Muslim minority sects most at risk, and eight of 10 countries at top of list have been subject to foreign military intervention, says new report from Minority Rights Group
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The risk of sectarian killings, especially between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, has spiked in much of the Middle East and Asia, according to an annual list of people under threat.
Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and Egypt have all risen up the table since last year, with religious minorities at particular risk, Minority Rights Group (MRG) said, launching its survey identifying people at greatest risk of genocide, mass killing or other violent repression.
"Muslim groups, of various denominations, are now at risk of mass killing in nine out of the top 10 states in the index. They may find themselves targeted because of their religion, but more often on account of their sect, or their ethnicity," MRG executive director Mark Lattimer said in a statement.
MRG listed the most dangerous countries for minorities as Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria.
Nigeria re-entered the list this year because of the growing threat of conflict between Christians and Muslims - much of it over land in the central Plateau state, neighbouring states and in the northeast, MRG said.
The top 10 risers this year are Pakistan, Syria, Nigeria, Yemen, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya and Algeria.
Last month, a suicide bombing tore through a Shi'ite Muslim seminary in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least 13 and wounding dozens - one of the latest attacks in a growing wave of sectarian violence targeting Shi'ites, who make up a little more than 10 percent of the population.
In Syria, an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has escalated into an increasingly sectarian civil war drawing in regional powers like Lebanon whose Shi'ite Hezbollah militants are fighting alongside Assad's forces.
Syria's Sunni Muslim majority has led the revolt against Assad, who is part of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
IMPACT OF FOREIGN MILITARY
Of the 10 states identified by MRG as most at risk, eight have been subject to recent or decades-long foreign military intervention.
"I think there is a tendency to see military intervention as being something which is undertaken rarely and may be able to protect civilian populations," Lattimer told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"What we actually see in practice is that foreign military intervention... is the norm, that it is continuous and ongoing in many of the states around the world where populations are most at risk and that it has a very complex and sometimes a negative effect on civilian protection."
Lattimer said foreign military interventions in Libya, where NATO air power helped topple Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, or in Mali, where French troops led an offensive to drive out Islamist militants earlier this year, were regarded by many in the international community as a success.
But one of the effects was to "shift killing on to other population groups", he added.
Security has worsened in Libya since Gaddafi was ousted, with large parts of the country under the control of different militias. Dark-skinned Libyans, including former residents of Tawergha - a town that was used as a base by Gaddafi in 2011 - are at risk of racist attacks and arbitrary detention, MRG said.
Minority Arabs and Tuaregs remain at risk of reprisal attacks and inter-ethnic clashes in northern Mali following the French-led operation, MRG said.
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