Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov was convicted by Russian-appointed judges on spurious "separatism" charges, and sentenced to two years. Human Rights Watch called his sentencing "ruthless retaliation" for his opposition to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and suspension of the Tatars' autonomous government.
Burma's army has responded to supposed Rohingya guerilla attacks with a massive new operation to encircle the rebels and block their escape into Bangladesh. Troops are accused of putting villages to the torch and carrying out extrajudicial killings. More than 8,700 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh, but at least 4,000 more are stranded in the no man's land between the two countries.
Trump's disparate reactions to the similar attacks in Charlottesville and Barcelona provide a study not only in double standards, but (worse) the president's actual embrace of racist terror. While saying there were "good people" on the side that was flying the Nazi flag and committed an act of terror in Virginia, he used the attack in Spain as an opportunity to unabashedly call for war crimes against Muslims.
The Rohingya Muslim people of Burma, facing genocide in their homeland, have fled by the thousands to Bangladesh—where they are not being welcomed. Long confined to refugee camps near the border, they now face forcible relocation to an uninhabited offshore island. Shunted from one region to another, they are targeted by the predictable propaganda—stigmatized as Muslim terrorists in Burma, they are now stigmatized by Bangladesh authorities as drug-traffickers.
The US Supreme Court agreed to review the Trump administration's travel ban, partially lifting the temporary injunction that had blocked the ban's enforcement.
The yellow press and much of the "left" react identically to the Manchester terror: by blaming "regime change" in Libya and demonizing refugees from the Arab world.
De facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi rejected a decision by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate crimes by Burma's security forces against minority Rohingya Muslims.
Turkey's aspiring dictator Erdogan (carrying out his own ethnic cleansing against the Kurds) exploits the Srebrenica genocide in vulgar manner and calls the Dutch "Nazis."
Massachusetts has joined Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, and New York in suing to block President Trump's revised travel ban as unconstitutional under the Equal Protection clause.
The New York Police Department reached a new settlement providing greater oversight of intelligence-gathering programs, after a federal judge rejected an earlier deal.
Trump signed a new order barring nationals from six Muslim-majority countries that he hopes will pass judicial muster, but the ACLU pledges to fight it as a "Muslim ban."
The Uighur people of China's Xinjiang province are coming under unprecedented surveillance and militarization amid official fears of terrorism in the far-western region.
