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Category: Politics

  • Burundi says plans to quit the International Criminal Court

    {Burundi plans to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, a deputy to President Pierre Nkurunziza said on Thursday, six months after the court’s prosecutor said it will investigate violence which killed hundreds of people.}

    Burundi slid into political crisis last year when Nkurunziza announced his intention to seek a third term in office, which he went on to win in an election boycotted by opposition parties.

    The Hague-based International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in April the court would investigate incidents of violence in Burundi that have killed at least 450 and forced hundreds of thousands to flee abroad since the crisis erupted in April 2015.

    “We have sent to the national assembly a draft law for adoption … to withdraw from the ICC,” First Vice President Gaston Sindimwo said after a cabinet meeting.

    “We found that it was necessary to withdraw from that organization so we can really be free,” he said in comments broadcast on state-run radio.

    A notice of a cabinet meeting held earlier in the day in Gitega, some 100 km (60 miles) from the capital Bujumbura, said among the items to be discussed were a draft law revising a 2003 law that Burundi ratified to be a signatory of the Rome Statute of the ICC.

    Opponents say Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term violated the constitution and a peace agreement that ended a civil war in 2005. The president and his supporters cite a court ruling that said he could run again.

    Preliminary examinations at the ICC, based mainly on publicly available information, can last months or years before leading to a possible full investigation. Only then can criminal charges be brought against individuals suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

    On Tuesday, Burundi dismissed a U.N. decision to establish a commission of inquiry to identify perpetrators of killings and torture, saying it was based on a one-sided account of events in the African nation.

  • Uganda:Police barricade homes of opposition politicians

    {The homes of opposition leaders were surrounded as early as 6 am on Friday}

    Kampala- Police have this morning besieged homes of opposition politicians ahead of their “first independence day rally”.

    The homes of opposition leaders were surrounded as early as 6 am on Friday. The Bweyogerere-Kirinya home of Kira Municipality MP, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, the convener of today’s rally is surrounded by police.

    However, Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago has been allowed to leave his Lubaga-Wakaliga home but with police trailing him. The home of Dr Kizza Besigye, the former presidential candidate of the Forum for Democratic Change remains under police siege.

    A Thursday statement by Mr Andrew Felix Kaweesi, the police spokesman confirmed receipt of the opposition politicians’ letters informing them on the planned rallies but said the force was “resolute on ensuring the national celebrations are not disrupted” and instead invited the opposition to the function.

    “The FDC party has been advised to attend national celebrations and desist from conducting any parallel celebrations. The general public is advised to avoid any parallel celebrations that are conducted outside the national celebrations,” Mr Kaweesi said in the statement.

    Opposition politicians, however, remain defiant that their planned rallies will go on as scheduled.

  • Trump backs off from praising Putin after VP debate

    {US presidential candidate backs down from his previous warm rhetoric towards Russian president.}

    US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has backed off from praising Vladimir Putin, saying he was unsure of his relationship with the Russian president who he has described as a better leader than President Barack Obama.

    On Wednesday, just one day after his running mate Mike Pence appeared to break ranks during a vice presidential debate and called Putin “a small and bullying leader”, Trump adjusted his own previously warm rhetoric towards the Russian leader.

    “I don’t love [Putin], I don’t hate. We’ll see how it works. We’ll see,” Trump told supporters during a campaign stop in the swing state of Nevada. “Maybe we’ll have a good relationship. Maybe we’ll have a horrible relationship. Maybe we’ll have a relationship right in the middle.”

    Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has appealed to anti-Russian sentiments in the US by criticising Trump, who often praises Putin, as being too cozy with the Kremlin leader and questioned the Republican’s business interests in Russia.

    Those charges were repeated by her vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine during a debate with Pence on Tuesday.

    In response, Pence denounced Putin for his interference in Syria’s civil war and support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    “The small and bullying leader of Russia is now dictating terms to the United States,” Pence said. “The greatest nation on earth just withdraws from talks about a ceasefire, while Vladimir Putin puts a missile defence system in Syria.”

    The vice presidential encounter set the table for a second presidential debate on Sunday in St Louis between Clinton and Trump, who needs to rebound from a rocky performance in his first debate. Clinton received a large boost in most national opinion polls following that encounter, with the November 8 Election Day only five weeks away.

    In Nevada, Trump suggested Russia could be a valuable ally in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

    “I will say if we get along with Russia and Russia went out with us and knocked the hell out of ISIS, that’s okay with me, folks,” he said.

    Trump celebrated a strong debate performance by Pence, the governor of Indiana, and said his running mate had won on style and on the issues.

    “He’s getting tremendous reviews from me and everybody,” Trump told a group of pastors and leaders gathered at a Christian academy in Las Vegas.

    A CNN/ORC snap poll declared Pence the winner with 48 percent support, compared with 42 percent for Clinton running mate Tim Kaine, who frequently interrupted his opponent.

    The television audience for the debate was 35.6 million viewers, according to preliminary data, about half the number who watched the first encounter between Trump and Clinton.

    Democrats have criticised previous remarks made by Trump seemingly in praise of Putin

  • EU Foreign Ministers to Discuss Congo Political Crisis Amid Sanctions Push

    {An EU statement criticizing the postponement of elections in the DRC was recently blocked}

    BRUSSELS—European foreign ministers will discuss the political crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo when they meet in Luxembourg later this month, diplomats said Wednesday, as some capitals push for the bloc to impose sanctions.

    EU ambassadors agreed at a meeting Tuesday that foreign ministers will discuss the situation Oct. 17 after a request from a number of countries, one of the officials said. The bloc will issue a formal statement after the talks, which means they could agree action at the meeting.

    Washington last week imposed fresh sanctions on two senior security officials for their role in suppressing political opposition in the DRC.

    Last Thursday, the DRC’s electoral commission said general elections, originally scheduled for late November, won’t take place until at least early 2018, risking further violence that could upend the fragile stability of the resource-rich nation.

    It is the first time the commission has provided a timeline for when the elections may take place, after saying previously that they won’t happen this year. Critics of President Joseph Kabila say the delay is an attempt to extend his time in power, since a constitutional two-term limit prevents him from running again.

    Over the past two years, the United Nations and Western governments, including the U.S., have condemned the government crackdown on protesters and arbitrary arrests of political opponents and activists.

    EU foreign ministers warned in May that it was critical for the DRC to stay on the democratic path and keep moving toward presidential elections. At the time, the EU warned it could impose sanctions for human-rights abuses, but Belgium, which has close ties to the country, said it was too early for such a step.

    On Tuesday, French foreign ministry officials said the EU needed to discuss sanctions and other measures in a bid to stop the political situation deteriorating. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has also said sanctions should be considered.

    The Belgian foreign ministry said Wednesday that it had halved the visa duration for Congolese officials holding diplomatic passports to six months because of the political situation in the DRC.

    However, the bloc has struggled to reach a common position on developments in the DRC. Last Friday, an EU statement criticizing the postponement of elections was blocked because of disagreement over its wording. As a result, the EU still hasn’t responded as a bloc to the electoral delay.

    In a statement last week, Human Rights Watch welcomed the U.S. imposition of sanctions on two senior security officials and called on Washington to broaden those measures against other senior government, security and intelligence officials.

    “The European Union and the United Nations Security Council should urgently adopt similar sanctions as the U.S.,” said Ida Sawyer, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

    ”Taking strong action now could put further pressure on President Kabila to abide by the constitutional requirement to step down at the end of his term, and help prevent a broader crisis, with potentially volatile repercussions throughout the region.”

    Congolese opposition supporters destroy a billboard of President Joseph Kabila during a march to press the president to step down in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa, Sept. 19.

  • US election: Kaine and Pence spar in heated VP debate

    {Tim Kaine and Mike Pence clash over economy, immigration and reports that Trump avoided paying taxes for years.}

    Tim Kaine and Mike Pence have faced off in the only vice presidential debate in the run-up to the US election, clashing over national security, immigration and other issues.

    Early on in the debate on Tuesday night, Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, clashed with Pence, Donald Trump’s choice for vice president, over reports that the Republican nominee could have avoided paying taxes for nearly two decades.

    Pence, the governor of Indiana, responded that Trump “used the tax code just the way it’s supposed to be used, and he did it brilliantly”.

    The two candidates wasted no time in launching broadsides against the presidential rivals in the opening minutes of their 90-minute debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.

    Kaine, a US senator from Virginia, repeatedly interrupted Pence, who in contrast to his temperamental running mate kept his calm and mocked his Democratic counterpart for his prepared one-liners.

    Political analyst Bill Schneider said Kaine appeared “very aggressive”.

    “I’m not sure that impressed the audience,” he told Al Jazeera.

    Schneider said that while Kaine might have won the debate on points, but “the audience might have sympathised more with Pence” as he was being pummelled.

    When the issue of immigration was raised, the Republican candidate defended Trump’s proposal to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and slammed Clinton for supporting what he called an “amnesty”.

    The Virginia senator responded that he and Clinton support comprehensive immigration reform and Pence and Trump are for a “deportation nation”.

    While Pence gave the Obama administration credit for eliminating Osama bin Laden, he said “America is less safe today” than it was before the Democrat became president.

    Kaine again took the opportunity to bring up Trump’s taxes, saying that by not paying taxes for years, he had not supported the “fight against terror” after 9/11.

    The vice presidential candidates seemed unlikely to dramatically change the way voters view Trump and Clinton, who met on the debate stage last Monday.

    Still, the nationally televised debate gave the long-time politicians a chance to introduce themselves to Americans, energising party loyalists and potentially swaying the shrinking pool of undecided voters.

    In a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, more than half of registered voters said they did not know enough about Kaine to venture an opinion about him and about 44 percent said the same for Pence.

    Trump and Clinton’s campaigns both tweeted continuously throughout the campaigns.

    Clinton was widely viewed as the winner of her opening debate with Trump, rattling the property mogul with jabs about his business record and demeaning statements about women, and responding to his attacks with calm rejoinders.

    New public opinion polls have showed her improving her standing in nearly all battleground states.

  • Hong Kong pro-democracy leader deported from Thailand

    {Supporters of 19-year-old activist who became face of protest movement accuse China of being behind deportation.}

    A Hong Kong student activist who became a face of a pro-democracy movement in the Chinese-ruled city has been deported from Thailand after being detained on arrival at the airport.

    Joshua Wong, 19, was held in Bangkok where he had been invited to speak at two universities about Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement street protests and on setting up his political party, Demosisto.

    “Demosisto has just been informed by the Hong Kong Immigration Department that … Joshua Wong has boarded Hong Kong Airlines HX772 earlier from Bangkok, Thailand, en route back to Hong Kong.” Demosisto said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.

    His supporters have accused Beijing of being behind the move.

    Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said a senior official at the immigration office at Bangkok’s airport had “responded to a request by China to blacklist” Wong.

    “He was therefore denied entry into Thailand and deported,” he said.

    The Umbrella Movement protests in Hong Kong, the former British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, brought the city to a standstill for three months and presented Communist Party rulers in Beijing with one of their biggest political challenges in decades.

    Wong was given 80 hours of community service by a Hong Kong court in August on a charge of unlawful assembly for taking part in a sit-in at the height of the protests in the Asian financial hub.

    Thailand has been ruled by a military junta since a 2014 coup which was widely condemned by the West. Since then, the generals running Thailand have forged closer ties with Beijing.

    Wong said in a Facebook post on Tuesday night that he was concerned about his trip to Bangkok.

    “We all know Thailand is not politically stable… It is also clear that it is close to the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

    Wong was denied entry by Malaysia in May 2015 when he was due to give a series of talks on democracy in China.

    He was invited by Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science to speak on the 40th anniversary of a bloody crackdown by the Thai army on student protesters. Organisers said he was detained at Bangkok’s main airport on Wednesday morning.

    Immigration officials confirmed to the Reuters news agency that Wong was prevented from entering Thailand and would be sent back to Hong Kong. Officials said they were under orders not to speak to the media about why Wong had been refused entry.

    Human Rights Watch condemned his detention.

    “Thailand’s arrest of Joshua Wong, a well-known pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong, sadly suggests that Bangkok is willing to do Beijing’s bidding,” Sophie Richardson, China Director for Human Rights Watch, said in an email.

    Demosisto, the political party that Wong heads in Hong Kong, also called for his release.

    Thailand, Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy, is slowly recovering from the events of 2014, when months of street protests and the coup almost brought economic activity to a standstill.

    Since then, the military has clamped down on dissent and banned political protests.

  • Burundi dismisses planned U.N. inquiry into killings and torture

    {Burundi’s government has dismissed a U.N. decision to set up a commission of inquiry to identify perpetrators of killings and torture, saying it was based on a one-sided account of events in the African nation.}

    The United Nations Human Rights Council agreed on Friday to set up the commission, saying it would build on a report by U.N. experts who looked into the suspected torture and murder of government opponents. The experts have drawn up a list of suspects.

    Burundi has been mired in political crisis and sporadic violence for more than a year, triggered by President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term in office, which he secured in a disputed election in July 2015.

    Opposition figures and government officials have frequently been killed in tit-for-tat attacks, while hundreds of government opponents have been rounded up and detained.

    “The (experts’) report was biased, undertaken and produced for the sole purpose of paving the way for this resolution and to destabilize the Burundian nation,” government spokesman Philippe Nzobonariba said.

    He told the state broadcaster late on Monday that the council had failed to take into account Burundi’s contribution to balance the report. The resulting decision was “inapplicable in Burundi”.

    He did not say if Burundi would take further action in response, but added the government would “continue its cooperation with the international community, particularly the United Nations” in line with international agreements.

    The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted an European Union resolution for a one-year commission of inquiry by a vote of 19 states in favor and seven against, with 21 abstentions. African votes were split.

  • Three SADC foreign ministers for Congo situation assessment

    {In his capacity as Chairman of Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s Organ of Politics, Defence and Security (Troika), President John Magufuli has pledged to dispatch foreign affairs minister from three African countries to assess the political situation in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).}

    Dr Magufuli made the pledge at a press conference in Dar es Salaam after his meeting with visiting President of DRC Joseph Kabila, pledging to send foreign affairs ministers from Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola. DRC is a SADC member.

    “President Kabila has briefed me on the situation in his country and will thus send the ministers to assess the situation for way forward,” Dr Magufuli noted.

    He went on to explain that the visiting leader had informed him that if elections were conducted today in DRC then a large number of voters, particularly young people, would be left out since they were not registered.

    “During the last election five years ago, there were between 30 and 35 million voters but now the number has grown to about 45 million. And thus if elections are held today, then about 10 million people will not be able to take part in the polls,” he stated.

    President Magufuli further advised Congolese refugees living in Tanzania to return to their country for registration to be able to take part in the envisaged polls. Earlier, President Kabila said discussions are underway involving various parties in his country to ensure there is peace before, during and after the elections.

    “There are lots of misleading reports making rounds in the media in regard to the state of affairs in the DRC, which should be disregarded. All is well in Congo and I assured President Magufuli of this in his capacity as the Troika Chairman.

    It is normal in many African countries for tensions to be high during election year and I think the same happened here in Tanzania during the election last year,” President Kabila said in fluent Kiswahili.

    On the other hand, the visiting leader revealed that he had informed his host of insurgencies in some parts of Eastern DRC, where a number of armed groups are still wreaking havoc among the population there.

    He pointed out the fact that Tanzania has, through the UN mandate, deployed troops to fight the insurgents in Eastern DRC to maintain peace.

    In a related development, President Magufuli revealed at the press briefing that President Kabila had asked him to allow his country to join the East African Community (EAC), currently made up of six member-states.

    “I have informed his Excellency President Kabila to follow procedures for his country to be admitted, it can start to participate as an observer. It is a known fact that DRC has been trading with many members of the EAC,” Dr Magufuli, who also doubles as Chairman of EAC, said.

    Once DRC submits formal application to join the EAC, President Magufuli pledged to submit the request to his fellow leaders of the EAC for deliberations.

    President John Pombe Magufuli

  • Burundi Opposition Leader Released After Days in Police Custody

    {The head of one of Burundi’s opposition parties has been released, days after he was arrested for what police said was collaborating with “armed gangs,” a spokesman for an opposition coalition said Tuesday.
    }
    The central African state has been in a political crisis and sporadic violence for more than a year, sparked by President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term in office, which he secured in a disputed election in July 2015.

    At least 450 people have been killed in violence that first erupted during protests against Nkurunziza’s re-election bid in April last year.

    Gervais Niyongabo, chairman of the opposition FEDES-SANGIRA party and one of the few opposition leaders still able to work inside Burundi, was detained in the southern Makamba region on Sept. 28, police said.

    FEDES-SANGIRA party was among the opposition groups to boycott last year’s elections.

    “It was but a police fabrication to arrest him, given that his native village is known as an opposition stronghold,” said Pancrace Cimpaye, spokesman for the opposition grouping CNARED.

    Police and government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

    Opponents accuse Nkurunziza of violating the constitution and a peace pact that ended a civil war in 2005. The government accuses opponents of stirring unrest, and accuses them of backing rebel groups, which officials call “armed gangs.”

    On Tuesday, Burundi’s government said it had dismissed a U.N. decision to set up a commission of inquiry to identify perpetrators of killings and torture, saying it was based on a one-sided account of events in the country.

    Protesters demonstrate outside U.N. headquarters in New York, calling for an end to political atrocities and human rights violations unfolding in Burundi under the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza, April 26, 2016.

  • Donald Trump a ‘genius’ if he paid no taxes: advisors

    {Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani praise the Republican candidate after reports he may not have paid tax for 18 years.}

    Two of Donald Trump’s senior advisors say allegations that the Republican candidate for US president avoided paying income tax for 18 years highlight his “genius” at using tax laws to his advantage.

    Chris Christie, a New Jersey Governor and head of Trump’s presidential transition team, told Fox News on Sunday that the Republican candidate was good at figuring out how to circumvent tax laws.

    “There’s no one who has shown more genius in their way to maneuver about the tax code as he rightfully used the laws to do that,” Christie told Fox News.

    “This was actually a very, very good story for him.”

    In a story published by the New York Times on Sunday, the newspaper said it anonymously received the first pages of Trump’s 1995 state income tax filings in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut – showing a net loss of $915,729,293 in federal taxable income for that year.

    According to tax experts hired by the Times, provisions in the tax code would have allowed Trump to use his near $916m loss to wipe out more than $50m a year in taxable income over 18 years.

    Trump advisor and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani went further than Christie, describing Trump as an “absolute genius” for his understanding of the tax code.

    “This is a perfectly legal application of the tax code. And he would have been a fool not to take advantage of it,” Giuliani told ABC’s This Week program.

    Giuliani compared Trump’s ability to come back from the nearly $1-billion loss to turnarounds made by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister who led the United Kingdom through World War Two.

    “It shows what a genius he is. It shows he was able to preserve his enterprise, and then he was able to build it,” Giuliani said.

    Trump’s campaign did not directly address the authenticity of the excerpts from Trump’s tax filings, but issued a statement saying the tax documents were obtained illegally and accused the New York Times of operating as an extension of the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

    “I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

    Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the tax writeoff “shows the colossal scale of his business failures” and that the wealthy real estate developer operates under a different set of rules than ordinary taxpayers.

    Clinton has repeatedly called on Trump to release his tax returns, as has been standard practice for presidential candidates in modern times.

    In August, Clinton released her 2015 tax return, along with her husband and former president Bill, reporting $10.6m in income for 2015.

    They paid $3.6m in federal income tax, according to documents posted on her campaign website.

    Democrats had hinted that by not releasing his tax returns, Trump may have been trying to hide that he paid little to no tax, made less money than he claims, or gave a negligible amount to charity.

    Trump has declined to release his tax records, saying he will not do so until an audit of his returns by the Internal Revenue Service is complete.

    The IRS has said that an audit does not bar an individual from sharing their own tax information.

    Donald Trump has repeatedly declined to release his tax returns despite mounting pressure