They 'shot everyone they saw'
Atrocities come to light in Ukraine, and go to court for Sudan's Darfur region
“Yet it follows not that the bodies of the departed are to be despised and flung aside, and above all of just and faithful men, which bodies as organs and vessels to all good works their spirit has holily used,” wrote St. Augustine in introducing his “On the Care of the Dead.”
We forget how this and other church teaching formed a basis for modern war crimes statutes and the outrage arising from a week of revelations over nearly unchecked Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Care for persons and for the dead is “an office of humanity,” according to Augustine.
Welcome to another installment of Globe Trot where the end of a grotesque week of war finds us in these final Lenten days moving toward Gethsemane and a time for trust in the dark. In that garden Christ embodied both the absence and the presence of God and “holds the wound of God’s silence” in the face of suffering. (2022 Lent Project)
Ukraine: The bodies of more than 400 civilians have been recovered from towns surrounding Kyiv that were under Russian occupation until last week, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova.
Bucha is a city of about 30,000 people, a 40-minute train ride from the capital, with trains in normal times leaving every 4 hours. Last weekend the Ukrainian forces that retook the Kyiv region discovered dead residents on Bucha’s streets. The Russians, eyewitnesses said, “shot everyone they saw.” They pulled men from passing cars, tied hands of many victims, shot and in some instances mutilated them.
The city coroner—who fled Bucha in early March but returned after the Russian retreat—had to hire a backhoe to dig a mass grave in the yard of an Orthodox church. “It was a horror,” he said.
The Kremlin claims the Bucha killings are the work of Ukrainian “radicals,” and it called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Monday. But satellite imagery indicates the bodies had been on the street since early March. All week reporters and photographers arrived to document (warning: graphic images) the wholesale destruction in Bucha.
Evidence throughout the region is growing, not only of killings but also rapes and pillaging by Russian soldiers.
With it, the United States imposed new sanctions—the fifth round since the war began Feb. 24. The UN General Assembly, after an unflinching speech to the UN Security Council by President Zelensky on Tuesday, voted yesterday to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. (China, after abstaining on two previous resolutions condemning Russian actions in Ukraine, opposed this one.)
Ian Bremmer has a good breakdown of what constitutes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, and why they are significant.
Outside Bucha, churches and Christian organizations are falling victim to Russia’s war of aggression. Last week the headquarters for Mission Eurasia in Irpin was destroyed. Russian troops threw its literature into a pile outside and burned it. Church leaders returned to Irpin this week to find destroyed church buildings and burned cars.
UNESCO says overall Russian attacks have damaged 31 religious sites, 26 historic buildings, 6 museums, a library and other cultural sites.
The number of Ukrainians arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum in the United States has more than doubled in less than a week.
Today targeted attacks on civilians continue: Russian missile fire at a railway station in Kramatorsk has killed at least 39 and wounded many. Thousands of people were at the station at the time, heeding calls to evacuate ahead of Russian attacks in the Donbas region.
With the attacks and evacuations, Alex Zaytsev is a Ukrainian-American pastor who plans to stay.
Russia: Here’s a thread from jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny on how most Russians saw what happened in Bucha.
Sudan: Sudanese victims of atrocities committed in Darfur believe justice remains far away, even as they welcomed the beginning of the trial of former militia chief Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The leader of Sudan’s janjaweed militia led a campaign of terror that left 300,000 Darfurians dead.
Abd-al-Rahman, who was arrested in 2020 (13 years after the ICC issued its warrant), has close ties to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto leader of Sudan who joined a transitional government in 2019 but led a coup ousting it last October.
“[al-Burhan] was absolutely instrumental to the devastation caused in Darfur,” Smith says of Burhan, who fought in the region and was a military intelligence colonel coordinating army and militia attacks against civilians in West Darfur state from 2003 to 2005.
I reported from Darfur in 2006, when the conflict had displaced 3 million people. At the time janjaweed gunmen were killing hundreds of villagers and expelling Western aid leaders and diplomats from the area—a pattern leading to war crimes and genocide, and since repeated in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine.
This week protesters again took to the streets in Khartoum, as factions aligned with al-Burhan’s military have drawn up a deal to form a transitional government. It would cement the army's control and bypass pro-democracy groups it shared power with before the October coup.
Pakistan: Prime Minister Imran Khan could face removal from office this weekend, after the country's top court ruled his move to block a no-confidence vote was unconstitutional. Khan has claimed without evidence his political opposition are in a conspiracy with the US to remove him because of his ties to Russia and China.
Here’s a letter sent to friends from a Muslim-background Christian in Pakistan:
Dear Mum, Political crisis in my country leads to currency crash Dollar reached
190 per rupee.Cooking oil 500 per liter, fruits which were 60 to 100
per kg reached 150 to 200. Everything has increased. Pray for the country that this difficulty may lead people to find peace in Jesus Christ the peacemaker. our only hope.
Israel: Security forces shot dead today near a Jaffa mosque a Palestinian gunman who killed two people and wounded 13 others outside a busy bar in central Tel Aviv on Thursday. The attack was the latest in the deadliest wave of attacks since 2016, and took place only blocks from a busy boardwalk and international hotels. It comes with Ramadan already underway, and just before Jews will mark Passover and Christians begin Holy Week.
France: Ahead of a first round of voting on Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron faces a tightening race against the far right’s Marine Le Pen. Moving to the center and attempting a leadership role in Europe has earned him critics from the left and right, including for his efforts on Ukraine.
Mali has become Macron’s Iraq.
Your weekend read: “I had been able to spend only about 11 months with Dad and Mom since my arrival to America nearly 27 years ago,” writes Nury Turkel, upon his father’s death April 3. Turkel is a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and the first Uyghur-American lawyer. He was born in China’s re-education camps in Xinjiang, but managed a student visa to study in the United States. As China’s repression of Uyghurs increased and conditions for his parents worsened, officials banned Turkel from returning. “My parents paid a heavy price for what I have done as a free person in America to fight for Uyghur freedom and dignity.”
When in … Japan, cherry blossom season just gets better and better. This photo was taken by my niece Sophie Shibata, who lives in Kyoto.
At Globe Trot we celebrate the dignity of men, women, boys and girls. Made in the image of God, their works and presence in this life—whether art, science, health, politics, humanities or industry—become therefore important. This energizes our global engagement every day despite tribulation, famine, danger and sword. As an early American Puritan wrote, “The very wheelbarrow is to be with respect looked upon."
Grateful for these updates, Mindy.
Thank you for your objective reporting, Mindy. I really appreciate your work.