HRW Reports Grave Abuses Amid Renewed Fighting in Mali
Human Rights Watch has enumerated multiple rights violations, accusing all parties to the conflict of unlawfully attacking civilians and of destroying and looting their homes. The rights group's senior researcher, Ilaria Allegrozzi, said that as fighting has flared up again, the warring parties are "repeating former patterns of harming civilians".
Since 2012, successive governments in Mali have battled Islamist and separatist armed groups. Most recently, on April 25, the Al-Qaeda-linked group Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) carried out coordinated attacks across the country. JNIM has joined forces with Tuareg fighters of the Azawad Liberation Front, who are seeking to overthrow the military junta led by Gen. Assimi Goïta - a regime currently backed by Russian fighters from the Africa Corps (formerly known as the Wagner Group).
InFocus
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Human Rights Watch senior researcher Ilaria Allegrozzi has called on Islamist militants laying siege on Mali's capital, Bamako, to immediately "cease all attacks targeting civilians or civilian objects" and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the population.
Allegrozzi''s call comes as the country's military junta announced it is temporarily shutting down schools and
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Human Rights Watch has called on the military junta and its allied Russia-backed Wagner Group to end the executions of ethnic Fulani men in the country and make known the whereabouts of those they have detained since the beginning of the year.
The rights group said in their joint operation against Islamist armed groups, the allied forces executed at least 12 Fulani men and forcibly disappeared about 81 others
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Human Rights Watch has called on the Malian government to conduct a "credible and independent" investigation into the deaths of 22 men who were taken into military custody on May 12. The rights group said the men were killed in "apparent extrajudicial executions", quoting residents who said the victims were in two mass graves with their throats slit.
The men were arrested during a military
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Militants in Mali (file photo).
