IGIHE

Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

  • Paraguay delays re-election vote amid fresh protests

    {Protests outside burnt Congress building call for Senate vote on President Cartes’ re-election bid to be withdrawn.}

    Thousands of protesters gathered outside Paraguay’s Congress in a new but peaceful demonstration over an unpopular Senate vote for an amendment last week that would allow President Horacio Cartes to run for re-election.

    In addition to calling for the amendment to be withdrawn, thousands gathered peacefully outside Congress on Monday night, holding candles in a vigil for the 25-year-old protester, Rodrigo Quintana, killed by police during the demonstrations on Friday.

    Signs reading “S.O.S. Paraguay” hung from tents in the plaza, where people grilled meat and settled in for a long night of protest. Dozens of police officers stood behind fences separating the plaza from the entrance to the Congress building, while another group carrying riot gear stood by.

    Supporters of Cartes, a former soft-drink and tobacco businessman, want him to be able to seek a second term in a country that constitutionally forbid re-election after a 35-year dictatorship fell in 1989.

    On Friday, protesters had clashed violently with police, storming and setting fire to the Congress building after a group of senators called a special session behind closed doors, rather than on the Senate floor, to pass the measure.

    The officer accused of killing Quintana inside the Liberal Party’s headquarters was charged with homicide on Monday and faces up to 30 years in prison, newspaper Ultima Hora reported.

    The charged officer told local television he believed his gun was loaded with rubber bullets.

    Late on Sunday, Cartes called on different political factions to meet and discuss ways to reduce tensions in the South American country of 6.8 million people after an appeal from Pope Francis, who hails from neighbouring Argentina.

    The amendment would still have to be approved by the lower house, where it was expected to have strong support. But the head of the lower house and Cartes ally, Hugo Velazquez, told reporters on Monday the vote would be delayed until the dialogue Cartes requested took place. It is scheduled to begin on Wednesday.

    The protests punctured a period of relative stability under Cartes in which the soy and beef exporting nation became one of South America’s fastest-growing economies and began moving past a long history of political uncertainty.

    Senator Lilian Samaniego, a Cartes ally, said re-election supporters would not be deterred by the protests and opposition.

    “The proposal will not be withdrawn,” she said after leaving a meeting in the presidential palace with governors, mayors and other politicians.

    Opposition leader Efrain Alegre said he would participate in the dialogue called by Cartes only after an investigation into Quintana’s death was completed and Friday’s Senate vote was annulled.

    “First we have to get things in order and then we can have a thousand meetings if that’s what it takes,” he said.

    People participate in a demonstration against the of re-election bid of President Cartes

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Senate headed for showdown over Neil Gorsuch

    Republicans threaten to change Senate rules to prevent Democrats from blocking Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation.

    Democrats have gathered enough support to hold up a Senate confirmation vote on President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee but Republicans threaten to change the Senate rules to ensure conservative judge Neil Gorsuch gets the lifetime job.

    The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-9 along party lines on Monday to send Gorsuch’s nomination to the full Senate, setting up a political showdown this week between Trump’s fellow Republicans and the opposition Democrats that appears likely to trigger a change in long-standing Senate rules to allow his confirmation.

    Democrats, portraying Gorsuch as so conservative he is outside the judicial mainstream, have amassed 42 senators in support of a procedural hurdle called a filibuster requiring a super-majority of 60 votes in the Republican-led, 100-seat Senate to allow a confirmation vote.

    Even before the panel voted, committee member Christopher Coons put the Democrats over the threshold as the 41st senator backing the filibuster bid, Reuters reported.

    The Senate’s Republican leaders insist Gorsuch will be confirmed on the Senate floor on Friday regardless of what the Democrats do. Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority.

    Senate Republicans who last year refused to even consider Democratic former president Barack Obama’s nomination of appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill the same high court vacancy that Trump has selected Gorsuch to fill.

    “Democrats, including me, are still furious at the way Judge Merrick Garland was treated last year. But the traditions and principles that have defined the Senate are crumbling, and we are poised to hasten that destruction this week,” Coons said.

    Gorsuch was nominated to fill a vacancy created by the February 2016 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

    {{Integrity questioned}}

    Democrats have accused Gorsuch of being insufficiently independent of Trump, evading questions on key Supreme Court rulings of the past including on abortion and political spending, and favouring corporate interests over ordinary Americans.

    In the face of the filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would be expected to force a confirmation vote by having the Senate change its rules and allow for a simple majority vote for confirmation of Supreme Court justices, a move sometimes called the “nuclear option” that Trump favours.

    Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, leading the filibuster effort, said McConnell should have the “vision and courage to see past this impasse” and not “go nuclear,” suggesting that Trump replace Gorsuch with a new consensus nominee chosen after meeting with Democrats.

    Senate confirmation of Gorsuch, 49, would restore the nine-seat high court’s conservative majority, fulfilling one of Trump’s top promises during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump in January nominated Gorsuch, a conservative appeals court judge from Colorado. He could be expected to serve for decades.

    On the Senate floor, McConnell called the Democratic strategy “a new low,” saying there was no principled reason to oppose a judge as well qualified and widely respected as Gorsuch.

    He did not explicitly say he would use the “nuclear option,” but several Republicans said that would happen.

    White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the decision would be McConnell’s. Republican Senator John McCain, a long-time opponent of Senate rules changes, told reporters he would support the move.

    {{‘Dangerous precedent’}}

    Republicans control the White House and Congress for the first time in a decade.

    The inability of Senate Republicans to coax enough Democratic support to avoid the “nuclear option” reflected the intense partisan divide in Washington and the Trump administration’s failure to win the cooperation of the opposition party.

    Senators Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s top Democrat, and panel member Patrick Leahy, along with fellow Democrats Mark Warner and Ben Cardin, also announced filibuster support on Monday.

    Spicer accused Democrats of partisan obstruction that sets “a very dangerous precedent” and told a briefing that “we’re obviously disappointed that the overwhelming majority of them are still playing politics with the nation’s highest court”.

    The actual confirmation vote would be by a simple majority if the filibuster is stopped. To date, four Democrats oppose a filibuster, four short of the eight that Republicans needed.

    With the failure of Republican healthcare legislation in Congress and with courts blocking the president’s ban on people from several Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, winning confirmation for Gorsuch has taken on even more importance for Trump.

    The 60-vote super-majority threshold that gives the minority party power to hold up the majority party has over the decades forced the Senate to try to achieve bipartisanship in legislation and presidential appointments.

    Republican committee member Lindsey Graham said, “If we have to, we will change the rules, and it looks like we’re going to have to. I hate that. I really, really do.”

    While Gorsuch’s opponents would fight a Senate rule change, it was the Democrats who in 2013 changed the Senate rules to limit filibusters after Republicans used the procedure against Obama’s appeals court nominees.

    The Senate, then led by Democrats, barred filibusters for executive branch nominees and federal judges aside from Supreme Court justices. Even if Republicans do change the rules, legislation, as opposed to appointments, would still need to meet a 60-vote threshold.

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • US withdraws funding for United Nations Population Fund

    {The US has withdrawn funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an agency that promotes family planning in more than 150 countries.}

    The state department said the UNFPA “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilisation”.

    This is the first of the promised cuts to US financial contributions to the UN by the Trump administration.

    The UNFPA said it “regrets the decision” and had not broken any laws.
    In total $32.5m (£26m) in funds is being withdrawn for the 2017 financial year.

    {{‘Erroneous’ claims}}

    Earlier this year, President Trump reinstated a ban on US funding of any international organisation that provided any kind of abortion service or advice.

    The Department of State referred to the presidential directive from January and a provision called the “Kemp-Kasten Amendment” in its statement on Monday.

    “This determination was made based on the fact that China’s family planning policies still involve the use of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilisation, and UNFPA partners on family planning activities with the Chinese government agency responsible for these coercive policies,” the state department said.

    The UNFPA calls those claims “erroneous” and that all of its work promotes the rights of individuals and couples to make their own decisions, free of coercion or discrimination.

    With the support of the US, last year UNFPA says it was able to save the lives of thousands of women from dying during pregnancy and childbirth, prevent unintended pregnancies, and unsafe abortions.

    The BBC’s Nada Tawfik in New York reports that the UN Population Fund has often been the target of conservative Republican administrations. President Ronald Reagan, as well as both of the Bush administrations withheld funding for the same reason.

    The money that had been allocated to the UNFPA for the fiscal year 2017 will be “transferred and reprogrammed to the Global Health Programs account,” the state department said.

    The account will be used by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to support family planning, maternal and reproductive health activities in developing countries, it added.

    The UNFPA promotes maternal health and family planning in countries including Sierra Leone

    Source:BBC

  • African envoys: India attacks on Nigerians ‘racial’

    {Envoys from African nations in the Indian capital, Delhi, have condemned the handling of recent attacks on Nigerian students in the city.}

    In a statement, the African Heads of Mission said the attacks were “xenophobic and racial”.

    Indian authorities had failed to “sufficiently condemn” the attacks or take “visible deterring measures”, the envoys added.

    The students were attacked last month in Greater Noida, close to Delhi.

    Five Nigerian students were attacked by crowds, while another was beaten by a mob inside a shopping mall.

    The violence was prompted by the death of a local teenager due to a drug overdose. His parents blame Nigerian students for giving him the drugs.

    Police say five people have been arrested over the violence and India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has promised an “impartial” inquiry.

    But the African Heads of Mission said that the response was inadequate, and called for an investigation by the UN Human Rights Council.

    They also called for “strong condemnation from the highest political level (both nationally and locally) of the government of India, as well as expediting legal actions against the perpetrators”.

    The attack on one student inside the shopping mall was recorded on mobile phone cameras by other shoppers and widely circulated on social media.

    The victim told Indian reporters he had been beaten with rods, bricks and knives. He said that no one had helped or even called the police.

    Many Indians have reacted with shame online. But there have been a number of incidents in recent years in which people from African nations living in India have faced apparent discrimination or violence.

    In May 2016 a Congolese man was beaten to death in Delhi after an argument over an auto-rickshaw. Three months before that, a Tanzanian student was assaulted and partially stripped by a mob in the southern city of Bangalore. A Nigerian man living in Goa was stabbed to death in 2013.

    Meanwhile, police say a Kenyan woman accused of faking a race attack in Greater Noida will be deported. The woman said she had been dragged out of a taxi by five men two days after the mob violence, but police said their investigation and the taxi’s GPS tracker proved her story wrong. Her visa had expired, they added.

    Last month's violence happened in Greater Noida, close to the Indian capital

    Source:BBC

  • Tunisia nightclub closed after Muslim call to prayer dance remix

    {A nightclub in Tunisia has been shut down after footage emerged of a DJ playing a dance remix of the Muslim call to prayer, officials say.}

    Video shared on Sunday from the Orbit Festival in the north-eastern town of Nabeul sparked outrage on social media sites.

    The governor of Nabeul, Mnaouar Ouertani, said that the club would “remain closed” until further notice.

    An investigation has begun into the incident.

    The footage shows clubbers at a party on Friday dancing to music played by two European DJs near the popular seaside resort of Hammamet.

    The music included a dance version of the call to prayer, the religious act that Muslims perform five times a day.

    “After confirming the facts, we decided to close this nightclub,” Mr Ouertani said.
    He said that the club’s manager had been detained “for violation against good morals and public outrage against modesty,” adding that an investigation was under way.

    “We will not allow attacks against religious feelings and the sacred,” Mr Ouertani said.

    On Monday, the organisers of the Orbit Festival apologised in a post on the event’s Facebook page, but said that they did not accept responsibility for the playing of any offensive music.

    The DJ “did not realise it might offend an audience from a Muslim country like ours,” they said in the post on the social media site (in French).

    Dax J, who played the call to prayer track, later offered his “sincere apologies to anyone who may have been offended by music that I played at Orbit Festival in Tunisia on Friday”.

    “It was never my intention to upset or cause offence to anybody,” he said.

    The dance remix led to the club's manager being detained "for violation against good morals"

    Source:BBC

  • South Africa’s credit rating has been cut to junk status

    {South Africa’s credit rating has been cut to junk status by the ratings agency S&P Global.}

    The agency said that political upheaval, including the recent sacking of finance minister Pravin Gordhan, was endangering the economy.

    S&P also expressed concern over government debt, and in particular the expense of supporting the state energy firm Eskom.

    The news put more pressure on the rand, which was down 2% against the dollar.

    The sacking of Mr Gordhan, seen as a safe pair of hands and with a reputation for financial prudence, led to a 4% fall in the rand on Friday and prompted strong criticism.

    His replacement as finance minister by Malusi Gigaba was part of a cabinet reshuffle by President Jacob Zuma.

    However the country’s deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, called Mr Gordhan’s sacking “totally, totally unacceptable” and the Gwede Mantashe, secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), also opposed it.

    The financial downgrading is likely to make it more expensive for South Africa to borrow money on the international markets, as lending to the country would be seen as riskier.

    {{‘Trust eroded’}}

    S&P explained its decision, stating that: “Internal government and party divisions could, we believe, delay fiscal and structural reforms, and potentially erode the trust that had been established between business leaders and labour representatives (including in the critical mining sector).”

    “An additional risk is that businesses may now choose to withhold investment decisions that would otherwise have supported economic growth,” S&P added.

    The agency also raised concern about the level of borrowing by state energy firm Eskom.

    The government guarantees 350bn rand ($25bn) of its debt, which is equivalent to about 7% of the nation’s economic output.

    For his part, Mr Gigaba spoke at the weekend of plans to “radically transform” the country’s economy.

    While he has a track record of policymaking, most recently as home affairs minister, he lacks a background in economics.

    That prompted criticism that Mr Gigaba was too inexperienced for the job.

    In 2014, the ANC adopted “radical economic transformation” policies to boost the economic position of the black majority in the post-apartheid nation.

    But many in the ruling party believe the process has been “too slow and in many instances superficial”, said Mr Gigaba on Saturday.

    “The ownership of wealth and assets remains concentrated in the hands of a small part of the population,” he said.

    But Mr Gigaba added that he did not “seek to implement a reckless lurch in a particular direction”.

    “We will stay the course in terms of the fiscal policy stance approved by government,” the new minister said.

    South Africa’s economy expanded by 0.3% in 2016, compared with 1.3% in the previous year.

    {{Junk status}}

    S&P lowered its credit rating on South African government debt from BBB- to BB+, which makes the debt “non-investment grade” or “speculative”, or in the shorthand term, “junk”.

    If another ratings agency follows suit, many international investment funds, under their owns rules, will be unable to lend to the South African government by buying its bonds, which are glorified IOUs.

    On Monday, Moody’s Investors Service placed South African government debt on review for a possible downgrade.

    Like S&P it expressed concern over the political upheaval: “Moody’s could downgrade South Africa’s issuer rating if the rating agency were to conclude that recent events signalled a deterioration in the effectiveness of government or in the credibility of its policy-making.”

    New finance minister Malusi Gigaba says economic change has been too slow

    Source:BBC

  • Gambia prepares for first post-Jammeh poll

    {The Gambia holds its first election Thursday since the downfall of longtime leader Yahya Jammeh, with expectations high that new lawmakers will overhaul a national assembly once derided as a mere rubberstamp.}

    Gambians complain that under Jammeh, who ruled for 22 years, laws were often made by executive decree and buttressed by legislation much later on, if at all.

    The 239 registered candidates representing nine different political parties on Tuesday end campaigning for the 48 seats up for election in the Banjul legislature.

    Five seats are also appointed by the president, totalling 53 spots in the tiny west African nation’s parliament, and with just 886,000 registered voters according to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), every ballot matters.

    Awa Lowe, a resident of Kanifing, a Banjul suburb, told AFP expectations were high that the new parliament would ensure true accountability for government decisions.

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    “The next parliament will not be a rubberstamp National Assembly that passes any bill that comes before parliamentarians,” Lowe told AFP.

    “Parliament will be diverse and that is what will make it interesting. No party would have the numerical strength to pass bills that are not in line with the interest of the people,” Lowe added.

    {{ALTERED LANDSCAPE}}

    The landscape of Gambian politics could not have shifted more dramatically since the last legislative elections in 2012, when Jammeh’s Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) took 43 seats, with a large number uncontested due to an opposition boycott.

    Among the parties running this year, the United Democratic Party (UDP) is fielding the greatest number of candidates after long being seen as the strongest opposition force in Gambian politics.

    Alagie Darboe, deputy administrative secretary of the UDP who is standing for a seat in The Gambia’s West Coast Region, said the party was aiming to win in 44 constituencies.

    “The support we are getting from the electorate during the campaign is a clear indication that we are going to win,” he told AFP.

    President Adama Barrow, who won December’s presidential race, was a former UDP treasurer who had resigned to run as the candidate of an unprecedented opposition coalition.

    After a drawn-out crisis caused by Jammeh’s initial refusal to step down, mediation efforts by west African leaders and the threat of military intervention eventually delivered the country’s first ever democratic transition.

    Barrow’s cabinet is made up of the heads of seven different political parties, all of which will field candidates in Thursday’s poll.

    {{INTERNAL TENSIONS}}

    The president had initially said the opposition coalition was a “family” and would run again as a group in the legislative poll, but internal tensions broke apart the agreement.

    As a result, parties whose leaders govern together as ministers will be pitted against each other at the ballot box, stoking tensions that some close to the government say could play into the hands of the APRC.

    Yankuba Colley, the APRC’s campaign chief, said the party knew mistakes were made during the presidential election, but added that his candidates were working hard to show it was still a vital force.

    “We are optimistic that we are going to defeat our opponents in the 29 constituencies (where) we fielded candidates,” he told AFP.

    “Some of our party militants felt they made errors in the presidential elections,” he added. “Some of our militants thought APRC was dead… they are now convinced the party is alive.”

    Although much has changed since the last vote, one peculiarly Gambian institution remains firmly in place.

    Gambians vote with marbles dropped into coloured metal barrels representing the different candidates, and despite rumours of reform, the system will be used again for the legislative elections, IEC chairman Alieu Momar Njie told AFP.

    Yahya Jammeh. He has refused to hand over power to Adama Barrow but for how long?

    Source:AFP

  • US teen pleads guilty to IS-inspired plot to kill Pope Francis

    {A New Jersey teen has pleaded guilty to a plot allegedly inspired by the Islamic State group to kill Pope Francis during his 2015 visit to the United States.}

    The US Justice Department on Monday said Santos Colon, 15 years old at the time, sought to recruit a sniper to shoot the pope as he celebrated mass in Philadelphia on September 27, 2015.

    Colon also allegedly planned to set off explosives.

    {{FBI AGENT}}

    But the teen unwittingly recruited an undercover FBI agent for the job, and was arrested quietly 12 days before the event.

    “Colon engaged someone he believed would be the sniper, but in reality was an undercover FBI employee. Colon engaged in target reconnaissance with an FBI confidential source and instructed the source to purchase materials to make explosive devices,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

    Court documents said Colon sought to carry out the act in support of the Islamic State group and that he had used the adopted name Ahmad Shakoor.

    In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Colon, now 17, agreed to forgo trial and plead guilty as an adult to one charge of providing material support to a terror group.

    With the deal, prosecutors dropped three other charges filed against him as a juvenile.

    15 YEARS

    Court documents said the charges were in relation to the Islamic State group, which Washington has designated a foreign terrorist organisation.

    But there were no details on how Colon became interested in the group and if or how he communicated with them.

    Pope Francis celebrated mass for tens of thousands of followers in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the historic east coast city to cap a week-long visit for the World Meeting of Families

    Colon’s home is in Lindenwold, New Jersey, just southeast of Philadelphia.

    Colon faces a maximum of 15 years in prison but sentencing would likely be held off until 2021 while he undergoes psychiatric treatment in a secure facility.

    In a plea statement, Colon acknowledged having been a patient in a mental institution in the past.

    Pope Francis. Santos Colon unwittingly recruited an undercover FBI agent to finish him in 2015.

    Source:AFP

  • Floods hit again Bujumbura northern areas

    {The torrential rain that fell in the afternoon of 2 April claimed the life of one kid and caused a lot of damage. Floods have inundated houses and infrastructures in Kamenge northern neighborhood of the capital Bujumbura. The victims demand that the drainage channels be rehabilitated.}

    Houses, schools, shops, roads, Kamenge market… were struck by floods due to the torrential rain that has fallen on 2 April in the northern neighborhoods of the Burundian capital Bujumbura. “Some of our belongings were taken away by the floods”, says a resident of Heha neighborhood in Kamenge area in the northern part of the capital. She also says students did not attend classes. “Their school kits were also damaged”, she says. At Kamenge II Fundamental School, students stayed at home. “We could not attend classes as floods had inundated our schools”, says a young pupil met at that school.

    Jean Marie Nshimirimana, a local chief of Heha neighborhood, says the heavy rain caused the destruction of dozens of houses. “All houses located near the Nyabagere River were affected by this disaster”, he says. Nshimirimana also says the residents of the locality are trying to help each other remove the mud around their homes”, he says.

    Inhabitants of the locality demand the rehabilitation of the drainage channels and the Nyabagere River, the main cause of these floods especially whenever a heavy rain falls. “As the channels were too small, all rainwater from the mountains took away trees and all dirt which blocked them and caused the inundation of homes”, says Bonaventure Nkeshimana, local chief of Kavumu neighborhood in Kamenge zone.

    Work in progress to rehabilitate rivers

    Eddy-Paul Hakizimana, Administrator of Ntahangwa commune in the capital Bujumbura, says one kid was taken away by Nyabagere River. “He was with his mother on a motorcycle. While they were crossing the Nyabagere River bridge, the motorcycle slipped and fell into the river. Thanks to the intervention of the nearby residents, two people were saved but the kid was already taken away. We are still looking for his body”, says Hakizimana.

    The Administrator says works are in progress to rehabilitate the Nyabagere, Gasenyi and Kinyankonge Rivers in the northern areas of the capital Bujumbura in order to prevent other floods from causing additional damage.

    On 17 March 2017, six people died including five children of the same family and hundreds of houses were destroyed following the heavy rains. About 250 families were made homeless and sheltered in the Bumwe Fundamental School in Buterere zone in Ntahangwa commune in the north of Bujumbura.

    In February 2014, severe floods caused a lot of damage and claimed over 100 human lives in Gatunguru zone, in northern Bujumbura. The main cause was the poor construction of the drainage channels of the Gasenyi River.

    Pupils did not attend classes due to floods that hit their classrooms.

    Source:Iwacu

  • Pope Francis calls for peace in DRC

    {Pope Francis on Sunday called for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, urging an end to the bloodshed in the troubled Kasai region.}

    “News continues to arrive of bloody clashes in Kasai in the Democratic Republic of Congo – fighting which drags in victims and displaced persons,” the pontiff told some 20 000 faithful at a mass in Carpi, the northern Italian city that was hit by two deadly earthquakes in 2012.

    “I urge everybody to pray for peace, that the hearts of those behind these crimes do not remain enslaved by hatred and violence,” the pope said.

    At least 400 people have died in six months of unrest which has hit the provinces of Kasai-Central, Kasai, Kasai-West and Lomami.

    The remote region has been plagued by violence since mid-August, when government forces killed Kamwina Nsapu, a tribal chief and militia leader who had rebelled against President Joseph Kabila’s central government.

    Congolese church leaders and the papal representative in Kinshasa on Thursday urged the DRC’s security forces, widely accused of brutal treatment of opponents, to refrain from using disproportionate force during operations.

    Last month, the police accused rebels of killing 39 officers in Kasai, and last week the bodies of two UN contractors were found after they were kidnapped in Kasai-Central.

    The two foreigners were kidnapped by unidentified assailants on March 12 along with four Congolese accompanying them.

    Pope Francis also said that the people of Colombia were in his thoughts after a huge mudslide in the town of Mocoa on Saturday killed some 200 people, a disaster which left him “profoundly saddened”.

    The pontiff always said he was praying for Venezuela and Paraguay amid growing political unrest in both countries.

    Source”AFP