Login to BlackFacts.com using your favorite Social Media Login. Click the appropriate button below and you will be redirected to your Social Media Website for confirmation and then back to Blackfacts.com once successful.
Enter the email address and password you used to join BlackFacts.com. If you cannot remember your login information, click the “Forgot Password” link to reset your password.
A LEGAL showdown is looming between Hwange Colliery Company and former workers after the coal mining firm cut electricity to their homes in a bid to force them out of company-owned houses. BY FRANCIS MWINDE Two weeks ago, the colliery company cut off electricity to company-owned houses occupied by former workers following their retrenchment but are refusing to vacate. Four years ago the colliery retrenched hundreds of workers both on compulsory and voluntary bases. Most of them have since gone to their respective homes. However, others are disputing the retrenchment process which they claim was fraught with irregularities resulting in them seeking legal advice on the way forward. Their lawyers, Calderwood, Bryce Hendrie and Partners, wrote a letter advising the company that their ex-employees would continue staying at their respective houses until finalisation of the matter between the two parties. Last week, the lawyers wrote a letter to Hwange Colliery threatening legal action against the company and the respective officers if the retrenched workers were not provided with electricity within forty-eight hours. “The conduct is, with respect, unlawful and constitutes proper grounds for relief at the High Court on an urgent basis. “The law frowns on persons who take the law into their own hands and we suggest that you seek legal advice on how to deal with this matter,” read part of the letter by the Bulawayo-based legal firm. Efforts to get a comment from Hwange Colliery Company were fruitless yesterday.
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.
