Ethiopia, China, Syria.

Today's three stories you should know.

Jan 29, 2022

Ethiopia

As mentioned in many previous newsletters, people starving to death around the world - staggeringly - rarely makes international headlines. The World Food Programme today said about 40 percent of people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where the country’s 15-month civil war has been centered, are experiencing an “extreme lack of food.” Forty percent of the population amounts to some 2.2 million people. Tigray’s health bureau said yesterday it had recorded more than 5,000 people dying from starvation and disease, 350 of them young children, in just one part of the region.

China

Several human rights groups today urged athletes attending the Winter Olympics in China to speak out against what they called “the genocide games.” China stands accused, according to multiple well-documented reports, of detaining one million Uyghur Muslims in detention camps as part of what many are deeming a genocidal campaign. “I personally believe that you should use your platform and your privilege and this historic opportunity. You have to speak out against the wave of genocide,” activist Lhadon Tethong said, in a direct message to athletes.

Syria

The UN’s counterterrorism chief, Vladimir Voronkov, today told the Security Council that an attack on a prison in Syria by ISIS, as the group attempted to free thousands of its members, highlighted an urgent need to deal with the 12,000 ISIS-linked detainees from more than 50 countries, which include women and children, being held at various prisons in northeast Syria. Voronkov called on countries with citizens in the jails to repatriate them and their families, and bring them to justice at home.