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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.
EU ambassador to Zimbabwe Timo Olkkonen, speaking in an interview with the Alpha Media Holdings-owned Heart and Soul TV yesterday said Zimbabwe was still failing to break from her past of corruption, human rights abuses and fiscal indiscipline.
Multilateral financial institutions have given a moratorium to many countries, including those in Africa to stop servicing their debts during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Zimbabwe is not among them.
The EU ambassador said Zimbabwe had failed to pursue economic reforms leading to the end of the International Monetary Fund Staff-Monitored Programme, thereby blocking the path that could lead to debt relief.
On the political front, the EU said it remained worried over allegations of abductions and human rights violations in Zimbabwe and the failure by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government to break from the past.
“We have been discussing with the authorities that Zimbabwe wants to make a break with the past, a very crucial part of the break is to end human rights violations.
While the police reform proposals are reasonable and fair, there will likely be some folks who don’t think so. The ultimate resolution will require sustained support from the electorate.
The post Police reform will require sustained effort appeared first on The Bay State Banner.
June 2020: African nations drag US to UN human rights council
\tAfrican nations have prepared a draft resolution at the U.N.’s top human rights body that singles out the United States and would launch intense international scrutiny of systemic racism against people of African descent in the wake of recent high-profile killings of blacks by American police.
It calls for a Commission of Inquiry — the rights body’s most powerful tool to inspect human rights violations — to look into “systemic racism” and alleged violations of international human rights law and abuses against “Africans and of people of African descent in the United States of America and other parts of the world recently affected by law enforcement agencies” especially encounters that resulted in deaths.
On Monday, the council agreed unanimously to hold the urgent debate on “racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and the violence against peaceful protests” in the wake of the George Floyd killing in the United States.
AP report
May 2020: US must sit up, eliminate racial discrimination: AU on George Floyd ‘murder’
\tThe Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat has waded into the death of a black American man, George Floyd at the hands of police in the United States.
Over in South Africa, the Economic Freedom Fighter, EFF, also lambasted the US in a statement calling on African countries to call the US government to exercise restraint and to “call on Trump to seize from his genocidal deployment of the military against protesters.”
Sarah Hegazi, a prominent queer Egyptian feminist, committed suicide on Saturday in exile in Canada.
Hegazi died in Toronto, where she had sought asylum in 2018 after her arrest for daring to raise the rainbow pride flag at a concert in Cairo in 2017.
For musician Hamed Sinno, also an LGBTQ activist, Hegazi's death is linked to wider violence inflicted on LGBTQ people's bodies and minds.
\"From 2013, when Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power, to 2017, when Sarah was arrested, Egyptian authorities arrested or charged tens of thousands of people, forcibly disappeared hundreds for months at a time, handed down preliminary death sentences to hundreds more, and tried thousands of civilians in military courts,\" Younes wrote.
Younes' message to the Egyptian government was unequivocal:
\"We, queer feminists, are the collective force etching at your oppression, raising our flags and voices and fists until you are held accountable for robbing Sarah and countless others of their bodily autonomy, their home, and their lives.\"
Even those in Africa, well, some of them, marched in support of the rights and cries of the Black Lives Matter movement.
However, what I find problematic is that Africans, especially the South African opposition, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), march for George Floyd and scream black lives matter while they have not protested against African governments’ abuse of their citizens.
And he has been consistent in this: South Africans, especially black xenophobic ones, should not be found shouting and joining the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd protests as charity begins at home.
Malema and even the current ANC government seem not interested in addressing the causes of violent conflict in Africa but find it worthwhile to march for the Black Lives Matter Movement and rights of Black Americans.
Isn’t it time African movements focused on African lives more than American ones precisely because the blacks in the global north have enough technologies, voices, fire power and alliances more than in the global south?
Donald Trump is back making racist statements about the people of Haiti, the New York Post reports. In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, Trump said that permitting Haitians into the U.S. is 'like a death wish for our country.' 'Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem. AIDS is a step beyond;…
Burrell has been fighting for his release, saying he is innocent and was wrongfully convicted. By Ricardo Lopez, Minnesota Reformer The Minnesota Board of Pardons, a three-person panel comprising Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, voted to commute the sentence of Myon Burrell, a 34-year-old man […]
The Essa and Fatima Moosa Foundation has come out in defence of retired Judge Siraj Desai.
The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted two resolutions to create a mission in Sudan to support the country's political transition and extend the mandate of peacekeepers in Darfur, diplomats said.
The resolution on the new United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) was drafted by Britain and Germany.
The mission was established \"for an initial period of 12 months,\" according to the text of the resolution, seen by AFP.
Britain and Germany also drafted the resolution on renewing the mandate of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) through December 31.
Civilians 'on attack frontlines'
In a joint report in March, the UN and the African Union however had recommended that the UNAMID be replaced by a political mission in late October, and called for the peacekeepers to be gradually withdrawn by that time.
It's not only the festive season for millions of celebrants in India, but also a promising season for hundreds of thousands of people who are being hired by e-commerce giants during this prime shopping period. [...]
A New Delhi-based think tank Law and Society Alliance organised a webinar on ongoing issues concerning Tibet and China’s “attempts” to destroy
The post China failed to destroy institution of Dalai Lama, say think tank experts appeared first on NewsDay Zimbabwe.
He was a fierce proponent of free and fair elections (FFE) in Guyana.
Depoo, a Miss Phoebe native, migrated with his family to the US in the mid 1970s, qualified as a lawyer, worked with the US State Department, and later made Trinidad his home.
He made Trinidad his home for a further 20 years before deciding to settle in Guyana earlier this year.
After the Mingo fraud, Depoo spearheaded a signature campaign calling on the US State Department to take actions against those who were involved in the electoral fraud.
He was very active among the Guyanese diaspora in Trinidad where I met him at public events related to Guyana.
[New Zimbabwe] MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa has said he will jealously guard and will not allow his victory in the 2023 presidential election to be stolen again as what happened in 2018.
She was accused of having, on her YouTube channel \"Idamange\", accused President Kagame and his government of having set up a dictatorship, of instrumentalizing the 1994 genocide without sufficiently helping the survivors, or of having turned the genocide memorials into tourist attractions.
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?…
[New Zimbabwe] The Gukurahundi massacres are not \"small a matter\", and the atrocities need to be addressed as a matter of urgency, the National Transitional Justice Working Group (NTJWG) has demanded.
