Category: General

KHARTOUM – Thousands of protesters in Sudan’s capital demanded justice from the government this week over a 2019 massacre in Khartoum in which more than 100 people died.

The protesters Thursday called for the government to hold the Rapid Support Forces, a security unit, accountable for violently suppressing sit-in protests two years ago.

On Wednesday night, Sudan’s military began restricting access to the area surrounding the military headquarters where the killings took place.

In a press release addressing the anniversary, the prime minister of Sudan, Abdalla Hamdok, described what he called a complicated relationship with the country’s various security agencies, which the constitution says are under the authority of his military counterpart.

Hamdok said this relationship had delayed the investigation and the government was holding talks to fix this relationship.

Political analyst Shawgi Abdulazeem said the absence of justice in the sit-in dispersal was increasing tension.

Activists have shared videos from the June 2019 attack that show heavily armed security convoys near the protester encampments.

Qatar-based political analyst Abbas Mohamed said he thought the accusations might threaten the country’s fragile transition to democracy.

Mohamed said demands of the massacre victims’ relatives remained linked with political agendas. He noted that their protests were aimed at the Rapid Support Forces alone, not other uniformed forces such as the military and other security forces that should also be under investigation.

Surfaced under Bashir

The controversial Rapid Support Forces surfaced during the Darfur war in 2003 under former dictator Omar al-Bashir. The forces grew larger over the years, participating in the Yemen war on behalf of Saudi Arabia, and they were allegedly involved in Libya’s war.

After Bashir was ousted from Sudan in 2019, the top leaders of Rapid Support Forces reached a power-sharing agreement with military and civilian lawmakers.

In March 2021, Human Rights Watch alleged that the Rapid Support Forces had committed many abuses, and it urged the transitional government to address the unit’s growing power.

The United States also called on Sudan to bring all the militias and armed entities into one army controlled by a civilian-led government.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese public prosecutor resigned in May without explanation.

Sudan’s prime minister has asked the official tasked with investigating the 2019 killings to set a deadline for releasing the findings. Protesters say they will escalate their rallies if the government further delays the results of the investigation.

Source: Voice of America

OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO – The death toll from the worst militant attack in Burkina Faso in recent years has risen to 132, the government said Saturday, after armed assailants laid siege overnight to a village in the Islamist extremist-plagued northeast.

The attackers struck during the night Friday, killing residents of the village of Solhan in Yagha province, bordering Niger. They also burned homes and the market, the government said in a statement.

It declared a 72-hour period of national mourning, describing the attackers as terrorists, although no group has claimed responsibility. Another 40 residents were wounded, government spokesperson Ousseni Tamboura later told reporters.

Attacks by Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State in West Africa’s Sahel region have risen sharply since the start of the year, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, with civilians bearing the brunt.

The violence in Burkina Faso has displaced more than 1.14 million people in just more than two years, while the poor, arid country is hosting 20,000 refugees from neighboring Mali.

The latest attack pushed the number killed by armed Islamists in the Sahel region to more than 500 since January, according to Human Rights Watch’s West Africa director, Corinne Dufka.

“The dynamic is the jihadists come in, they overpower the civil defense post and engage in collective punishment against the rest of the village — it’s a pattern we’ve seen everywhere this year,” Dufka said.

In March, attackers killed 137 people in coordinated raids on villages in southwestern Niger.

Source: Voice of America

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON – Female Cameroonian activists and opposition members have appealed to the United Nations Security Council, meeting Monday, to discuss possible solutions to escalating Boko Haram terrorism and the separatist crisis in the central African state. They are also asking the U.N. to force Cameroon to respect human rights, release political prisoners and negotiate a cease-fire with armed groups. The government has refused to respond to their appeal.

Twenty female leaders say in a letter to the U.N. Security Council that Cameroon, once the bastion of stability in Central Africa, is today conflict-ridden and on the brink of catastrophe.

They say that more than 10,000 Cameroonians have died in the Boko Haram conflict on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria and the separatist crisis in the central African state’s English-speaking western regions. They accuse Cameroon’s government and rebels of gross human rights violations.

Edith Kah Walla is the president of the Cameroon People’s Party and founding member of Stand Up for Cameroon, which advocates for a peaceful transition to rebuild Cameroon.

She says the women want the Security Council to include Cameroon on their agenda.

“We want the U.N. to give us help now,” said Walla. “We do not want them to wait till the situation is so bad, and then to start telling us that they are bringing U.N. soldiers [peace keeping troops] here. We want them to act now. Our population is dying. Over a million children are out of schools. We cannot sit by as our country falls apart. There is no peace without respect for human rights, without justice.”

Walla said the women want the U.N. to require Cameroon to respect human rights and release all nonviolent political prisoners linked to Boko Haram, separatists and the political crisis in the central African state.

The women say that for the sake of peace, U.N. member states should ask Cameroon to allow free public discussions on political transition. Cameroon’s 88-year-old President, Paul Biya, has been in power for close to 40 years and is accused of wanting to hang on to power until he dies.

Ejani Leonard Kulu is a Cameroonian political analyst at the U.N. University for Peace in Addis Ababa. He says it is very unlikely that the United Nations will take up the female leaders’ proposals.

He says the U.N. has already helped Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Benin contribute troops to a joint task force to fight Boko Haram.

“The U.N. is a partner in managing the crises in Cameroon,” said Kulu. “If we should take Boko Haram, remember the Multinational Joint Task Force. It is financed and supported by the U.N. The crisis in the North West and South West, the U.N. has pronounced itself on several occasions that it is an internal problem which Cameroon can solve.”

Kulu said Cameroon female leaders should have carried out advocacy with the five permanent members of the Security Council – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to ensure discussion of Cameroon at the Security Council.

In another letter, the female leaders ask International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to stop disbursing funds until the Cameroon government shows proof of transparent management.

Tomaino Ndam Njoya is mayor of the western town of Foumban, an official of the Cameroon Democratic Union and a former lawmaker in Cameroon’s National Assembly.

Njoya says the female leaders are not indifferent to the high wave of corruption and theft of public funds in Cameroon. She says many government ministers have been asked to explain what happened to a $335 million IMF loan intended to stop the spread of COVID-19. She says it would be unfair to continue to give loans to Cameroon when the government has not accounted for amounts already received.

Cameroon government spokesperson Rene Emmanuel Sadi did not respond when contacted by VOA about Njoya’s comments. In a release read on state radio, Cameroon promised to investigate corruption and punish those found guilty.

Cameroon, a majority French-speaking country, is facing several problems, including the separatist crisis in its English-speaking western regions and Boko Haram terrorism on its northern border with Nigeria.

Cameroon also suffers the spillover of the crisis in the Central African Republic, with attacks by rebels on its eastern border and political tensions from Biya’s long stay in power.

Source: Voice of America

ABUJA, NIGERIA – Millions of Nigerians struggled Saturday to access Twitter, a day after authorities suspended the service in response to the company’s deletion of a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari for violating its terms of service.

The Twitter ban took effect Saturday morning. Millions of users in Lagos and Abuja said they were unable to access their accounts.

Authorities said Friday that they had banned Twitter because it was persistently being used “for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”

Twitter responded to the ban, saying it was “deeply concerning.”

‘Reverse the unlawful suspension’

Many citizens and rights groups objected to the ban. Amnesty International said it was a threat to free speech and must be reversed without delay.

“Amnesty International condemns the Nigerian government’s suspension of Twitter in Nigeria,” said Seun Bakare, a spokesperson for the organization. Bakare said Amnesty had called on Nigerian authorities “to immediately reverse the unlawful suspension and other plans to gag the media, to repress the civic space and to undermine human rights of the people. The Nigerian government has an obligation to protect and promote International human rights laws and standards.”

The ban mostly affected the country’s largest network providers, MTN and Airtel.

Some users Saturday were able to access Twitter using Wi-Fi connections. Others were avoiding the shutdown by using virtual private networks that make them appear to be using Twitter from another country.

VPN providers have since Friday seen a surge in usage. Abuja resident Basil Akpakavir was among Twitter users getting around the government ban.

“They are relentless in their intolerant attitude toward people that have contrary opinion to theirs,” Akpakavir said. “But the truth is that we’re equal to the task, as well. Whichever way they want it, we’re going to give it to them. We want a Nigeria that is prosperous, that is built on the tenets of true democracy.”

Separatist group singled out

Buhari had threatened earlier in the week to crack down on separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), in a manner similar to the civil war waged in 1967 when 3 million Biafrans were estimated to have died in battle against the Nigerian government.

The president’s tweet was criticized as a war threat to separatist groups, and Twitter deleted it.

Amnesty’s Bakare said the government must be held accountable for comments capable of instigating division and violence.

“It is important that government platforms, and in this particular instance the president, do not invite violence or division,” Bakare said. “The government must be alive to the increased tensions in the country, given the spate of insecurity.”

The Nigerian government has often attempted to regulate the use of social media to reduce criticism.

Late last year, the government proposed a social media regulation bill after the End SARS protests against police brutality, when social media were used by young Nigerians to mobilize and challenge what they said was bad governance.

Source: Voice of America

The breezy, cool markets are moderately crowded on Wednesday afternoon, and blue tuk-tuks whiz through the streets. Sidewalk juice and coffee shops are busy, in what appears to be a relaxed regional capital.

But it is not long before we notice glimpses of how much this city is not relaxed. War has permeated every aspect of life here, from mundane activities to unspeakable horrors, such as children being shot at and knifed.

Mobile phone data doesn’t work, and only a few hotels and organizations have Wi-Fi. In our hotel lobby, one of the lucky few with a connection, the bar area is packed with college-age men and women, and soldiers with their AK assault rifles on the tables. Most eyes are glued to mobile phones.

But they are not just catching up on emails and Facebook. Everyone seems to be worrying about someone who is out of contact and possibly displaced, injured or worse.

An evening curfew begins at 6 p.m. or 8 p.m., depending on whom you ask. Either way, they say, getting home before night falls is preferable because the streets are dangerous after dark.

Only last year, Mekelle was run by an entirely different government, and when the federal government took over last year, the police just left, many presumably to fight with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which formerly controlled the city.

“Every night we have to take everything we have in our store back home and bring it back the next morning,” a tailor in the market tells us as he closes up shop, adding that he doesn’t want his name or picture in the press for security reasons. “It’s not safe.”

Displaced

The next morning, we visit the newest displacement camp in the city — it is only a month or so old. It is one of 26 camps in this city, where 200,000 people are displaced. Across Tigray, about 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes since last November.

At first glance the camp looks quaint and comfortable. It is an adapted school campus, with ample trees and stone buildings painted with things like maps and microscopes.

But we soon learn that the more than 7,000 residents are not enjoying the views. The camp is overcrowded, with as many as 100 people sleeping in a classroom about 10 meters by 8 meters. What’s more, there is very little food. By midafternoon, almost no one we speak to has eaten yet.

Less than a year ago, this region was at peace. Displaced families here now mourn their thousands of dead and missing, along with their homes, farms and businesses.

“I had my own kiosk in my hometown,” says Merchawit Kiros, a 27-year-old mother of one, who is six months pregnant with her next child. Merchawit was stoic when she described the violence of displacement, but when her shop comes up, she bursts into tears. “When the soldiers came in, they looted it and took everything. I used to sell many things, like sugar, coffee, candles and matches.”

Another camp in town also looks like a tiny village. It is a converted campus, with English lessons dangling from the ceilings of the classrooms. It is smaller than the first camp, and a Catholic charity provides food for the residents. It’s still crowded, with 35 to 45 people packed in a room, and there is a monthslong waiting list to get in.

On a bench in what once was a play yard, we meet Gebre Gebreslase, a 70-year-old former cattle farmer, as he waits for news of his place in line. Right now, he is staying with family in the city, but it is crowded and his family is poor.

He wears a fraying cowboy hat and a black mask against coronavirus, one of the few to be seen in the yard. Tigray is unsure of how much COVID-19 is present — they started testing only about a month ago, according to local hospital workers.

Like others from his community who are sitting on the bench, Gebre cannot imagine ever going back to his home, which he fled as gunfire blasted through the town. He says he is certain that his properties and animals have all long been confiscated by the controlling forces.

“I had 130 cows, 70 goats and a villa,” he says. “Now I am a beggar.”

Injured

As dismal as the camps are, nothing could prepare us for what we see at the hospital later in the day. Dozens of children with missing limbs, broken bones and gunshot wounds fill room after room, with quiet parents by their side. The children are also mostly silent.

“The only noise she makes is crying or asking for her mother,” says Gabre Hiwet, a young father, speaking of his 4-year-old daughter, Samrawit, who winces at the metal bars stuck in her broken leg.

Gabre then goes on to describe how he wasn’t home on March 30, when eight members of his family were killed, including his wife. Little Samrawit was the only survivor, after being knifed in the leg and shot through her left hand.

“She was bleeding so badly, we thought she was dead,” Gabre says. “We couldn’t believe she survived.”

It’s a story so gruesome, we might not believe it, if it weren’t for the fact that displaced families and refugees from Tigray have told us stories like this, over and over, from every corner of the region.

We meet other children wounded from sniper fire, point-blank shootings, artillery fire, planted mines and other explosives. A 15-year-old girl, Beriha, was hit in the face by a bullet that exited through her left eye. Her doctors say she will survive, permanently blinded, but hopefully one day with less pain.

Downstairs, the cheerful hospital garden belies the facility’s lack of medical supplies.

“There is a shortage of everything,” says one medical student, briskly explaining the snowball effect of substandard medicine that allows the patients to get sicker and puts them in need of even more advanced treatments that the hospital doesn’t have.

Around the corner, a military truck of injured soldiers reminds us there is a war still going on, and hospital workers say more wounded fighters arrive almost every evening. Much of the region is closed to reporters and, more tragically, aid workers, leaving 90% of the people in Tigray in desperate need of emergency food.

At the hospital, there are no battles and hardly any noise. No one appears to be starving. Just a stark view of the horror that families in Tigray are facing.

“Forget the bang-bang,” says Yan Boechat, our photojournalist. “This is the real war.”

Source: Voice of America

For weeks now, Niger state in Central Nigeria has remained a hotspot for kidnappings in the country.

State authorities said around 70 gunmen on motorbikes carried out an attack on the Islamiyya School on Sunday afternoon. One person was killed during the attack and scores of children between five and 13 years old were herded into the nearby bush.

But that wasn’t Niger state’s only kidnapping last weekend. Resident Enoch Obemeasor said his neighborhood was also the scene of an attack in which numerous people were abducted.

“They started operation around 10 o’clock, over three hours operation,” Obemeasor said. “They kidnapped 17 people, but two escaped and they took away the remaining 15.”

For months, kidnap-for-ransom crises have rocked Nigeria, especially in the north of the country. School students have been most adversely affected.

Since December, nearly 1,000 school children have been kidnapped, leading to the shutdown of schools, leaving millions of kids without a place to learn.

Experts, however, said although citizens are growing weary of the frequent mass kidnappings, public outrage in diminishing.

Hosea Adama, former chairman of the Chibok community where some 276 girls were taken by Boko Haram in 2014, explains why.

“Everybody is tired, people are suffering,” Adama said. “You’re facing your own problem. It will be difficult for you to come out for somebody else. Everyone is facing his own problem. So it has become difficult for people to come out and make agitations about kidnappings.”

The Chibok abductions in 2014 sparked global outrage and announced Boko Haram’s notoriety.

Recent mass abductions in the country have yet to attain that level of recognition.

Vivian Bellonwu of Social Action Nigeria says the level of outrage remains the same, but citizens are becoming more tactical in their expression of outrage as a result of a government efforts to suppress its most vocal critics.

“Nigerians are responding in diverse ways; truly, the thing is that we have never had it this bad,” Bellonwu said. “We’re having a situation where we are being bombarded by multifaceted dimensions of insecurity. So citizens have been reacting. There have been reactions, but what you are seeing is a systematic attitude by the state to suppress these reactions.”

This week, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari responded to rising insecurities and tweeted, “There must be zero tolerance for all those bent on destroying our country by promoting crime and insurrection.”

Source: Voice of America

Shops remained shuttered, some government workers hadn’t been paid and the town’s main hospital was laid to waste. But the Tigrayan fighters still claimed victory, swaggering through the streets of Hawzen with their guns.

It wouldn’t last long.

Hawzen, a rural town in the ethnic Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, is a microcosm of the challenge facing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — and a warning that the war here is unlikely to end soon.

When The Associated Press arrived in May, Tigrayan fighters had recently retaken Hawzen from Ethiopian government troops, laying claim again to land that has switched control multiple times since the war began in November.

To the Ethiopian government, the fighters are terrorists who have defied the authority of Abiy in the federal capital, Addis Ababa.

But almost everyone the AP spoke with in Hawzen supported them and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, the party of the region’s ousted and now-fugitive leaders.

“The people elected us, so we are not terrorists,” said fighter Nurhussein Abdulmajid, standing confidently in the middle of the road with a gun on his shoulder, as a crowd listened. “He [Abiy] is the one who is the terrorist. A terrorist is someone who massacres people.”

Larger war

The battle for Hawzen is part of a larger war in Tigray between the Ethiopian government and the Tigrayan rebels that has led to massacres, gang rapes and the flight of more than 2 million of the region’s 6 million people.

While the government now holds many urban centers, fierce fighting continues in remote rural towns like Hawzen.

The AP was able to get through an Ethiopian military roadblock and cross the front line to get a rare look at a town held by Tigrayan fighters, who carried light weapons they said they had seized from opponents.

If anything, recent atrocities appear to have increased support for the TPLF.

One 19-year-old said she had been raped by an Ethiopian soldier and was now six months pregnant. After trying and failing to terminate the pregnancy herself, she is now desperately hoping someone in a local hospital will help her.

As soon as possible, she said, she wants to join the rebels.

“I want to go,” she said, as she broke down in tears. “You will die if you stay home, and you will die if you go out there. … I would rather die alongside the fighters.”

The AP does not name victims of sexual abuse.

The TPLF was on top of a coalition that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades. That changed in 2018, when Abiy rose to power as a reformist. He alienated the TPLF with efforts to make peace with its archenemy, Eritrea, and rid the federal government of corruption.

Tigray’s leaders fought back. In 2020, after a national vote was suspended because of the pandemic, the TPLF went ahead with its own elections in the region.

Asserting that Tigrayan fighters had attacked a military base, Abiy sent federal troops into Tigray in November. Government forces are now allied with militias from the rival Amhara ethnic group as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, who are blamed for many atrocities.

‘Protracted’ conflict

Abiy acknowledged recently that the highly mobile Tigrayan guerrillas were stretching the Ethiopian military, springing ambushes from the rugged highlands where they hide.

In April, the International Crisis Group predicted that entrenched resistance on both sides meant “the conflict could evolve into a protracted war.”

Billene Seyoum, a spokeswoman for Abiy’s office, told reporters on Thursday that “the suffering of Ethiopians who are victims of a situation that is not of their choosing is a source of pain.” Efforts to alleviate the suffering of Tigrayans “have been marred by various challenges given the complexity of any armed engagement,” she said.

Residents of Hawzen said the town of a few thousand people had seen fighting four times since November. Many spoke disapprovingly of Abiy, saying they no longer trusted him to keep them safe.

As the two sides fight, civilians are suffering heavily. More and more children are caught up in shelling in Hawzen and other nearby areas, with at least 32 admitted to the regional Ayder Hospital in Mekelle for blast injuries from December to April. Thirteen left with limbs amputated, according to official records.

Some of those victims might have had limbs saved if they had received first aid at the nearest health centers. But such facilities are shells right now — systematically looted, vandalized and turned upside down.

Eritrean soldiers set up camp in the Hawzen Primary Hospital, which once boasted of equipment ranging from X-ray machines to baby incubators. Now it is trashed and looted, and heaps of stones litter the compound where fighters had set up defensive positions.

Many Tigrayans from contested towns like Hawzen end up in camps for the internally displaced in Mekelle, mostly women and children.

And so the fight continues.

Source: Voice of America