The world at a glance ... NEWS 9
Urumqi, China
Mass rape: Women are being systemati-
cally raped and tortured in China’s huge
internment camps for ethnic Uighur
Muslims in Xinjiang, according to
escaped detainees and former camp work-
ers. Tursunay Ziawudun, who spent nine
months in the camps and fled to the U.S.
after her release, told the BBC that she
was tortured with electric shocks in her vagina and gang-raped
three times. “There were many people in those cells who lost
their minds,” said Ziawudun, 42. An ethnic Uzbek woman hired
to teach Mandarin to detainees said she witnessed a public gang
rape of a young woman by Chinese policemen. As part of China’s
attempt to destroy the Uighur minority, camp doctors have forcibly
sterilized many women in Xinjiang. The U.S. has labeled Chinese
treatment of Uighurs a genocide.Tigray, Ethiopia
Eritreans accused of atrocities: Citing “credible reports of looting,
sexual violence, assaults in refugee camps, and other human rights
abuses,” the U.S. last week called on Eritrean troops to withdraw
from Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Ethiopia was controlled by ethnic
Tigrayans during much of its two-decade border war with Eritrea,
a conflict that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed—an ethnic
Oromo—ended in 2018. When Abiy sent troops to Tigray in
November to quell what he said was a political rebellion, thou-
sands of Eritrean troops unofficially joined the fight on the side
of Ethiopian government forces. Eyewitnesses say the Eritreans
have been going house to house, killing men and boys and raping
women. Tigrayan leaders say that some 52,000 people have so far
died in the fighting and at least 3 million have fled their homes.
They say the Eritreans have also looted grain stores, and hunger is
now widespread.Perth, Australia
Lockdown inferno: A five-day total lockdown was imposed on
Australia’s fourth-largest city, Perth, after a single case of Covid-
was detected this week—but residents had to break quarantine
when a raging bushfire reached the city’s outskirts. Thousands of
people had to evacuate in the middle of the night, unsure where
they could go and fearful that evacuation
centers could become superspreader sites.
Firefighters were hampered by new regulations,
meant to prevent virus spread, that restrict the
number of people allowed in each fire truck.
Australia has largely beaten Covid with its
strategy of swift and strict lockdowns.
Before this week’s positive case—a
guard at a quarantine hotel—all busi-
nesses had been open in Perth.Moscow
Navalny sentenced: Russia drew international
condemnation this week after a Moscow court
sentenced opposition leader Alexei Navalny
to more than two years in prison. Navalny,
who has exposed the corruption of President
Vladimir Putin and his allies, was poisoned
last August by suspected Kremlin agents who
smeared the nerve agent Novichok in his
underwear. Airlifted to Germany for life-saving
treatment, he was arrested upon his return to
Moscow last month. Judge Natalia Repnikova found that his trip
abroad violated parole for an earlier—and bogus—fraud convic-
tion. During a speech in court, Navalny joked about how history
will remember Russia’s current leader. “There was Alexander
the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise,” he said. “Now we’ll
have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants.”Naypyidaw, Myanmar
Suu Kyi arrested in coup: Myanmar’s military has overthrown the
country’s civilian government and placed Aung San Suu Kyi—a
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader—
under house arrest. The military has claimed with no evidence that
there was fraud in the November elections, in which Suu Kyi’s
National League for Democracy party won 83 percent of the vote.
On what was supposed to be the first day of parliament since the
elections, troops surrounded government quarters where Suu Kyi
and other NLD officials were staying and declared a state of emer-
gency. “I urge people not to accept this,” Suu Kyi said in a state-
ment. The military said the nation’s commander in chief, Gen. Min
Aung Hlaing, would take charge for a year and hold new elections
to usher in a “genuine, discipline-flourishing multiparty democratic
system.”
Suu Kyi, 75, is the daughter of the founder of mod-
ern Burma, as Myanmar used to be known. After a
military coup in 1962, she led the pro-democracy
movement and spent decades under house arrest
before coming to power through free elections in- Suu Kyi can’t be president because her hus-
band and children are British citizens, but she
has wielded power from behind the scenes. She
drew criticism for failing to stop the military’s
murderous expulsion of hundreds of thou-
sands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar
in 2017. Her supporters say she was never
truly in charge, and that the military kept its
power while allowing a veneer of democracy.
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Under house arrestSending a messageStay at home, unless there’s a fire.A Uighur detention camp