内容摘要：Those friendships, built over decades through sometimes happy, sometimes sad experiences and shared confidences, have evaporated in an instant.

Those friendships, built over decades through sometimes happy, sometimes sad experiences and shared confidences, have evaporated in an instant.

By offering security and counterterrorism courses to students from repressive regimes without appropriate checks, British institutions risk complicity in torture.Across the UK, pro-Palestinian protests in reaction to the war in Gaza have placed universities’ response to human rights concerns under the spotlight. But concerns about links between Britain’s higher education institutions and human rights abuses are not limited to one area.

A new investigation by Freedom from Torture has found that UK universities are offering postgraduate security and counterterrorism education to members of foreign security forces, including those serving some of the world’s most repressive regimes. These institutions are offering training to state agents without scrutinising their human rights records, or pausing to consider how British expertise might end up being exploited to silence, surveil or torture.The investigation reveals that British universities may not just be turning a blind eye to human rights abuses, but could also be at risk of training some of the abusers. Some universities have even partnered directly with overseas police forces known for widespread abuses to deliver in-country teaching. Others have welcomed individuals on to courses designed for serving security professionals from countries where torture is a standard tool of state control. All of this is happening with virtually no oversight of the risks to human rights.These are not abstract concerns. They raise serious, immediate questions. What happens when the covert surveillance techniques taught in British classrooms are later used to hunt down dissidents? Why are universities not investigating the backgrounds of applicants from regimes where “counterterrorism” is a common pretext for torture and arbitrary detention?

Freedom from Torture’s investigation found that universities across the UK  are accepting applicants for security education from some of the world’s most repressive states. Yet just one university in the study said they are screening out applicants who they believed have either engaged in human rights violations or “intend to”.Torture survivors in the UK have

about their shock that members of the security forces from countries they have fled can access UK security education without meaningful human rights checks. British universities, long considered beacons of liberal values and intellectual freedom, appear to be overlooking the fact that the knowledge they produce may be used to further oppression and state violence.

Meanwhile, student activists across the country are staunchly positioning themselves as stakeholders in their university’s human rights records. The recent  Gaza protests indicate that that when students believe universities’ conduct does not align with their values, they won’t hesitate to hold them accountable.Oualata’s isolation hinders the development of tourism – there is no hotel, and the nearest town is a two-hour journey across rough terrain. The town’s location in a region where many nations advise against travel, citing the threat of rebel violence, further complicates prospects.

Efforts to counter the encroaching desert have included the planting of trees around Oualata three decades ago, but Sidiya admits these measures were insufficient.A number of initiatives have been launched to rescue Oualata and the three other ancient towns inscribed together on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1996. Each year, a festival is held in one of the four towns to raise funds for restoration and investment, and to encourage more people to remain.

As the sun sets behind the Dhaar mountains and the desert air cools, the streets of Oualata fill with the sounds of children at play, and the ancient town briefly springs back to life.Thousands of people celebrate toddler’s cancer recovery in Istanbul