Tag Archives: Civil War

Mayor says Lee statue must go as debate over U.S. slave past rages

The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee sits at the center of the park formerly dedicated to him, the site of recent violent demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. August 18, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Brandon Shulleeta

RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) – The mayor of Charlottesville called on Friday for a special session of Virginia’s legislature to let localities decide the fate of Confederate monuments like the statue at the center of a far-right rally last week that turned deadly.

Mayor Mike Signer issued his appeal amid an increasingly contentious debate over what to do with memorials to Confederate figures, who fought for the preservation of slavery during the U.S. Civil War, that are seen by opponents as offensive.

In what has become the biggest domestic crisis of his presidency, Donald Trump has been sharply criticized, including by fellow Republicans, for blaming Charlottesville’s violence not only on the white nationalist rally organizers, but also the anti-racism activists who opposed them.

“Whether they go to museums, cemeteries, or other willing institutions, it is clear that they no longer can be celebrated in shared civic areas,” Signer said in a statement, referring to the statues. “We can, and we must, respond by denying the Nazis and the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek.”

A 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, was killed and several people were injured when a man crashed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters at last Saturday’s rally.

A 20-year-old Ohio man has been charged with her murder. On Friday, he was handed five new felony counts of malicious wounding, with the charges related to serious injuries inflicted on people hit by the vehicle, Charlottesville police said.

Some attendees at the rally were heavily armed, and Signer said in his statement he was also calling for legislation that would let localities ban open or concealed carry of weapons at some public events. And he said he wanted to find a way to memorialize Heyer’s name and legacy.

Heyer’s mother told a memorial service on Thursday that her daughter’s killers tried to silence her. “Well guess what? You just magnified her,” Susan Bro told the service.

Signer said that memorial was a profound turning point for him, and that it made him realize the significance of the city’s statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee had changed.

“Its historical meaning now, and forevermore, will be a magnet for terrorism,” the mayor said in his statement.

RALLYING POINTS FOR RACISTS

Also on Friday, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed an executive order temporarily banning protests at the Lee Monument in downtown Richmond while new regulations governing demonstrations are put in place, the governor’s office said.

In many places, Confederate monuments have become rallying points for white nationalists. Efforts to remove many such statues have been stepped up since the Charlottesville rally, which was called by far-right groups to protest against plans to remove the Lee statue.

In Maryland on Friday, authorities took down a statue of a 19th century chief justice, Roger Taney, who wrote an infamous 1857 ruling known as the Dred Scott decision that reaffirmed slavery and said black people could not be U.S. citizens.

Trump on Thursday decried the removal of such monuments, drawing stinging rebukes from fellow Republicans in a controversy that inflamed racial tensions nationwide.

The mother of Heyer, the woman killed in Charlottesville, said in a television interview on Friday that after Trump’s comments, “I’m not talking to the president now.”

“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m not forgiving him for that,” Susan Bro told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

There are more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces across the United States, with 700 of those being monuments and statues, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

The large majority of these were erected long after the Civil War ended in 1865, according to the center, with many going up early in the 20th century amid a backlash among segregationists against the civil rights movement.

More than half a dozen have been taken down since Saturday.

(Reporting by Brandon Shulleeta in Richmond, Virginia; Additional reporting by Barry Yeoman in Durham, North Carolina, Gina Cherelus in New York, Susan Heavey and Ian Simpson in Washington, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Frances Kerry and Lisa Shumaker)

Another statue removed amid debate over symbols of U.S. slave past

The statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney is seen on a flatbed trailer after it was removed from outside the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland, U.S. early August 18, 2017 in this image obtained from social media. Courtesy @BeeprB/Handout via REUTERS

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Maryland authorities took down a statue on Friday of a 19th century chief justice who wrote an infamous pro-slavery decision, the latest example of action across the United States over memorials that have triggered racially charged protests.

Meanwhile, the mother of a woman killed when a man crashed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally in the Virginia city of Charlottesville on Saturday said that after hearing Donald Trump’s latest comments, she did not want to talk to the president.

In what has become the biggest domestic crisis of his presidency, Trump has been strongly criticized, including by many fellow Republicans, for blaming the Charlottesville violence not only on the rally organizers, but also the anti-racism activists who opposed them.

Crews in Maryland’s state capital, Annapolis, removed the 145-year-old bronze statue of Roger Taney from its base outside State House overnight using a crane, local media showed.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, had called on Wednesday for the monument to be taken down immediately. Taney’s 1857 ruling, known as the Dred Scott decision, reaffirmed slavery and said black people could not be U.S. citizens.

Opponents of monuments to the Confederate states, which fought in the U.S. Civil War for the preservation of slavery, view them as a festering symbol of racism. Supporters say they honor American history, and some of the monuments have become rallying points for white nationalists.

In North Carolina, Durham County Sheriff Mike Andrews said his officers were preparing for a possible march by white nationalists in front of a Durham city courthouse on Friday, the News & Observer newspaper reported. Protesters tore down a Confederate statue in the city earlier this week.

Several hundred anti-racist demonstrators took to the streets as a result, some carrying a banner reading “We will not be intimidated.” Some downtown businesses closed early.

“Tensions are high right now,” said Taylor Tate, an employee of Scratch Bakery, which shut its doors. “We would rather make sure everyone can get out of the way if anything does happen.”

Efforts to remove many such statues around the country have been stepped up since the Charlottesville rally, called by white nationalists to protest plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

‘I’M NOT FORGIVING HIM’

Trump on Thursday decried the removal of Confederate monuments, drawing stinging rebukes from fellow Republicans in a controversy that has inflamed racial tensions nationwide.

The mother of Heather Heyer, the woman killed in Charlottesville, said in a television interview on Friday that after Trump’s comments, “I’m not talking to the president now.”

“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m not forgiving him for that,” Susan Bro told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

She added she would tell Trump: “Think before you speak.”

“I’ve had death threats already … because of what I’m doing right this second – I’m talking,” Bro told MSNBC separately on Thursday.

There are more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces across the United States, with 700 of those being monuments and statues, the Southern Poverty Law Center says.

The large majority of these were erected long after the Civil War ended in 1865, according to the center, with many going up early in the 20th century amid a backlash among segregationists against the civil rights movement.

More than half a dozen have been taken down since Saturday.

In Lexington, Kentucky, government leaders voted on Thursday in favor of moving two Confederate statues from their plinths outside a former courthouse that is being turned into a visitor center, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray said.

(Additional reporting by Barry Yeoman in Durham, Gina Cherelus in New York and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Frances Kerry)

Statue of 19th century slavery advocate removed in Maryland

(Reuters) – Authorities in Maryland on Friday removed a statue of a 19th century Chief Justice who wrote the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision in the latest example of action over memorials that have sparked protests across the United States.

Crews in state capital Annapolis hitched straps overnight to the 145-year-old bronze statue outside State House and lifted it from its base with a crane, according to media reports and social media postings.

“While we cannot hide from our history – nor should we – the time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history,” Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said in a statement on Wednesday.

Chief Justice Roger Taney’s landmark 1857 decision said: “The negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Legal scholars say it is one of the worst decisions in the Supreme Court’s history.

Authorities and protesters have since Saturday removed monuments in several U.S. cities to the Civil War Confederacy of states that held slaves, arguing they are inappropriate and offensive.

One person died and others were injured in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday when a car plowed into people protesting a demonstration by hundreds of white supremacists who opposed the removal of a monument.

President Donald Trump decried on Thursday the removal of the monuments, echoing the views of white nationalists. His comments drew a rebuke from fellow Republicans in a controversy that has inflamed racial tensions.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

Museum or dumpster? U.S. cities wrestle with Confederate statues’ fate

Museum or dumpster? U.S. cities wrestle with Confederate statues' fate

By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – As communities across the United States redouble efforts to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces after a far-right rally in Virginia turned deadly, city leaders now face another conundrum: what to do with the statues.

President Donald Trump described them on Thursday as “beautiful statues and monuments,” part of the history and culture of the country that will be “greatly missed.”

But they are seen by many Americans as symbols of racism and glorifications of the Confederate defense of slavery in the Civil War, fueling the debate over race and politics in America.

Cities are speeding up their removal since Saturday’s rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a suspected white supremacist crashed a car into a crowd, killing one woman, during protests against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, who headed the Confederate army in the American Civil War.

Since Monday, officials in Baltimore and Gainesville, Florida, have taken down statues while another was torn from its plinth by protesters in Durham, North Carolina. Calls for more to be removed have grown louder.

This has created an additional headache for cities and spurred another debate: how to dispose of the statues once they are taken down.

Some have suggested museums, others putting them in Confederate cemeteries and one city councilman proposed using their metal to make likenesses of civil rights leaders.

“Melting them down and using the materials to make monuments for Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, Harriet Tubman would be powerful!” Baltimore city councilman Brandon Scott wrote on Twitter this week. The mayor’s office said that was unlikely.

UNLIKE EASTERN EUROPE

The debate contrasts sharply with how Eastern Europe handled thousands of statues following the collapse of Communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Often pulled down by angry mobs, some of the statues ended up in dumpsters and others in museums to teach people the evils of totalitarian regimes. In Budapest, a for-profit park hosts about 40 statues of communist heroes such as Karl Marx.

In the U.S. South, the debate still rages between those nostalgic for the past and those who view the monuments as painful reminders of slavery.

There are more than 700 Confederate statues in the United States according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, most of them created in the 1910s and 1920s, decades after the Civil War ended. They were intended to reassert the power of white people, said Jonathan Leib, Chair of Political Science and Geography at Old Dominion University in Virginia.

“They’re visible, tangible expressions of power,” he said on Thursday.

In Birmingham, Alabama, Mayor William Bell ordered workers to hide a Confederate statue behind plywood boards, while the city challenges a state law banning the removal of such monuments.

“They represent acts of sedition against the United States of America and treason against the United State of America,” he told Reuters on Wednesday.

But sympathies persist, as both lawmakers and citizens resist plans to remove them.

“I absolutely disagree with this sanitization of history,” Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, a Republican, told WVHU radio on Tuesday.

PROPER CONTEXT

For now, many of the removed statues gather dust in warehouses or, as in the case of New Orleans, sit disassembled in a city scrap yard, where two were found by local reporters.

In Baltimore, statues are now in storage, according to the mayor’s spokesman Anthony McCarthy, who said they will likely end up in a Confederate cemetery or a museum.

Many city legislators have expressed interest in relocating statues to museums, where they might be viewed as historical artifacts and not rallying points for racism.

Anna Lopez Brosche, city council president in Jacksonville, Florida, encouraged the removal of Confederate statues from public property on Monday and proposed placing them where they will be “historically contextualized.”

In Lexington, Kentucky, Mayor Jim Gray has proposed removing statues from one city park, formerly the site of a slave auction block and whipping post.

Meanwhile, a statue removed in Gainesville, Florida, on Monday is being returned to a local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which erected it in 1904.

The group, founded in 1894 by women descended from Confederate soldiers, put up many of the statues as part of their goal to display what they call “a truthful history” of the Civil War and mark places “made historic by Confederate valor.”

Some historians argue that, as in Eastern Europe, the Confederate monuments should be preserved, but in the proper context.

“A slave whipping post isn’t something we want up, just out in public without interpretation,” said W. Fitzhugh Brundage, American History professor at the University of North Carolina.

“But on the other hand, if you have it in the Smithsonian where people can see it and it can be properly interpreted, it’s a valuable teaching tool.”

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Additional reporting by Taylor Harris and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Dina Kyriakidou and Matthew Lewis)

Confederate monuments removed in Baltimore: media

(Reuters) – Work crews took down four Confederate monuments in Baltimore overnight into Wednesday, days after white nationalists led a deadly protest over the planned removal of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Monuments to Robert E. Lee, commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army in the American Civil War, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, a Confederate general, were dismantled from the city’s Wyman Park Dell after the city council on Monday approved the removal of four statues, the Baltimore Sun reported.

“It’s done,” Mayor Catherine Pugh told the newspaper on Wednesday. “They need to come down. My concern is for the safety and security of our people. We moved as quickly as we could.”

The swift dismantling of the monuments, which Pugh said began at 11:30 p.m. EDT on Tuesday (0330 GMT on Wednesday) and finished at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT), comes after a rally by white nationalists protesting against plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee sparked clashes with anti-racism demonstrators in Charlottesville on Saturday.

The rally turned deadly when a car rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other people.

“Following the acts of domestic terrorism carried out by white supremacist terrorist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend, cities must act decisively and immediately by removing these monuments,” Baltimore city councilman Brandon Scott wrote in a resolution calling for the removal of the statues, according to the Sun.

Saturday’s violence appears to have accelerated the drive to remove memorials, flags and other reminders of the Confederate cause across the United States.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Andrew Bolton)

Pace of airstrikes, clashes in Yemen sharply higher in 2017: report

People gather at the site of a Saudi-led air strike on an outskirt of the northwestern city of Saada, Yemen August 4, 2017. REUTERS/Naif Rahma

By Sami Aboudi

DUBAI (Reuters) – Yemen suffered more airstrikes in the first half of this year than in the whole of 2016, increasing the number of civilian deaths and forcing more people to flee their homes, according to a report by international aid agencies.

The pace of clashes on the ground has also intensified this year, especially around Yemen’s third largest city, Taiz, which is besieged by the Iran-aligned Houthis, said the report.

The number of airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 totaled 5,676, according to the report by the Protection Cluster in Yemen, which is led by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), up from 3,936 for all 2016.

Average monthly clashes between the warring sides have increased by 56 percent from last year, the figures also showed.

“(We are concerned by) the increasing impact on the civilian population, particularly in terms of civilian casualties, fresh displacement and deteriorating conditions,” said Shabia Mantoo, UNHCR spokesperson for Yemen.

Yemen’s nearly 30-month-old civil war pits President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s Saudi-backed government, which controls south and eastern Yemen, against the Houthis, who control the more populated north and eastern parts of the country.

The conflict shows no sign of ending and U.N.-sponsored peace efforts remain deadlocked.

The report did not identify any party as being responsible for the airstrikes, but the Saudi-led coalition backing Hadi has controlled Yemeni airspace since the war began in March 2015.

U.S. forces have also conducted occasional airstrikes or raids using drones.

A coalition spokesman declined to comment on the report.

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

Most clashes and air strikes have been concentrated in frontline provinces, including Taiz, Saada, Hajjah, Sanaa, al-Jawf and Marib, the report said.

The United Nations has put the death toll since the war began in March 2015 at more than 10,000.

Figures released in a periodic update issued in August by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), with input from other aid agencies in Yemen, estimated the civilian death toll as of April 2017 at 8,053, with more than 45,000 injured, but the real figures could be much higher.

“(The figures are considered) to significantly undercount the true extent of the casualties, considering the diminished reporting capacity at health facilities and people’s difficulties accessing healthcare,” the OCHA said.

The war has destroyed much Yemeni infrastructure, including the main Hodeidah port, as well as hospitals, schools and roads, pushing the country to the verge of famine and causing a cholera epidemic that has killed some 2,000 people since April.

The number of displaced people stands at two million, while 946,000 people are internally displaced returnees, so more than 10 percent of Yemen’s 27 million population are either displaced or facing the immediate challenges of return, the OCHA said.

“Ongoing hostilities in Yemen, compounded by cholera and widespread food insecurity, continue to increase the humanitarian needs of an already vulnerable population,” said UNHCR’s Mantoo.

(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Undeterred, U.S. cities ramp up removal of Confederate statues

A Sheriff's deputy stands near the toppled statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the old Durham County Courthouse in Durham, North Carolina, U.S. August 14, 2017. REUTERS/Kate Medley

By Chris Kenning

(Reuters) – Undeterred by the violence over the planned removal of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, municipal leaders in cities across the United States said they would step up efforts to pull such monuments from public spaces.

The mayors of Baltimore and Lexington, Kentucky, said they would push ahead with plans to remove statues caught up in a renewed national debate over whether monuments to the U.S. Civil War’s pro-slavery Confederacy are symbols of heritage or hate.

Officials in Memphis, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida, announced new initiatives on Monday aimed at taking down Confederate monuments. And Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, a Republican, urged lawmakers to rid the state’s Capitol of a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and early member of the Ku Klux Klan.

“This is a time to stand up and speak out,” Lexington Mayor Jim Gray said in an interview on Monday. He had moved up the announcement of his city’s efforts after the Charlottesville violence.

The clashes between white supremacists and counter protesters that left three dead in Charlottesville on Saturday, including two police officers whose helicopter crashed, appeared to have accelerated the push to remove memorials, flags and other reminders of the Confederate cause.

Some opponents appeared to take matters into their own hands. A crowd of demonstrators stormed the site of a Confederate monument outside a courthouse in Durham, North Carolina, on Monday and toppled the bronze statue from its base.

Local television news footage showed numerous protesters taking turns stomping and kicking the fallen statue as dozens of others stood cheering and yelling.

In Baltimore, a Confederate monument of a dying Confederate soldier embraced by a winged angel-like figure was found defaced by red paint, apparently an act of vandalism carried out over the weekend, the Baltimore Sun reported.

The drive by civil rights groups and others to do away with Confederate monuments gained momentum after an avowed white supremacist murdered nine African-Americans at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015. The deadly shooting rampage ultimately led to the removal of a Confederate flag from the statehouse in Columbia.

In all, as of April, at least 60 symbols of the Confederacy had been removed or renamed across the United States since 2015, according to the latest tally by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But such efforts also have made Confederate flags and memorials a rallying point for white supremacists and other groups of the extreme right, according to Ryan Lenz, a spokesman for the law center, which tracks hate groups.

While opponents of Confederate memorials view them as an affront to African-Americans and ideals of racial diversity and equality, supporters of such symbols argue they represent an important part of history, honoring those who fought and died for the rebellious Southern states in the Civil War.

New Orleans’ efforts to dismantle four Confederate statues sparked protests and litigation that became so contentious that crews waited until the middle of the night to remove a 14-foot-tall bronze likeness of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard on horseback in May.

The violence in Charlottesville is unlikely to bolster the argument about the value of maintaining the monuments for historical value, Carl Jones, chief of heritage operations for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said in a telephone interview. But he said he would continue to make that case.

“Where does it stop?” he said. “The Egyptian pyramids were built by slaves. Do we tear those down?”

Across the country, 718 Confederate monuments and statues remain, with nearly 300 of them in Georgia, Virginia or North Carolina, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

There are also 109 public schools named for Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis or other icons of the Civil War-era South, the group said.

On Monday, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh said in a statement she intended to move forward in removing several city statutes, including those of Lee and Stonewall Jackson. She stopped short of endorsing some city council members’ calls for the monuments to be destroyed.

Memphis officials said the city would take legal action to get state approval to remove a Confederate statue there. The city council voted to remove it in 2015, but the effort was blocked by the state historical commission, according to a WREG-TV.

In Kentucky, Gray said he had heard opposition to his plans but also had received offers to pay for the statutes to be relocated as early as this fall.

“We expected criticism,” he said. “It’s a challenging and polarizing time – and issue.”

(Story corrects South Carolina capital to Columbia from Charleston in ninth paragraph.)

(Reporting by Chris Kenning; Additing reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Richard Chang)

South Sudanese refugees in Uganda near million mark

South Sudanese youths match to attend Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby's visit to Mirieyi refugees settlement camp in Adjumani district, Uganda August 2, 2017. REUTERS/James Akena

By Francis Mukasa

MIREYI, Uganda (Reuters) – Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, prayed on Wednesday with South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda, home to a nearly million fugitives from a four-year civil war in the world’s youngest nation.

Around 1.8 million people have fled South Sudan since fighting broke out in December 2013, sparking what has become the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis and largest cross-border exodus in Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Most have fled south to Uganda, whose open-door refugee policy is now creaking under the sheer weight of numbers in sprawling camps carved out of the bush.

“The Bible tells us that the refugee is specially loved by God,” Welby, leader of the 85-million strong Anglican Communion, said as he joined in prayers in a camp in the northern district of Moyo.

“Which means you who are refugees are specially loved by God, that Jesus himself was a refugee and he loves you and he stands with you and the suffering that you have is the suffering that he knows. So I pray for you, I will advocate for you.”

Officials from the United Nations UNHCR refugee agency say $674 million is needed to pay for the basic needs of the refugees this year, but so far only 21 percent of those funds have been secured.

The total number of refugees is due to pass a million in the next week, UNHCR officials said. Nor is there any sign of a let-up in the stream of desperate civilians.

Some days it is only hundreds. On others, it is thousands.

In the camps, refugees are already on half their standard food rations of 12kg of maize a month, and now critical services such as health and education are facing cut-backs, UNHCR officials said.

In Bidi-Bidi, the largest of the refugee camps, 180 South Sudanese died in the first six months of the year, nearly half of them small children.

“We came here to hide ourselves from death,” said 31-year-old Moro Bullen, standing next to a row of 16 freshly dug graves, mounds of rust-red earth arranged in three neat rows. Half of the graves were only a meter long.

“We did not come here to die. We came here to be rescued.”

SPLINTERED CONFLICT

Although the roots of the war lie in the animosity between President Salva Kiir, who hails from South Sudan’s powerful Dinka ethnic group, and his former deputy, Riek Machar, a Nuer, it has splintered into a patchwork of overlapping conflicts.

Machar is under house arrest in South Africa, having fled there last year to seek medical attention, but there has been little let-up in the levels of conflict, especially in the Equatoria region abutting Uganda.

“It has evolved significantly. There are many actors. Because there are many actors now it has become more violent. The prognosis is not encouraging in terms of achieving peace,” said Brian Adeba of the Washington-based Enough Project.

Refugees have told Reuters of towns and villages emptied by government forces, dominated by the Dinka, with men, women and children summarily executed, and their bodies mutilated.

Rights groups have also reported widespread rape and looting that the United Nations says indicates ethnic cleansing. It has also warned of a possible genocide in a country that only came into being in 2011, when South Sudan split from Sudan.

The government has denied the reports, and said its troops are merely conducting operations against rebel militiamen.

(Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Ed Cropley and Alison Williams)

Trump ends CIA arms support for anti-Assad Syria rebels: U.S. officials

A Free Syrian Army fighter carries weapons as he walks past damaged buildings in a rebel-held part of the southern city of Deraa, Syria July 9, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Faqir

By John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration has decided to halt the CIA’s covert program to equip and train certain rebel groups fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, two U.S. officials said, a move sought by Assad ally Russia.

The U.S. decision, said one of the officials, is part of an effort by the administration to improve relations with Russia, which along with Iranian-supported groups has largely succeeded in preserving Assad’s government in the six-year-civil war.

The CIA program began in 2013 as part of efforts by the administration of then-President Barack Obama to overthrow Assad, but produced little success, said the officials, both of whom are familiar with the program and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Washington Post was first to report the program’s suspension on Wednesday. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders declined to comment on the topic at the White House briefing.

The CIA also declined to comment.

The decision was made with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and CIA Director Mike Pompeo after they consulted with lower ranking officials and before Trump’s July 7 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany. It was not part of U.S.-Russian negotiations on a ceasefire in southwestern Syria, the two officials said.

One of the officials said the United States was not making a major concession, given Assad’s grip on power, although not on all of Syria, “but it’s a signal to Putin that the administration wants to improve ties to Russia.”

Trump is under intense scrutiny by Congress and a special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump’s campaign had ties to the activity. Russia has denied U.S. intelligence agencies’ allegations of Moscow meddling, and Trump has denied collusion between his campaign and Russians.

A downside of the CIA program, one of the officials said, is that some armed and trained rebels defected to Islamic State and other radical groups, and some members of the previous administration favored abandoning the program.

Before assuming office in January, Trump suggested he could end support for Free Syrian Army groups and give priority to the fight against Islamic State.

A separate effort by the U.S. military effort to train, arm and support other Syrian rebel groups with air strikes and other actions will continue, the officials said.

However, aside from air strikes after the Syrian military launched a chemical weapons attack, the Trump administration has not increased military support from the limits set by the Obama administration.

(Reporting by John Walcott; additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Grant McCool)

U.N. says world needs to know about Yemen, journalists need access

Members of a special security force loyal to the Houthi rebels perform an oath as they take part in a military parade at the Tahrir Square in downtown Sanaa, Yemen July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations on Wednesday demanded media access to report on the “man-made catastrophe” in Yemen after a Saudi Arabia-led coalition blocked three foreign journalists from traveling on a U.N. aid flight to the Houthi rebel-controlled capital Sanaa.

“Steps like this do not help,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York. “This has been a large man-made humanitarian problem, the world needs to know and journalists need to have access.”

The coalition, which intervened in the Yemen conflict in 2015 in support of the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, controls the airspace over Yemen and can prevent any flights made without prior permission.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is backing Yemen government forces fighting the Iran-allied Houthi rebels, prevented the U.N. flight from departing Djibouti on Tuesday because the journalists were due to travel.

Haq said the U.N. humanitarian air service had been allowed to take off on Wednesday and had landed in Sanaa carrying 26 humanitarian aid workers, but not the three journalists from the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“This partially explains why Yemen, which is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, is not getting enough attention in international media,” Haq said.

“The lack of coverage is hindering humanitarian workers efforts to draw the attention of the international community and donors to the man-made catastrophe that the country is experiencing,” he said.

Top United Nations officials last week slammed the warring parties in Yemen and their international allies for fueling an unprecedented deadly cholera outbreak, driving millions closer to famine and hindering humanitarian aid access.

Since the end of April, the World Health Organization said there have been more than 320,000 suspected cases of cholera – a disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhea – and 1,742 deaths across more than 90 percent of the Arabian Peninsula country.

Haq said the journalists had been carrying visas from the Yemen government.

A source in the coalition said that the Yemeni government was the only party entitled to issue visas for foreigners and that entry must be made via commercial flights through Aden airport, which is under its control.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Diane Craft)