Category: General

The U.N. human rights office says it fears heightened tension between Hema herders and Lendu farmers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo may erupt into more violence following last week’s deadly attacks.

At least 62 internally displaced members of the Hema ethnic community were killed and 38 injured when their camp was attacked by an armed group last week. Fighters from CODECO, the Cooperative for the Development of Congo, staged a night-time raid on the Plaine Savo IDP camp in DR Congo’s Ituri province.

The attack, which took place February 1, is only the latest in a string of devastating assaults on IDP sites by CODECO, which is mainly composed of Lendu farmers.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssel says all the victims in the camp of 24,000 people were either shot or attacked with machetes and knives.

“It is already on vulnerable people. It is IDPs. It is people who are in camps. So, of course it is creating fears, tension. It is leading to people fleeing from the violence. Following deadly attacks last week and further attempts over the weekend, there is significant risk that other IDP sites could be attacked as well,” Throssel said.

U.N. officials note ethnic tensions between the Hema and Lendu communities have existed for years. Last year, the U.N. agency documented 10 attacks on IDP sites in Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu provinces. In all, it says at least 106 people were killed, 16 injured and some seven women subjected to sexual violence.

The human rights agency is calling on DRC authorities to immediately strengthen the protection of civilians in the troubled areas. It says they must ensure the safety and security of people who have sought refuge from violent inter-ethnic attacks in IDP camps.

Military authorities in the region have launched a preliminary investigation into the recent onslaughts. U.N. officials say the investigation must be independent, effective, and transparent, and perpetrators must be brought to justice.

Source: Voice of America

Drought conditions have left an estimated 13 million people facing severe hunger in the Horn of Africa, according to the United Nations World Food Program.

People in a region including Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya face the driest conditions recorded since 1981, the agency reported Tuesday, calling for immediate assistance to forestall a major humanitarian crisis.

Drought conditions are affecting pastoral and farming communities across southern and south-eastern Ethiopia, south-eastern and northern Kenya, and south-central Somalia. Malnutrition rates are high in the region

WFP said it needs $327 million to look after the urgent needs of 4.5 million people over the next six months and help communities become more resilient to extreme climate shocks.

“Three consecutive failed rainy seasons have decimated crops and caused abnormally high livestock deaths,” it said in a statement. “Shortages of water and pasture are forcing families from their homes and leading to increased conflict between communities.”

More forecasts of below-average rainfall threaten to worsen conditions in the coming months, it said.

Others have raised alarm over a fragile region that also faces sporadic armed violence.

The U.N. children’s agency said earlier in February that more than 6 million people in Ethiopia are expected to need urgent humanitarian aid by mid-March. In neighboring Somalia, more than 7 million people need urgent help, according to the Somali NGO Consortium.

Source: Voice of America

AMBOISE (France)— A sculpture of an Algerian military hero was vandalised on Saturday in central France, hours before it was inaugurated.

The artwork, which was commissioned to mark 60 years of Algerian independence from France, depicts Emir Abdelkader, once dubbed “France’s worst enemy”.

Abdelkader led the struggle against the French invasion of Algeria in 1830.

He was imprisoned for four years in the French town of Amboise, where the new sculpture now stands.

The town’s mayor decided to go ahead with the ceremony on Saturday, saying he was “ashamed” that someone would treat an artwork that way.

“This is a day of harmony and unity and this kind of behaviour is unspeakable,” said Thierry Boutard.

Algeria’s ambassador to France said it was an act of “unspeakable baseness”.

The vandalism comes in the middle of France’s presidential election campaign, during which immigration and Islam have been significant issues for some candidates.

“It’s a shame and yet it’s not surprising with the rhetoric of hate and the nauseating current atmosphere,” said Ouassila Soum, a 37-year-old French woman of Algerian background who attended the inauguration.

Emir Abdelkader, who was an Islamic scholar before becoming a military ruler, is considered one of the founders of modern-day Algeria for his role in resisting French rule. But the rebellion he led in the 19th Century ultimately failed, and he was taken to France and imprisoned for four years with his family in Amboise, a town south-west of Paris.

He later won international recognition for his role defending Christians from sectarian attacks in the Middle East, where he travelled after his release from France.

Algeria eventually gained independence from France in 1962 after a bloody eight-year war which continues to complicate relations between the two countries. Estimates of the death toll vary between 400,000 and one million.

The new sculpture, which looks across the river Loire at the castle where Abdelkader was imprisoned, was the idea of a historian who had been asked by French President Emmanuel Macron to find ways to heal the memories of the war and of French rule in Algeria.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Tunisian judges on Sunday rejected President Kais Saied’s moves to disband the council that oversees them, a move they see as undermining their independence, setting up a new struggle over his consolidation of power.

Saied announced overnight he was dissolving the Supreme Judicial Council, one of the few remaining state bodies still able to act independently of him, the latest in a series of moves his opponents call a coup.

In July he suddenly suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister and said he could rule by decree, and has since said he will rewrite the 2014 democratic constitution before putting it to a public referendum.

Saied has vowed to uphold rights and freedoms won in the 2011 revolution that introduced democracy, but his critics say he is leaning increasingly on the security forces and fear he will take a harsher stance against dissent.

Tunisia’s dire economic problems and a looming crisis in public finances risk undermining Saied’s declared plan to reset the 2011 revolution with a new constitution, raising the possibility of public unrest.

Saied has been tussling with the judiciary for months, criticizing its decisions, accusing it of corruption and saying it has been infiltrated by his political enemies.

The Supreme Judicial Council head, Youssef Bouzakher, early on Sunday said its dissolution was illegal and marked an attempt to bring judges under presidential instruction.

“Judges will not stay silent,” he warned.

Later, two other judicial organizations condemned the move as unconstitutional. The Young Magistrates Association said it was part of a political purge of the judiciary and the Judges Association said Saied was trying to amass all powers in his own hands.

Saied, a constitutional law professor before running for president in 2019, is married to a judge and has repeatedly said that the judiciary should remember it represents a function of the state rather than being the state itself.

In January, he revoked financial privileges for the council’s members, accusing the independent body established in 2016 of appointing judges to their positions based on loyalty to its leadership.

“Their place is not where they sit now, but where the accused stand,” Saied said of the council members in his overnight speech, delivered from the building of the Interior Ministry, which oversees Tunisia’s security forces.

Saied had called on supporters to protest against the council on Sunday, but only a few hundred people turned up. Some held a banner saying, “The people want to cleanse the judiciary.”

Several main parties in the suspended parliament, including the moderate Islamist Ennahda which has been part of successive governments since 2011, accuse Saied of a coup.

Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, who is also the speaker of the suspended parliament, said in a statement on Sunday that the body rejected Saied’s decision to dissolve the council and voiced solidarity with the judges.

Three other parties, Attayar, Joumhouri and Ettakatol, issued a joint statement rejecting the move.

Source: Voice of America

IGHRAN, MOROCCO — The Moroccan royal palace said Saturday that a 5-year-old boy who was trapped in a deep well for four days has died.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI expressed his condolences to the boy’s parents in a statement released by the palace.

The boy, Rayan, was pulled from the well Saturday night by rescuers after a lengthy operation that captivated global attention.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the boy wrapped in a yellow blanket after he emerged from a tunnel dug specifically for the rescue.

His parents had been escorted to an ambulance before the boy emerged.

Online messages of support and concern for the boy poured in from around the world as the rescue efforts dragged through the night.

Rescuers used a rope to send oxygen and water down to the boy as well as a camera to monitor him. By Saturday morning, the head of the rescue committee, Abdelhadi Temrani, said: “It is not possible to determine the child’s condition at all at this time. But we hope to God that the child is alive.”

In the well for days

Rayan fell into a 32-meter (105-feet) well located outside his home in the village of Ighran in Morocco’s mountainous northern Chefchaouen province on Tuesday evening. He became trapped in a hole too narrow for rescuers to reach safely.

For three days, search crews used bulldozers to dig a parallel ditch. Then on Friday, they started excavating a horizontal tunnel to reach the trapped boy. Morocco’s MAP news agency said that experts in topographical engineering were called upon for help.

Temrani, speaking to local television 2M, said Saturday that rescuers had just two meters (yards) left to dig to reach the hole where the boy was trapped.

“The diggers encountered a hard rock on their way and were therefore very careful to avoid any landslides or cracks,” he said. “It took about five hours to get rid of the rock because the digging was slow and was done in a careful way to avoid creating cracks in the hole from below, which could threaten the life of the child as well as the rescue workers.”

The work was especially difficult for fear that the soil surrounding the well could collapse on the boy.

Villagers gather

His distraught parents were joined by hundreds of villagers and others who had gathered to watch the rescue operation.

The village of about 500 people is dotted with deep wells, many used for irrigating the cannabis crop that is the main source of income for many in the poor, remote and arid region of Morocco’s Rif Mountains. Most of the wells have protective covers.

The exact circumstances of how the boy fell in the well are unclear.

Nationwide, Moroccans had taken to social media to offer their hopes for the boy’s survival, using the hashtag #SaveRayan which has brought global attention to the rescue efforts.

Source: Voice of America

Efforts to rescue a five-year-old continued Friday in Morocco, three days after he fell into a well near the northern city of Chefchaouen.

Local media reported the boy’s father said he had been repairing the 32-meter well near his home Tuesday when his son fell in.

First responders confirmed the boy, named Rayan, was alive by lowering a video camera down the well’s narrow shaft. The MAP news agency said rescuers had been able to send him oxygen and water through pipes.

With the well’s shaft too narrow for rescuers to reach the bottom and the soil too loose to risk widening it, heavy construction equipment was brought in to dig a parallel hole alongside it. State media reports early Friday rescuers were about six meters from the child.

Efforts to reach the boy were streamed on social media, capturing public attention, and sparking an outpouring of sympathy online, with the Arabic hashtag #SaveRayan going viral across North African, including in neighboring Algeria.

The coverage has also brought crowds of onlookers to the scene to watch the rescue, though officials have kept them a good distance away.

Local television reports showed a medivac helicopter standing by at the scene to take the child to a hospital once he is freed.

Source: Voice of America