Category: General

June 20, Eritrea’s Martyrs Day was commemorated by nationals inside the country and abroad with patriotic zeal.

President Isaias Afwerki laid a wreath at Asmara’s Patriots Cemetery in the early morning hours today in Commemoration of Martyrs Day and in tribute to Eritrea’s best sons and daughters who paid the ultimate price to assert and defend Eritrea’s national independence and sovereignty.

Similarly, Martyrs Day was commemorated in all regions of the country by putting wreaths at their respective Martyrs Cemeteries. The commemoration events were conducted within the confines of COVID-19 Guidelines.

The event was also highlighted by tree-planting popular campaigns as well as cultural performances depicting the glorious legacy of the Martyrs and the steadfastness of the Eritrean people.

Exactly at 1:00 o’clock, a minute of silence in memory of the fallen heroes and heroines was observed by nationals inside the country and abroad in their homes.

On 19 June nationals inside the country and abroad also commemorated Martyrs Day with candle vigil inside their home.

Source: Ministry of Information Eritrea

Eritrean Martyrs Day Commemorated Throughout United Kingdom

Eritrean communities in the UK commemorated martyrs day in their respective localities. The official commemoration was broadcasted virtually live from Embassy Media studio on the 19th of June. The event was presided in the presence of the UK organising committee, martyr’s families and representatives of those undertaking sporting activities to mark the remembrance of Eritrean Martyrs.

During the virtual ceremony H.E. Estifanos Habtemariam, the Ambassador of the State of Eritrea to the UK and Ireland gave an opening speech and various other programmes, which reflected the event including interviews, artistic works, poems and songs by children were also presented .

On June 20th communities in 4 different locations of London (East, West, North & South) also commemorated the event. Communities Newcastle, Leicester, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Coventry, Nottingham, Birmingham also commemorated the event.

Communities in Birmingham in particular on the 19th of June also commemorated the event in a unique manner in city centre. Eng Mulugeta Gebreab created lighting design which represents Eritrean Martyrs.

The design was very inspiring and captivating to kids. In what seems to be the first of its kind, they provided gifts to the children attending the event. As all other Eritreans in the UK, the community in Birmingham also commemorated the event on June 20th. In the sphere of sports, a 10k run also aimed at commemorating the event was also conducted by various individuals in London.

Mr Teame Tesfamariam, Mr Goitom Seyoum and others who ran along them today had also previously taken such initiatives in the past during COVID19 lock down. Mr Teame had last year run with his two sons to raise funds for Martyr’s families. Similarly, Mr Goitom also ran throughout the month of February for the Fenkil run challenge to raise funds to the Eritrean National War Disabled Veteran Association.

Similarly, the London cycling team which has been commemorating the event for the past 6 years, has also managed to cover yet again another 100 kms cycling ride to commemorate and raise awareness along their route. They have managed to successfully find many business sponsors and individuals who have contributed for their fundraising initiative. Notably they got a £500 donation form a non-Eritrean friend who had heard of their resourcefulness to raising funds for the cause.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

Nearly 6,000 people who fled jihadist violence in 2015 have returned home to the town of Baroua in southeast Niger’s troubled Diffa region, local authorities said Monday.

They are the first group to go home as part of a operation to return people to 19 towns and villages in the region, which has been ravaged by jihadists from neighboring Nigeria.

“It is a voluntary return of 1,187 households totaling 5,935 people” who returned on Sunday to Baroua, a town of some 15,000 near Lake Chad, said Yahaya Godi, a top official in the Diffa region.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 people are expected to return to Baroua in total.

State television showed images of around 20 trucks loaded with food, water, beds and building materials, with the returnees perched on top, arriving in Baroua.

Diffa is home to 300,000 refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) who have fled attacks by the Nigeria-based jihadist group Boko Haram and its breakaway faction Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), according to the UN.

Niger’s government gave the go-ahead for the return of IDPs “given positive changes in the (security) situation on the ground,” said Diffa regional governor Issa Lemine, who was in Baroua to welcome the returnees.

Niger’s security forces are working to ramp up protection for returning residents, he added.

Most of the IDPs had fled to other parts of the region, notably the city of Diffa itself.

Some 120,000 refugees from jihadist attacks in northeastern Nigeria are housed in camps around the Diffa region.

ISWAP has become a dominant threat in Nigeria, attacking soldiers and bases while killing and kidnapping civilians.

Baroua “is in ruins and we will have to start from scratch,” a local elected official told AFP.

Health clinics, drinking water distribution facilities, schools and mosques are “all run down”, he added.

Godi said people who are still reluctant to return will be encouraged by the stepped-up security as well as rebuilt infrastructure.

And the government will hire returnees to work on rebuilding projects in Baroua.

Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum, elected in February, campaigned on a promise to return all refugees and displaced people to their homes by the end of 2021.

The former French colony, which by the yardstick of the UN’s Human Development Index is the poorest country in the world, also houses nearly 60,000 people who fled after the jihadist insurgency erupted in neighboring Mali in 2012.

Source: Voice of America

Somalia, Congo, Afghanistan and Syria top the list of the most dangerous conflict zones for children, the United Nations said Monday, accounting for nearly 60% of all violations among the entries on its annual blacklist of countries where children suffer grave abuses.

“Children can no longer be the last priority of the international agenda nor the least protected group of individuals on the planet,” Virginia Gamba, U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, told reporters Monday at the report’s launch. “We need to give children an alternative to violence and abuse. We need peace, respect for children’s rights, and democracy.”

Gamba said the most widespread violations in 2020 were the recruitment and use of children by security forces and armed groups and the killing and maiming of children.

“We are extremely alarmed at the increase in the abduction of children by 90% compared to previous years, as well as the increase in rape and other forms of sexual violence, registering an increase of 70% compared to previous years,” she added.

More than 3,200 children were confirmed abducted in conflict situations in 2020, and at least 1,268 were victims of sexual violence, the report said.

Of the worst offenders, Gamba said Somalia had the “most violations by far,” primarily perpetrated by al-Shabab terrorists. In Afghanistan, she said the Taliban was responsible for two-thirds of violations, and the government and pro-government militias the rest.

Myanmar also ranked high on the list of grave violations, including for the highest numbers of children recruited and used, while Yemen has among the highest figures for children killed or maimed.

Attacks on schools and hospitals remained high last year at 856, mostly in Afghanistan, Congo, Syria and Burkina Faso.

“Education against girls was particularly targeted,” Gamba said.

As with everything else in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic only complicated matters.

The report found, for example, that the use of schools by militaries rose last year. Many schools were closed temporarily because of the pandemic, making them easy targets for military occupation and use.

New to the list are Cameroon, Burkina Faso and the Lake Chad Basin region.

The report contained some good news. Due to advocacy efforts, armed groups and security forces released 12,643 children. And the number of actors engaging with Gamba’s office, signing on to action plans and making new commitments toward children is growing.

However, human rights groups have criticized the report over the years, saying that double standards apply to the creation of the blacklist and that some countries escape accountability.

“We strongly urge the (U.N.) Secretary-General to reconsider his decision and hold parties to conflict all over the world to the same standard,” Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International, said in a statement.

“Secretary-General (Antonio) Guterres is letting warring parties implicated in the deaths and maiming of children off the hook by leaving Israel, the Saudi-led coalition (in Yemen) and other violators off his ‘list of shame,'” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “His repeated failure to base his list on the U.N.’s own evidence betrays children and fuels impunity.”

Responding to the criticism, Gamba said that regarding Israel, violations carried out during the recent fighting in Gaza would be examined in next year’s report.

She added that she did not experience any political pressure from parties in terms of who would be listed.

Source: Voice of America

Marking World Refugee Day, June 20, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, is calling on host communities to show more sympathy and love for those fleeing crises in their home country and who are now threatened by COVID-19. The UNHCR says Cameroon is home to close to half a million refugees, mostly from Nigeria and the Central African Republic.

Portraits of famous refugees adorn the walls of the annex building of the United Nations Refugee Agency in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. Among the most famous is Somali-American supermodel Iman, who became a refugee in 1972, Jamaican singer Bob Marley and Hong Kong-born film actor Jackie Chan.

UNHCR says the exhibition is designed to encourage refugees who have given up hope. The U.N. agency says people displaced from their countries by conflict can succeed in life if they work hard.

The refugee agency says Cameroon, with a population of around 25 million, is now home for close to 2 million refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced Cameroonians seeking refuge.

Among the 2 million are about half a million refugees, 322,000 of whom are fleeing violence in the neighboring Central African Republic and 117,000 are Nigerians escaping Boko Haram terrorism. Others are from Niger and Chad.

Olivier Guillaume Beer is the UNHCR representative in Cameroon. He said his agency is encouraging Cameroon and the refugees to live in peace.

“This is a day where we would like to have people understand that behind these figures, you have women, you have children. Each of them with his or her own story of violence, of persecution. People lost everything. Children lost their school, they lost their friends, parents lost their jobs and they need to restart a new life in a very difficult context. On World Refugee Day, we show empathy, solidarity to these people,” said Beer.

Beer said when Cameroon reported its first cases of COVID-19 in March of last year, the UNHCR made protecting refugees a priority. He spoke on Cameroon state radio, CRTV, on World Refugee Day.

“In remote centers where they [refugees] are, we did not have isolation centers, we did not have tents, we did not have masks. So, the first thing that the UNHCR did was to support the government, support the regional health directorate to make sure that if refugees and host communities are tested positive, they can find a way to be treated,” he said.

Cameroon said it deployed mobile health workers to test the refugees for COVID-19 in remote areas.

Lawrence Diyen Jam is the highest-ranking Cameroonian government official in Garoua Boulay, an administrative unit on Cameroon’s border with the C.A.R. He said his office receives many reports of confrontations between host communities and refugees.

He said last week, many people were wounded in conflicts between Cameroonian farmers and ranchers who fled the C.A.R. with their cattle. He said Cameroonians are not happy when cattle from the C.A.R. destroy their crops, causing hunger in local communities. He said there is regular fighting between refugees and their host communities over water resources.

Twenty-seven-year-old Yussuf Abdoulaye is a C.A.R. refugee. He said in spite of the challenges, Cameroon is still more peaceful than his country. He said he is not thinking of returning to the C.A.R. soon.

Abdoulaye said he and 16 other civilians fleeing post-election violence in the C.A.R. were warmly received by Cameroonian authorities and the UNHCR in Cameroon’s eastern town of Garoua Boulay. He said the community freely offered farmland to grow corn and beans. He said he is very happy because there is peace in Cameroon. He said he is encouraging refugees to respect the country’s laws.

Ten years ago, Cameroon had fewer than 250,000 refugees.

This year, Cameroon said it offered food and mattresses to C.A.R. refugees on its eastern border and Nigerian refugees in the Minawao camp on its northern border.

UNHCR Cameroon says it has received only 23% of the $100 million it needs to take care of the growing needs of refugees in the central African state. This year’s Refugee Day theme is together we heal, learn and shine.

Source: Voice of America

Shire, Ethiopia, a historical commercial city in the northern Tigray region has been overwhelmed with displaced families since war broke out last November. For VOA, Yan Boechat takes a closer look at some of the many camps created to house the region’s roughly 2 million displaced people.

Source: Voice of America

Countries accused of abusing their peoples’ human rights will come under the lens of the U.N. Human Rights Council over the next three weeks. Dozens of thematic issues and country reports on topics including the COVID-19 pandemic will be addressed during the session, which begins Monday.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, will present an oral update on the human rights crisis unfolding in Myanmar since the military coup there on February 1. Her report is likely to reflect condemnation of the military leaders’ violent crackdown on the civilian population and, what she sees as a looming threat of civil war in the country.

The council also will hear updates on the human rights situation in other countries, including Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, South Sudan, and Syria. Separately, observers view events in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region as one of the most serious human rights issues around.

The executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says reports of imminent famine, summary executions, rape and other atrocities perpetrated in Tigray warrant action by the Human Rights Council. He is calling for the adoption of a resolution condemning these practices at this session.

“A resolution should clearly name the governments,” he said. “We know that Ethiopian government forces have been major perpetrators of these crimes along with, as you mentioned, the Eritrean forces. It is important to recognize the Eritrean forces did not invade Tigray. They were invited in by the Ethiopian government.”

Violence erupted in Tigray in November when forces of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation front attacked federal military bases in the region. The Ethiopian government responded with the use of military force.

High Commissioner Bachelet also will present a report on police violence and systemic racism against people of African descent. The death of African American George Floyd while in police custody in the United States last year triggered a special council session one year ago.

Roth says he believes the report should have a strong focus on the United States. He adds, however, that systemic racism is a global problem and should be treated as such.

“Our concern is really that the council creates some kind of mechanism to continue this. It is not just a one-off report, but there is a more systematic effort to address root causes and to push for accountability…I do not say that at all to try to minimize the situation in the U.S. The U.S. should be a critical focus of those efforts,” he said.

The council’s last session in February focused on efforts to combat COVID-19-related violations. Bachelet will present a report on how states are responding to the pandemic. COVID-19 also will feature as a sub-theme into reports and panel discussions this session.

Source: Voice of America