The former commander of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide warned that the same crime is taking place in Myanmar, and called on the international community to intervene.

"You’re into the mist of a very slow moving and very deliberate genocide,” Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire told Sky News.

A new report commissioned by the Rwandan government accuses France of being complicit in the 1994 genocide, which saw more than 800,000 people killed.

The Muse Report, written by US law firm Cunningham Levy Muse, was commissioned by the Rwandan government to explore France’s role in the massacres. Published this week, the report states that French officials attempted “to conceal their own role in the genocide and to undermine attempts to prosecute genocide suspects”.

A court in the Netherlands on Friday convicted a man of war crimes in Ethiopia during the Marxist regime of the 1970s. 

The 63 year old man, Eshetu Alemu was deemed by the court to have been in charge of the Dergue regime in Gojam province. 

The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for the “immediate release of two Reuters reporters arrested in Myanmar.

Speaking on Friday, Mr Tillerson further called for “information as to the circumstances around their disappearances.”

The journalists, Wa Lone 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo 37, went missing on Tuesday after being invited to meet police officials over dinner in the northern outskirts of the city of Yangon.

Two Kurdish women and two teenagers have been arrested to be questioned about the sale and distribution of Kurdish newspaper Yeni Ozgur Politika (New Free Politics),” reports the BBC.

The Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign described the arrests as “an attack on freedom of expression.”

The organisation added,

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor this week urged the UN Security Council to take action over a number of outstanding arrest warrants. 

“I call on this Council to prioritise action on the outstanding warrants of arrest issued by the Court,” Fatou Bensouda told the Security Council in New York.

More than 170 people have reportedly been killed in clashes in South Sudan, leading to President Salva Kiir declaring a state of emergency across the country.

The order allows the army to use force if civilians did not lay down weapons, reports the BBC.

The European Union rejected calls by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to join the US in recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

During his first visit to the European Union headquarters in Brussels, Mr Netanyahu said the US decision helped peace, “because recognising reality is the substance of peace, the foundation of peace.”

Nationalists in Corsica have gained a majority in elections for a new regional assembly on the French Mediterranean island, reports the New York Times.

The coalition of moderate and hard line nationalists won 56.5 percent of the vote to defeat President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres marked Genocide Prevention Day on Saturday, with a message that the international community ”must do more” to prevent genocide from occurring, rather than reacting.

Luxury jeweller Cartier announced that it will no longer be buying gemstones from Myanmar, following a campaign to boycott the purchase of “genocide gems” over the Burmese government’s military campaign against Rohingya Muslims, reports The Times.

France and Turkey’s presidents have agreed to work together to persuade the US to reconsider its decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Speaking to Reuters, a Turkish official said the two leaders agreed over the phone to make a joint effort to reverse the US decision.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gerban Bassil called on Arab nations to consider economic sanctions against the US to prevent it moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, reports Reuters.

 Speaking at a meeting of foreign ministers of the Arab League in Cairo, Mr Bassil said,

“Pre-emptive measures must be taken against the decision .. beginning with diplomatic measures, then political, then economic and financial sanctions.”

Hundreds of people attended a rally in Jakarta last week, calling for self-determination for West Papua.
The rally, organised by the Papua Student Alliance (AMP) and the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP), was initially meant to march from the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Jakarta) offices in Central Jakarta to the offices of PT Freeport Indonesia.