Human

After going global for its second volume, “Star Wars: Visions” Volume 3 brings the anthology series back to its roots with a new slate of shorts all created by Japanese anime studios.

Each season of the Disney+ series, which launched in 2021, has infused fresh creative energy into the galaxy far, far away by giving international animation houses the freedom to explore ideas about the Force, the factions of the Galactic War and brand new planets and cultures outside of the constraints of the long-running franchise’s canon.

And while Volume 3, which premiered last week, revisits some characters that were introduced in Volume 1, it also shows how anime is a medium with range. From the gritty installment that explores the complexity of the dark sides of the Force through a battle between former Sith and Jedi (“The Duel: Payback”) to a more heartwarming story about a pair of resourceful orphans who decide to become family (“Yuko’s Treasure”), there are different types of anime for everyone.

Anée-san in “The Duel: Payback,” one of the shorts in “Star Wars: Visions” Volume 3.

(Lucasfilm Ltd.)

With movies like “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle” and “Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc” making waves at the box office, anime’s growing popularity is undeniable and its availability on major streamers has also made anime series and movies more accessible than ever. So for those whose curiosity about the medium has been piqued by “Star Wars: Visions,” here are some titles to check out based on the themes and stories of the nine shorts that comprise Volume 3.

Stunning fights (with some moral ambiguity)

Sagiri in an episode of “Hell’s Paradise.”

(©Yuji Kaku/Shueisha, Twin Engine, Mappa / Crunchyroll)

Let’s be honest: Lightsaber duels are awesome. So it’s no surprise that a number of shorts in “Star Wars: Visions” Volume 3 leaned into stories involving Jedi and/or the Sith, including “The Duel: Payback,” “The Lost Ones” and “The Bird of Paradise.”

For those who are looking for anime featuring stylish and stunning sword-fighting scenes, the ever popular “Demon Slayer” (Netflix, Disney+/Hulu, Crunchyroll), featuring a secret organization fighting to protect humans from demons, is an obvious choice. Another show featuring stylish combat between skilled warriors and supernatural monsters is “Hell’s Paradise” (Netflix, Disney+/Hulu, Crunchyroll). The series follows a ninja who is recruited by an executioner to join a party of death row inmates on a quest to find the elixir of life on a mythical island populated with mysterious deadly threats. The successful convict will be pardoned for all of their past crimes. The premise may remind some of the supervillain team-up “The Suicide Squad,” but the fighting scenes — and the island’s inhabitants — stand alone.

Master and apprentice dynamics

Frieren, left, and Fern from “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.”

(Crunchyroll)

Speaking of Jedi, “The Lost Ones” and “The Bird of Paradise” also touch on the relationship between a Jedi master and their padawan apprentice. If a story involving a lineage of student-teacher dynamics that’s about friendship, human connection, memory, mortality and legacy sounds intriguing, consider checking out “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End” (Netflix, Disney+/Hulu, Crunchyroll). The fantasy series follows an elven mage, her young human apprentice and others they pick up along their years-long journey to visit the spirits of old friends. The show is part travelogue, part adventure quest with monsters, magic battles and dungeon exploration.

Lovable scoundrels

Kazuki, left, Miri and Rei in an episode of “Buddy Daddies.”

(©KRM’s Home / Buddy Daddies Committee / Crunchyroll)

The world of “Star Wars” is full of scoundrels that fans can’t help but love for their swagger and independent moral code, and “Visions” installments “The Smuggler” and “The Bounty Hunters” add to that legacy.

Well-known classics like “Cowboy Bebop” (Crunchyroll) and “Lupin the Third” (Tubi, Crunchyroll) and the long-running “One Piece” (Netflix, Disney+/Hulu, Crunchyroll) are good starting points for those first dipping their toes into anime and are interested in the adventures of a ragtag group of bounty hunters, thieves and/or pirates. For those looking for something new, consider “Buddy Daddies” (Crunchyroll), which follows a pair of assassin roommates who form a makeshift family after taking in a 4-year-old they encounter while out on a job. Think of it like “The Mandalorian,” if Mando had a recluse gamer co-parent and Grogu was a picky eater.

Political space wars and mech suits

Suletta Mercury in an episode of “Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.”

(©Sotsu, Sunrise, MBS / Crunchyroll)

Some film and TV shows set in the galaxy far, far away are more political than others, but aspects of the conflict involving the Galactic Empire, Rebel forces and stray Jedi are touched on in a few of the shorts in “Visions” Volume 3 like “The Lost Ones,” “The Smuggler,” “Black” and “The Song of Four Wings,” with the latter featuring a young protagonist that dons a snazzy flying mech suit.

The mecha franchise “Gundam” is best known for its giant robots, but it’s a sprawling space opera that touches on political themes including the horrors of corruption, inequity and war. A recent standout is newcomer-friendly “Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury” (Crunchyroll). The show follows a shy new transfer student at a corporate military school where recruits train and settle disputes in giant mech suit combat. The series uses school drama and a budding teen romance as a backdrop to touch on themes such as class strife and prejudice, corporate greed and personal vengeance.

Emotionally resonant robots

Atom in an episode of “Pluto.”

(Netflix)

From the Skywalkers’ fussy protocol droid C-3PO to Hera Syndulla’s cranky astromech Chopper, lovable androids are a “Star Wars” signature. “Visions” Volume 3 installments “The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope” and “Yuko’s Treasure” each introduce loyal droids that tug viewers’ heartstrings.

The title androids in “Astro Boy” (also known as Atom) and “Doraemon” are kid-friendly household names in Japan akin to Mickey Mouse and Snoopy, but a more mature option is “Pluto” (Netflix). The gritty, sci-fi murder mystery series is based on a reimagining of a story arc from the “Astro Boy” manga, and is set in a world where humans live alongside robots — though the dynamic is a bit different than in “Star Wars.” The story follows a robot detective who is investigating a string of robot and human killings, and, like many sci-fi stories about androids and artificial intelligence, touches on themes like what makes humans human.

A scene from “Yuko’s Treasure,” one of the shorts in “Star Wars: Visions” Volume 3.

(Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Rambunctious kids

Plenty of “Star Wars” media is made with younger audiences in mind, but not many are about the adventures of children in the galaxy far, far away. “Vision” Volume 3’s “Yuko’s Treasure” puts a couple of orphan kids in the forefront — along with an adorable bear-like droid.

There’s no shortage of anime series about the (mis)adventures of rambunctious kids and one of the more heartwarming involves a “fake” family. “Spy x Family” (Disney+/Hulu, Crunchyroll) follows a secret agent working to maintain the fragile peace between neighboring nations and the faux happy family he constructed for his latest undercover mission. Unbeknownst to him, his adopted daughter is secretly a telepath and his fake wife is an assassin. As one might expect, a telepathic first grader with a wild imagination who lives with a spy and an assassin can get caught up in plenty of shenanigans. Bonus: The family also adopts a cute massive dog.

Kotaro in an episode of “Kotaro Lives Alone.”

(Netflix)

On the opposite end of the spectrum is “Kotaro Lives Alone” (Netflix), a more grounded show with just as outlandish a premise. The series follows a 4-year-old who moves into a rundown apartment complex alone — for reasons that are eventually revealed as his neighbors get to know him. The boy is unusually self-reliant and mature but also childish and understandably vulnerable. As viewers might assume, there are not many happy circumstances that could possibly lead to a 4-year-old child living on his own, but there’s more warmth than tragedy.

Musical, visual spectacle

One of the standouts in “Star Wars: Visions” Volume 3 is “Black,” a jazz-fueled, mind-bending fever dream of a Stormtrooper during a battle. The bold, music-driven 13-minute short is a visual spectacle that challenges viewers and there’s not much else out there that compares. Though it has a more structured narrative, the anime film “Inu-Oh” (Netflix) is a psychedelic rock opera that might scratch the same itch. Set in 14th century Japan, the film follows two young artists who forge a friendship because they are both outcasts — the musician is blind, and the dancer was born with monstrous deformities — and their dazzling performances drive the story.

A Tunisian court has sentenced Ahmed Souab, a lawyer and fierce critic of President Kais Saied, to five years in prison, his lawyer said, in a case that rights groups say marks a deepening crackdown on dissent in the North African country.

Defence lawyer Yosr Hamid said on Friday that her client had received an additional three-year sentence of “administrative supervision” after he was arrested in April following criticism of the legal process in a trial of prominent figures, including opposition leaders.

Souab’s trial on “anti-terror” charges lasted just seven minutes, according to Hamid, who voiced fears it sets a troubling legal precedent.

Hundreds of opposition figures, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists and humanitarian workers in Tunisia are being prosecuted for “conspiracy” or in connection with a “fake news” decree by authorities.

That legislation, Decree Law 54, has been criticised by rights activists, who are concerned over its broad interpretation by some courts.

Souab, 68, was not allowed to appear in court on Friday, declining to testify via videolink, according to Hamid. His legal team refused to enter a plea under the conditions.

Souab faces around a dozen charges related to the presidential decree on false information.

“The hearing lasted only seven minutes” before the judge retired to deliberate, Hamid told the AFP news agency on Friday.

He said there was a “lack of fundamental grounds for a fair trial” and that the decision to sentence after a one-day trial set “a precedent”.

Mongi Souab, the defendant’s brother, said authorities “prevented family members from entering” the court, criticising the brevity of the trial.

‘A dangerous escalation’

Souab was arrested in April after criticising the trial process for about 40 prominent figures, including opposition leaders, in a case related to “conspiracy against state security”.

Among those targeted in that case are figures from what was once the biggest party, Ennahdha, such as the leader and former Speaker of Parliament Rached Ghannouchi, former Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, former Minister of Justice Noureddine Bhiri, and Said Ferjani, a member of the party’s political executive.

Souab was one of the principal defence lawyers.

After a trial involving just three hearings, without closing arguments or defence pleas, Souab accused authorities of putting “a knife to the throat of the judge who was to deliver the verdict”.

An anti-terrorism court interpreted the comment as a threat to the judges, and he was detained over it, but Souab’s lawyers said it was a reference to the huge political pressure on judges.

Heavy prison sentences of up to 74 years were handed down to those accused in the “conspiracy” mega-trial. The appeal related to that trial is scheduled to take place on November 17.

Silencing dissenting voices

Several dozen people demonstrated outside the court on Friday, brandishing photos of Souab and chanting that the country was “under repression and tyranny”.

Several Tunisian and foreign NGOs have decried a rollback of rights and freedoms since Saied seized full powers in 2021 in what critics have called a coup.

Separately on Friday, Tunisian authorities ordered the suspension of the Nawaat journalists’ group, which runs one of the country’s leading independent investigative media outlets, as part of a widening crackdown.

The one-month suspension follows similar actions against prominent civil society groups such as the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights and the Association of Democratic Women, both known for defending civil liberties.

Authorities cited financial audits linked to foreign funding as justification, but rights advocates said the real aim was to silence dissenting voices.

The National Union of Tunisian Journalists condemned the suspension as “a dangerous escalation in efforts to muzzle independent journalism under an administrative guise”.

Founded in 2004, Nawaat carried out investigations on corruption and human rights abuses before and after the revolution. In a statement, it said it would not be “intimidated by the current political climate or campaigns of defamation”.

Ben Rhodes, a former United States deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, famously called Washington’s foreign policy establishment “the Blob” to describe its entrenched ecosystem of think tanks, former officials, journalists and funders that perpetuate a narrow vision of power, global order and legitimate actors. This apparatus not only sustains conservative inertia but also defines the limits of what is considered possible in policy. In Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year conflict, these self-imposed boundaries are proving fatal.

A particularly insidious practice within the Blob is the invocation of moral and rhetorical equivalence, portraying the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) as comparable adversaries. This ostensibly balanced US stance, evident in establishment analyses and diplomatic statements, represents not an impartial default but a deliberate political construct. By equating a criminalised, externally backed militia with a national army tasked with state duties, it sanitises RSF atrocities, recasting them as mere wartime exigencies rather than orchestrated campaigns of ethnic cleansing, urban sieges and terror.

Reports from Human Rights Watch on ethnic cleansing in West Darfur, civilian killings, rape and unlawful detentions in Gezira and Khartoum and United Nations fact-finding missions confirm the RSF’s deliberate targeting of civilians. Furthermore, a report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) monitor from late 2024 attributed roughly 77 percent of violent incidents against civilians to the RSF, underscoring this asymmetry, yet the Blob’s discourse frequently obscures it.

This notion has dominated US and international discourse on Sudan’s war since its outbreak when the then-US ambassador to Khartoum, John Godfrey, tweeted in the first month of the war a condemnation of RSF sexual violence but vaguely attributed it to unspecified “armed actors”. By refraining from explicitly identifying the perpetrators despite extensive documentation of the RSF’s responsibility for systematic rapes, gang rapes and sexual slavery, his wording essentially dispersed accountability across the warring parties and contributed to a climate of institutional impunity. RSF militiamen carry out their atrocities with confidence, knowing that responsibility will be blurred and its burden scattered across the parties.

What drives this equivalence? The Blob’s institutions often prioritise access over veracity. Framing the conflict symmetrically safeguards diplomatic ties with regional allies, particularly the RSF’s patrons in the United Arab Emirates while projecting an aura of neutrality. However, neutrality amid asymmetric criminality is not objectivity; it is tacit complicity. Elevating an internationally enabled militia to parity with a sovereign military confers undue legitimacy on the RSF, whose methods – including the besieging and starving of cities such as el-Fasher, the systematic use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war, the deployment of drones against mosques and markets, and acts of genocide – are demonstrably systematic, as corroborated by investigative journalism and human rights documentation. To subsume these under “actions by both parties” distorts empirical reality and erodes mechanisms for accountability.

Compounding this is the Blob’s uncritical assimilation of RSF propaganda into its interpretive frameworks. The RSF has strategically positioned itself as a vanguard against “Islamists”, a veneer that conceals its historical criminal nature, patronage networks, illicit resource extraction and foreign sponsorship.

In a similar vein, the RSF has publicly expressed sympathy and strong support for Israel, even offering to resettle displaced Palestinians from Gaza in a bid to align with US interests. This discourse serves as an overture to the Blob, leveraging shared geopolitical priorities to portray the RSF as a pragmatic partner in regional stability.

Certain establishment pundits and diplomats have echoed this narrative, casting the RSF as a viable bulwark against an “Islamist resurgence”, thereby endowing a force implicated in war crimes with strategic and ethical credibility. When the Blob internalises this “anti-Islamist” trope as analytical shorthand, it legitimises an insurgent militia’s rationalisations as geopolitical truths, marginalising the reality of the war and the Sudanese who repudiate militarised binaries and sectarian lenses.

Contrast this with the recurrent accusations of external backing for the SAF from an ideologically disparate coalition, including Egypt, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Iran. These claims, often amplified in mainstream media narratives and aligning with RSF discourse, expose profound inconsistencies: Egypt’s secular anti-Islamist state, Turkiye’s Islamist-leaning government, Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Wahhabi monarchy and Iran’s Shia theocracy embody clashing regional rivalries, evident in proxy wars from Yemen to Libya, rendering their purported unified support for the SAF implausible unless opportunistic pragmatism overrides ideology.

Moreover, the evidentiary threshold falls short of the robust, independent documentation implicating the UAE in RSF operations, relying instead on partisan assertions and circumstantial reports that appear designed to muddy asymmetries. Critically, any verified SAF assistance typically involves conventional arms transactions with Sudan’s internationally recognised government in Port Sudan, a sovereign authority, as opposed to the unchecked provisioning extended to the RSF, a nonstate actor formally designated by the US as genocidal. This fundamental distinction highlights the Blob’s contrived equivalence, conflating legitimate state-to-state engagements with the illicit empowerment of atrocity perpetrators.

Even more corrosive is the Blob’s propensity to credential “pseudo-civilian” entities aligned with the RSF and its external sponsors, particularly those bolstered by UAE influence, such as Somoud, led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who also chairs the Emirati business-promotion organisation, the Centre for Africa’s Development and Investment (CADI). These networks are often presented in Blob forums as “civilian stakeholders” or “pragmatic moderates”, sidelining authentic grassroots entities inside Sudan.

This curation of externally amenable proxies transforms mediation into theatre, channelling international validation towards RSF-aligned gains and ignoring Sudanese agency rather than supporting any real civic architects of Sudan’s democratic aspirations. Documented UAE-RSF logistical and political linkages alongside Gulf-orchestrated narrative amplification should serve as a warning against endorsing such fabricated authority.

These lapses are not merely intellectual; they yield tangible harms. Legitimising the RSF through equivalence or narrative cooption dilutes legal and political tools for redress, confining policy options to performative ceasefires and superficial stability blueprints that preserve war economies and armament flows. It defers genuine deterrence, such as targeted interdictions, robust arms embargoes and the exposure of enablers until atrocities become irreversible.

The repercussions do not end there. They deepen, fuelling the militia’s authoritarian ambitions in alliance with its civilian partners. Drawing on this contrived equivalence, they have recently declared Ta’asis, parallel governing structures in western Sudan, claiming a layer of legitimacy while, at least rhetorically, brandishing the threat of partition despite the clear international consensus against recognising such authority.

To counter the Blob’s pathologies, a paradigm shift is imperative. Analysts and policymakers must abjure false symmetry, distinguishing symmetric warfare from asymmetric atrocity campaigns. Where evidence is found of systematic rights abuses, international rhetoric and actions should reflect this imbalance through targeted sanctions and disruptions while avoiding generic “both-sides” statements.

They must also repudiate RSF narratives. The “anti-Islamist” rhetoric is partisan sloganeering, not objective analysis. US engagement should centre on civilian protection, privileging authentic civil society testimonies over manufactured proxies. The question of who governs Sudan is, first and foremost, the prerogative of the Sudanese people themselves, who in April 2019 demonstrated their sovereign agency by toppling Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime without soliciting or relying on external assistance.

Equally important is to withhold recognition from contrived civilians. Mediation roles should hinge on verifiable grassroots mandates. Entities tethered to foreign patrons or militias merit no elevation as Sudan’s representatives.

Finally, policymakers must dismantle enablers. Rhetorical and legal measures must be matched by enforcement through transparent embargo oversight, flight interdictions and sanctions on supply chains. Justice without implementation offers only solace to victims.

Should the Blob prove intransigent, alternative forces must intervene. Sudanese civic coalitions, diaspora advocates, independent media and ethical policy networks can amass evidence and exert pressure to compel a recalibration of global approaches. A diplomacy that cloaks complicity in neutrality perpetuates atrocity machinery. Only one anchored in Sudanese agency, empirical truth and unyielding accountability can forge a viable peace.

Sudanese seek no sympathy, only a recalibration among the influential: Cease equating aggressors with guardians, amplifying perpetrator propaganda and supplanting vibrant civic realities with orchestrated facades. Until Washington’s elite perceives Sudanese not as geopolitical subjects but as rights-bearing citizens demanding justice, its epistemic maze will continue to license carnage over conciliation.

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

I am standing on what looks like a cramped, dark city street. A tavern is around a corner, a police department in front of me. And I’m lost.

That’s when I hear a whisper. “Psst.” I turn, and see a puppet peeping his head out of a secret opening of a door. Over here,” he says, and I find myself leaning in to listen to this furry, oval-faced creature in the shadows. He’ll help me, he says — that is if I can clear his name. See, another puppet has been murdered, and everyone right now is a suspect.

Campaign posters for puppet candidates for mayor inside Appleseed Avenue. “Election Day” is a tale of political espionage with puppet-on-puppet violence.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

I am playing a gamed called “Election Day” at Appleseed Avenue, a relatively new escape room in a multi-story strip mall in Newhall. The puppet world is in the midst of a crisis, torn over whether humans should be allowed to wander the fictional street of Appleseed Avenue. My role is that of a detective, and throughout this game of fatal political espionage, I encounter multiple puppet characters — electricians, would-be-mayors, gangsters, dead puppets.

Drama ensues, and that’s where we humans come in, helping the puppets crack the case before we’re banned from their world once and for all. One needn’t be up on the state of puppet politics to participate — and don’t worry, the domestic affairs of Appleseed Avenue are relatively divorced from those of our own. Only a penchant for silly absurdity, and a stomach for puppet-on-puppet violence, is required.

While the look of the puppets may be inspired by, say, “Sesame Street,” with characters that are all big mouths and large eyes, the tone of “Election Day” leans a bit more adult. Recommended for ages 13 and older, “Election Day” will feature puppets in perilous conditions. And if you’re playing as a medical examiner, be prepared to get a glimpse at a mini puppet morgue.

Guests will play as detectives or medical examiners in Appleseed Avenue’s “Election Day.”

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

“Sometimes people do think, ‘Oh, this is for little kids.’ Not quite,” says Patrick Fye, who created the experience with Matt Tye. “We call it PG-13.”

“We wanted that dichotomy,” says Tye. “Really silly puppet-y characters in a gritty world.”

Fye and Tye are veterans of the local escape room scene — Fye the creator of Evil Genius Escape Rooms and Tye the developer of Arcane Escape Rooms. “Election Day,” however, while a timed experience, isn’t a pure escape room. Think of it more as a story that unfolds and needs solving. We’re not trapped. In fact, one puzzle actually utilizes the waiting room, as “Election Day” toys with the idea of traversing the human world and a puppet universe.

Patrick Fye and Matthew Tye, founders of Appleseed Avenue, along with their lookalike puppets.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Puppets weren’t necessarily the driving idea behind their joint venture in Appleseed Avenue. Creating a so-called escape room that was more narrative based was the objective. They wanted a room, for instance, where puzzles felt natural rather than forced. “Election Day” isn’t a space, say, with complex cipher codes to untangle. I was reminded of old-fashioned adventure video games, where one is prompted to look at objects, combine them or go on scavenger hunts, like the one prompted by the puppet I met in an alley.

Puppets were simply a means to an end.

“How can we make something that feels like you’re actually in the story and has more video game-y elements, as opposed to, ‘I’m in an Egyptian tomb. Here’s a padlock,’ ” says Fye. “We were trying to figure out how to mix the diegetics with the overall design. We stumbled on crimes and puppets because we thought it was fun and funny.”

One problem: Neither had created puppets or puppeteered before. Enter online classes, where Tye learned how to craft arm-rod puppets.

“We thought it was the coolest idea we had,” Tye says. When we both look at something and go, ‘We don’t know how to do all of this yet,’ we don’t let that stop us.”

Appleseed Avenue is home to an escape room featuring puppets. It doubles as the street name in which the game, “Election Day,” takes place.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

“Election Day” does unfold like a live-in video game. At times, we’re interacting with a screen, as puppets will relay us messages and quests. Often, we’ll explore the space, as the two have created an elaborate set. Teams are split. Half work as detectives, and half as medical examiners. We can communicate via an inter-room conference system, or simply run back and forth.

But listening to everything the puppets say is paramount, as clues are often hidden in dialogue. Both say they have done too many escape rooms where the story felt too divorced from the actions they were being asked to complete.

“We even say at the beginning of the game, ‘The story really matters.’ You have to pay attention to it,” Fye says. “There’s a moment I’ll never forget. We were doing a Titanic room, and we were in the engine room shoveling coal. But isn’t the ship sinking? What is happening? A lot of times a story is just set dressing.”

The initial response to “Election Day” has been positive, so much so that the two are set to debut a second game in 2026, a sci-fi room titled “Shadow Puppet.” The latter will utilize the same Appleseed Avenue set, although additional spaces will be built out. They’re also looking at some more kid-friendly options. Planned for 2027 is a game titled “Puppet Town Day,” in which little ones will receive passports that prompt them to interact with the puppet characters.

Wanted posters for puppets. Many are a suspect in Appleseed Avenue’s “Election Day.”

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

For now, however, think of Appleseed Avenue as part of greater Los Angeles escape room trend. Whether it’s Hatch Escapes with its corporate time-jumping game “The Ladder” or Ministry of Peculiarities with its spooky haunted house, creators here are emphasizing story. Appleseed Avenue is no different, introducing us to a wacky cast of puppet characters.

It also achieves a rare feat: It makes murder feel ridiculous.

Says Tye: “When there’s a guy named Alby Dunfer who’s getting it from a blowdart from a hitman, it’s like, ‘OK, this is fun.’ ”

Dutch humanitarian organisation INSO rejected the allegations and called for the release of its eight staff members.

Burkina Faso’s military government says it has arrested eight people working for a humanitarian organisation, accusing them of “spying and treason”, allegations the Dutch nonprofit “categorically” rejected.

Burkina Faso’s Security Minister Mahamadou Sana said the eight people arrested worked for the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO), a Netherlands-based group specialising in humanitarian safety.

Those detained included a French man, a French-Senegalese woman, a Czech man, a Malian and four Burkinabe nationals, Sana said, alleging the staff members had continued working for the organisation after it was banned for three months, for allegedly “collecting sensitive data without authorisation”.

The security minister claimed some of INSO’s staff had “continued to clandestinely or covertly conduct activities such as information collection and meetings in person or online” following the ban, including its country director, who had also previously been arrested when the suspension came into effect at the end of July.

Sana said the INSO staff members had “collected and passed on sensitive security information that could be detrimental to national security and the interests of Burkina Faso, to foreign powers”.

The Hague-based humanitarian organisation issued a statement on Tuesday saying it “categorically” rejected the allegations about its activities in Burkina Faso.

“[We] remain committed to doing everything in our power to secure the safe release of all our colleagues,” INSO said in the statement.

INSO also said it collects information “exclusively for the purpose of keeping humanitarians safe,” and that the information it gathers “is not confidential and is largely already known to the public.”

Burkina Faso’s military government has turned away from the West and, in particular, its former colonial ruler, France, since seizing power in a September 2022 coup.

Together with neighbouring Mali and Niger, which are also ruled by military governments, it has also withdrawn from regional and international organisations in recent months, with the three countries forming their own bloc known as the Alliance of Sahel States.

The three West African countries have also wound back defence cooperation with Western powers, most notably their former colonial ruler, France, in favour of closer ties with Russia, including Niger nationalising a uranium mine operated by French nuclear firm Orano.

Within the three countries, the military governments are fighting armed groups linked to al-Qaeda that control territory and have staged attacks on army posts.

Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups have accused the fighters, the military and partner forces of Burkina Faso and Mali of possible atrocities.

Kevin Sinfield, who was awarded a CBE for his services to the motor neurone disease community after his friend Burrow’s diagnosis inspired him to raise more than £10m to fund research and awareness, sent Moody a message of support and made a fresh vow to tackle the disease.

“I’m obviously very saddened by the news,” said Sinfield, who is the skills and kicking coach for the England national team. “I’d like to wish Lewis, and all his family and friends, the very best.

“I’ll support in any way I can. We have to keep fighting MND [motor neurone disease] together.”

Andrea Pinchen, CEO at Leicester Tigers where Moody made 223 appearances, winning seven English titles and two European crowns over 14 years, also paid tribute to Moody as a person, as well as a player.

“The figures, trophies and awards tell you what an incredible player Lewis was, but that is only half the story,” said Pinchen.

“One minute he’s parading around with the World Cup trophy and the following Friday he’d be in the ticket office where I worked, answering the phone to supporters if we were really busy and helping sell tickets.

“As an individual, his commitment to his club along with his warmth and passion shone through, which endeared him to team-mates, staff and supporters alike.

“Always looking to help others, Lewis together with his wife Annie have worked tirelessly through the Lewis Moody Foundation, supporting research into brain tumours and helping affected families.

“He absolutely threw himself in. It was very much lead by example. He would never ask somebody to do something he wouldn’t do himself. He is utterly fearless.”

Football’s Leicester City added their support, describing Moody as “a sporting great of our city”., external

Haiti’s transitional leader Laurent Saint-Cyr told the 80th UNGA Haiti faces a “modern-day Guernica,” with rampant killings, rapes, and mass hunger. He urged urgent, large-scale international action to defend democracy, protect children, and secure Haiti’s right to peace.

Prominent Egyptian-British human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been freed after spending most of the past 12 years in prison, his family said, a day after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pardoned him and five other prisoners.

“I can’t even describe what I feel,” Abd El-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, said from her house in Giza early on Tuesday as she stood next to her son, surrounded by jubilant family and friends.

“We’re happy, of course. But our greatest joy will come when there are no [political] prisoners in Egypt,” she said.

Considered to be among the most high-profile political prisoners in Egypt, Abd El-Fattah’s lengthy imprisonment and repeated hunger strikes had prompted international pleas for the Egyptian government to release him.

The former blogger had been detained before the Arab Spring uprising that toppled Egypt’s hardline leader, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011 and during the years of upheaval that followed.

But it was his criticism of government crackdowns on political dissidents after then-army chief el-Sisi gained power in Egypt in 2014 that landed him his lengthiest prison stints by far.

In 2014, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for protesting without permission. He was briefly released in 2019, but remained on parole, and was arrested again later that year and sentenced to another five-year term.

Friends, family and supporters shared photos on social media of the activist after his release, showing a smiling Abd El-Fattah embracing his mother and other relatives.

His sister, Mona Seif, celebrated her brother’s release on social media: “The world is full of nightmares, injustice, violence, and many things that break the heart.. but we can take a breath and give happiness a chance to fill our hearts.. and keep going.”

“Oh Lord, the same joy for the families of all the detainees,” she wrote in a separate post.

“Can you imagine if this happened, how much beauty and happiness would fill our world in a single moment?”

An exceptionally kind day 💛

Alaa is free pic.twitter.com/nmg4oROSTi

— Mona Seif (@Monasosh) September 22, 2025

Abd El-Fattah’s lengthy detention had become emblematic of the fraying of Egypt’s democracy.

“I strongly welcome the news that Alaa Abd El-Fattah has received a Presidential pardon,” United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said.

“I’m grateful to President Sisi for this decision. We look forward to Alaa being able to return to the UK, to be reunited with his family.”

Abd El-Fattah, who obtained UK citizenship through his mother in 2021, comes from a family of well-known activists and intellectuals who had launched several campaigns for his release.

His mother met UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this year to lobby for her son’s release.

Intensifying her campaign in September 2024, when she was expecting her son’s release due to the time he spent in pre-trial detention, Soueif staged a lengthy hunger strike in the UK, ending it only after pleas from her family as her health significantly deteriorated.

Starmer had promised he would do everything he could to secure the release of Abd El-Fattah, who has also staged multiple hunger strikes in detention, most recently in early September, to protest against his imprisonment and in solidarity with his mother.

But his most dramatic hunger strike was in 2022, as Egypt hosted the annual United Nations climate summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The strike ended when Abd El-Fattah lost consciousness and was revived with fluids.

Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights, a state-funded body, also welcomed his release, saying it signalled a growing emphasis on swift justice for Egyptian authorities.

Since it first premiered in 1926, F.W. Murnau’s “Faust” has been lauded as one of the greatest silent films ever made. And in the century that’s followed, striking a deal with the devil has been one of cinema’s most enduring tropes.

“Him,” the Jordan Peele-produced horror film reaching theaters Friday, is the latest testament to the fact that, in Hollywood at least, the devil’s offer never goes out of style.

It tells the story of an aspiring professional football player, Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), who gets invited to train at a secluded compound under famed quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). But Cade eventually realizes what is meant by the question he keeps getting asked: “What are you willing to sacrifice?”

“People are so fixated with the whole selling your soul to the devil and they really think that it’s a man in a suit who’s like, ‘Sign the dotted line,’” said Julia Fox, who plays White’s wife. “I think that selling your soul to the devil is a metaphor for selling out and doing things that you don’t want to do, compromising your morals and values for a paycheck.”

Like “Him,” Faustian stories in cinema are often billed as horror. Much like the literary and artistic retellings of the German fable, from Marlowe and Goethe to the song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” film adaptations span place, decade and genre — from the cult Keanu Reeves’ DC Comics adaptation, “Constantine,” to Brendan Fraser’s 2000 rom-com “Bedazzled,” a remake of the 1967 film of the same name that starred Raquel Welch.

The devil can promise money — as in “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” the 1941 post-Great Depression takedown of greed — or fame, a la Jack Black’s 2006 musical comedy, “Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.”

“It’s pretty much everywhere once you start looking,” said Kirsten Thompson, a professor of film studies at Seattle University. “We all want to have eternal life or youth or power or status. And the various iterations of the myth sometimes emphasize different things.”

“Him” isn’t even the first Faustian film set against the backdrop of sports. “Damn Yankees,” the 1958 adaptation of the Bob Fosse-choreographed Broadway show, tells the story of a diehard baseball fan who makes a devilish pact to help his team.

Murnau’s ‘Faust’ legacy

Although the 1926 “Faust” isn’t the oldest cinematic retelling of the legend — French filmmaker Georges Méliès made a handful of adaptations beginning in the 1890s — Murnau’s movie has the greatest legacy.

“The film has these very striking set pieces that are, visually, enormously iconographic and influential on subsequent silent cinema, including American cinema,” Thompson said.

Speaking with the Associated Press last year to promote his adaptation of “Nosferatu” (the original vampire tale was also made by Murnau, in 1922), Robert Eggers testified to the ways in which “Faust” has influenced him as a director.

“Filmmaking — it didn’t really get better than that,” he said.

Murnau’s “Faust” follows its titular protagonist, a faithful alchemist who despairs over a deadly, seemingly unstoppable plague. He eventually meets the demon Mephisto — legend often refers to him as Mephistopheles — who convinces Faust to do a trial-run pact to renounce God in exchange for the power to help the infirm village.

But Faust’s demonic deal is found out when a crowd realizes he cannot look upon a cross. Despondent, Faust plans to kill himself, but is stopped by Mephisto, who comes back with another offer: The demon will give the elderly alchemist back his youth.

Origins of the devil’s offer

It’s unclear when exactly the idea that humans could strike a deal with the demonic materialized, according to Joseph Laycock, a professor of religion who studies Satanism and demonic belief at Texas State University.

The idea that a powerful supernatural being could grant wishes or help humans exists in pre-Islamic Arabic traditions, but most Western depictions of this kind of myth borrow from Christian theology.

“Humans and demons each have something the other wants. We want this power. We want control over the natural world. The demons have it and we don’t. But the demons want our souls,” Laycock said. “The Faust legend is kind of ready to be told as soon as this Christian demonology emerges.”

One clue into the origins of a Satanic bargain lies within the “Malleus Maleficarum,” often translated as the “Hammer of Witches,” a 15th century German Catholic theological text on demonology.

In it, God has limited Satan’s power, Laycock explained. But, “there’s this loophole. And the loophole is, if a demon makes a pact with a human, the demon gets to do all the stuff it couldn’t normally do.”

This period around the Reformation was a “golden age” for possession, exorcism and witch-hunting in Europe, Laycock said, which sets the stage for the Faust legend to materialize.

In the 1800s, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe adapted the Faust story into a two-part tragic play, converting the German legend into a literary giant that would have tremendous influence on the Western world, Thompson argues.

She compares Goethe’s cinematic influence to works from Shakespeare and stories like “Sherlock Holmes,” which have also been repeatedly retold. “Canonical works of literature in different languages are adapted over and over again,” she said.

Fauria writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

US president says if reports that captives are being moved above ground to hinder Israeli assault are true, ‘all bets are off’.

United States President Donald Trump has warned Hamas against moving the Israeli captives in Gaza above ground to hinder Israel’s military campaign, renewing his call for their release.

Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday that he had read a news report indicating that Hamas would use the captives as “human shields” amid the relentless Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“I hope the Leaders of Hamas know what they’re getting into if they do such a thing,” the US president said.

“This is a human atrocity, the likes of which few people have ever seen before. Don’t let this happen or, ALL ‘BETS’ ARE OFF. RELEASE ALL HOSTAGES NOW!”

Trump has regularly posted threats against Hamas. But with most of the group’s leaders already killed, and Israel having destroyed much of Gaza in a campaign that experts and rights groups say is a genocide, it is not clear how the US president can further punish Hamas.

In recent weeks, Israel has been carrying out a systematic campaign to level what remains of Gaza City, targeting residential towers and schools, and forcing a mass evacuation of the area. The United Nations’s special envoy said on Monday that the offensive is part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Trump’s warning on Monday comes less than a week after Israel killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security official while trying to assassinate senior Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital, Doha. Those targeted were involved in negotiating a ceasefire and captives’ proposal put forward by the US president himself.

Hamas said its top officials survived the strikes, which Trump said he opposed. On Monday, Trump repeated his assertion that Israel would not be striking Qatar again.

Days before the Doha attack, Trump had issued what he called a “last warning” for Hamas.

On Monday, Trump again denied reports that he had advance knowledge of the Israeli attack. He suggested that he learned about it from the media – a claim that contradicts his previous assertion that he was notified about the strikes by the US military shortly before they were launched.

Asked how he found out about the strikes, the US president told reporters, “The same way you did.”

‘Human shields’

On Sunday, Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan, reported that Hamas was moving Israeli captives to homes and tents to pressure Israel to halt its bombardment campaign in Gaza City.

The Israeli military has long used Palestinians as human shields, both in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to numerous media reports, witness testimonies and video footage.

Last year, Al Jazeera obtained footage of Israeli soldiers sending Palestinian prisoners into tunnels and buildings in Gaza to ensure they were not rigged with explosives.

Israeli authorities regularly justify their atrocities in Gaza by claiming that Hamas uses civilians as human shields.

Over the past days, the Israeli military has been stepping up its attacks on the city and across the territory with hundreds of strikes.

On Sunday, Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz shared footage of a high-rise building in Gaza being obliterated by an Israeli strike, with the caption: “The house of cards. The skyline of Gaza is changing.”

HUMAN remains potentially containing contagious diseases are slowly being revealed on a creepy UK island.

While there are some spooky islands in the UK, this haunting isle was a former burial site and is off-limits to the public.

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Deadman’s Island is a small island in the River Medway estuary of Kent and has long been the subject of gruesome tales.

More than 200 years ago, the island was used as a burial ground for convicts who died aboard prison ships, known as hulks, anchored nearby in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Many succumbed to horrendous conditions with regular outbreaks of disease sweeping through the ships.

Hundreds were buried in unmarked wooden coffins, six feet under the mud.

Trevor Mason, who runs Deadman’s Island social media page, told the BBC: “Unfortunately in many cases sailors were sick, and in some cases they died, so while the boats were moored here those who succumbed to those contagious diseases were buried.”

“The sailors who would have been living on board those ships must have been in horrendous conditions – not being able to come off the ship to go [on] land and see their families etc, and the risk of catching a disease from their fellow sailor.”

He added that an archaeologist revealed some of the remains may still contain contagious diseases.

For many years the grim finds remained invisible to the human eye.

But now, changing sea levels and erosion are bringing the human remains to the surface.

It’s not uncommon for them to be washed out into the Thames Estuary or discovered on the Kent coastline.

In 2016 the remains of more than 200 humans were found on the island, believed to belong to men and boys who had died on board the floating jails.

The uninhabited mudbank is owned by Natural England, who lease it to two people.

Visitors are banned from the island, though camera crews are sometimes permitted.

Human bones are littered among the shells, while coffins that were once six feet under have risen to the surface, threatening to expose their contents.

As well as a graveyard of bones, the protected wetland also serves as an important breeding and nesting site for birds.

The Sun paid a visit to the hidden UK island last year where you can only visit by kayak.

It was said that local fisherman spotted human ghosts calling out to them to come and save them.

Historians have often been left open-mouthed as they continue to uncover skulls, ribs and jawbones on the island.

Previous footage shows dozens of human remains scaled in barnacles and littering the sludgy banks.

What looks like it could come straight out of a horror film, the truth behind the creepy area was revealed back in 2017.

‘Mass surveillance’ tech has enabled world’s most restrictive state to exert ‘control in all parts of life’, UN Human Rights Office says.

North Korea has further tightened its grip on its population over the past decade, executing people for activities like sharing foreign TV dramas, according to a major United Nations report.

The UN Human Rights Office said on Friday that tech-enabled state repression under the Kim dynasty, which has governed with absolute power for seven decades, had grown over a decade of “suffering, repression, and increased fear”.

“No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” concluded the agency’s report, which is based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had fled the country and reported the further erosion of freedoms.

“To block the people’s eyes and ears, they strengthened the crackdowns. It was a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint,” recounted one escapee, cited in the report.

James Heenan, head of the UN Human Rights Office for North Korea, told a Geneva briefing that the number of executions for both normal and political crimes had increased since COVID-era restrictions.

An unspecified number of people had already been executed under new laws imposing the death penalty for distributing foreign TV series, including the popular K-Dramas from South Korea, he added.

The clampdown has been aided by the expansion of “mass surveillance” systems through technological advances, which have subjected citizens to “control in all parts of life” over the past 10 years, the report said.

Heenan also reported that children were being made to work in forced labour, including so-called “shock brigades” for tough sectors such as coal mining and construction.

“They’re often children from the lower level of society, because they’re the ones who can’t bribe their way out of it, and these shock brigades are engaged in often very hazardous and dangerous work,” he said.

Last year, the UN indicated that the forced labour could, in some cases, amount to slavery, making it a crime against humanity.

The sweeping review comes more than a decade after a landmark UN report documented executions, rapes, torture, deliberate starvation, and the detention of between 80,000 and 120,000 people in prison camps.

The new report covered developments since 2014, noting the government’s adoption of new laws, policies and procedures providing a legal framework for repression.

UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement: “If the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] continues on its current trajectory, the population will be subjected to more suffering, brutal repression and fear.”

North Korea’s Geneva diplomatic mission and its London embassy have not yet commented on the report.

When the 2025 cloudburst hit Buner, a district located in northern Pakistan, villagers described how torrents of water came down upon their dwellings with such fury as never before seen. Entire settlements vanished behind walls of mud and rock. Survivors stood amidst the rubble of their houses, blaming fate, blaming climate change, and waiting for relief from the provincial government. But the mountains behind them spoke a different tale. Its slopes, stripped of forests and scarred by marble quarries, had long been preparing for this disaster.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a province in northern Pakistan where the marble industry has grown very fast. By 2023, more than 6,000 marble factories were working in that province. These factories were mostly found in the Buner, Mardan, Swabi, Malakand, and Mansehra areas and also in the industrial belt on Warsak Road up to Mohmand and Bajaur. In just one city area alone, there were 350 units that Peshawar hosted. Yet alongside this economic boom came a quieter tragedy: about 1,091 units reportedly ran without environmental clearance from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Only 133 factories held the required no-objection certificates (NOCs). The rest continued to blast mountains, dump slurry, and strip forests unchecked.

The ecological costs have been devastating. Global Forest Watch figures demonstrate that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lost an average of 4,690 hectares in tree cover per year between 2020 and 2024. Swat’s forest cover, which at one time was 30 percent in 1947, has now decreased to just about 15 percent in 2025. Deforestation led by marble quarry expansion and firewood extraction that caters to the needs of the urbanizing population results in barren slopes replacing natural watersheds. Mountain blasting destroys soil structure, leading to erosion and reducing the water absorption capacity of the land, thereby ensuring flash floods accompanied by landslides with every spell of heavy rain. The Buner flood was not a natural calamity, but rather it was the net result of years of environmental neglect by the PTI government.

Villagers, whose words seldom reach the ears of policymakers, tell of dry streams, washed-away topsoil, and lost animal corridors that happen when the forest disappears. Farmers watch their yields decline while factory owners argue the industry brings jobs and export earnings Pakistan needs. Yet the floods that now strike with greater intensity destroy far more than they ever build.

Here, the climate debate takes a dangerous turn. Pakistan is right to point out that it happens to be among the top five most climate-vulnerable countries while contributing less than one percent to global carbon emissions. But local actions—unregulated mining, illegal riverbed construction, and deforestation—weigh heavily in magnifying the impacts of a changing climate. Extreme weather may be global, yet the scale of destruction in places like Swat and Buner reflects local choices as much as global injustice.

What makes this tragedy sharper is the economic paradox at its core. The marble industry contributes almost $1.5 billion every year to the economy of Pakistan, and it is this region that supplies a major portion of exports from the country. But this same industry depletes those very ecosystems on which agriculture, tourism, and rural livelihoods depend. When floods destroy the crops, roads, and houses, the damage is more than what profits could be made out of marble extraction, hence leaving the communities in a cycle that has economic gains disappearing with ecological losses.

The provincial government’s unwillingness to act sits at the heart of the crisis, permitting unregulated factories to function as environmental grey zones. The provincial EPA remains underfunded and politically sidelined. Deforestation bans exist on paper but are rarely enforced. Mining royalties swell provincial coffers, while watershed restoration receives scant attention. More than one thousand illegal factories are operating without NOCs, and only a few face closure orders. The trade-off between short-term revenue and long-term ecological survival remains tilted towards profit.

The paradox is striking. The provincial government continues to blame the Global North for carbon emissions yet does not want to place regulations on companies that are destroying its own watersheds. International climate finance and disaster relief from Islamabad come after every flood, but the mountains continue to be stripped, the diggings continue expanding, and the risks multiply.

This does not have to be the case. If NOCs are strictly enforced, if mining companies undertake mandatory watershed restoration, and if provincial climate adaptation plans are integrated with industrial licensing, the trajectory can be altered. When mountain quarrying was regulated in Turkey and Nepal, mining was allowed to proceed, but only under conditions of ecological stewardship, which is only possible under strong governance.

Until then, the people of Buner, Swat, and Malakand pay. With every flood deadlier than the last, every disaster is met with a cycle of blame and appeals for relief. Yes, climate change is a global issue, but in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it’s as much about local negligence as it is about distant smokestacks. Without governance reforms, no amount of international aid can stop those mountains from crumbling when the next storm comes.

Some countries (such as Bhutan and Sri Lanka) in South Asia have recently piloted community-based watershed rehabilitation efforts wherein local bodies keep checks on mining activities, which are accompanied by financial payouts for reforestation. If applied here, it has the potential to transform the current humanitarian recovery response into an upfront investment for risk reduction. This could pressurize provincial authorities of KP to enforce stricter measures and to plan for resilience in the long run.

The provincial government sinks into its political warfare with the center, treading on anti-state rhetoric while there are crises within its own borders. As elites trade barbs and chase power across the hall, ordinary people pay the price of floods and deforestation and unregulated mining.

Uganda is the latest of several countries to strike a deportation deal with the United States as President Donald Trump ramps up controversial efforts to remove migrants from the country.

In a statement on Thursday, Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Kampala had agreed for Washington to send over third-country nationals who face deportation from the US, but are unwilling to return to their home countries. The ministry said that the agreement was made under certain conditions.

Rights groups and law experts have condemned Trump’s controversial plans to deport millions of undocumented migrants. Those already deported include convicted criminals and “uniquely barbaric monsters,” according to the White House.

African countries, such as Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, have accepted similar deals, reportedly in exchange for lower tariffs. The US’s actions are exploitative and tantamount to treating the continent as a “dumping ground,” Melusi Simelane of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) told Al Jazeera, adding that Washington was especially focusing on countries with weak human rights protection.

Here’s what you need to know about the Uganda deal and what countries might be getting in return for hosting US deportees:

What did Uganda agree to?

In a statement posted on X on Thursday, Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, the permanent secretary of Uganda’s Foreign Ministry, said the country had agreed to a “temporary arrangement” with the US. He did not state the timelines for when the deportations would begin or end.

There are caveats regarding the people who would be transferred, the statement continued, including that Uganda will not accept people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors and that it “prefers” that Africans be transferred as part of the deal.

“The two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented,” the statement added.

A US State Department statement confirmed that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had held discussions over the phone regarding “migration, reciprocal trade, and commercial ties”.

The deal’s announcement came after weeks of speculation in local Ugandan media regarding whether the East African nation would accept US deportees.

On Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem denied the media reports, saying Uganda did not have the facilities to accommodate deportees.

Speaking to The Associated Press news agency, Oryem said Uganda was discussing issues of “visas, tariffs, sanctions and related issues” with the US, but not of migration.

“We are talking about cartels: people who are unwanted in their own countries. How can we integrate them into local communities in Uganda?” he told the AP.

A day later, Uganda’s narrative had flipped.

What might Uganda gain from this?

The Foreign Ministry’s statement on Thursday did not state what Uganda might be getting in return.

Other countries, including Eswatini, have reportedly accepted deportees in exchange for lower tariffs.

Uganda has been hit with 15 percent tariffs on goods entering the US, as part of Trump’s reciprocal tariff wars. Senior government officials in early August told local media that the tariffs would disrupt Ugandan exports, especially in the agricultural sector, and that Kampala would enter negotiations for a better deal.

Coffee, vanilla, cocoa beans and petroleum products are some of Uganda’s key exports to the US. Kampala is particularly keen on boosting coffee exports to the US and competing with bigger suppliers like Colombia. The US, on the other hand, exports machinery, such as aircraft parts, to Uganda, which imposes an 18 percent tariff on imported products.

The US and Uganda have historically enjoyed friendly ties, with the US routinely sending aid to Kampala. However, after Uganda passed an anti-homosexuality bill into law in 2023, relations turned sour, and the US accused Uganda of “human rights violations”. The law proscribes punishment, including life sentences, for same-sex relations.

Washington thereafter cut aid funding for HIV programs and issued visa restrictions on Ugandan government officials “complicit in undermining the democratic process.” The US also banned Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade programme that helped African countries trade tariff-free with the US, but that Trump’s tariffs have effectively killed.

The World Bank additionally banned Uganda from its loans for two years, although the restriction was lifted this June.

Rights activists say the deal on deportees could make the US administration more favourably inclined towards Uganda, but at the expense of those deported.

“The proposed deal runs afoul of international law,” human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo told the AP. He added that such an arrangement leaves the legal status of deportees unclear as to whether they are refugees or prisoners.

“We are sacrificing human beings for political expediency; in this case, because Uganda wants to be in the good books of the United States,” Opiyo said.“That I can keep your prisoners if you pay me; how is that different from human trafficking?”

Does Uganda already host refugees?

Yes, Uganda is Africa’s largest refugee host country. It already hosts some 1.7 million refugees, largely from neighbouring South Sudan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are all dealing with armed conflict and unrest.

The United Nations has, in the past, hailed the country as having a “progressive refugee policy” and “maintaining an open-door approach to asylum”.

However, opposition activists are sounding the alarm over the government’s dismal human rights record. Uganda has been ruled by Museveni since 1986, with his party winning contested elections in landslides. Opposition members and journalists are often targeted in arrests. Some report being tortured in detention.

Speaking to the AP, opposition lawmaker Muwada Nkunyingi said the US deal could give Museveni’s government further Western legitimacy ahead of general elections scheduled for January 2026.

The deal was struck to “clear their image now that we are heading into the 2026 elections,” Nkunyingi said. He urged the US not to ignore what he described as human rights issues in Uganda.

What other countries has the US sent people to?

Eswatini, Rwanda and South Sudan have struck similar agreements with the US.

Eswatini, in July, accepted five unnamed men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen.

Tricia McLaughlin, Department for Homeland Security assistant secretary, described them as “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back”. She added that they were convicted of offences ranging from child rape to murder, and faced up to 25 years in jail. The men are presently held in detention facilities and will be sent back to their countries, according to officials who did not state a timeline.

Activists accuse the Eswatini government of engaging in the deal in exchange for lower tariffs from the US. The tiny country, which exports apparel, fruits, nuts and raw sugar to the US, was hit with a 10 percent tariff.

“No country should have to be engaged in the violation of international human rights laws, including breaching its domestic laws, to please the Global North in the name of trade,” Simulane of SALC, who is leading an ongoing court case challenging the Eswatini government’s decision, told Al Jazeera. The move, he said, was against the country’s constitution, which mandates that international agreements pass through parliament.

“What we want, at the core, is for the agreement to be published for public scrutiny, and for the public to understand (if) it indeed is in line with our national interest,” Simulane said. “We further want the agreement declared unconstitutional because it lacked parliamentary approval.”

South Africa, which borders Eswatini on three sides, summoned the smaller country’s diplomats earlier in August to raise security concerns about the arrangement.

Similarly, the US sent eight “barbaric” criminals to South Sudan in July. The DHS listed them as being from Cuba, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Mexico and South Sudan. They were convicted of crimes such as first-degree murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and sexual assault, the DHS said.

The men were initially diverted to Djibouti for months pending a legal challenge in the US. However, in late June, the US Supreme Court approved the move to South Sudan.

Rwanda, too, has confirmed that it will take 250 deportees from the US at an unnamed date. According to government spokesperson Yolande Makolo, the deportees will enjoy “workforce training, health care and accommodation”. The country previously struck a controversial migrant deal for a fee with the United Kingdom. That deal, however, fell through when the new Labour government was elected in the UK in 2024.

Outside Africa, El Salvador has taken in 300 migrants, mainly from Venezuela, for a $6m fee.

Costa Rica accepted 200 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, China, Ghana, India and Vietnam. While many have been repatriated, some 28 people were still in detention by June. It is unclear what the US offered in return.

Nearly 300 people from countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and China were sent to Panama in February.

Aug. 20 (UPI) — Rebels from M23, a rebel group backed by Rwanda, killed at least 140 people in July in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said.

The resurgence of killings of mostly Hutu civilians in at least 14 villages and farming areas near Virunga National Park in eastern DRC comes as the United States and Qatar have been working to broker peace in the region.

Human Rights Watch called the killings “executions.”

Between July 10 and 30, “M23 fighters summarily executed local residents and farmers, including women and children, in their villages, fields, and near the Rutshuru River,” Human Rights Watch said.

“Credible reports indicate the number of people killed in Rutshuru territory since July may exceed 300, among the worst atrocities by the M23 since its resurgence in late 2021,” it added.

The rebels have denied any role in these killings, calling the charges a “blatant misrepresentation of the facts,” BBC reported.

“The M23 armed group, which has Rwandan government backing, attacked over a dozen villages and farming areas in July and committed dozens of summary executions of primarily Hutu civilians,” said Clémentine de Montjoye, senior Great Lakes researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Unless those responsible for these war crimes, including at the highest levels, are appropriately investigated and punished, these atrocities will only intensify.”

Witnesses said that M23 fighters told them to immediately bury the bodies in the fields or leave them unburied, preventing families from having funerals. M23 fighters also threw bodies, including of women and children, into the Rutshuru River, Human Rights Watch said.

The mass killings appear to be part of a military campaign against opposing armed groups, especially the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, a largely Rwandan Hutu armed group created by participants in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

In the killings reported to Human Rights Watch, most victims were ethnic Hutu and some were ethnic Nande.

Rwanda has not responded to the HRW claim, but it has denied the U.N. accusations, calling them “gratuitous” and “sensational allegations.” It claims that an armed group opposed to M23 committed the killings.

Rwanda denies allegations that it provides military support to M23, which is largely made up of the Tutsi ethnic group that was targeted by Hutu militias in the genocide.

Human Rights Watch reported first-person accounts of witnesses. In one, a woman saw her husband killed by M23 fighters with a machete. The same day, “We were forced to walk toward the place where our lives were going to end,” she said. The group included about 70 women and girls. After walking all day, they were forced to sit on a riverbank to be shot at. She was only able to escape because she fell into the river without being shot.

Fighting between DRC government troops and M23 escalated in January, when the rebels captured large parts of the mineral-rich east, including the regional capital Goma.

Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians forced from their homes in the ongoing conflict, the United Nations says.

On June 27, DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington, D.C., after 30 years of conflict between the two nations.

Then on July 19, DRC and M23 rebels backed by Rwanda signed a declaration of peace after nearly four years of fighting. The rebels were not involved in the agreement in Washington but the declaration must follow the Washington Accord brokered by the United States.

As negotiations were set to resume last week, M23 walked away from the peace talks. It said Kinshasa had failed to meet commitments outlined in the deal.

Around 7 million people have been displaced in Congo, which has a population of 106 million. Rwanda also borders Uganda to the south.

The Congolese army has also accused the M23 of violating the cease-fire.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte has signed into law a controversial piece of legislation that would shield the military, police and other government-sanctioned forces from prosecution for human rights abuses committed during the country’s decades-long internal conflict.

On Wednesday, Boluarte held a signing ceremony at the presidential palace in Lima, where she defended the amnesty law as a means of honouring the sacrifices made by government forces.

“This is a historic day for our country,” she said. “It brings justice and honour to those who stood up to terrorism.”

But human rights groups and international observers have condemned the bill as a violation of international law — not to mention a denial of justice for the thousands of survivors who lived through the conflict.

From 1980 to 2000, Peru experienced a bloody conflict that pitted government forces against left-wing rebel groups like the Shining Path.

Both sides, however, committed massacres, kidnappings and assaults on unarmed civilians, with the death toll from the conflict climbing as high as 70,000 people.

Up until present, survivors and family members of the deceased have continued to fight for accountability.

An estimated 600 investigations are currently under way, and 156 convictions have been achieved, according to the National Human Rights Coordinator, a coalition of Peruvian human rights organisations.

Critics fear those ongoing probes could be scuttled under the wide-ranging protections offered by the new amnesty law, which stands to benefit soldiers, police officers and members of self-defence committees who face legal proceedings for which no final verdict has been rendered.

The legislation also offers “humanitarian” amnesty for those convicted over the age of 70.

Peru, however, falls under the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which ordered the country’s government to “immediately suspend the processing” of the law on July 24.

The court ruled against past amnesty laws in Peru. In cases of severe human rights violations, it ruled that there can be no sweeping amnesty nor age limits for prosecution.

In 1995, for instance, Peru passed a separate amnesty law that would have prevented the prosecution of security forces for human rights abuses between 1980 and that year. But it was greeted with widespread condemnation, including from United Nations experts, and it was eventually repealed.

In the case of the current amnesty law, nine UN experts issued a joint letter in July condemning its passage as a “clear breach of [Peru’s] obligations under international law”.

But at Wednesday’s signing ceremony, President Boluarte reiterated her position that such international criticism was a violation of her country’s sovereignty and that she would not adhere to the Inter-American Court’s decision.

“Peru is honouring its defenders and firmly rejecting any internal or external interference,” Boluarte said.

“We cannot allow history to be distorted, for perpetrators to pretend to be victims, and for the true defenders of the homeland to be branded as enemies of the nation they swore to protect.”

Peru’s armed forces, however, have been implicated in a wide range of human rights abuses. Just last year, 10 soldiers were convicted of carrying out the systematic rape of Indigenous and rural women and girls.

Drawing from Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, the human rights group Amnesty International estimates that the country’s armed forces and police were responsible for 37 percent of the deaths and disappearances that happened during the conflict.

They were also credited with carrying out 75 percent of the reported instances of torture and 83 percent of sexual violence cases.

Francisco Ochoa, a victims’ advocate, spoke to Al Jazeera last month about his experiences surviving the 1985 Accomarca massacre as a 14-year-old teenager.

He had been in the corn fields preparing to sow seeds when soldiers arrived and rounded up the residents of his small Andean village.

Despite having no evidence linking the villagers to rebel groups, the soldiers locked many of them in their huts, fired into the structures and set them ablaze.

As many as 62 people were killed, including Ochoa’s mother, eight-year-old brother and six-year-old sister.

“The first thing I remember from that day is the smell when we arrived,” Ochoa, now 54, told journalist Claudia Rebaza. “It smelled like smouldering flesh, and there was no one around.”

When asked how he and other survivors felt about the amnesty law, Ochoa responded, “Outraged and betrayed”.

A key annual United States government report on global human rights abuses has drastically shifted focus, with references removed to abuses based on sexual orientation, and poor conditions downplayed in ally nations while taking aim at those who have clashed with President Donald Trump.

Released on Tuesday, the 2024 State Department Human Rights Report, was issued months late as Trump appointees altered an earlier draft dramatically to bring it in line with America First values, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The report introduced new categories such as “Life”, and “Liberty,” and “Security of the Person.”

The department referred to its new report as “streamlined” and focused on remaining “aligned to the administration’s executive orders”.

While the 2023 report contains a lengthy introduction with numerous appendices and citations, the newest report has a single introductory page that stresses a desire to “minimize the amount of statistical data in the report”. An NPR analysis found individual country reports are, on average, one-third the length of the previous year’s.

There is no mention of discrimination against women, members of the LGBTQ community, or on the basis of race in the latest report introduction.

Instead, the report sounds an alarm about the erosion of freedom of speech in Europe and ramped up criticism of Brazil and South Africa, both of which Washington has clashed with over a host of issues.

Any criticism of governments for their treatment of LGBTQ rights, which appeared in Biden administration editions of the report, appears to have been omitted.

The report’s section on Israel is much shorter than last year’s edition and contains no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis or death toll in Gaza. Some 61,000 people have died, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as a result of Israel’s military operations in response to an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in October 2023.

While last year’s report underscored numerous acts of anti-Semitism in Hungary, noting that a local survey found half the population were “moderately or strongly anti-Semitic”, the new report says the close Trump ally has “made combating anti-Semitism a top priority, publicly emphasizing its welcoming and open environment for Jews”.

The report claims “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in El Salvador – where Trump has gained help from President Nayib Bukele, whose country is receiving $6m from the US to house migrant deportees in a high-security mega-prison.

Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement that the report “purposefully fail[ed]” to capture rights abuses in a number of countries.

This year’s Human Rights Report from the U.S. State Department reveals a disturbing effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe.

— Amnesty International USA (@amnestyusa) August 12, 2025

This year’s Human Rights Report from the US Department of State shows a visible effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe.

On Monday, rights group coalition the Council for Global Equality sued (PDF) the State Department to release report documents, alleging the department had potentially manipulated its latest human rights report.

For decades, the State Department’s congressionally mandated Human Rights Report has been used as a blueprint of reference for global rights advocacy.

This year’s report was prepared following a major revamp of the department, which included the firing of hundreds of people, many from the agency’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which takes the lead in writing the report.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in April, wrote an opinion piece that said the bureau had become a platform for “left-wing activists,” saying the Trump administration would reorient the bureau to focus on “Western values”.

Taking aim at Brazil and South Africa

In Brazil, where the Trump administration has clashed with the government, the State Department found the human rights situation had declined, after the 2023 report found no significant changes. This year’s report took aim at the courts, stating they took action undermining freedom of speech and disproportionately suppressing the speech of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, among others.

Bolsonaro is on trial before the Supreme Court on charges he conspired with allies to violently overturn his 2022 electoral loss to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Trump has referred to the case as a “witch hunt” and called it grounds for a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods.

In South Africa, whose government the Trump administration has accused of racial discrimination towards Afrikaners, this year’s report said the human rights situation significantly worsened. It stated that “South Africa took a substantially worrying step towards land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities in the country.”

In last year’s report, the State Department found no significant changes in the human rights situation in South Africa.

Trump, earlier this year, issued an executive order that called for the US to resettle Afrikaners, describing them as victims of “violence against racially disfavored landowners,” allegations that echoed far-right claims but which have been contested by South Africa’s government.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres puts both countries ‘on notice’ over documented pattern of sexual violence.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has put Israel and Russia “on notice” that their armed forces and security personnel could be listed among parties “credibly suspected” of committing sexual violence in conflict zones.

The warning on Tuesday resulted from “significant concerns regarding patterns of certain forms of sexual violence that have been consistently documented by the United Nations”, Guterres wrote in a report seen by the Reuters news agency.

In his annual report to the UN Security Council on conflict-related sexual violence, Guterres said that Israel and Russia could be listed next year among the parties “credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence”.

In his warning to Israel, Guterres said he was “gravely concerned about credible information of violations by Israeli armed and security forces” against Palestinians in several prisons, a detention centre and a military base.

“Cases documented by the United Nations indicate patterns of sexual violence such as genital violence, prolonged forced nudity and repeated strip searches conducted in an abusive and degrading manner,” Guterres wrote.

Because Israel has denied access to UN monitors, it has been “challenging to make a definitive determination” about patterns, trends and the systematic use of sexual violence by its forces, he said, urging Israel’s government “to take the necessary measures to ensure immediate cessation of all acts of sexual violence, and make and implement specific time-bound commitments.”

The UN chief said these should include investigations of credible allegations, clear orders and codes of conduct for military and security forces that prohibit sexual violence, and unimpeded access for UN monitors.

In March, UN-backed human rights experts accused Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence”.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said it documented a range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys, and accused Israeli forces of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, dismissed the Secretary-General’s concerns as “baseless accusations” on Tuesday.

Danon, who circulated a letter he received from Guterres and his response to the UN chief, said the allegations “are steeped in biased publications”.

“The UN must focus on the shocking war crimes and sexual violence of Hamas and the release of all hostages,” the Israeli ambassador said.

Danon stressed that “Israel will not shy away from protecting its citizens and will continue to act in accordance with international law”.

In July 2024, the Israeli military said it had detained and was questioning nine soldiers over the alleged sexual abuse of a Palestinian detainee at the infamous Sde Teiman prison facility, which was set up to detain people arrested in Gaza.

Israeli media reported at the time that a Palestinian prisoner was taken to hospital after suffering severe injuries from what was an alleged gang rape by military guards at the prison.

In the case of Russia, Guterres wrote that he was “gravely concerned about credible information of violations by Russian armed and security forces and affiliated armed groups”, primarily against Ukrainian prisoners of war, in 50 official and 22 unofficial detention facilities in Ukraine and Russia.

“These cases comprised a significant number of documented incidents of genital violence, including electrocution, beatings and burns to the genitals, and forced stripping and prolonged nudity, used to humiliate and elicit confessions or information,” he said.

Russia’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Guterres said that Russian authorities have not engaged with his special envoy on the matter.

On August 5, 2019, the Indian government stripped the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state of its special status under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, split it into two entities and demoted the two units to Union Territories under New Delhi’s direct control.

As the sixth anniversary approached, the region was caught in the grip of rumours of a probable further division, or other administrative changes. Reports of unusual jet activity over Srinagar triggered widespread panic among residents.

This evoked harrowing memories of similar aerial activity coupled with a similarly bizarre set of rumours in the tense days leading up to August 5, 2019. People waited anxiously.

The bombshell that came on the sixth anniversary was an official order banning 25 books that focus on Jammu and Kashmir’s history and politics – all accused of promoting “false narratives” and “secessionism” – a sweeping judgement that does not stand the test of scrutiny and is not based on any evidence.

My book A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370, published in December 2022 by HarperCollins, is one of them. The book is a rare chronicle of the day-to-day reality in Jammu and Kashmir after 2019. Based on ground research, extensive interviews and the collation of data from other primary and secondary sources, it punctured the Indian government’s claims of “normalcy” in Jammu and Kashmir.

The government justified the actions of August 5, 2019 on the grounds that they would usher in peace and development in the region, while glossing over the unprecedented physical and cyber-restrictions imposed across the erstwhile state, during which thousands of people, including pro-India politicians (three former chief ministers included), were arrested. Barbed wire and military barricades turned the region, particularly the Kashmir Valley, into a curfewed zone, and communication channels – from internet to telephone lines – were pushed into some black hole.

Six months later, when some of these restrictions were slightly eased and the internet was partially restored, the stranglehold of the Indian state became even more oppressive, with an exacerbation of raids and crackdowns against journalists, political and social activists, and civil rights defenders. The policy of widespread detentions under laws like the Public Safety Act, which allows the government to detain anyone without charge for up to two years, was ramped up significantly.

These realities were hardly ever reported. Journalism was severely curtailed under the state’s clampdown, particularly affecting local publications. Newspapers that refused to fall in line were choked financially until they were out of print. Those that did comply were rewarded with lavish government advertisements that kept the businesses going, minus the journalism.

Either co-opted or terrorised, the newspapers were no longer daily chroniclers of the events, developments and incidents in the region. Community voices were silenced while journalists no longer asked questions. The rich archives of some newspapers, showcasing the complex day-to-day history of the region, became inaccessible or were removed.

In the last six years, the government has been extremely intolerant of any criticism. Any word of dissent invites punitive measures ranging from mere intimidation and interrogation to confiscation of devices, and from the slapping of income tax and money laundering cases to terrorism accusations, sometimes accompanied by short detentions or prolonged arrests. While local journalism was reduced to an extension of the government’s public relations department, all civil society voices were throttled by intimidation, leaving major gaps in information.

It was this vacuum that my book aimed to fill. Focused on the first two years of the revocation of Article 370, and in 12 chapters, I documented what was happening on the ground – the increased suppression of the masses, the lack of space for freedom of expression, the shrinking space for civil society and political activism, the criminalisation of dissent, the continuation of terrorism as opposed to the claims of peace and normalcy, and the hollowness of the development claims by the government even as the new policies and actions robbed the people of their homes and agricultural lands.

The book is a pursuit of truth – the naked truth, which challenged everything the Indian state was saying. A paranoid state whose only method of engagement in Jammu and Kashmir is through increasing its military footprint, merciless subjugation of the residents and silencing of all voices of dissent was obviously uncomfortable with what I documented. The book was a warning to the government that its methods of control, creation of a police and surveillance state, and misplaced development models were unsustainable and would fail.

In the last six years, the government has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the world by trumpeting its achievements of bringing peace, normalcy, tourism and development. The April 22 killings this year of 26 innocent civilians punctured this bubble. It was a wake-up call for the government to sit back and review its policies in Kashmir and begin course correction.

Instead, it clamped down even further with a horrific scale of demonisation of Kashmiris, ruthless detentions and even more brutal demolitions of houses. This, even as there was widespread public condemnation of terrorism, including vigils and calls to reject violence – something unprecedented in the more than three-decade-long history of rebellion in the region – and even as the investigators indicated foreign militants, not locals, were involved in the killings.

In the last three months, the government has demonstrated that its policy of control through harsh security measures and pervasive surveillance would be further accelerated. The ban on 25 books, many of which provide rich, well-researched, and layered historical, political and legal narratives about the complex and trouble-torn region, is an extension of the pattern. Through this ban, there is an attempt to erase every trace of a counter-narrative and alternate memory.

By branding all criticism of the state and narratives that are out of sync with the official version as “seditious”, the government can now seize and destroy these books. Not only are the written words being criminalised – even the act of reading will be wrongfully deemed a threat to the security and integrity of the nation. While this may not stop ideas and memory from being suppressed, policing what people write and read is likely to be further intensified.

Though senseless, shocking and irrational in scale and scope, the ban, which ironically coincides with a government-backed Chinar Book Festival in Srinagar, sends a chilling message: Knowledge and information will be regulated by the state. What people write and read will be decided by the state. The thought police will penetrate deeper.

Last year, during Jammu and Kashmir’s first assembly elections as a Union Territory, India’s home minister, Amit Shah, took a dig at the regional political parties and alleged that while “they (local politicians) gave the youth stones in their hands”, his government had given them “books and laptops”.

The hollowness of such claims is laid bare when the daily reality is one of confiscation of digital devices, including laptops, during raids and interrogations, alongside a blanket book ban that only reinforces the central message of my work: Kashmir is anything but normal.

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

Investigators name senior figures among those responsible for alleged abuses at detention facilities.

United Nations investigators say they have gathered evidence of systematic torture in Myanmar’s detention facilities, identifying senior figures among those responsible.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), set up in 2018 to examine potential breaches of international law, said on Tuesday that detainees had endured beatings, electric shocks, strangulation and fingernail removal with pliers.

“We have uncovered significant evidence, including eyewitness testimony, showing systematic torture in Myanmar detention facilities,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the mechanism, said in a statement accompanying its 16-page report.

The UN team said some prisoners died as a result of the torture.

It also documented the abuse of children, often detained unlawfully as proxies for their missing parents.

According to the report, the UN team has made more than two dozen formal requests for information and access to the country, all of which have gone unanswered. Myanmar’s military authorities did not respond to media requests for comment.

The military has repeatedly denied committing atrocities, saying it is maintaining peace and security while blaming “terrorists” for unrest.

The findings cover a year that ended on June 30 and draw on information from more than 1,300 sources, including hundreds of witness accounts, forensic analysis, photographs and documents.

The IIMM said it identified high-ranking commanders among the perpetrators but declined to name them to avoid alerting those under investigation.

The report also found that both government forces and armed opposition groups had committed summary executions. Officials from neither side of Myanmar’s conflict were available to comment.

The latest turmoil in Myanmar began when a 2021 military coup ousted an elected civilian government, sparking a nationwide conflict. The UN estimates tens of thousands of people have been detained in efforts to crush dissent and bolster the military’s ranks.

Last month, the leader of the military government, Min Aung Hlaing, ended a four-year state of emergency and appointed himself acting president before planned elections.

The IIMM’s mandate covers abuses in Myanmar dating back to 2011, including the military’s 2017 campaign against the mostly Muslim Rohingya, which forced hundreds of thousands of members of the ethnic minority to flee to Bangladesh, and postcoup atrocities against multiple communities.

The IIMM is also assisting international legal proceedings, including cases in Britain. However, the report warned that budget cuts at the UN could undermine its work.

“These financial pressures threaten the Mechanism’s ability to sustain its critical work and to continue supporting international and national justice efforts,” it said.