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Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called for an independent probe into the deadly crackdown on protests that rocked Eswatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy, in June.
In May, Burundi held a presidential election which was won by Evariste Ndayishimiye, candidate of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy - Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party.
Ndayishimiye was hurriedly sworn in after the untimely death of president Pierre Nkurunziza in June.
Rights violations continue
The Council encouraged donor countries which had suspended aid to Burundi to continue dialogue towards resumption of development assistance.
A report by a UN watchdog in September said human rights violations were still being committed in Burundi, including sexual violence and murder.
The country was plunged into a crisis in April 2015 when Ndayishimiye’s predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a controversial third term, which he ultimately won in July 2015.
His candidature, which was opposed by the opposition and civil society groups, resulted in a wave of protests, violence and even a failed coup in May 2015.
Hundreds of people were killed and over 300,000 fled to neighboring countries.
Even as his recent report on the performance of Trinidad and Tobago’s extractive industries point to a decline in their revenue, going forward, the country’ Energy and Energy Industries Minister Stuart Young, speaking at the virtual launch of the Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TTEITI) report, covering the performance of 2018 has said that the country’s economy will continue to look to the energy sector as a “pillar’ in pursuit of the twin-island Republic’s economic recovery from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.
The article Despite drop in oil, gas earnings… T&T economy still looks to energy sector appeared first on Stabroek News.
By BENJAMIN F. CHAVIS NNPA (TriceEdneyWire.com) – The COVID-19 pandemic has brought issues of health care equity to the forefront of discussions of racial justice. Even when controlling for factors like age and [...]
The post Communities of color and other buyers, beware of bold promises from health insurers appeared first on Dallas Examiner.
[Nation] Mozambique authorities say they are detaining 12 Iraqi nationals linked with supporting insurgents in Cabo Delgado province, providing further evidence of an external hand in the local violence that has claimed thousands.
This past week’s international civil disturbances, sparked by the ‘lynching’ of a Black man in Minneapolis, took me back four decades to the killing/murder of Earnest Lacy by Milwaukee police officers.
Milwaukee, still reeling from several questionable killings by police—including the murder of Joel Acevedo a few short weeks ago by an off duty cop—leads the nation in seven negative social indicators and has been judged the worst city for African Americans to live in the country.
While the Minneapolis chief of police was quick to condemn his officers for violating Floyd’s human rights, Milwaukee had the misfortunate of having an avowed racist leading our police department in Chief Harold Breier.
But I doubt if the Minnesota criminal justice community would have sought to delay, distort and sabotage the investigation the way the Milwaukee Police Department did in the Lacy case.
And they had many opportunities over an extended sojourn given how the Milwaukee district attorney (E. Michael McCann), the police union, and mayor (Henry Meier) used every trick in the book to delay, undermine and desensitize the White community about the incident and police brutality against Black citizens in general.
Social media users in Africa have therefore created important pockets of “freedom” in these digital spaces. As a result, they encourage much-needed political “indiscipline” by legitimising and popularising alternative political discourses.
The post Social media are being hijacked to subtly suppress opposing voices. Insights from Kenya appeared first on NewsDay Zimbabwe.
Would George Floyd be alive today had he and Derek Chauvin grown up together and attended the same schools?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the public middle and high schools that Chauvin attended were 94 percent white and less than 2 percent Black at the time.
Today, nearly one-fifth of public schools have almost no children of color, while another one-fifth have almost no white children.
This segregation persists despite mountains of evidence demonstrating that students who attend school in integrated settings harbor fewer prejudices and have less discriminatory attitudes.
Students in diverse classrooms are less likely to drop out and more likely to enroll in college than students in high-poverty, racially segregated schools — and these benefits accrue to all students, regardless of race or ethnicity.
Somalia’s military court has sentenced a soldier to death after he was found guilty of raping a four-year-old girl. The soldier, identified as Mohammed Hussein Elmi, confessed to raping the girl in May this year. According to documents presented at the Mogadishu court, the soldier lived next door to the girl’s family in Wadajir district...
The post A soldier has been sentenced to death in Somalia for raping a four-year-old girl appeared first on Face2Face Africa.
[HRW] Nairobi -- Hold Officials Responsible to Account
HUMAN rights doctors have laid into government over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying they had noted a “sad scenario” where the fight against the dreaded pandemic was being hampered by the poor living conditions at the quarantine facilities, resulting in the recent spike in cases.
“This sad scenario is further compounded by the poor state of the quarantine facilities whose standards fall far below the World Health Organisation minimum standards,” the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) said in a statement yesterday.
“ZADHR strongly suspects that the recent spike in cases in quarantine centres is a result of the poor living conditions at the quarantine facilities.”
“ZADHR received reports that the Girls High quarantine centre, where a group of about 96 returnees — including pregnant women and an infant who were quarantined at Harare Polytechnic College on May 10, 2020 and later moved to Girls High School in Harare for further quarantining, upon arrival at Harare Polytechnic College — were not tested despite some individuals clearly exhibiting flu-like symptoms,” the doctors said.
ZADHR said it was concerned about reports that about 150 returnees were released from a Gweru facility four days ahead of schedule on May 24, 2020, after returnees threatened to protest against poor living conditions.
1. Democrats Flex Political Power What You Need To Know: At long last, leaders have completed an agreement on how to organize the evenly split U.S. Senate. 2. The Faces of White Privilege What You Need To Know: This January 20, we celebrated the anniversary of the release of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?…
With the coronavirus pandemic spiraling out of control in India and other developing regions, the United States this week committed to sharing 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with other countries. But that's a drop in the bucket. The US has bought or contracted to buy more than 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines. That's enough to vaccinate the […]
[Nation] The eSwatini government on Tuesday dismissed reports that King Mswati III had fled the country following the violent, pro-democracy protests that escalated on Monday.
Citing fears that the Delta variant may spread to eSwatini, the prime minister’s office introduced a strict curfew.
HUMAN rights lobby group, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum says it recorded at least 920 human rights violations involving State security agents under the guise of enforcing the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. BY Nhau Mangirazi In a report launched yesterday, the rights group said the violations included abductions and torture, extra-judicial killings, assaults on citizens by law enforcement officers, attacks on journalists, unlawful arrests and gunshots. Most of the violations were recorded ahead of the foiled July 30 protests where citizens intended to demonstrate against the deteriorating human rights situation and corruption in the country. “Other violations that could not be adequately quantified due to their high frequency include harassment, threats and intimidation,” read part of the report titled 180 Days of What?. “The lockdown was also marred by reports of violations on fundamental rights to dignity and rights not to be tortured, rights to water, food, medical services, access to information, and restrictions to freedom of expression, non-compliance with court orders and corruption.” According to the report, about 280 reports of assaults and torture, including dog bites, were recorded, while 20 cases of assault on journalists and 538 unlawful arrests and detention were recorded. The rights defenders also recorded 12 abductions, two gun shots, four extra-judicial killings, eights raids, 57 displacements and two cases of harassment, threat and intimidation across the country. In a country with a fragile economy, the pandemic further exacerbated the plight of citizens in relation to social and economic rights. Access to water, food and health was also a major challenge for communities, forcing the majority to venture out in search of the services and inadvertently violating lockdown regulations. The report also noted the failure by government to provide personal protective equipment in hospitals as the biggest cause of the spread of the COVID-19. “This report was compiled from stories recorded across the length and breadth of our country. It captures personal accounts of victims of all sorts of violations, through 180 stories. The report is also a scorecard of the performance of duty bearers in this time of crisis,” Musa Kika, the rights group executive director said. “The 180 days national lockdown period was marred by violations of civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights.” Police were urged to conduct a thorough investigation into all outstanding reported cases concerning excessive use of force and live ammunition by security forces on citizens and bring the perpetrators to book. The human rights lobby group also urged government to stop persecuting whistleblowers and establish an independent and credible department that monitors and oversees compliance to prevent human rights violations, corruption and malpractices by police officers.
A recent report from The Hollywood Reporter highlighting anti-vaccine sentiment among Hollywood actors revealed that Letitia Wright had been reportedly sharing those views on the Atlanta set of the highly-anticipated Marvel film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Twitter thinks it might be time to recast Shuri.
More than 100 members of Congress are pushing for higher staff wages, to ensure that “Congress reflects the American people we serve.”
[HRW] Nairobi -- The decision in the Court of Appeal of Ngozi to uphold the conviction and five-year prison sentence for a lawyer who had been affiliated to a human rights group in Burundi was a travesty of justice, Human Rights Watch and five other international human rights groups said today. The following is their statement:
BRASILIA, (Reuters) - Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has tried to sabotage efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 in his country and pursued policies that undermine the rights of Brazilians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday.
The article Brazil’s Bolsonaro sabotaged anti-COVID-19 efforts, says Human Rights Watch appeared first on Stabroek News.
A resolution has been submitted in the Punjab provincial Assembly in Pakistan, condemning attacks on journalists and rights activists in the country.
The post Pakistan: Resolution condemning rising attacks on journalists submitted in Punjab Assembly appeared first on NewsDay Zimbabwe.
Image: GCIS
Zimbabwe on Friday suspended trade on the stock exchange and mobile phone-based payments to address what President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government called “criminality and economic sabotage”.
The decision to suspend mobile payments will hit the economy hard as more than 80% of all transactions are conducted on phones due to a shortage of banknotes, according to central bank data.
“Government is in possession of impeccable intelligence which constitutes a prima facie case whereby the phone-based mobile money systems of Zimbabwe are conspiring, with the help of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, either deliberately or inadvertently, in illicit activities that are sabotaging the economy,” the statement said.
‘Intrusive investigations’
The suspension of all mobile payments and the stock market was meant to allow “intrusive investigations”.
The government says mobile payment platforms were major drivers of a roaring foreign currency trade outside formal banking channels, with multiple listed stocks such as Old Mutual providing proxy exchange rates implied by their prices on foreign bourses such as the London Stock Exchange.
The junta that seized power in Guinea has unveiled a \"transitional charter\" that it says will steer the country back to civilian rule. It however did not say how long the transition will last.
