AHS Comparative Government

The United Nations warns that as many as 75,000 children could die of starvation in northeastern Nigeria in a "few months,” as famine spreads as a result of Boko Haram warfare in the region.  The UN estimates that 14 million people in the region require "humanitarian assistance," and that 400,000 children are in "critical need of assistance."

Earlier this week, Alexey Ulyukaev, the Russian Minister for Economic Development, was arrested on corruption charges.  Some observers believe that Ulyukaev, a relative economic liberal, was arrested for initially opposing the sale of the Russian government's shares in an oil producer, Bashneft, to Rosneft, Russia's largest oil producer.  Rosneft is state-controlled and largely state-owned, and Ulyukaev had advocated selling the government's shares in Bashneft to private investors.  This position put him at odds with Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft and the head of the siloviki faction (made up of hardline KGB and FSB veterans) in the Putin regime:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21710197-corruption-charges-against-minister-signal-rising-tensions-russias-elite

According to The Economist, Chinese government officials and Han Chinese residents of China tend to equate having Han Chinese ancestry with being Chinese.  Thus, people of Han Chinese ancestry who are citizens of other countries -- including people whose ancestors emigrated from China generations ago -- are seen as Chinese, while citizens of the People's Republic of China of non-Han ancestry, while formally equal to Chinese citizens of Han ancestry, are treated as not really Chinese.  This tendency creates diplomatic problems for China with countries that have substantial populations of Han ancestry.  It also creates significant problems inside China.  The 110 million Chinese citizens who are not of Han ancestry increasingly resent their treatment:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21710264-worlds-rising-superpower-has-particular-vision-ethnicity-and-nationhood-has

Since 2009, the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria, and the Nigerian government's counter-insurgency campaign, have killed an estimated 20,000 people and driven 2.3 million people from their homes.

When Boko Haram captures or raids a village, it kidnaps the young women and forces them into sexual slavery; it kidnaps the young men as well, and forces them to become Boko Haram fighters.  When the Nigerian Army recaptures a village previously occupied by Boko Haram, it removes the young men and holds them in detention centers as suspected Boko Haram insurgents.  The detention centers are overcrowded and disease-ridden; the detainees are also often shot (though the murder of detainees appears to have ended since Muhammadu Buhari was elected president of Nigeria in 2015).  Nonetheless, the International Criminal Court estimates that as many as 7000 Nigerian men have died in the detention centers:

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21709559-if-you-are-young-and-male-army-may-arrest-you-jihadist-rounding-up

The Russian non-governmental organization, Memorial, was established in the 1980s to publicize the human rights abuses of the Stalinist terror, and to try to ensure that Russia never again succumbed to despotism.  During the two Chechen Wars, moreover, Memorial investigated and publicized abuses committed by the Russian Army, to the displeasure of Russian and Chechen authorities.  (In 2009, a Memorial board member, Natalia Estemirova, was kidnapped from her home in Grozny and murdered.)

The Russian government ruled recently that Memorial is a "foreign agent," and must identify itself as such on all of its publications.  In Russia, the term "foreign agent" is synonymous with "spy."  As such, the government's designation of Memorial as a foreign agent will make it very difficult for the group to raise money from the public, for schoolteachers to use its educational materials about the Stalin era, and for students to participate in its educational programs.  This, of course, will make it easier for the current Russian government to rewrite Russian history for its own purposes:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21709557-memorial-was-founded-commemorate-victims-state-repression-now-human-rights-group-may
    

The central government of China is preparing to intervene in a dispute in Hong Kong over the seating of two "localists" elected to the territory's Legislative Council.  In their inauguration ceremony last month, the would-be legislators declined to swear loyalty to the People's Republic of China without reservation, pronounced "China" in a derisive way and held a banner that said that "Hong Kong is not China."  However, by intervening in the dispute rather than letting it play out in Hong Kong's courts, the Chinese government risks increasing localist sentiment in the territory:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21709581-ruling-its-legislature-will-inflame-passions-territory-china-wants-nip-bud