Eritrea Wire

Kenya’s population of donkeys is under threat after the High Court lifted a 2020 ban on donkey slaughterhouses, allowing them to resume selling the meat and hides to Asian markets.

The high price for donkey hides for use in Chinese medicine has led to donkey poaching and sparked fears the animals could eventually go extinct.

Kilena Simeon, a Masai farmer living in the border county of Kajiado, drives her herd of donkeys in search of pasture. For years, she says, women like her have relied on the donkeys to ease the burden of labor in their homes and on their farms.

“We get our earnings from our donkeys. We use them to help us in our work. We fetch water with them, we carry luggage, we fetch fodder for our calves, and sometimes we sell them to earn money to educate our children,” she said.

This reliable source of labor is now under threat once again. In early March, Kenya’s High Court lifted a ban on the slaughter of donkeys for both meat and hide for medicine in the Asian market.

Donkey slaughter was legalized in Kenya in 2012, leading to a rapid decimation of the animal’s population and cross-border theft. Josiah Ojwang, the program’s director for the African Network for Animal Welfare, says these developments are likely to reoccur.

“There were many issues that were coming up of donkey theft, of slaughtering of underage donkeys, of cross-border smuggling of donkeys, but most importantly, communities were losing their livelihoods, because abattoirs were slaughtering very many donkeys a day, much more than naturally the donkeys can replenish,” Ojwang said.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said in 2019 that the country’s donkey population had decreased over the previous 10 years, from 1.8 million donkeys in 2009 to 1.17 million in 2019.

Ojwang says this figure is expected to decline even further with the renewed slaughter of the most significant and profitable domestic animals in Kenya.

“These slaughterhouses were slaughtering about 200 donkeys a day, sometimes 250, but they have an installed capacity of about 1,000, so if you look at even our country’s population, if they continue slaughtering at that rate, which is too high, it will be a few short years before the population of donkeys in Kenya gets almost decimated,” he said.

Kenya has four donkey abattoirs spread across four counties. The four haven’t resumed operations yet, as they are waiting to get approved by the licensing authorities.

When that happens, activists say, donkey numbers will resume their downward slide, presenting a real problem for rural women of the country and the region.

Source: Voice of America

Military officials in Mali arrested the country’s president and prime minister Monday, just months into their tenure, according to multiple news reports.

President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, as well as Defense Minister Souleymane Doucoure, were taken to a military base outside the capital, Bamako, Reuters and Agence France Presse reported.

The U.S. Embassy in Mali warned U.S. citizens to avoid unnecessary travel in Bamako because the embassy “received reports of increased military activity” in the city.

The news closely follows a reshuffle of the country’s government, in which two members of the military junta that seized power in an August coup were replaced.

The military overthrew former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita last August. Ndaw and Ouane are serving an 18-month term as the country transitions and prepares for new elections.

Mali had been mired in months of protests led by the main opposition party in 2020 over an economic crisis, corruption and Keita’s failure to quell an eight-year-old Islamic insurgency that gained a foothold in central Mali. Anger also brewed over the results of 31 disputed legislative races held last April.

Source: Voice of America

The International Criminal Court has begun hearing evidence against Sudanese para-military commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, the alleged leader of a notorious militia blamed for atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The hearing will determine if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial on one or more of the 31 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity Kushayb is facing.

During her presentation Monday, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda called Ali Kushayb a “willing and energetic” perpetrator of crimes committed in 2003 and 2004 as Sudan’s central government tried to crush an insurgency in Darfur.

Kushayb was arrested after he surrendered himself to authorities in the Central African Republic last year and was transferred to the ICC in the Hague. The court had issued a warrant for Kushayb’s arrest in April 2007.

The hearing is expected to last four days, said Fadi El Abdallha, spokesperson and head of public affairs at the ICC.

“The purpose of this hearing is to decide whether or not a trial will be held at a later stage. It’s a preliminary hearing in which the judges will check the evidence of the prosecutor, will listen to the defense answers and will listen to the victims who are represented through their lawyers,” El Abdallha told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

The judges will have 60 days to decide whether or not to confirm one or more of the charges, “and that means whether or not they believe for each of the charges the prosecutor has presented enough evidence to believe or to have substantial reasons to believe that Mr. Abdelrahman committed these crimes,” said El Abdallha.

The judges may also decide to ask the prosecutor for additional evidence or suggest different legal characterizations of certain elements of the case.

Following his arrest last year, the ICC released a statement saying Kushayb was one of the most senior leaders in the tribal hierarchy in the Wadi Salih locality and a member of the para-military group the Popular Defense Forces and reportedly commanded thousands of Janjaweed militiamen from August 2003 until March 2004.

It was Kushayb who allegedly implemented the counter-insurgency strategy of the Sudan government which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur.

The militia leader is accused of personally participating in some of the attacks against civilians between August 2003 and March 2004, including the killing of civilians, rape, and torture, according to El Abdallah.

Initially, Kushayb faced 50 counts of crimes but Bensouda recently reduced the number to 31, El Abdallah told VOA. The remaining charges include counts of rape, torture, pillaging and attacking civilians, he said.

Kushayb has not entered a plea to the charges but at a hearing last year he told judges the allegations were “untrue.”

Former Sudanese president Omar al Bashir and his former defense minister, state minister for interior and a rebel commander are also accused of war crimes committed in Darfur. The ICC issued arrest warrants against all of them years ago.

Bensouda visited Sudan in October urging Sudanese authorities to cooperate with the ICC on all five individuals.

“Sudan has an obligation to cooperate with the ICC because of the resolution of the [U.N.] Security Council which created this obligation for Sudan, and cooperating with the ICC means respecting the ICC founding treaty, the Rome Statute, which allows for different possibilities such either surrendering the suspects against whom there’s arrest warrants, or raising for example changes to the admissibility of the case based on the complementarity principle,” said El Abdallah.

The principle of complementarity allows Sudan to submit a request to the ICC to try the accused at home. El Abdallah said if Sudan chooses to try Bashir and the other accused, ICC judges must decide whether Sudan fulfils all the legal criteria for a competent tribunal. If Sudan fails to meet the criteria, it must surrender the accused to the ICC.

Sudanese officials have reiterated their commitment to cooperating with the ICC but have yet to agree with the court on a process for trying the accused in Sudan.

Source: Voice of America

Ethiopia has accused the United States of “meddling” in its internal affairs after the U.S. imposed visa restrictions on Ethiopian officials whom the U.S. accuses of fueling the ongoing conflict in the Tigray region.

“If such a resolve to meddle in our internal affairs and undermining the century-old bilateral ties continues unabated, the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia will be forced to reassess its relations with the United States, which might have implications beyond our bilateral relationship,” said Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement issued Monday. The ministry added that the move “will seriously undermine this longstanding and important bilateral relationship.”

The U.S. announced visa restrictions Sunday on several Ethiopian and Eritrean officials it says have “taken no meaningful steps to end hostilities” in the Tigray region.

“People in Tigray continue to suffer human rights violations, abuses, and atrocities, and urgently needed humanitarian relief is being blocked by the Ethiopian and Eritrean militaries as well as other armed actors,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

In addition to visa restrictions, Blinken also announced restrictions in economic and security assistance to Ethiopia. He added that humanitarian aid would continue.

The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement said the “tendency by the U.S. administration to treat the Ethiopian government on an equal footing with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is “saddening.”

“There is nothing more revealing than this to understand the misguided approach by the administration,” the statement read.

The Ethiopian government has declared the TPLF a terrorist organization.

The statement adds that the Ethiopian government has been “fulfilling its commitment” to hold those accused of human rights abuses in Tigray accountable. It says it has been working with the international community to respond to the humanitarian crisis sparked by the conflict.

Thousands have already been killed in fighting between forces of Ethiopia’s central government and the armed wing of the TPLF, which dominated Ethiopia’s politics and economy for almost two decades until Abiy Ahmed was appointed prime minister in 2018.

The conflict has also triggered a major humanitarian crisis in Tigray, pushing millions into chronic hunger and malnutrition.

Tensions between the prime minister and TPLF flared into clashes last year, triggering a government offensive in November.

Ethiopian troops and Eritrean troops have been accused of massacres in the region.

Source: Voice of America

Eritrean Independence Day Car Parade Filled London with Bright Colours

London 23rd May 2021

On a typical damp grey Sunday in London, Eritreans from all corners of the great city converged on Belgrave Square, home to London’s diplomatic community.

Though the London weather was its usual grey and miserable self, it did not deter those Eritreans who had gathered to celebrate Eritrea’s 30th Independence anniversary one bit.

As cars adorned in the bright colours of the Eritrean flag began to roll out of Belgrave Square and make their way to Parliament Square, the cloudy quiet streets of London stirred into life and vibrated to the sound of hooting horns and the beat of the music blaring from the open car windows. The greyness of London dispelled by the shining smiles of Eritreans, unable to withhold their jubilation.

As the long queue of cars snaked its way past Marble Arch — the sight of past demonstrations, the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall — where in 1975 a group of Eritrean students had staged a hunger strike to highlight the plight of Eritrea, Trafalgar Square, Langham Place — home to the BBC, Euston, Kings Cross and White Lion Street, it sent out to all who care to listen, that Eritreans are as united as ever and will always enthusiastically celebrate 24th of May, the day the children of Eritrea grasped their destiny in their own hands.

White Lion street in London where the Embassy of Eritrea stands proud, is usually quiet on a Sunday, but not on this Sunday, the eve of the independence of Eritrea. White Lion street was heaving with traffic as a steady stream of cars flying high the Eritrean flag, passed by the doors of the Eritrean Embassy for a full four hours from midday Sunday up until four PM in the afternoon. The street was bursting at its seams with as a large crowd of jubilant Eritreans gathered.

Community representatives, elderly, Embassy staff, officials including the Ambassador H.E. Estifanos Habtemariam stood outside undeterred by the occasional rain fall greeting everyone until the car parade ended.

The police unable to stem the flow of cars and contain the ever growing crowd of jubilant Eritreans in White Lion street, in the end decided to close if off to non-Eritrean traffic, turning a small part of London for a brief few hours into Eritrea.

Not even the heavy construction machinery in White Lion street had managed to shake it like the dancing feet of the multitudes of Eritreans that had gathered at their embassy to usher in 24th of May, the most glorious of days in the Eritrean Calendar.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online