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West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, speaking in state capital Kolkata on June 8, said nearly 5,000 Bangladeshi citizens had been deported across the border. “We have started the work of deporting Bangladeshi infiltrators who do not fall under the purview of the Citizenship Amendment Act,” Adhikari said, refering to the 2019 national law that has been assailed for denying citizenship to thousands of Muslims. (TNH, TRT World)

Mass detention of Muslims on questionable immigration grounds is most advanced in the neighboring state of Assam, leading the group Genocide Watch to issue a “warning alert” for India.

Image: Sowmya Reddy

In commenting on the sheer gravity of the crimes, the experts stated:

The deteriorating security situation in northern Nigeria and the Middle Belt has created an environment in which armed extremist groups, including Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province [ISWAP], and radicalised individual herdsmen involved in the “farmer-herder” conflict continue to operate with devastating consequences for civilians, amid persistent reports of impunity, institutional failures, and inadequate protection by authorities.

Religious persecution in Nigeria against Christian and minority religious groups is a longstanding issue, with radical Islamic groups such as Boko Haram and various jihadist factions operating with the goal of eradicating the presence of these vulnerable groups and establishing strict Sharia law. Forced conversion is a commonly used tactic to exert control over these minority religious groups, with militants abducting schoolchildren from their educational institutions.

A high-profile example, which received international condemnation, was the 2014 Chibokschoolgirls kidnapping, in which 276 mostly Christian girls aged between 15 to 18 were kidnapped from a village in Borno state, forced to convert to Islam, subjected to sexual slavery, and forced to marry Boko Haram fighters. Although a large number of the girls managed to escape or have been released, the fate of a remaining 82 is uncertain. Tensions between settled Christian communities and Muslim semi-nomadic groups such as the Fulani have also exploded into violence; in December 2023, multiple villages were attacked in central Plateau state, resulting in at least 160 deaths.

June 2022 saw an armed attack on St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Ondo state during Sunday service that left over 50 people dead. In May 2022, Christian college student Deborah Yakubu was stoned to death by a mob in Sokoto state. Her murder came after her classmates accused her of making blasphemous sentiments in a WhatsApp group, an illustration of the deep ethnoreligious tensions in the West African region.

The widely reported executions of Christian students at Kaduna state’s Greenfield University in April 2021 resulted in rights groups criticizing the Nigerian government for its lack of accountability in protecting civilians. Religiously targeted sexual exploitation, with young women and girls sometimes coerced into performing sexual acts to access food, has also been seen in this culture of impunity.

From JURIST, June 8. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Several members of the Committee to Defend Prisoners of Conscience were arrested on May 25 after organizing an exhibition called “They Don’t Belong in Prison,” highlighting cases of persons unjustly detained for political reasons. They were charged with “disseminating false news,” and one activist, lawyer Mohamed Abu al-Dayyar, is also facing terrorism-related charges. Other prominent figures among the arrested are Dr. Hanan Altantawy and Wafaa al-Masry, who have been released on bail but still face criminal charges.

Amnesty International charged that the government is pursuing a “relentless crackdown on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” with “rampant use of arbitrary detention to intimidate activists.”

The Egyptian Human Rights Forum issued a joint statement decrying the arrests, stating that the activists’ prosecution “constitutes punishment for their political activism and their dedication to various causes.”

Amnesty International called for the immediate release of the detained activists, including Mohamed Abu al-Dayyar, and for charges to be dropped against Hanan Altantawy and Wafaa al-Masry. It urged the government to drop its façade of human rights progress when “it has no intention of changing course or addressing the country’s decade-long arbitrary detention crisis.”

Arbitrary detention, or deprivation of liberty in the course of exercising rights or freedoms, is a violation of international law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

From JURIST, June 6. Used with permission.

See our last report on the crackdown in Egypt.

Image: Egyptian Human Rights Forum

Reporting on his visit to the CAR, Nononsi noted that despite the mostly peaceful electoral process that took place in December, the country continues to face instability due to attacks by armed groups against civilians, tensions involving nomadic pastoral communities, and spillover consequences of the conflict in Sudan. The reported attacks include forced displacements, extortion, and conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls.

The UN expert called on authorities to bring the perpetrators of rights violations to justice, and urged international partners to back CAR authorities’ efforts in combating violence and restoring security. He commended the significant role played by the Special Criminal Courtand called for its increased independence, as well as providing more support for national human rights institutions, including the National Human Rights Commission and the Truth, Justice, Reparations & Reconciliation Commission (CVJRR).

During his visit to the CAR, Nononsi met with senior representatives of the country’s authorities, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and international partners. He will present his detailed findings and recommendations in a full report to the UN Human Rights Council.

The Central African Republic has been struggling with an internal conflict between armed groups and government forces, in addition to general poverty and escalating climate hazards. In March 2025, the UN reported grave human rights violations committed by armed groups against civilians, which included torture, looting, and sexual violence against women and girls. The attacks in Haut Oubangui region, in the southeast of the country, mainly targeted Muslim communities and Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers.

From JURIST, June 2. Used with permission.

Note: The report comes nine years after a peace accord that officially put an end to the CAR’s internal conflict.

Map via Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

Evidence of the existential threat posed to humanity by artificial intelligence accrues day by day.

The United Nations on June 4 issued a call for a “responsible AI ecosystem,” warning that daily use of AI is having a vast and insufficiently appreciated environmental impact. The appeal came after a United Nations University study predicting AI’s global water use will match the needs of all 1.3 billion people in Africa south of the Sahara by 2030. The report also warned of a growing challenge from electronic waste, with AI infrastructure projected to generate up to 2.5 million metric tons of e-waste annually by 2030.

The critical minerals needed for AI raise concerns about environmental degradation and social iniquities in the extraction zones—most notably war-torn Central Africa.

But the study especially noted the massive energy demands of AI. Media reports have largely focused on the energy required to train AI models, but the study found that daily consumer use once a model is deployed accounts for more than 80% of the industry’s energy demand. By 2030, data centers powering AI worldwide are projected to consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity. This is nearly triple the combined annual use of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria—countries collectively home to more than 650 million people.

This is unfolding as the minimum goals for reducing emissions to avoid devastating global climate collapse set by the 2015 Paris Agreement are being openly abandoned. So, we are going straight over the edge into climate catastrophe—while a large proportion of that “consumer use” is mindless slop spread on social media.

Nonetheless, the report ended with a roadmap for a “responsible” industry, with proposals including a mechanism for “standardized environmental footprint reporting.”

Given the magnitude of the impacts at a time when reducing industrial civilization’s “footprint” is an urgent imperative, this call can be seen as a dangerous legitimization of the technology. Even in critical commentary, its “advance” is taken as fait accompli—as if that, and not passing a habitable planet to posterity, were the urgent imperative.

Ironically, the forthright call for an outright moratorium or “pause” on AI development has been put forth by one of the industry’s corporate leaders, Anthropic. The company’s June 4 statement warned that AI systems appear to be approaching “recursive self-improvement”—the ability to expand their own capabilities by writing their own code, completely outside human control.

Which brings us what this ubiquitous “slop” means for human culture and consciousness.

This was the focus of Pope Leo XIV’s May 15 encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” The encyclical warns of the impacts of this technology on labor—the threat of mass unemployment as workers are replaced by AI, as well as slavery being enabled by the industry (such as in the coltan mines of Central Africa). But it properly views this in itself, dire a threat as it represents, as symptomatic of a deeper and more thoroughgoing threat.

Writing on the threat posed to the consumer of chat-bots, designed as a simulacrum of humanity (as implied by the very name “Anthropic”), the Pope states: “Here, the danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.”

Next, he turns to the assault on truth represented by AI—not merely on truth itself, but the very idea of truth. Here he actually quotes from Hannah Arendt and her classic work The Origins of Totalitarianism:

When questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective, then democratic life is weakened. After all, democracy does not consist of rules and procedures alone, but above all of a solid concordance with the facts… Indifference to the truth leads, slowly but surely, to a descent into totalitarianism. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, the ideal subjects of such regimes are not so much those who are ideologically convinced, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Which speaks to the sinister nature of what is dismissively called “AI slop.” The reference to a “slow” descent into totalitarianism seems unwarrantedly optimistic as Trump seeks to establish a dictatorship in the United States—a process enabled by the unprecedented environment of true saturation propaganda, bombarding us every moment of our waking lives, with the volume and sophistication now in hypertrophy due to the proliferation of AI.

Social media propaganda has already been implicated in inflaming genocide—particularly that of the Rohingya of Burma and Tigray of Ethiopia. Yet every day, we continue to share unvetted slop—because this abuse is inherent to the technological model.

The encyclical next moves from the epistemological threat—that concerning the nature of truth—to the eschatological: that concerning the ultimate fate of humanity. Noting the “underlying narratives” of “transhumanism and posthumanism,” the Pope warns against the futuristic vision of an “enhanced human being” or “human-machine hybrid.”

Unfortunately, in this most important point in the entire screed, Leo retreats to obfuscation, writing that post-humanism is “difficult to define them in a single, unambiguous way.”

Alas, there is nothing ill-defined about it; it is very concrete and imminently upon us. The advent of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant technology, now approved for human testing by the US Food & Drug Administration, will give corporate power the ability to directly control our thoughts and emotions. This not only means the extinction of human freedom, even as an idea, but it actually portends the ultimate abolition of humanity itself, and its replacement by a conditioned post-humanity stripped of all autonomy, dignity and reason.

The Pope concludes with a call for “disarming” AI so that it does not serve the aims of “domination, exclusion, and war.” This is the encyclical’s most serious failure—also seen in its frequent nods to AI’s “genuinely helpful” uses.

AI cannot be “disarmed,” because it is by its very nature a weapon.

This technology cannot do other than dominate humanity—or, at the very least, the risk it holds of total domination and ultimate abolition of humanity makes it far too great a threat to allow it to advance. Regardless of what seeming social good it may be made to serve. Like nuclear weaponry, it is sui generis. This is the Latin phrase used by CS Lewis for this kind of technology in his amazingly prescient 1943 essay, The Abolition of Man—meaning of its own class, completely distinct and a break with all precedent.

Nuclear weapons must be rejected in toto, and the only possible legitimate demand concerning them is their total elimination from the Earth. Similarly, we must reject the notion that there is any legitimate use for a technology that bends reality and ultimately the human organism to the will of those who wield it. AI must be rejected in toto. The only possible legitimate demand concerning it is its total elimination.

But another problem with the encyclical is precisely that it is a papal encyclical. It is disturbing that much of the critique of this technology is coming from organized religion and cultural conservatives. Some on the “left” are even so deluded as to view it as a tool for liberation—what’s been called “cyborg socialism.”

Groups such as the Luddite Club in New York and Pull the Plug in London have recently held protests outside the offices of the AI giants, warning of impending “techno-fascism.” This is indeed an apt name for the system now consolidating nearly worldwide, but we must have a critique of the techno as well as the fascism, and avoid the fallacy that the problem is merely what the tech is being used for. The techno and the fascism are inseparable.

Labor unions striking for guarantees against worker replacement by AI are a significant glimmer of hope. So too are the spreading grassroots movements against the proliferation of data centers. But these movements must go beyond mere NIMBY sentiment (Not In My Backyard) to an unflinching critique of the technology.

Of course, it is predictable that the techno-fascist state is criminalizing dissent to techno-fascism, with Trump’s counter-terrorism czar Sebastian Gorka explicitly targeting “anti-tech extremists” for repression. And Trump’s June 2 executive order purporting to establish a regulation regime for artificial intelligence (something he has heretofore rejected) actually serves the aim of a government partnership with the AI industry to advance the police state. Companies are not restrained under the order, but encouraged to share the “cyber capabilities of AI models” with the state.

There is precedent for an abolitionist position on AI. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is urging support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—which has now taken force at the UN, although none of the nine nuclear weapons states have signed it.

We must take a similar abolitionist position on AI, in light of unacceptable threats it poses to humanity on ecological, epistemological and eschatological grounds.

It must be abolished before it abolishes us.

———

A shorter version of this piece first appeared June 11 in Freedom News.

Image: Pixabay via Wikimedia Commons

Audio version:

AI: the case for abolition
​CounterVortex podcast, June 7, 2026

See also:

ORBITAL DATA CENTERS IN LEGAL VACUUM
by Vishal Sharma, JURIST
CounterVortex, March 2026

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Reprinted by CounterVortex, June 12, 2026
Used with permission.

The rights organization emphasized that hostage-taking and the abduction of civilians are prohibited under international law.

The call comes weeks after armed groups from the Kuki and Naga communities reportedlyabducted more than 48 civilians in Manipur’s Kangpokpi and Senapati districts following an ambush by unknown armed men that killed three church leaders. The church leaders had recently participated in efforts to facilitate dialogue between Kuki and Naga groups in neighboring Nagaland. Kuki leaders blamed the slayings on the Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF), a Naga insurgent organization, sparking the inter-communal violence.

While 12 Naga and 16 Kuki captives have since been released, local organizations report that several civilians remain in captivity. Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM), the apex body representing Kuki tribes in the state, stated that 14 Kuki civilians continue to be held by Naga groups. The possibility of a broader release appeared to diminish when the United Naga Council (UNC), a representative body for Naga tribes in Manipur, withdrew a proposal to release the remaining Kuki captives. The organization said the planned release had been cancelled due to the “prevailing sentiment of the Naga public,” and maintained that six Naga civilians being held by Kuki groups must first be released.

Conrad K. Sangma, president of the National People’s Party (NPP), which forms a part of the ruling coalition in Manipur, has urged both sides to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of all civilians being held. Sangma stated that the release of the remaining captives could serve as an important step toward reconciliation and lasting peace in the conflict-affected state.

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have criticized Manipur state authorities and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government for failing to adequately protect civilians and prevent further violence. The group warned that the continued detention of civilians by armed groups underscores broader security concerns in Manipur, where ethnic tensions have fueled recurring violence and displacement since 2023.

The conflict has displaced more than 60,000 residents and resulted in at least 200 deaths since it broke out in May 2023, according to rights groups and government figures. Homes, businesses, villages and places of worship have been damaged or destroyed during successive waves of violence.

The violence has drawn condemnation from both domestic and international rights groups, which have repeatedly urged authorities to restore security and ensure accountability for abuses committed during the conflict. In February 2025, the government of India imposed an emergency state of “president’s rule” in Manipur following months of political instability and security concerns. The measure ended in February 2026, when Yumnam Khemchand Singh of the BJP assumed office as chief minister. However, incidents of violence and insecurity have continued in the state.

From JURIST, June 5. Used with permission.

See our last report on the struggle in Manipur.

Photo: Asia Media Centre

WFP confirmed the data breach on June 2. “WFP recently detected unauthorized access of its self-registration application (SRA) for Palestine, where individuals are able to register to receive food and cash assistance after verification,” a spokesperson said in a statement responding to questions from The New Humanitarian. “WFP took immediate action to shut down the platform, contain the intrusion, and strengthen its security controls to prevent further exposure.”

More than 2 million people in Gaza have submitted their personal information to WFP’s self-registration application, known as People Portal, which the WFP credits for cutting registration red tape and response times. The spokesperson said the compromised data is “isolated to the SRA application used only in Palestine.”

An investigation is under way, and no party has claimed responsibility, WFP said.

WFP said the cyber-attack occurred on May 14. The Telegram message to affected Gazans was sent 17 days later.

Digital security experts say aid groups are increasingly the target of sophisticated hacks and cyber-attacks. In one of the largest previously known breaches of humanitarian data, sensitive personal information belonging to 515,000 people was exposed in a 2022 hack targeting the International Committee of the Red Cross. The following year, the Norwegian Refugee Council said a cyber-attack hit a database containing info on thousands of project participants in one country. In the past, the UN has also come under fire for failing to disclose cyber-attacks.

The Gaza breach also spotlights data practices at WFP, which is consistently the world’s largest humanitarian agency, based on volume of funding.

The agency has long sought to grow its global beneficiary ID management programme, known as SCOPE. A 2021 audit noted that 63.8 million “identities” were registered in SCOPE, including some 20 million beneficiaries that were “actively managed.” At the time, SCOPE was used in 80% of the countries where WFP had a presence. An earlier 2017 audit said the agency needed major improvement in how it safeguarded beneficiary data.

WFP has previously said it intended a full rollout of SCOPE in Palestine in 2026. The agency said the May data breach did not affect SCOPE or other data management systems.

WFP has also come under fire for its relationship with Palantir, the US military contractor and big data analytics firm that is also highlighted in the “economy of genocide” UN rights report naming companies accused of sustaining Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Humanitarian organizations risk losing their protection under international law by partnering with military-linked technology companies, according to Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group that has documented the WFP-Palantir relationship.

WFP says its Palantir partnership backstops DOTS, a platform that combines data across systems.

A 2022 audit of WFP’s Palestine operations said risks related to personal data collection had not been assessed or mitigated due to limited internal technical capacity.

From The New Humanitarian, June 2, condensed.

Photo: Mohammed Nateel/UNICEF via UN News

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The 2006 violence began when the criminal organization Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) launched coordinated prison rebellions and attacks on public officials after authorities transferred hundreds of suspected gang members to maximum-security prisons. The attacks included prison riots, shootings, and assaults on police and public facilities. During this period, 59 police and prison officers were killed.

According to human rights organizations and victims’ families, police officers and death squads carried out a retaliatory campaign that resulted in more than 500 deaths and at least four enforced disappearances. The victims were disproportionately young Black men from low-income communities, and many had no known connection to the criminal group whose attacks triggered the violence.

The UN experts’ statement comes weeks after rights organizations Conectas Direitos Humanos and the Independent Mothers of May Movement submitted an urgent appeal to the United Nations. The groups alleged that Brazil has failed to adequately address the crimes. They charged that authorities have not guaranteed victims’ “rights to memory, truth, reparations and non-repetition.” They also reported that many mothers and relatives affected by the violence continue to face poverty and social vulnerability because of the lack of state support and accountability.

The Mothers of May movement was formed by mothers and relatives of those killed during the violence. It first emerged after the death of Edson Rogério Silva dos Santos at the hands of police in São Paulo. His mother, Débora Maria da Silva, became one of the movement’s leading advocates for accountability. For two decades, the group has sought the reopening of investigations, the prosecution of those responsible, and reparations for victims and survivors.

The UN experts warned that denying justice on procedural grounds would reinforce impunity for racialized police violence. They noted that people of African descent continue to experience disproportionate levels of police violence in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities.

The experts also linked the anniversary to wider concerns about accountability for violence against marginalized communities in Brazil. Earlier this year, UN experts described the upcoming trial of individuals accused of orchestrating the 2018 murders of Rio de Janeiro city councilor and human rights defender Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes, as a test of Brazil’s ability to confront racism, discrimination and violence.

From JURIST, June 1. Used with permission. Internal links added.

See our last report on Brazil’s favela wars and the prison crisis in Latin America.

Photo: Conectas