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“It is long past time for the government to take responsibility to fix what they have broken, clean up our river, and help us out rather than kicking us while we are down.” -- Grassy Narrows Chief Roger Fobister Sr.

For almost a decade, Amnesty International has stood with the people of Grassy Narrows in their long struggle to determine for themselves the fate of the forest and waters on which they depend. This campaign--  led by the people of Grassy Narrow, and supported by a wide range of social justice and environmental organizations --  has had remarkable success with company after company announcing that they will not log at Grassy Narrows, or handle wood cut  at Grassy Narrows, unless the community gives its consent. These remarkable victories, however, have taken place against the backdrop of an ongoing, unresolved and largely unacknowledged tragedy.

By Maxim Tucker, Press Officer – Global Campaigns, Thematic Issues and UN.

(BORGO MEZZANONE, ITALY) Ebrima’s bedroom is a stark corrugated square, five metres long and five metres wide. He shares it with one other asylum seeker – each has a foam mattress over a camp bed to sleep on. Wires dangle from a broken light in the ceiling and the floor is carpeted in dust, crumbs and the odd seashell.

The Asylum Seekers Reception Centre at Borgo Mezzanone, Southern Italy, has been his home for the past six months. In this disused airbase which was turned into a detention centre, conditions are dire. But after a harrowing journey from Africa, through the Sahara and across the Mediterranean, Ebrima doesn’t even seem to notice. He is happy to be here.

He tells me his journey started in Sierra Leone after the death of his Muslim father. The Christian community where he lived wanted him gone. Even his stepmother’s family tried to force him to convert from Islam to Christianity.

After a harrowing escape, first from their hometown of Qahtanya and then from Sinjar Mountain – where they were stuck for eight days with very little food or water – Suleiman Shaibo Sido, his wife and their eight children, all members of the Yezidi minority, are now sheltering under a bridge in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk, along with more than 20 other families.

The place is dusty, noisy and dangerous. Vehicles race by day and night on the main road under the bridge. “We have to be on alert every minute, to stop the children running to the road”, he tells me. “The cars and lorries drive by very fast”, he says. There is no electricity, water or sanitation. “We go get water from the nearby mosque and people bring us food. We are very grateful to the people of Dohuk, they are real brothers”, says Suleiman. “We arrived with nothing other than the clothes we were wearing. People, and also an organization, brought us some blankets and other things. This is enough for now. The most important thing is that we are safe.”

Just as the dire humanitarian situation on north-western Iraq’s Sinjar Mountain was beginning to improve, news broke on Friday about one of the worst reported attacks in the weeks since fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS or IS) had started their assault on the towns and villages in the surrounding areas. Scores of people were killed and hundreds abducted by ISIS fighters in Kocho, a small village about 15 km south of the town of Sinjar.

This fresh atrocity was a bitter reminder of the ferocity of ISIS’s advance. Since 3 August, when the armed group began its march to take control of the territory surrounding Sinjar, they have forced tens of thousands of Yezidis from their homes, killed hundreds and abducted thousands.