The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele [granite-like, igneous, monument slab], found in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and Demotic script, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree is the same (with some minor differences) in all three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The stone, carved in black granodiorite during the Hellenistic period, is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at nearby Sais. It was probably moved during the early Christian or medieval period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It was rediscovered there in July 1799 by a French soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic language. Lithographic copies and plaster casts began circulating among European museums and scholars. Meanwhile, British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, and the original stone came into British possession under the Capitulation of Alexandria and was transported to London. It has been on public display at the British Museum almost continuously since 1802. It is the most-visited object in the British Museum.

Study of the decree was already under way when the first full translation of the Greek text appeared in 1803. It was 20 years, however, before the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts was announced by Jean-François Champollion in Paris in 1822; it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions and literature confidently. Major advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three versions of the same text (1799); that the demotic text used phonetic characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the demotic (Thomas Young, 1814); and that, in addition to being used for foreign names, phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (Champollion, 1822–1824).

Ever since its rediscovery, the stone has been the focus of nationalist rivalries, including its transfer from French to British possession during the Napoleonic Wars, a long-running dispute over the relative value of Young and Champollion's contributions to the decipherment and, since 2003, demands for the stone's return to Egypt.

Two other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now known, including two slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees (the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC). The Rosetta Stone is, therefore, no longer unique, but it was the essential key to modern understanding of Ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation. The term Rosetta Stone is now used in other contexts as the name for the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

The Character Actor and Actress

A character actor or character actress is a supporting actor who plays unusual, interesting, or eccentric characters.  The term, often contrasted with that of leading actor, is somewhat abstract and open to interpretation. In a literal sense, all actors can be considered character actors since they all play "characters", but in the usual sense it is an actor who plays a distinctive and important supporting role.

The term is sometimes used to describe an actor who plays characters who are very different from the actor's off-screen real-life personality, while in another sense it describes an actor who specializes in minor roles. In either case, character actor roles are more substantial than bit parts or non-speaking extras.

The term is used primarily to describe television and film actors, and is less used to describe theater actors. An early use of the term was in the 1883 edition of The Stage, which defined a character actor as "one who portrays individualities and eccentricities". Actors with a long career history of playing character roles may be difficult for audiences to recognize as being the same actor.

Unlike leading actors, they are generally seen as less glamorous. While a leading actor often has physical beauty needed to play the love interest, a character actor may be short or tall, heavy or thin, balding, older, or simply unconventional-looking and distinctive in some physical way. For example, the face of Chicago character actor William Schutz was disfigured in a car accident when he was five years old, but his appearance despite reconstructive surgery helped him to be memorable and distinctive to theater audiences. Generally, the names of character actors are not featured prominently in movie and television advertising on the marquee, since a character actor's name is not expected to attract film audiences. The roles that character actors play in film or television are often identified by only one name, such as "Officer Fred", while roles of leading actors often have a full name, such as "Captain Jack Sparrow". Some character actors have distinctive voices or accents, or they develop memorable mannerisms. A character actor with a long career may not have a well-known name, yet may be instantly recognizable.

During the course of an acting career, an actor can sometimes shift between leading roles and secondary roles. Some leading actors, as they get older, find that access to leading roles is limited by their increasing age. In the past, actors of color, who were often barred from roles for which they were otherwise suited, found work performing ethnic stereotypes. Sometimes character actors have developed careers based on specific talents needed in genre films, such as dancing, horsemanship, acrobatics, swimming ability, or boxing. Many up-and-coming actors find themselves typecast in character roles due to an early success with a particular part or in a certain genre, such that the actor becomes so strongly identified with a particular type of role that casting directors steer the actor to similar roles. Some character actors play essentially the same character over and over, as with Andy Devine's humorous but resourceful sidekick, while other actors, such as Sir Laurence Olivier, have the capacity of submerging themselves in any role they play. Some character actors develop a cult following with a particular audience, such as with the fans of Star Trek or The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Character actors tend to play the same type of role throughout their careers, including Harvey Keitel as a "tough and determined guy", Dame Maggie Smith as an "upstanding lady matriarch", Christopher Lloyd as an eccentric, Claude Rains as a "sophisticated, sometimes ambiguously moral man", Abe Vigoda as a "leathery, sunken-eyed" and tired hoodlum on the verge of retirement, Christopher Walken as a "speech maker", Vincent Schiavelli as "the confused guy", Steve Buscemi as "a quirky, smart guy with a mind just outside of reality" and Forest Whitaker as a "calm, composed character with an edge and potential to explode". Ed Lauter usually portrayed a menacing figure because of his "long, angular face" which was easily recognized in public, although audiences rarely knew his name. Character actors can play a variety of types, such as the femme fatale, gunslinger, sidekick, town drunk, villain, whore with a heart of gold, and many others. A character actor's roles are often perceived as being substantially different from their perceived real-life persona, meaning that they do not portray an extension of themselves, but rather a character substantially different from their off-screen persona. Character actors subsume themselves into the characters they portray, such that their off-screen acting persona is practically unrecognizable. According to one view, great character actors are rarely out of work, and often have long careers that span decades. They are also often highly regarded by fellow actors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_actor

Liu Xiaobo Dies

Liu Xiaobo (28 December 1955 – 13 July 2017) was a Chinese literary critic, writer, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule. He was incarcerated as a political prisoner in Jinzhou, Liaoning. On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and died on 13 July 2017 at the hospital.

Liu rose to fame in the literary circle with his literary critiques and became a visiting scholar at several overseas universities. He returned home to support the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was imprisoned for the first time from 1989 to 1991 and again from 1995 to 1996 and from 1996 to 1999 for his involvement in democracy and human rights movement. He served as the President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, from 2003 to 2007. He was also the president of Minzhu Zhongguo (Democratic China) magazine since the mid-1990s. On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained due to his participation with the Charter 08 manifesto. He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009 on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power".  He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009, and sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009.

During his fourth prison term, Liu was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." He was the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China. Liu is the third person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison or detention, after Germany's Carl von Ossietzky (1935) and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). Liu was also the second person to have been denied the right to have a representative collect the Nobel Prize for him and died in custody. (The first being Carl von Ossietzky who died in a Nazi concentration camp.)

Thoughts and Political Views

Evolving from his aesthetic notion of "Individual Subjectivity" as opposed to Li Zehou's theory of aesthetic subjectivity which combined Marxist materialism and Kantian idealism, he upheld the notion of "aesthetic freedom" which was based on the individualistic conception of freedom and aesthetics. He also strongly criticized the traditional attitude of Chinese intellectuals of searching for rationalism and harmony as "slave mentality" as it was criticized by radical left-wing literary critic Lu Xun during the New Cultural Movement. He also echoed the New Cultural Movement's call for wholesale westernization and rejection of the Chinese traditional culture. In an interview, he said "modernization means wholesale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs. in-humane, there's no middle ground... Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race." In 2002, he reflected his Mao-style radical aesthetic and political views at the time:

"I realized my entire youth and early writings had all been nurtured in hatred, violence and arrogance, or lies, cynicism and sarcasm. I knew at the time that Mao-style thinking and Cultural Revolution-style language had become ingrained in me, and I had become my own gaol [...]. It may take me a lifetime to get rid of the poison."

In a 1988 interview with Hong Kong's Liberation Monthly (now known as Open Magazine), Liu was asked what it would take for China to realize a true historical transformation. He replied:

"[It would take] 300 years of colonialism. In 100 years of colonialism, Hong Kong has changed to what we see today. With China being so big, of course it would require 300 years as a colony for it to be able to transform into how Hong Kong is today. I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough."

Liu admitted in 2006 that the response was extemporaneous, although he did not intend to take it back, as it represented "an extreme expression of his long-held belief." The quote was nonetheless used against him. He has commented, "Even today [in 2006], radical patriotic 'angry youth' still frequently use these words to paint me with 'treason'."

He was also a strong critic of Chinese nationalism, believing that the "abnormal nationalism" existed in China over the last century had turned from a defensive style of the "mixed feelings of inferiority, envy, complaint, and blame to an aggressive "patriotism" of "blind self-confidence, empty boasts, and pent-up hatred". The "ultra-nationalism", being deployed by the Chinese Communist Party since the Tiananmen protests, has also become "a euphemism for worship of violence in service of autocratic goals."

In his letter to his friend Liao Yiwu in 2000, he expressed his thought on the prospect of the democracy movement in China:

"Compared to others under the Communist black curtain, we cannot call ourselves real men. Through the great tragedies of all these years, we still don’t have a righteous giant like [Václav] Havel. In order for everyone to have the right to be selfish, there has to be a righteous giant who will sacrifice selflessly. In order to obtain "passive freedoms" (freedom from the arbitrary oppression by those in power), there has to be a will for active resistance. In history, nothing is fated. The appearance of a martyr will completely change a nation’s soul and raise the spiritual quality of the people. But Gandhi was by chance, Havel was by chance; two thousand years ago, a peasant’s boy born in the manger was even more by chance. Human progress relies on the chance birth of these individuals. One cannot count on the collective conscience of the masses but only on the great individual conscience to consolidate the weak masses. In particular, our nation needs this righteous giant; the appeal of a role model is infinite; a symbol can rouse an abundance of moral resources. For example, Fang Lizhi’s ability to walk out of the U.S. Embassy, or Zhao Ziyang’s ability to actively resist after stepping down, or so-and-so refusing to go abroad. A very important reason for the silence and amnesia after June Fourth is that we did not have a righteous giant who stepped forward."

In 2009 when he was tried for "inciting subversion of state power" due to his participation with the Charter 08 manifesto which demanded freedom of expression, human rights and democratic elections, he wrote an essay known as "I Have No Enemies", stating that "the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy", and declared he had no enemies, and no hatred.

On international affairs, he supported U.S. President George W. Bush's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, 2003 invasion of Iraq and his re-election. However, he also criticized the Iraq prison abuse scandals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo

W.H.O. Essential Medicines List

The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (EML), published by the World Health Organization (WHO), contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system. The list is frequently used by countries to help develop their own local lists of essential medicine. As of 2016, more than 155 countries have created national lists of essential medicines based on the World Health Organization's model list. This includes countries in both the developed and developing world.

The list is divided into core items and complementary items. The core items are deemed to be the most cost effective options for key health problems and are usable with little additional health care resources. The complementary items either require additional infrastructure such as specially trained health care providers or diagnostic equipment or have a lower cost-benefit ratio. About 25% of items are in the complementary list. Some medications are listed as both core and complementary. While most medications on the list are available as generic products, being under patent does not exclude inclusion.

The first list was published in 1977 and included 212 medications. The WHO updates the list every two years. The 14th list was published in 2005 and contained 306 medications. In 2015 the 19th edition of the list was published and contains around 410 medications. The 20th edition was published in 2017. The national lists contain between 334 and 580 medications.

A separate list for children up to 12 years of age, known as the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines for Children (EMLc), was created in 2007 and is in its 5th edition. It was created to make sure that the needs of children were systematically considered such as availability of proper formulations. Everything in the children's list is also included in the main list.

 

This article can be found along with a current complete list of medicines at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines

Turkey's "March for Justice"

The March for Justice  was a 450 km (280-mile) march from Ankara to Istanbul to protest against arrests that were made as part of the government crackdown following the July 2016 coup d'état attempt. After the coup attempt, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government declared a state of emergency. Since then at least 50,000 people have been arrested and another 140,000 people have been removed from their positions. The protest was led by opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, in response to a lengthy prison sentence that Enis Berberoğlu received for allegedly giving the press a video that shows Turkish intelligence smuggling weapons into Syria. The march concluded in Istanbul on July 9 with a rally attended by hundreds of thousands of people, during which Kılıçdaroğlu spoke at length about the effect that the government purge has had on the judiciary and rule of law in Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared the protest march illegal. During the march, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and President Erdoğan compared the march to the July 2016 coup attempt, and accused the participants and Kılıçdaroğlu of supporting the Gülenist FETÖ organization that the government says was behind the coup attempt. Counter-demonstrations have been held by AKP supporters. Police officers provided security for the marchers, and the march concluded peacefully at Maltepe, Istanbul (where Berberoğlu is imprisoned).

Background

A "state of emergency" was declared in Turkey after the failed coup attempt in 2016. Over 50,000 Turks were jailed in the aftermath of the failed coup. 140,000 have been removed from their jobs in a number of fields, particularly civil service, military, judiciary, academia and media. The government has said that it is targeting those who are suspected of supporting Fethullah Gülen, who the government believes was behind the coup attempt.

The Guardian reported that interviews with people involved with the Turkish judiciary and various experts on the topic has shown:

"a broad and systematic attempt at intimidating and reshaping Turkey's judicial branch in an effort to further consolidate power in the hands of the ruling AKP and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan."

Experts have commented that the Turkish justice system was "crippled" following the 2016 coup attempt. 4,000 prosecutors and judges have lost their jobs since the coup attempt. Kılıçdaroğlu commented that judges wait for orders from the presidential palace before making decisions.

In an opinion piece published in the New York Times opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said that he and others were marching for "democracy, justice and freedom from fear and authoritarian rule in Turkey." Kılıçdaroğlu listed democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression, the jailing of parliament members, and dysfunctional courts as reasons for the march.

The march began in Ankara on June 15, 2017 after CHP member Enis Berberoğlu was sentenced to 25 years in prison for providing the opposition paper Cumhuriyet with a video that showed Turkish intelligence agents smuggling weapons into Syria. Turkish government officials have confirmed the authenticity of the videos, but have maintained that the videos were published by FETÖ members. Cumhuriyet's editor in chief Can Dündar was sentenced to five years in prison, and fled to Germany after surviving an assassination attempt outside the Courthouse.

The law that stripped members of parliament of their immunity and made Berberoğlu's imprisonment possible was passed in May 2016. Though dozens of pro-Kurdish HDP members have since been jailed, including HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtaş, Berberoğlu is the first CHP member to be imprisoned in 15 years of AKP rule.

March

The protest was led by opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The march has been compared to Gandhi's 1930 Salt March. Thousands of protesters participated in the march, carrying signs that read adalet (the Turkish word for "justice") and chanting "rights, law, justice".

A diverse group of citizens participated, including members from different political parties, trade unions, as well as ordinary citizens. On 6 July 2017 Bloomberg reported that 30,000 protestors were participating in the march. Marchers have reported difficult conditions, including walking 20 kilometers a day, hot weather and rain. At least one elderly protester has died of cardiac arrest during the march.

Protestors have given many different reasons for participating in the March, including a recent court decision permitting a mining project in Artvin that has been opposed by many local residents and other citizens throughout the country. In the aftermath of the July 2016 coup attempt, the government declared a "state of emergency" in which 50,000 Turks have been arrested and a further 140,000 people have been fired or suspended from their jobs, including the chairman of Amnesty International Turkey. Judge Aydin Sefa Akay, a member of the United Nations war crime panel, was sentenced to more then seven years in prison for suspected involvement in the coup attempt. Some who participated in the march had been directly affected by the purges, including a former political science professor who was fired by government decree in April 2017. He was one of the 1,100 academics who was investigated for signing a petition calling for an end to violence in Turkey's southeastern conflict with the Kurdish people.

Counter-demonstrations have been held by AKP supporters.

Maltepe rally

The march reached Istanbul on July 9, 2017 with a mass rally attended by hundreds of thousands of people in Maltepe, where Berberoğlu is imprisoned. – the biggest opposition gathering since the protests in Gezi Park in 2013. Kılıçdaroğlu spoke at the rally. During his speech Kılıçdaroğlu said that the state of emergency declared by Erdoğan and his government in response to the 2016 coup attempt had suspended the powers of the national parliament and the judiciary. He said: "We marched for justice, we marched for the rights of the oppressed. We marched for the MPs in jail. We marched for the arrested journalists. We marched for the university academics dismissed from their jobs.”

He read a list of demands which included: an end to the state of emergency, an independent judiciary, and the release of imprisoned journalists, politicians and others who were arrested during the purges that followed the coup attempt. He said that "subjecting the judiciary to partisan politics is a betrayal of democracy." He also said that the rally was only the beginning, adding: "This is a rebirth for us, for our country and our children. We will revolt against injustice." He said that the April constitutional referendum that had eliminated the post of prime minister and greatly expanded the powers of the presidency was "unlawful" (the changes take effect in 2019). Because the state of emergency was in place when the referendum was carried out, Kılıçdaroğlu said that "all public resources were exploited to manipulate the outcome".^[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_March_for_Justice

Making Drugs with Proper Chirality

Researchers Report Chemical Reaction with Potential to Speed Drug Development

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center -- DALLAS - July 2017 - Chemists have long sought to develop new reactions for the direct conversion of simple hydrocarbon building blocks into valuable materials such as pharmaceuticals in a way that dependably creates the same chemical bonds and orientations. UT Southwestern researchers have hit upon a novel way to do that.

The ability to consistently create desirable molecules and avoid undesirable ones could greatly accelerate pharmaceutical production. Many molecules come in two mirror-image configurations, often labeled left-handed and right-handed. Usually, only one of the two is biologically desired, but the issue is more complicated than that, said Dr. Uttam Tambar, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and senior author of a study outlining the reaction published online in Nature.

"Unsaturated hydrocarbons contain only two types of bonds, carbon-hydrogen and carbon-carbon. It is very challenging to selectively transform the starting material hydrocarbon, called the feedstock, into a product in which you have selectively transformed one carbon-hydrogen bond into a new bond in every molecule. We are able to do that," Dr. Tambar said.

"We are not only dealing with left- or right-handed configuration; we are also dealing with what position of the molecule is chemically modified," he added.

The selectivity problem challenges chemists, who often encounter it when attempting to directly transform unsaturated hydrocarbons that contain one or more carbon-carbon double bonds, resulting in difficult-to-separate mixtures of compounds that require subsequent chemical steps to subdivide the mixtures into the desired molecules.

"We have developed a method for the direct conversion of a variety of double bond-containing materials into useful products. A specially designed chiral catalyst is used to oxidize hydrocarbons into multifunctional compounds that are obtained in high purity and are readily converted into an assortment of molecules that will streamline the synthesis of future pharmaceutical drugs," said Dr. Leila Bayeh, a former graduate student and lead author of the study. Dr. Bayeh is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The phrase "chiral catalyst" means that the catalyst that orchestrates the entire reaction has the proper orientation - a left- or right-handed configuration as the situation requires - in order to create the desired chemical transformation, he explained.

The orientation and proper location of all chemical bonds is crucial because the wrong molecule generated from a reaction can be ineffectual or potentially dangerous.

Hence the emphasis on consistency.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-07/usmc-rrc070717.php

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Footnote by the Blog Author

See also "The Fascinating Characteristic or Chirality," the April 5, 2011 entry on this blog.

ISIL Loses Mosul

The Battle of Mosul (2016–17) is a joint offensive by Iraqi government forces with allied militias, the Kurdistan Regional Government, and international forces to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which had seized the city in June 2014. Military intervention against ISIL had already included attempts in 2015 and 2016 to retake the city.

The offensive, dubbed Operation "We Are Coming, Nineveh" (قادمون يا نينوى; Qadimun Ya Naynawa), began on 16 October 2016, with forces besieging ISIL-controlled areas in the Nineveh Governorate surrounding Mosul, and continued with Iraqi troops and Peshmerga fighters engaging ISIL on three fronts outside Mosul, going from village to village in the surrounding area in the largest deployment of Iraqi troops since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The battle was also the world's single largest military operation in nearly 15 years.

At dawn on 1 November 2016, Iraqi Special Operations Forces entered the city from the east. Met with fierce fighting, the government advance into the city was slowed by elaborate defenses and by the presence of civilians, but the Iraqi Prime Minister declared "full liberation of eastern side of Mosul" on 24 January 2017. Iraqi troops began their offensive to recapture western Mosul on 19 February 2017.

The Battle of Mosul was concurrent with the Battle of Sirte (2016) in Libya, and with the Raqqa campaign conducted by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIL's capital city and stronghold in Syria.

General Background

Mosul is Iraq's second most populous city. It fell to 800–1,500 ISIL militants in June 2014, because of the largely Sunni population's deep distrust of the primarily Shia Iraqi government, and its corrupt armed forces. It was in the Great Mosque in Mosul that ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the beginning of ISIL's self-proclaimed "caliphate" which spans Iraq and Syria. The original population of 2.5 million has fallen to approximately 1.5 million after two years of ISIL rule. The city was once extremely diverse, with ethnic minorities including Armenians, Yazidis, Assyrian, Turkmen, and Shabak people, all of whom have suffered and continue to suffer considerably under the (majority Sunni Arab) Islamic State. Mosul remains the last stronghold of ISIL in Iraq, and the anticipated offensive to reclaim it was promoted as the "mother of all battles.”

Violation of the Laws of War in the Battle for Mosul

In February 2017, Human Rights Watch issued a report regarding the violation of the laws of war in Iraq. According to the report, Islamic State fighters occupied Al-Salam Hospital in Mosul in June 2014, and put the staff and the patients at risk of attacks. During the Battle of Mosul, seven Iraqi soldiers’ corpses were dragged through the streets, and the bodies of three soldiers were hanged from a bridge in the city. As the report mentioned, ISIL fighters occupied a clinic in the town of Hammam al-Alil, which was then hit by an airstrike without warning on October 18, killing at least eight civilians. Previously, they occupied other clinics in other towns controlled by the Islamic State fighters in Iraq, as well operating offices in all the medical facilities in the Republican, Ibn Sina, al-Salam, and Mosul General Hospitals.

Human Rights Watch has also accused the Iraqi Security Forces and Popular Mobilization Forces of dragging the bodies of alleged ISIL fighters in the town of Qayyarah and in the city of Fallujah, after Iraqi forces took eastern Mosul on January 24, 2017. They warned that allowing Popular Mobilization Forces to conduct the screenings of men and boys fleeing Mosul for having fought for ISIL would have "dire human rights consequences."

Human Rights Watch warned that Popular Mobilization Forces were poorly trained to conduct these screenings. They argued that the irregular nature of screening and detention practices and isolation of detainees in custody risk abuse of the detainees, including arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances. Despite assurances from the Iraqi government that the PMF would not screen detainees in Mosul, an observer reported that three PMF groups were seen at a screening site on March 11, 2017: Hezbollah Brigades, al-Abbas Brigades, and Imam Ali Battalions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%9317)