Bangladesh
UN team vows to work to end Rohingya crisis
KUTUPALONG — A U.N. Security Council team visiting Bangladesh promised Sunday to work hard to resolve a crisis involving hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled to the country to escape military-led violence in neighboring Myanmar.
The diplomats, who visited the sprawling camps and border points where about 700,000 Rohingya have taken shelter, said their visit was an opportunity to see the situation firsthand.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, said he and his fellow team members would not look away from the crisis after their visit, though he warned that there are no simple solutions.
“It’s very necessary to come and see everything at place here in Bangladesh and Myanmar. But there is no magic solution, there is no magic stick to solve all these issues,” he said at a news conference at the Kutupalong refugee camp in the coastal town of Cox’s Bazar.
Vatican City
Chile victims of clergy abuse meet with pope
Men who were sexually abused by a priest in Chile described the private talks they’ve had so far with Pope Francis at the Vatican as very helpful and respectful Sunday.
James Hamilton, one of three men staying at the hotel where the pope lives, tweeted that his more than two hours of conversation with Francis were “enormously constructive.” Jose Andres Murillo tweeted that the importance of understanding sexual abuse as “abuse of power” was stressed during his time with the pope.
The third man, Juan Carlos Cruz, was due to meet with Francis on Sunday.
During a January visit to Chile, Francis sought to discredit the men’s claims that a bishop covered up their abuse, calling the victims’ assertions “calumny.” The pope invited them to Vatican City as his guests after his remarks provoked an outcry.
Francis has requested the Holy See not to reveal the content of his talks with the abuse victims, saying his priorities were listening to them and asking their forgiveness.
In a tweet, Cruz said he was “very satisfied” by how the conversation had gone with the pope.
Iran
Report: Authorities destroying mass graves
Iran is destroying or redeveloping the sites of mass graves holding those executed in a 1988 wartime purge that killed as many as 5,000 people, a report released Monday alleges.
The joint report by the London-based group Justice for Iran and Amnesty International calls new attention to the mass executions carried out nearly 30 years ago, which came at the end of Iran’s bloody war with Iraq.
Justice for Iran alleges in the report that it has identified over 120 locations in the country it believes were used as mass graves then. The report focuses on seven sites for which the group says it has reliable testimony, photo and video evidence and satellite imagery.
It says Iranian authorities targeted the sites in areas including Iran’s Gilan, East Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Khuzestan, Khorasan Razavi and Tehran provinces in different ways.
The graves hold those killed in executions that came at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq, which began when Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980. By 1988, 1 million people had been killed in a conflict that featured trench warfare, Iranian human-wave attacks and chemical weapons assaults launched by Iraq.
