A tattered pair of grey shorts, a child’s bright pink shoes and a football are some of the items that have been recovered from a mass grave in the eastern state of Veracruz.

Mexican authorities announced the discovery of the huge burial site in early September, after they counted 166 skulls across 32 burial pits. The body count has since risen to 174 and excavations at the site are ongoing.

The bodies of both children and adults discovered at the site in recent weeks had been buried for around two years, according to officials.

Photographs of clothing items and various objects found at the site were made available online this week by the National Commission of Missing Persons, in the hope that it will allow people to identify missing loved ones. 

The Interior Ministry said the picture catalogue will be updated with additional garments and items as they are found.

Both the scale of the mass grave and the discovery of children’s remains and belongings have shaken Mexican society.

“There has always been crime and violence in Mexico, but the cruelty that the organised crime is displaying is unseen,” Carlos Vilalta, a Mexican criminologist told Al Jazeera.

“What’s the rationality or the need of killing a baby? This shows the dehumanization of the gangs” he added.

Currently, Veracruz has more mass graveyards than municipalities. In total, there are around 300 graveyards in only 212 localities, according to police reports.

The region has witnessed a bloody rivalry between drug cartels in recent years, as well as government corruption, leading to an explosive cocktail of violence and uncertainty in the state.

The discovery of the mass grave has only heightened fear and tension among local communities.

“I feel a lot of impotence” Doctor Denis Traconis, a citizen from Veracruz told Al Jazeera.

“You can’t even know if the government is doing something about it, when you leave your house in the morning, you don’t know if you are coming back.”

“I have seen friends, colleagues, close people that one day went out to work, and never came back, weeks later, we learned they were dead,” she said.

Corrupted system

Activists and citizens accuse the state’s former governor Javier Duarte, of being one of the main culprits of human rights abuses in the state.

The former governor is awaiting trial on money laundering charges at a prison in Mexico City.

During his tenure as governor of Veracruz from 2010 to 2016, the state became one of the most violent places in Mexico and two former state police chiefs have been charged with running squads that allegedly killed opponents during Duarte’s administration from 2010 to 2016.

“We don’t trust our authorities any more” Rogelio Monterde, a marketer and citizen from Veracruz told Al Jazeera. “The less contact we have with them, the better.”

Last year alone, Veracruz registered a total of 1,641 homicides, a rate of 20.7 murdered for every 100,000 inhabitants, and in January a pile of nine dismembered bodies was found in a truck.

Relatives of missing people are still digging at another mass grave found in 2016, where 280 bodies have been discovered so far.

“People are afraid,” Monterde said.

“We are even cautious with whom we talk about these things, you never know who’s in front of you, corruption is so great, that anyone can be connected to the gangs,” he added.

Deadliest year in two decades

In 2006, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide war on drugs.

Since then the government has fought violent drug cartels, deploying military forces and thousands of police officers and soldiers to the streets.

This caused a huge rise in violence that has continued, with 2017 being the deadliest year in two decades. More than 23,000 homicides were registered, an increase of 10.7 percent compared with 2016.

The figures for 2018 show that there have been 18,994 murders in seven months, a 20 percent jump compared with the same period in the previous year, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

“There are different scenarios taking place,” Vilalta, the criminologist, explained.

“The first one starts with former president Felipe Calderon. I believe that when he took the decision to combat the drug gangs, he didn’t anticipate the massacre that would take place. He announced this was going to be a long war, but I don’t think he foresaw the extent in which it would drag on”

“The second one is with the current president Enrique Pena Nieto. He used the media, there was a beastly decline in the publication of notes related to crime, the underlying problems were not solved.

“The third scenario starts with the new elected president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. We will have to see what he comes up with, but I believe it will be very difficult to reduce the number of homicides, there is a lot of money within organised crime, and institutions are in a delicate state,” he said.

Obrador has recently declared he will not order the military off the country’s streets, despite pledging to do so during his presidential campaign.

“Without the aid of the army and the navy, we would not be able to solve the security problem,” Lopez Obrador said in August, outlining his plan for when he assumes office in December.

“We are not in a position to pull out the armed forces, because that would leave the populace unprotected.”

He admitted that the federal police was not ready to replace the armed forces.

The rise of violence linked to drug trafficking has left almost 200,000 dead since the government ordered the military onto the streets in 2006.

Image: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Rome, Italy – On Friday after midday, on a tree-lined residential street in southeastern Rome, people speak an assortment of languages and dialects, from north African Arabic to the local Roman slang.

The bottom floor of a peeling post-war building hosts a “prayer home”.

On the Muslim holy day, worshippers lay out their prayer rugs as far as the pavement and listen to the sermon.

Officially recognised mosques in Italy can be counted on one hand, but there are many unofficial “prayer homes” like this – more than 50 in Rome.

Islam isn’t formally recognised in Italy, despite being the country’s largest religious minority.

While other religions have underwritten an accord with the Italian state, attempts to reach one for Islam have been inconclusive. As a result, mosques cannot receive public funds, religious holidays and weddings are not recognised, and there’s no law governing the establishment of places of worship.

There are 2.6 million Muslims in Italy, just over four percent of the population. While the majority are foreign citizens, nearly a million are Italian either by birth or naturalisation.

I don’t think Italy is a racist country. I think there are statements that some politicians could avoid, but instead they are used relentlessly to exploit a certain type of propaganda.

Yassine Lafram, president of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy

The basement prayer home in Centocelle, a traditionally working-class neighbourhood and today one of the most multicultural in the city, has been here since 1993. 

For more than two years, it has faced uncertainty regarding its future, after local authorities asked the community to address building regulation breaches. 

Similar administrative reasons were given to justify the closure of at least eight other prayer homes and Islamic cultural centres in the city, sparking prayer-protests near Rome’s landmark, the Coliseum, in October 2016. 

Local media often calls such establishments “illegal mosques”, referring to their unregulated status but simultaneously feed a narrative of fear and mistrust towards the Muslim community. Most of the prayer homes closed in Rome at the time were re-opened.

There is also now an increasing sense of insecurity among Muslim communities across Italy with the instalment of the new government, led by the anti-Islam, anti-migration League and the populist Five Star Movement.

“There is more uncertainty as we have no idea what this government is going to do towards the Islamic community,” said Mohamed Ben Mohamed, the imam of the Centocelle mosque, sitting at his desk with a photograph of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque behind him.

“During the election campaign, Salvini said he would close mosques, not allow any new ones to open. It may be propaganda, but there’s a mentality behind that,” Ben Mohamed added. “There’s no regulation for places of worship, the law remains vague, and every municipality interprets it its own way.”

A “government contract” that led to the governing deal between the two parties promised stricter controls and closure of “irregular” mosques, as well as the establishment of a registry of imams and checks on funding sources.

During his election campaign, Matteo Salvini, interior minister and deputy prime minister, stated that “Islam is incompatible with the constitution.”

When Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz closed seven mosques last June, Salvini hailed the decision and called for a meeting to discuss common strategies.

‘We are concerned’

Three months into his role, Salvini launched a campaign against sea rescue, preventing boats from docking in Italian ports or rescued refugees from descending, sparking a diplomatic crisis among EU states over migration.

Between 2014 and 2017, more than 623,000 people arrived in Italy via the central Mediterranean route. But arrivals had already dropped by the end of 2017, following a EU-supported Italian agreement with Libya’s UN-backed Government of National Accord.

Racism watchdogs have warned of the links between the proliferation of a stigmatising rhetoric towards migration and a series of racially-motivated violent attacks which have often been carried out in a copycat fashion in the past months, including at least a dozen BB gun shootings.

The UN’s new high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet said in her maiden speech on Monday that she intended to send teams to Italy as well as Austria to assess the situation.

“On social media, messages, Facebook pages and groups are increasingly aggressive against migration and Islamic culture,” Yassine Lafram, the 32-year-old recently appointed president of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), told Al Jazeera.

“We are concerned about that and that words may turn into the actions of a few people. Let’s not forget there have been violent episodes against migrants in general, as well as some homophobic incidents, even if they’ve not been recognised as such.” 

Lafram was born in Morocco but grew up in Italy, where he was recently naturalised as a citizen.

“I don’t think Italy is a racist country,” he said. “I think there are statements that some politicians could avoid, but instead they are used relentlessly to exploit a certain type of propaganda.”

As elsewhere in Europe, violent attacks on European soil in recent years, claimed to have been carried out in the name of Islam, have affected Italians’ perception of the country’s Muslim communities even if none were carried out in Italy. 

According to the Pew research centre, Italy is second only to Hungary in negative perceptions of Muslims in Europe, with as many as 69 percent saying they viewed Muslims unfavourably.

Opinions about an alleged “Islamisation” of Italy may also be shaped by a misperception of the migratory phenomenon. As independent research institute Eurispes points out, however, out of Italy’s five million foreign residents just over 30 percent are Muslim.

This often translates into right-wing opposition to projects aimed at Muslim communities by local groups.

In an ongoing debate in Bologna, politicians belonging to the League and Berlusconi’s party Go Italy are opposed to a deal between the Islamic community and the local administration for a land exchange that they say would allow Muslims to build the first official mosque in the city. 

A similar controversy surrounds the opening of two mosques and the regularisation of four informal ones in the Milan area.

“I want to know who pays, who prays, in what language, who goes in and who goes out,” Salvini said about the issue, adding that mosques were “not a priority,” but he intended to create a commission to regulate new places of worship.

“We are waiting to see how things will develop, what role this commission will have,” said Ben Mohamed back in eastern Rome. “Whether or not it will involve the community.”

In the nearby neighbourhood of Torpignattara, home to a large Bangladeshi community, the sign of one of the local prayer homes has been blanked out. Locals say it has been like that for three years.

Image: James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images

I started the curtain controversy. It wasn’t motivated by partisanship. I actually joined the Foreign Service under President George W. Bush. My concern were the diminishing funds for American diplomacy.

Yes, the Obama administration—where I served on the National Security Council—initially developed plans to install $52,000 curtains in the New York apartment of our ambassador to the United Nations. We could afford nicer drapes at the time; the United States was spending a lot more on diplomacy back then. When the Trump administration took office, hiring at the State Department was frozen and budgets were slashed.

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Curtaingate went viral last week when the New York Times published an article headlined, “Nikki Haley’s View of New York is Priceless. Her Curtains? $52,701.” When the State Department and Ambassador Nikki Haley complained, saying they had no say in the matter, the Times changed the headline and appended this extraordinary editor’s note: “An earlier version of this article and headline created an unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question. While Nikki R. Haley is the current ambassador to the United Nations, the decision on leasing the ambassador’s residence and purchasing the curtains was made during the Obama administration, according to current and former officials.”

That is simply not true. This project was not awarded out until April 2017. Even if it had been funded by the last administration, federal contracts can at any time be stopped or delayed. So Haley was responsible for the purchase.

By time the Trump administration chose to move forward, spending had been cut off for many other essential services. Security enhancements for our embassies in dangerous posts like Baghdad were not being funded. I served in Iraq and know the risks my colleagues face. Medical care for the children of State Department employees with special needs remains blocked to this day. I have a young son and can’t imagine not being able to give him the care he needs. Why were custom curtains and an expensive system to operate them—at a cost equivalent to many Americans’ annual income—considered more urgent than the safety and health of her colleagues?

What kind of public leader pursues costly upgrades to their residence even as their employees lack basic support? The tweet I initially sent was meant to highlight the hypocrisy of those procurement priorities. This wasn’t another case of extravagant spending by a senior Trump official, like Tom Price’s air travel or Scott Pruitt’s secure phone system. Ambassador Haley demonstrated a different kind of entitlement: It was an egregious example of the selective and self-serving application of Trump’s directive to slash spending.

There is a certain irony in their justifying the spending based on plans drawn up by the prior administration. President Trump and Ambassador Haley have aggressively undertaken efforts to dismantle and defund programs from the Obama era. They have abandoned long-standing American commitments and traditions without regard for the cost or consequences. While her custom drapes were being installed, the ambassador oversaw more than $350 million in cuts to peacekeeping, health and development programs at the United Nations—cuts that will cause greater instability around the world. They are also causing a precipitous decline in American influence, as we are witnessing this week in New York.

This isn’t just about curtains, and it isn’t just about money, either. One of the first lessons you learn as a diplomat is that from day one the ambassador is responsible for everything that happens at his or her post. Another point they drill into you at diplomat school is the importance of setting the right tone from the start. Ambassador Haley’s effort to shift blame on others weakens her standing internally and across the United Nations. It sends a message to staff and fellow ambassadors she isn’t going to be accountable for actions that happen on her watch.

Despite Secretary Mike Pompeo’s frequent boasts about restoring swagger, American diplomacy continues to struggle and shrink. The budget he put forward to Congress would cut spending by more than 25 percent. While leaders on Capitol Hill may eventually restore some of those funds, the administration will likely continue its policy of not using all of the money allocated to diplomats. The State Department has also not completely lifted the hiring freeze, leaving significant staffing gaps. As just one example, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security can’t get authorization to fill positions to protect embassies and Americans.

Most of the attention paid to the curtains focused on where the idea started, not who decided to put it out for contract. When President Obama came into office, he canceled the Marine One project, which was already on order. The country was in the midst of a recession and the project was just too expensive. Some Republicans may ask: What would President Reagan have done? Well, he actually did cancel plans for the redecoration of and new furniture for the White House. But as for Haley, she didn’t speak up, nor was she willing to pull up her own blinds as budgets fell.

In reality, the question I was asking was less about whether Nikki Haley needed custom, control-operated curtains. It had more to do with what our diplomats deserve. If we have to prioritize, I would put the safety of those serving our country overseas first. If we have to cut, then politicians, as well as public servants should be prepared to make sacrifices. If we are going to effectively represent America abroad and retain the next generation of diplomatic leaders, then we need to do better.

The US National Security Adviser has launched a scathing attack on Iran saying there will “be hell to pay” if Tehran tried to harm the US and its allies.

The warning from John Bolton came after US President Donald Trump and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani clashed at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

“So I might imagine they would take me seriously when I assure them today that if you cross us, our allies or our partners, if you harm our citizens, if you continue to lie cheat and deceive. Yes there will indeed be hell to pay,” the US National Security Advisor said.

Speaking at an organisation that opposed the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, from which the Trump administration withdrew in May, Bolton criticised the deal as “the worst diplomatic debacle in American history”.

“[The deal] did nothing to address the regime’s destabilising activity or its ballistic missile development and proliferation,” Bolton said.

“Worst of all the deal failed to achieve its fundamental objective permanently denying Iran all paths to nuclear weapons.”

JCPOA members set up payment system

Earlier, Trump during his speech at the UNGA called Tehran “the leading sponsor of terrorism” while Rouhani accused the US administration of trying to overthrow his government.

The other five major powers that signed the Iran deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) under which Iran agreed to curb nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, have made it clear that they remain committed to it.

Top diplomats from France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia agreed to establish a financial facility in the European Union to facilitate payments for Iranian imports and exports including oil.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, hit back at these countries for attempting to subvert US sanctions, saying that they were bolstering Iran as the “number one state sponsor of terror”.

“I was disturbed and indeed deeply disappointed to hear remaining parties in the deal announced they are setting up a special payment system to bypass US sanctions,” he said.

“This is one of the most counterproductive measures imaginable for regional and global peace and security.”

Since its witdrawal from the Iran deal, the Trump administration has slapped biting sanctions on Tehran in order to choke its oil exports – the main source of income for the Islamic Republic.

Some of Tehran’s biggest oil customers appear to have succumbed to the US pressure, with India – a major buyer of Iranian oil – cutting down on its imports.

The US State Department has spelled out a campaign of “maximum economic and diplomatic pressure” to drive Iran towards negotiating a “better” deal to replace the Iran nuclear deal.

In his UN speech, Rouhani said the US sanctions are “economic terrorism”.