Author: Publisher

{{An Angolan radio journalist has been convicted for defamation after allegedly inquiring about screams coming from prisoners inside a police station, his lawyer said on Friday.}}

The Angolan court handed Queiros Chiluvia a six-month suspended sentence, the lawyer told media in a case that drew criticism from a media rights group.

Chiluvia, a deputy editor at Radio Despertar, a station backed by Angola’s main opposition party UNITA, was arrested on Sunday after entering the Cacuaco police station on the edge of Luanda to seek comment about the prisoners’ screams.

“The journalist was sentenced to 180 days in prison and the sentence was suspended,” said defense lawyer Pedro Cangombe. “We are glad he has been freed, but are not happy with the verdict and will file an appeal.”

He said the accusation that Chiluvia had defamed the police was unfounded, given that the report he filed just before his arrest did not accuse police of any wrongdoing and only reported the screams from inside the station.

An Angolan police spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

UNITA lost a 27-year civil war against President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ MPLA party in 2002 and has since suffered heavy defeats in two elections.

Opposition parties and international rights groups have long accused Dos Santos, who has been in power in Africa’s No. 2 oil producer for 34 years, of suppressing freedoms, including those of the press.

“The conviction… for merely seeking comment from the police is an outrageous travesty of justice,” said Mohamed Keita, Africa Advocacy Coordinator for New York-based media rights group Committee to Protect Journalists.

“It criminalizes a basic act of journalism and tramples on the right to access information on a topic of public interest such as the conditions of prisoners inside a police station.”

{reuters}

{The ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said “profound human suffering” had been caused}

{{The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda says she has opened a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes in the Central African Republic (CAR).}}

Fatou Bensouda said she had received reports of “extreme brutality by various groups”.

Tens of thousands of Muslims have already fled to Cameroon and Chad.

CAR, one of Africa’s poorest nations, has been in chaos for more than a year after Muslim rebels seized power.

Mrs Bensouda said that her investigations so far included “hundreds of killings, acts of rape and sexual slavery, destruction of property, pillaging, torture, forced displacement and recruitment and use of children in hostilities.”

She added that “in many incidents, victims appear to have been deliberately targeted on religious grounds.”

Accounts of violence in CAR have become increasingly brutal, with reports of mob killings common.

On Friday morning, witnesses said thousands of Muslims piled on to trucks in the capital Bangui to leave the city, escorted by Chadian peacekeepers.

One person who fell off one of the trucks was killed by a crowd and his body mutilated, witnesses said.

Rebel leader Michel Djotodia, who became CAR’s first Muslim leader, resigned as interim president last month as part of a regional peace process, but the violence has continued.

{agencies}

{{South Africa will go to the polls on May 7, President Jacob Zuma announced on Friday, with his African National Congress likely to easily extend its two-decade rule, despite rising discontent among its poverty-stricken grassroots supporters.}}

Zuma himself has lost popularity amid allegations of using public funds for private purposes, and the announcement of the election date came as violent demonstrations by residents in largely black townships, against poor government services, spread.

The African National Congress (ANC), which spearheaded the fight against apartheid, should retain the die-hard loyalty of an older generation whose memories of the apartheid system that discriminated against non-whites remain fresh. That should enable the ANC to win the vote with a comfortable majority, giving Zuma another five-year term in office.

But the movement which has been in power since the end of white minority rule in 1994 faces charges of largely failing to lift millions of blacks out of grinding poverty.

Underscoring the volatile atmosphere which has engulfed several townships, hundreds of youths danced and sang in Hebron, a township some 30 kilometers north of the capital Pretoria on Friday, ripping out street signs, lighting tire barricades and littering roads with boulders and rubble.

“People are never going to vote for the ANC because they are so angry,” said Jerry Tlou, 26, outside a Pakistani-owned general store in Hebron, which had just been looted by rioters.

“The ANC makes all these promises but they can’t deliver. No water, no electricity, they can’t fix the roads. I am going to vote for the DA,” Tlou, who is unemployed, said in reference to the opposition Democratic Alliance.

Unemployment in South Africa is running at around 25 percent and growth in Africa’s biggest economy has slowed sharply to about 2 percent in 2013, disrupted by the global slowdown and labor unrest that has frequently halted production in the mainstay mining and auto sectors.

reuters