Why a police plan for a DNA data bank in China has sparked privacy worries
Initiative by Inner Mongolia law enforcement to collect male blood samples exposes gaps in legal safeguards
Police in Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia announced last month that they would start collecting DNA samples to update a data bank for identification information used for such items as ID cards and passports, according to a report by China Newsweek magazine.
The police also said at the time that the samples would help in “preventing elderly and children getting lost”, and offered reassurances that personal information and biological samples would be “kept strictly confidential”, according to the September 23 report.
Sudan war sparks global alarm after paramilitary forces kill hundreds at hospital
The Rapid Support Forces have been accused of mass executions and other atrocities after capturing the provincial capital of North Darfur state
World leaders have called for renewed talks to halt the war in Sudan, as reports emerged of widespread atrocities in a city recently captured by the paramilitary group fighting the army-backed government.
Since seizing El-Fasher in western Sudan on Sunday, the Rapid Support Forces have been accused of executing hundreds of people, while about 30,000 civilians have fled the famine-hit capital of North Darfur state.
Sudan’s Deputy Commissioner of Humanitarian Aid, Mona Nour Al-Daem, said on Wednesday that about 2,000 people have been killed in El-Fasher since the RSF entered the city.
The capture after a year-long siege marks a major advance for the group in a civil war that has raged for more than 2½ years, killed over 40,000 people, and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with over 14 million displaced.
RSF commander General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who is sanctioned by the US, on Wednesday acknowledged what he called “abuses” by his forces. In his first comments since the fall of El-Fasher, posted on the Telegram messaging app, he said an investigation was opened. He did not elaborate.
The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas and its Commissioner for Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib called “on all parties to immediately de-escalate” the violence in El-Fasher, which they said “marks a dangerous turning point in the war and threatens to further worsen the already dire humanitarian situation”.
“Civilians being targeted based on their ethnicity underscore the brutality” of the RSF, they said.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the “WHO is appalled and deeply shocked by reports of the tragic killing of more than 460 patients and companions at Saudi Maternity Hospital in El-Fasher”.
“All attacks on healthcare must stop immediately and unconditionally,” he said, calling for a ceasefire, and insisting that all patients, healthcare workers and health facilities must be protected.
The WHO said the Saudi Maternity Hospital was the only partially functioning hospital in the city.
Mini Minawi, the governor of Darfur, shared a video online that purported to show RSF fighters inside the hospital. The minute-long footage showed bodies lying on the floor in pools of blood. A fighter fires a single shot from a Kalashnikov-style rifle into a lone man sitting up, who then slumps to the floor. Other bodies could be seen outside.
Two weeks before the unfolding events in El-Fasher, US officials, including presidential adviser Massad Boulos, met in Cairo with Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to discuss dropping sanctions and possible investment in Sudan’s mineral sector in exchange for his commitment to a peace deal, diplomats with knowledge of the meeting earlier this month said.
The engagement, which was not made public, came after repeated, failed attempts over the course of the last two years by numerous countries to forge a peace deal and bring the warring parties together for talks.
In a report late Tuesday, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab said that RSF fighters continued to carry out mass killings since they took over El-Fasher.
The report, which relied on satellite imagery from Airbus, said it corroborated alleged executions and mass killing by the RSF around the Saudi Maternity Hospital, and at a detention centre at the former Children’s Hospital in the eastern part of the city.
Javid Abdelmoneim, the president of Médecins Sans Frontières, described the situation as “horrific”.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres was “deeply alarmed” by the continued flow of weapons and fighters into Sudan, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The United Arab Emirates, accused of backing the RSF – an allegation it denies – was facing renewed calls to disengage as fighting intensifies.
“I am sickened by the images of the RSF seizing El-Fasher in Sudan. The UAE needs to cease their support,” Democratic congresswoman Sara Jacobs wrote on social media on Tuesday.
“The Trump administration needs to invest in a real peace process that is not rigged to benefit external backers of this horrific war.”
Adding to the turmoil in Sudan, the World Food Programme said on Wednesday that the army-backed government had expelled its country director and emergency coordinator without explanation, deepening concerns about the international community’s ability to respond to a worsening famine in Darfur.
“At a moment when WFP and its partners need to be expanding their reach, this decision forces WFP to implement unplanned leadership changes, jeopardising operations that support millions of vulnerable Sudanese facing extreme hunger, malnutrition, and even starvation,” it said in a statement.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
