News headlines in June 2023, page 17

One of the world’s most celebrated poets is also one of the closest to the heart of the UN. Kahlil Gibran wrote The Prophet a century ago, and this milestone was marked at a special exhibit at the UN, which is also celebrating 75 years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 09 (IPS) - Children were thrown into the air and stabbed and cut with knives and machetes. The attackers first opened fire on the victims of the massacre before finishing them off with knives so that none of the 244 indigenous people of the village would survive. The 1904 massacre permanently marked the Xokleng people and may play a decisive role in the future of the native peoples of Brazil.

LONDON, Jun 09 (IPS) - Nothing was more predictable than repression. Merely for holding candles and flowers, people were taken away by Hong Kong’s police.

The occasion was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, 4 June 1989. Hong Kong was until recently home to mass annual vigils where thousands gathered to keep alive the memory of that day. But that’s all gone now in the crackdown that followed large-scale protests for democracy that erupted in 2019.

Plans to help the people of Ukraine following the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam are centred on saving people “right now”, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told UN News in an interview on Friday.

The UN has strongly condemned an attack on a peacekeeping patrol in Mali which left one ‘blue helmet’ from Burkina Faso dead and eight others with serious injuries.

The UN on Friday announced that following serious allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse, an entire unit of 60 peacekeepers from Tanzania formerly based in the western part of the Central African Republic (CAR), is to be repatriated.

The UN rights office (OHCHR) sounded the alarm on Friday over the detention in Yemen’s capital Sana’a of followers of the minority Baha’i faith - and a subsequent sermon by a leading cleric targeting them and other religious groups.

Amid media reports of widespread theft of aid deliveries in Ethiopia, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced on Friday the immediate temporary suspension of food assistance to the country.

Warring parties in Sudan must do more to protect civilians caught up in the conflict, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday, in response to recent deadly attacks and ongoing violations.

The humanitarian situation following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine is still a “moving target”, immediate needs are “huge”, and concerns are rising for what the future holds, according to the UN’s top official in the country, Denise Brown.