US mosque attack in Syria; repressive climate in Turkey; Thailand's junta targets critics; reporter in hiding after exposing Chechnya's gay purge; Venezuela in crisis; Ethiopia rejects UN investigation into protest deaths; campaign of terror in Burundi; no secondary education for refugee kids; & hitherto inaccessible Holocaust files made public.

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Venezuela is facing a human rights and humanitarian crisis. Government power is going unchecked, resulting in arbitrary arrests and detentions, abuses by security forces, and an erosion of judicial independence. And a severe shortage of food and medicine is keeping Venezuelans malnourished and lacking adequate medical care. Now, the crisis is spilling over Venezuela's borders as people flee.
Somalia is facing a humanitarian crisis. Half of Somalia’s population of 12.3 million people currently need assistance. Hundreds of thousands are moving to displacement camps or areas otherwise considered safe. But there are no quick solutions, and the reality awaiting many of them is often hostile, and sometimes even abusive.
Hungary's unwelcoming and abusive attitude toward asylum seekers has already been well documented - not least by the construction of a wall on its border to keep them out. But now Hungarian authorities are taking their disdain for refugees a dubious step further.
From earlier today: The US seems to have gotten several things wrong in its attack on a building in western Aleppo, Syria, on March 16, a new Human Rights Watch report has found. A proper analysis of the target would have established that the building was a mosque, HRW says. The strike hit when a prayer meeting was about to begin and killed at least 38 people. No evidence has been found that members of al-Qaeda were meeting in the mosque. The findings are corroborated by several other studies.
With 51.4 percent of the vote, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “Yes” campaign won a landmark referendum on a new political system giving him enormous centralized power. The campaign took place in a highly repressive climate. Now, Erdogan wants to reintroduce the death penalty. Instead, he should end the state of emergency and the political repression unleashed in the months before the vote.
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