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.
"Alpha Condé's record can hardly be considered anything but disastrous. Especially since he came to power in 2010, carrying hopes for the country and the region. Let us not forget that he was a former democratic opponent, who had himself been a victim of Lansana Conté ." Fabien Offner, a researcher
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.
Seven years after hundreds of schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, more than 100 are still missing,
Guinea was in the final hours of a feverish election campaign on Friday as security forces blocked access to central Conakry for unknown reasons, while a high-ranking official was killed in a military camp east of the capital.
No official explanation was given for the setting up of roadblocks blocking access to the Kaloum neighborhood, where Guinean decision-making centers are located.
A police officer deployed in the center said that President Alpha Condé is scheduled to travel to the outskirts of the capital for a final campaign meeting before Sunday's presidential election, where he is running for a third consecutive and contested term. These statements could not be verified.
Apart from the near absence of traffic in a city that is normally close to saturation and an exceptional tranquility in streets that are usually tumultuous, the capital offered few signs of tension.
On the other hand, during the night, about 100 kilometers northeast of Conakry, \"armed men opened fire inside the Samoreyah military camp in Kindia, fatally wounding Colonel Mamady Condé,\" said Defense Ministry spokesman Aladji Cellou on his Facebook page.
Colonel Condé was the commander of the camp's battalion of commandos, where the Guinean peacekeepers deployed in Kidal, northeastern Mali, are based.
\"The defense forces reacted immediately to secure the camp and its surroundings. The situation is under control in Kindia. Investigations are open and sweeps are continuing,\" the spokesman added.
A military source in the camp on condition of anonymity said that the officer killed, facing accusations of \"nepotism, ethnocentrism and especially of having blocked bonuses for soldiers returning from Kidal\", had been threatened on several occasions.
No link could be established between the events in Kindia and the measures taken in the capital.
Blocking access to the center of Conakry is easy, as the center of Conakry is located on a peninsula.
Guineans interviewed in Conakry are concerned about the conduct of Sunday's vote and even more about its aftermath, in a country accustomed to physical confrontation in politics.
[Nation] The Ethiopian government on Monday refuted claims of planned talks with the Tigray People's Liberation Front, mediated by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala.
Press Release - G20 countries account for almost 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions
[AI London] The UN Security Council must extend the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) by at least six months in light of failure by government security forces to protect civilians in recent months, said Amnesty International, with weeks left to the end of the mission's mandate.
At least four people were killed as protests spread across several Ethiopian cities on Tuesday after a prominent singer from the country's largest ethnic group was shot dead, according to medical sources and a relative.
With his political lyrics, he was seen as a voice of the Oromo people during years of anti-government protests that swept Abiy to power in 2018.
On Tuesday morning, large crowds of protesters poured into the capital Addis Ababa from the surrounding Oromia region, snarling roads with stones and blocking traffic.
A resident of Western Hararge, in Oromia told AFP on condition of anonymity that his cousin had been killed by young Oromo nationalists known as Querroo, because he was from the Amhara ethnic group.
The US embassy said Tuesday that it was \"monitoring reports of protest and unrest, including gunfire throughout Addis Ababa\".
AS the COVID-19 pandemic wrought havoc on both lives and livelihoods, it led to the closure of borders. The pandemic has not only been terrible to the human body, but it has also affected general humanity and politics around the world, where despots have sought to use it to subvert the will of the people. COVID-19 has assisted in the erosion of democracy and respect for human rights so much that dictators like President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni have gone full throttle in suppressing dissent. In January this year, Uganda held its general elections and the long reigning strongman Museveni was declared the winner, the results which are being contested by the opposition led by the youthful musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine. He had vowed to occupy the streets after the elections. However, immediately after Museveni was declared the winner, heavily armed soldiers stormed the young politician’s compound and held him hostage for days on end, denying him the freedom and right to go out to mobilise people to demonstrate against a rigged election. In Zimbabwe, for example, the bulk of the 34 new regulations passed during the national lockdown are still in place, and have been used to perpetuate abuses by the State. In September, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum listed 920 cases of torture, extra-judicial killings, unlawful arrests and assaults on citizens by security services in the first 180 days of lockdown. According to the report, one man was forced to roll in raw sewage while others had dogs set on them in Beitbridge and dozens of opposition activists were arrested and/or beaten, including MDC Alliance vice-presidents Tendai Biti and Lynette Karenyi-Kore, national executive members David Chimhini and Lovemore Chinoputsa. Three MDC Alliance activists Joanah Mamombe, Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova were abducted by suspected State security agents, sexually abused and forced to drink own urine and ingest own stool. Democratically-elected representatives were expelled from Parliament and in their places, people from other political parties were handpicked to replace those who had been recalled. To add salt to the injury, government has postponed by-elections indefinitely. Furthermore, during the lockdown, we witnessed the arrest of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, opposition leaders Job Sikhala and Jacob Ngarivhume on allegations of inciting violence. To all these authoritarian regimes, COVID-19 became a much-needed veil to cover up their faces as they looted and closed the democratic space in order to entrench dictatorship. Fanuel Chinowaita
At the UN in Feb. 2008, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The Covenants ensure citizens political and civil freedom, and gaurantee the right to work, fair wages, social security, education, and high standards of physical and mental health. Roque also announced that in 2009 the United Nations Human Rights Council will be allowed to examine Cuba at will.
The government relaxed land restrictions for private farmers in July 2008, in an effort to boost the countrys poor food production and reduce dependence on food imports.
The U.S. Congress voted in March 2009 to repeal the long-standing restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting Havana and sending money into the country. President Obama has signaled a willingness to establish warmer ties with Cuba, a subtle acknowledgement that isolation has not been effective in forcing the Castro regime from power.
Castro made the surprise announcement in July 2010 that he plans to release 52 political prisoners. The prisoners—activists and journalists—have been held since a 2003 crackdown on dissidents. Fidel Castro said the activists were mercenaries acting at the request of the United States.
Charles Diggs was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1922. His father was Charles Coles Diggs and his mother was Mayme Jones Diggs. Young Diggs had an upper middle class background; his father, a prominent mortician and real estate developer, served in the Michigan State Senate. Diggs eventually took over the family business and followed his father into politics.
As a high school student, Diggs was a star debater. He attended the University of Michigan and then Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1943 he was drafted into the Army Air Corps and stationed to Tuskegee Airfield. The war ended without Diggs ever seeing combat. He returned to Detroit and graduated from Wayne State University in 1946. In 1950 Diggs was elected to the Michigan State Senate. Four years later he became Michigan’s first black Congressman when in 1954 he was elected to represent Michigan’s Thirteenth Congressional District, then a predominately white area. He would represent the district for the next 26 years.
As a member of Congress in the 1950s, Diggs worked to promote the civil rights movement emerging across the nation. He was the only Congressman to attend the Mississippi trial of the men accused of murdering Emmett Till. He was especially interested in voting rights and fought to lower the voting age to 18. He also sponsored legislation to promote black voting rights in the South. While in Congress, Diggs chaired the House Subcommittee on Africa and the District of Columbia Committee.
Diggs devoted much of his legislative energy to crafting measures to fight unemployment and poverty. He supported War on Poverty legislation as well as other measures to reduce joblessness among African Americans both in his state and across the nation.
In 1969 Diggs became a founding member and the first chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. He used that position to criticize the policies of the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford Presidential Administrations which seemed, in his view, to encourage continued poverty and racial
Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), founded in 1990, is one of the earliest and highly regarded LGBTI (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Intersex) advocacy organizations in Southern Africa. GALZ is the country’s only gay rights group and the first one in the nation to start HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns. The organization also promotes gay rights in the Southern African region and encourages emerging LGBTI groups in other countries.
GALZ was originally a small social club of mostly middle class professionas drawn from the active urban social scene in Harare, the nations capital, which flourished after Zimbabwean independence in 1980. GALZ launched in 1990 with seventy members, grew to approximately 500 in 2000, but had about 300 members by 2012. The drop in membership was caused mainly by its members seeking asylum in other nations. Whites or mixed race persons were the early members, but most GALZ members today are LGBTI people from the nation’s urban black communities. The involvement of lesbians increased dramatically with the establishment of the Gender Department in 2002. With its national headquarters in the capital of Harare, as of 2012 GALZ had ten centers throughout Zimbabwe.
The mission of GALZ is to serve the needs of LGBTI persons in Zimbabwe, advance social tolerance of sexual minorities, and repeal homophobic laws. A 1995 incident propelled GALZ into the national and international spotlight. The Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF), with that year’s theme of “Human Rights and Justice,” banned GALZ from participating. The rejection attracted local and regional news coverage. In response, regional and international organizations such as Amnesty International began to recognize homosexuality as a human rights issue and international groups also began to fund GALZ.
GALZ offers a wide variety of services. They began providing HIV/AIDS awareness at a time when their nation’s political leadership and many citizens remained in denial of the dangers and risks of the disease. This program has evolved
The seditious libel case involving Sierra Leone’s former minister of social welfare and journalist – Dr Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, was adjourned today to Friday 12 June 2020, after prosecution witness who is the lead police investigator – Detective M.K. Alieu, was cross-examined by Blyden who is representing herself in court.
On Friday, 22nd May 2020, Dr Blyden was charged with 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) states: “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.
Section 27 states: “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.”
At Friday prayers in Senegal, many worshippers pray for those who have died in recent political protests which were sparked on by the arrest of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, a government critic popular with young people.
Democratic Republic of Congo: President Tshisekedi reneges on justice pledge, leaving victims in despair
\tPresident Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo has reneged on his inauguration pledges to strengthen the rule of law, fight impunity and ensure justice, leaving the families of hundreds of people killed during the country’s pre-election crisis in despair, Amnesty International said today.
“President Tshisekedi and his government must acknowledge the pain that victims and their families have been enduring and publicly commit to promptly and effectively prosecute those responsible,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa.
Victims of 2015-2018 brutal crackdowns denied justice in the DRC, Amnesty International interviewed 115 survivors and victims’ family members, on their quest for justice.
Farcical investigations
\tUnder international pressure, former President Joseph Kabila constituted three committees to investigate the deadly crackdowns on protestors, none of which have resulted in any prosecutions.
A second committee created in February 2018 investigated the use of deadly force against protestors on 31 December 2017 and 21 January 2018, recommending prosecution of security officers who ordered or used excessive force against protestors.
Non-governmental organizations have called on Governments in Southern Africa and donors to ramp up efforts and increase resources to speedily vaccinate as many people as possible, in order to avoid third wave catastrophe. Amnesty International and 27 other Non-Governmental Organizations have urged high income countries and their groupings, including G20 and G7, to ensure that […]
The post Governments in Southern Africa urged to speedily vaccinate as many people as possible appeared first on Malawi 24.
[Citizen] Dar es Salaam -- The African rights court on Wednesday ordered Tanzania to amend a section of its constitution which bars any court from probing the election of a president after a winner is officially announced.
If completed, the sale would be the first American transfer of lethal drones and stealth aircraft to any Arab country.
State vice-president Saulos Chilima has come under intense fire for describing founding president Hastings Kamuzu Banda - an autocrat with a streak of brutality who ruled Malawi for 31 years of one-party dictatorship - as champion of democracy.
Chilima has hailed Kamuzu Banda as champions of democracy but critics say in reality Kamuzu was a champion of atrocities and poor human rights record
Chilima, whose party, UTM is in political alliance with Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and seven other tiny parties, described Kamuzu Banda as a \"champion of democracy\" for accepting to hold a referendum on June 14, 1993 on whether the country should adopt multiparty democracy or not.
Chilima, as a suniversity student activist, was among frontline troops who campaigned against Kamuzu and trumpeted democracy.
Ngeyi Kanyongolo, a lecturer at Chancellor College also wrote that what she remembers about Kamuzu Banda are stories of a young student (now husband) who spent months in prison together with his friends for unspecified \"revolutionary rebel\" activities.
Adack Pafupi also posts that Kamuzu was a \"champion of atrocities\" and not champion of democracy.
Kristen Clarke has been chosen by the Biden administration to head the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division as assistant attorney general in January...
