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Global NGO Save the Children says more than 1.7 million children and adults are displaced as a result of Ethiopia's Tigray conflict.
He replaces Debretsion Gebremichael, whose immunity from prosecution was removed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Thursday that scores of civilians were killed in a \"massacre\" in the Tigray region, that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party.
The \"massacre\" is the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
\"Amnesty International can today confirm... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest of Ethiopia's Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,\" the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty said it had \"digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.\"
The dead \"had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,\" Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, though Amnesty said it \"has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings\".
It nonetheless called on TPLF commanders and officials to \"make clear to their forces and their supporters that deliberate attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and constitute war crimes\".
Abiy ordered military operations in Tigray on November 4, saying they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps -- a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since, making it difficult to verify competing claims on the ground.
Abiy said Thursday his army had made major gains in western Tigray.
Thousands of Ethiopians have fled across the border into neighboring Sudan, and the UN is sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
UN says most of the troubled region remains ‘inaccessible’ for aid workers amid growing hunger due to ongoing fighting.
On Friday, 22nd May 2020, Dr Blyden was charged with ten counts of seditious libel under Sections 33, 32 and 27 of the notorious Public Order Act No 46 of 1965, which successive governments of Sierra Leone have used to harass, intimidate and persecute those with whom they disagree, especially journalists.
According to Section 33 (1), “any person who (a) does or attempts to do, or makes any preparation to do, or conspires with any person to do, any act with a seditious intention; or (b) utters any seditious words; or (c) prints, publishes, sells, offers for sale, distributes or reproduces any seditious publication; or (d) imports any seditious publication, unless he has no reason to believe it is seditious shall be guilty of an offence and liable for a first offence to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or to a fine not exceeding one thousand leones or to both such imprisonment and fine, and for a subsequent offence shall be imprisoned for a term not exceeding seven years, and every such publication shall be forfeited to the government.”
Section 32 (1) – “Any person who publishes any false statement, rumour or report which is likely to cause fear or alarm, to the public or to disturb the public peace shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding three hundred Leones or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding twelve months, or to both such fine and imprisonment.
(2) Any person who publishes any false statement, rumour or report which is calculated to bring into disrepute any person who holds an office under the Constitution, in the discharge of his duties shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding five hundred Leones or to imprisonment not exceeding two years or both.”
Section 27 – “Any person who maliciously publishes any defamatory matter shall be guilty of an offence called libel and liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding seven hundred Leones or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years or to both such fine and imprisonment.”
Algerian authorities must immediately release journalist Merzoug Touati and drop all charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
On June 12, Algerian police arrested Touati, a reporter for the news website L'Avant-Garde, while he was covering anti-government protests in the city of Béjaïa, according to journalist and press freedom advocate Mustapha Bendjama, who has followed the case and spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and a statement by the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees, a local human rights group.
On June 13, a state prosecutor charged Touati with inciting an unarmed assembly, distributing publications harmful to national unity, and putting the lives of others in danger by violating COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, according to Bendjama and news reports.
If convicted on the harming national unity charges alone, Touati could face up to 10 years in prison, according to CPJ research.
Today, a judge at the Béjaïa court denied Touati's appeal for parole, and postponed the next hearing in his case until July 1, according to Bendjama and news reports.
… enjoying historic employment numbers — especially African Americans, Latino Americans and women. Except …
United Nations — The combination of rife insecurity, food insecurity and more than 7.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance has left the Sahel a region in crisis, with the global coronavirus pandemic expected to exacerbate the situation.
The briefing, titled 'They Executed Some and Brought the Rest with Them: Civilian Lives at risk in the Sahel', details the grave reality in the region, especially across Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, including \"at least 57 cases of extrajudicial executions or unlawful killings, and at least 142 cases of enforced disappearances\" that have allegedly been committed by soldiers between February and April.
Rajasingham noted that between 2019 and now, the region experienced an exponential rise in its need for humanitarian assistance: with 7.5 million people in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali requiring assistance -- up from 6.1 million just a year ago.
According to Ousmane Diallo, a Sahel researcher at Amnesty International, the COVID-19 pandemic \"is not the defining feature in the region due to its emergence but it constitutes another challenge that different governments must contend with\".
\"The governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have mobilised their security structures in an effort to respond to the rise in militant Islamist group violence,\" the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies said.
Announcement - CPJ is Honored to Present its 2020 International Press Freedom Award to Nigerian Journalist Dapo Olorunyomi
The Second Liberian Civil War was an intense four-year conflict that involved child soldiers on all sides and extensive civilian casualties. It was also one of the few civil wars that spread into neighboring countries, in this case, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The conflict began in April 1999 when a rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), with the support of the government of neighboring Guinea, began a military offensive to topple the government of President Charles Taylor. They quickly gained control over much of Northern Liberia.
The origin of the second civil war was rooted in the previous conflict waged between 1989 and 1996 which saw former rebel leader Charles Taylor become president of the entire nation, following UN-monitored elections in 1997. The country remained at peace only two years before LURD began its military campaign. Most of LURD were Mandingo and Krahn fighters led by Sekou Conneh. Many of them had been part of the rebel group, United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), which had fought in the first Liberian civil war against Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) as well as the government of President Samuel Doe.
In September 2000, to weaken support for the rebels from the government of Guinea and Sierra Leone which was now also supporting LURD, Taylor persuaded anti-government dissidents in both nations to form the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). They along with some of his paramilitary supporters began insurgencies and thus expanded the conflict to three nations. His action drew condemnation and opposition from the UN as well as support for Guinea and Sierra Leone from Great Britain and the United States.
By early 2002, LURD troops had outmaneuvered Taylor’s forces and were only about twenty-seven miles from Monrovia, the capital. Under leaders Conneh and Thomas Nimely, LURD troops mounted successful raids that bypassed government strongholds, and in May, they staged a bold attack on Arthington, less than twelve miles from
Thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced after a government-led military campaign against regional forces in November last year.
The area is known for oil spills that have polluted the waters and left fish and other wildlife inedible.
The massive die-off was first reported in February when community people in Delta State complained of the schools of dead fish floating and littering their shores.
Samples of the fish were taken by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA).
Idris Musa, head of NOSDRA, declared the die-off had nothing to do with the continual oil leakages from offshore platforms as claimed over the years by Amnesty International, the U.N. Environmental Program, the Fishnet Alliance, and dozens of other groups in and outside of Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) this month said that the dead fishes floating and littering the Niger Delta coastline had nothing to do with its operations.
Authorities in Zimbabwe have jailed Hopewell Chin’ono, a prominent investigative journalist whose coverage of corruption brought the dismissal of a government minister for alleged profiteering on essential coronavirus supplies. Health Minister Obadiah Moyo was fired [...]
