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Kenya’s department of gender says reported cases of gender-based violence have nearly quintupled during the COVID-19 pandemic. But activists say that stigma and fear associated with reporting abuse means the real number of cases is many times higher.

Jackline Karemi recalls the day in April when her partner of nearly a decade suddenly accused her of having an affair and attacked her.

“We wrestled, he was trying to strangle me and pull me back to the bedroom so that he could lock the door. But I managed to get out of the room. He wanted to push me off the fifth floor. I hit him. Then he started slashing my face and head with the Masai sword.”

Karemi’s was among more than 5,000 reported cases of gender-based violence in Kenya over the past year as emotional and work stress mounted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s nearly five times the number of reported cases in 2019, according to an April survey by Kenya’s Department of Gender.

But Kenya’s women’s rights campaigners say the majority of cases go unreported, says Vivian Mwende, a counselor at the Federation of Women Lawyers Kenya.

“Reporting will cause shame – ‘I’ll fight with my parents.’ Another thing could be that nobody will believe me, because this person is reputable – could be a chief, could be anybody, this person is reputable in this area. So, a lot of trust has been [lacking], especially with the reporting system. Most of the victims believe they are not going to be heard,” Mwende said.

To encourage gender-based violence survivors to speak out, Kenya’s women’s rights defenders hold open forums. The organizer of one such forum, Rachael Mwikali of the Grassroots Human Rights Defenders, explains why.

“The reason why we are having this fellowship is to try to bring more women and human rights defenders and activists and feminists that are able to talk against any form of violence against women and girls and any form of violence when it comes to human rights violation[s].”

Kenyan authorities are running a campaign called “Komesha Dhulma,” meaning “stop violence” in Swahili.

The goal is to motivate the public to report cases of gender-based violence. An official at the department of gender, Beatrice Elachi, is leading the campaign.

“For us to achieve even to start talking about it, to make it open for people to come out, for women to come out, we have to have a holistic approach, on how do we indeed deal with gender-based violence. Dealing with it is not taking people to court alone or fighting it the way we want to fight it, we have to go back even in the church, because some of these people are people who go to church, some of them to the mosque,” Elachi said.

As COVID-19 continues to take its toll on families, gender-based violence survivors like Karemi can only hope more people speak out against what many now call a pandemic within a pandemic.

Source: Voice of America

French President Emmanuel Macron was in Rwanda’s capital Thursday, where he acknowledged France’s role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and said he hoped for forgiveness.

Speaking alongside Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the Gisozi genocide memorial in Kigali, Macron said, “I hereby humbly and with respect stand by your side today, I come to recognize the extent of our responsibilities.”

Macron is the first French leader since 2010 to visit the East African nation, which has long accused France of complicity in the killing of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi Rwandans.

The visit follows the release in March of a French inquiry panel report saying a colonial attitude had blinded French officials, and the government bore a “serious and overwhelming” responsibility for not foreseeing the slaughter.

But the report absolved France of direct complicity in the genocide, a point Macron made in his comments, saying “France was not an accomplice,” but that his nation “has a role, a history and a political responsibility in Rwanda.”

Rwanda released its own report that found France was aware a genocide was being prepared and bore responsibility for enabling it by continuing in its unwavering support for Rwanda’s then president, Juvenal Habyarimana.

It was the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane, killing the president, that launched the 100-day frenzy of killings.

Macron said only those who survived the genocide “could perhaps forgive, and so could give us the gift of forgiving ourselves,” and repeated, in Rwanda’s native language, the phrase “Ndibuka,” meaning “I remember.”

Rwanda’s Kagame called Macron’s speech “powerful,” and said his words were something more than an apology. “They were the truth. Speaking the truth is risky, but you do it because it is right, even when it costs you something, even when it is unpopular,” he said.

Macron said he proposed to Kagame the naming of a French ambassador to Rwanda, a post that has been vacant for six years. He said filling the post and normalizing relations between the nations could not be envisioned without the step he took on Thursday.

Source: Voice of America

Two investigative reports this year accused the Burkina Faso representative of tobacco giant Philip Morris of funding terrorism through tobacco smuggling. In an exclusive interview with VOA, Apollinaire Compaoré rejects those findings.

Selling cigarettes to smugglers who pay jihadists to protect their convoys.

That’s the accusation leveled against the Burkina Faso representative of Phillip Morris International by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP.

In a February report, the Sarajevo-based group cited officials, rivals and former colleagues of Apollinaire Compaoré who accused him of indirectly funding terrorism by working with smugglers who carry not only cigarettes, but drugs and people into Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Libya.

It also accused Burkina Faso authorities and the Swiss American tobacco giant of being complicit in a vast smuggling operation centered around a warehouse in the northern town of Markoye.

“Indeed, we think Phillip Morris was aware of what he was doing,” Aisha Kehoe Down, OCCRP Investigative Journalist told VOA. “There’s also clear indications that parts of the Burkinabe state, including customs, were involved in the warehouse at Markoye. In fact, the customs officer we interviewed characterized it as a mafia at the top of the state.”

Burkina Faso’s customs department was not available to comment on the accusations against the agency or against Compaore, who also owns a major bank and telecom company.

In a written response, Phillip Morris said there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the company and no information indicating their products shipped to Burkina Faso were smuggled into neighboring countries.

But a 2019 U.N. report also found that a company owned by Compaoré supplied regional smugglers, says one of the report’s authors.

“He knowingly supplies those that traffic, and he must be aware of this because there’s no legal market for those cigarettes once he brings them to northern Burkina Faso,” said Ruben de Koning, United Nations Finance Expert.

In an exclusive interview for VOA, Compaoré refuted all these accusations.

He says the United Nations lied and that those who worked on the report for the U.N. are no longer employed by them.

One of the richest men in Burkina Faso, Compaore also dismissed claims in the OCCRP report that two of his companies have never paid taxes.

“Are they the director general of taxes?” he asked. He said they are all lying to harm him. “They are lies,” he insisted.

When asked if there is any evidence of Compaoré being involved in cigarette smuggling, Moumouni Lougue, the general manager of Burkina Faso’s tax department, cited confidentiality laws.

What is known, he said, is that the tax administration is very vigorous, very rigorous, and does not in any case let this type of fact pass it by without it going unpunished.

Whether or not authorities take action, the allegation that cigarette smuggling supports Sahel terrorism is not expected to go away any time soon.

Source: Voice of America