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A United Nations report has alleged that recruits of the Somalia National Army participated alongside the Eritrean army in the Tigray region in what can be termed as an illegal international military operation.
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.
LATE LAST month Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed received the first electric car fully assembled...
The post Ethiopia unveils first locally-assembled electric car appeared first on Voice Online.
By CARA ANNA and SAMY MAGDY Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Up to 200,000 refugees could pour into Sudan while fleeing the deadly conflict in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, officials said Wednesday, while the first details are emerging of largely cut-off civilians under growing strain. Nearly 10,000 people have crossed the border, including some wounded in the fighting, and the flow is growing quickly. 'There are lots of children and women,' Al-Sir Khalid, the head of the refugee agency in Sudan's Kassala province, told The Associated Press. 'They are arriving very tired and exhausted. They are hungry and thirsty […]
The post Sudan braces for up to 200,000 fleeing Ethiopia fighting appeared first on Black News Channel.
Threats to kill women and babies, while corpses of fighters paraded in grotesque incidents
Banned anti-personnel landmines planted in civilian homes, with Russian military company Wagner implicated
'Commanders must publicly condemn these acts' - Diana Eltahawy
New evidence obtained by Amnesty International indicates that war crimes and other violations may have been committed between 13 April and 1 June by warring parties in Libya during the latest surge in fighting near Tripoli.
Amnesty is calling on all warring parties and associated forces in Libya to immediately halt attacks against civilians and other violations of international humanitarian law, including those being carried out to punish civilians for their perceived affiliations with rival groups.
In another video posted on social media on 30 April, again verified by Amnesty, a Government of National Accord-affiliated fighter is seen threatening \"Kaniyat forces\" (aligned with the Libyan National Army) that they would \"not to leave a single woman alive\" when they capture the town of Tarhuna, south-east of Tripoli.
Amnesty verified one video showing the Libyan National Army first infantry brigade parading fighters' corpses in a pick-up truck, while calling a captured Government of National Accord fighter a \"Syrian dog\" on 18 April.
Witnesses and a medical source confirmed to Amnesty that an attack launched by Libyan National Army forces on Souq Al-Talat on 31 May left at least three civilians dead and 11 wounded, including a child whose leg was amputated.
[Nation] Ethiopian authorities say they are ready to start the second filling of the Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD), despite warnings from Egypt over the Blue Nile project.
Democratic representative of New York City, Charles Bernard Rangel, first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970, is now one of the longest serving members of Congress. Rangel was born in Brooklyn, New York City in 1930. He attended De Witt Clinton High School but dropped out in 1948 and entered the U.S. Army. Two years later he served in the second infantry division in Korea where he earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his actions in combat.
In 1952 Rangel was discharged and returned to New York, graduated from high school, earned a B.S. degree from New York University in 1957 and a J.D degree from St. Johns University in 1960. Upon admittance to the bar Rangel began practicing law in New York City.
In 1964 Charles Rangel spent the year as assistant U.S. attorney for the south district of New York working under U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau. In 1965 he was counsel to the Speaker of the New York State Assembly. He also served as counsel to the President’s Commission to Revise the Draft Laws. Throughout the late 1960s Rangel was legal advisor to many civil rights activists in New York and the South.
Charles Rangel was elected to the New York State Assembly, representing the 72nd District (Central Harlem), in 1966. In 1970 he entered the Democratic primary where he narrowly defeated legendary Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. In November he was elected to represent New York’s 15th District in Congress over token Republican opposition. A co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971, Rangel was elected chair of the group. He also served in the House Judiciary Committee’s hearings on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.
Rangel’s three decades in Congress, representing Harlem, the smallest Congressional district in land area in the United States, has been marked by a commitment to control the use of illegal drugs and drug-related violence and to tax relief for the poor. He has also advocated for federal funds to develop impoverished urban neighborhoods, and
[HRW] Human Rights Watch thanks the Commission of Inquiry for a much-needed update on the grave human rights violations that Burundian state agents, most notably the National Intelligence Service and administrative authorities, and members of the Imbonerakure, have committed against the population since May 2019.
Both sides - Boko Haram and the Nigerian military - continue to commit war crimes, including against children, regularly.
The military, itself responsible for abuses, has unlawfully detained thousands of boys and girls coming out of Boko Haram territory, often with no evidence the child was affiliated with the group, much less that they committed crimes.
Many children have been subjected to beatings and other forms of torture to extract \"confessions\" of involvement with Boko Haram.
And it should fulfil its responsibility to \"promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration\" of children who have suffered during the conflict, whether at the hands of Boko Haram, Nigerian military, or both.
That means children coming out of Boko Haram territory must be able to access education and psychosocial support, not be locked away for years in grossly inhumane detention cells.
Tension between Amhara and Tigray, two of Ethiopia's most powerful regions, is increasing as the country approaches elections next year, says a new International Crisis Group report.
But it is the dispute between the Amhara and Tigray regions, the new report says, that “is arguably the bitterest of these contests, fueled in part by rising ethnic nationalism in both regions.”
William Davison, the Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Ethiopia, tells VOA that Amhara citizens believe that several key zones, notably the Wolqait and Raya areas, were annexed by Tigray when the current Ethiopian federation was mapped out in the early 1990s.
Plans to hold a vote have led political elites in Tigray and Amhara to adopt increasingly hardline stances toward each other, the report says, noting a recent warning from Prime Minister Abiy that any such act would “result in harm to the country and the people.”
But Dessalegn Chanie Dagnew, chairman of the opposition National Movement of Amhara, said via a messaging app that Ethiopia’s regional map based on ethnic territories has been the root cause of many tensions, not just between the Amhara and Tigray regions, but many others.
Lester Walton was a journalist, entertainment professional, and diplomat who promoted civil rights at home and abroad. Born Lester Aglar Walton on April 20, 1882 in St. Louis, Missouri, his early life was spent as a journalist. At the age of 20 in 1902, when he was hired by the St. Louis Star to be its golf writer and later its court reporter, he became the first black reporter to write for a white daily paper in St. Louis.
In 1906 Walton moved to New York City, New York and in 1908 he became theatrical editor for the New York Age, which was the largest black newspaper in the nation at the time. He remained at the Age until 1914. In 1912 he married Gladys Moore, the daughter of Fred Moore, publisher of the newspaper. The couple had two daughters.
During this period he also wrote for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the largest newspaper in the city, and from 1922 to 1931 he was a reporter with the New York World. He then worked briefly with the New York Herald Tribune, quitting in 1933 when the paper refused to give him a byline. Walton then returned to the New York Age. During his years with these newspapers, Walton started the movement which was eventually supported by the New York Times and the Associated Press, to have the spelling of the word “Negro” written with a capital “N.”
Walton was also actively involved in entertainment throughout his adult life. Between 1917 and 1919 he managed New York City’s Lafayette Theater. He later served as vice president of the Negro Actors Guild of America, and in the 1950s became chair of the Coordinating Council of Negro Performers, lobbying corporate and broadcast leaders to include more black actors in theatrical and broadcast performances. Walton was a songwriter, director, and founder of Walton Publishing Company, which published instrumental music.
Walton’s journalistic endeavors encouraged his interest in world affairs. He traveled as a correspondent to the Versailles Peace Conference outside Paris, France in 1919 and visited Liberia in 1933 to write articles
[DW] As Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sends troops into the Tigray region, the country could be on the brink of a civil war.
In September last year, Doudou Diene, chairman of the commission of inquiry set up by the UN on Burundi, said the country was primed for a genocide.
His commission, working with the UN Office for the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect, established risk factors in Burundi for criminal atrocities likely to lead to genocide.
We facilitated meetings with communities in Nairobi’s informal settlements, with Yves Niyiragira from Burundi and Leonie Abela from Democratic Republic of the Congo.
For instance, the identity of Niyiragira as a Hutu from Burundi and Abela Tutsi from the DRC confused Kenyans.
Burundi and Rwanda have several commonalities such as being the only two African countries who speak the same language—Kinyarwanda in Rwanda or Kirundi in Burundi.
