are working – the transfer is already happening”, which argued that settler attacks were contributing to the displacement of Palestinian communities.

“Settler violence is not a new phenomenon. But over the past three years, it has become more violent, more systematic and, most importantly, part of a state mechanism intended to ethnically cleanse large parts of the West Bank,” said Yair Dvir, the spokesperson for B’Tselem.

“The government funds and arms the settlers, while the Israeli military stands by and, in many cases, actively participates in the attacks,” he told Al Jazeera. “So far, these militias have expelled 64 Palestinian communities and taken control of around one million dunams of land.”

Dvir also told Al Jazeera that the Israeli settlers are “now carrying out organised attacks on established Palestinian villages and towns in order to drive out their residents”.

“These are armed militias operating as an unofficial arm of the state, with a shared goal: to ethnically cleanse as much of the West Bank as possible,” he added.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, which is named after Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who is credited with coining the term genocide after the Holocaust, referred to settler attacks on Al-Mughayyir, a Palestinian village in Ramallah, as “pogroms”, reporting that hundreds of armed settlers attacked residents and burned buildings and cars while soldiers stood by earlier this year. In 2025, the Israeli military uprooted thousands of Palestinian olive trees at Al-Mughayyir.

Raheel Dhattiwala, an Indian scholar who focuses on collective violence, told Al Jazeera: “West Bank attacks fit the characteristics of a pogrom – systematic targeting of one civilian group by another with state approval. A few senior Israeli army officers have called it ‘pogroms’ in the past too, for example after attacks in Huwara.

“One might want to debate the use of the term, ‘pogrom’, but it is accurate to call settler violence systematic attacks of occupiers, with government approval, on groups of occupied people.”

The Rohingya of Myanmar have faced decades of discrimination and forced displacement, and a case alleging genocide now sits before the International Court of Justice.

This film describes how military regimes rewrote citizenship laws to exclude Rohingya from registers and used identity documents, checkpoints and travel permits to control movement. It also highlights how segregation, incitement and continuing waves of violence normalised their erasure from the community.

Focusing on the 2016-2017 “clearance operations”, the film documents village burnings, mass killings and the flight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to Bangladesh. Through survivor testimony and interviews with officials and legal experts, Myanmar: The Architecture of Statelessness examines whether these crimes meet the legal threshold for genocide, how Myanmar defends itself against the allegation and what is ultimately at stake when the court delivers its verdict.