Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{South Sudan’s army has killed almost 100 members of a small tribe, executing some of them in cold blood, during seven months of fighting with rebels in the eastern Jonglei state, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.}}

South Sudan’s defence minister Kuol Manyang declined to discuss details of the report by the New York-based rights group. But he told Reuters authorities had launched an investigation in August into army abuses in the vast territory.

South Sudan’s army spokesman could not be reached on his mobile phone.

South Sudan’s army is grappling with a rebellion led by local politician David Yau Yau as well as clashes between his Murle tribe and the rival Lou Nuer in Jonglei, which borders Ethiopia.

Western powers are worried a heavy-handed army approach is worsening the violence, undermining stability in the African country already awash with arms after decades of conflict.

HRW said in a report soldiers had killed at least 96 members of the Murle tribe, including 74 civilians, 17 of them women and children, between December and July.

Some of them were shot dead in crossfire during battles with rebels, HRW said.

Others were executed as an apparent punishment for alleged support for Yau Yau or for failing to give up weapons during an army campaign to disarm locals, the campaign group added.

The army, or SPLA, killed 13 Murle members in Lotho village on Dec 4, HRW said.

“SPLA soldiers approached a group of civilian men … and demanded that the men hand over their guns.” the report said, citing witnesses.

“The men gave the SPLA two rifles. The SPLA then tied up the men into two groups of seven. The soldiers executed the men in one group at the site and took the men in the other group some distance away and shot them,” it added.

Yau Yau’s group has said it fights to end army abuses, corruption and the domination of the ruling party in South Sudan.

“Soldiers should be protecting Murle civilians in Jonglei state from the fighting and the ethnic conflict,” said Daniel Bekele, HRW’s Africa director. “Instead, the army has been killing these vulnerable people.”

Last month, President Salva Kiir ordered the arrest of several generals in Jonglei over the alleged killing of civilians and other reported abuses under their command.

South Sudan’s government has struggled to reform and modernise its army, a lose umbrella of former guerillas who fought Sudan’s government forces during decades of civil war. That conflict ended in a 2005 peace deal that paved the way for South Sudan to secede in 2011.

Tribal violence, often triggered by conflicts over livestock and land, has killed more than 1,600 people in Jonglei since the secession, hampering plans to explore the state for oil with the help of France’s Total and U.S. firm Exxon.

South Sudan accuses Sudan of supplying Yau Yau with weapons, an accusation dismissed by Khartoum.

{{Reports from Kenya indicate that a middle-aged man committed suicide in Vihiga County on Sunday after setting his house on fire, killing his wife and three children.}}

The incident occurred at Vindizi village in Maragoli at about 4 am, according to Maragoli Central Chief Kennedy Chanzu.

“We have lost five members of the same family in this incident – the man, his wife and three children,” Chanzu told journalists at the scene. “It is only a 10-year-old girl who was lucky to escape.”

The girl narrated to the police how her father woke up at 4 am and assembled them in one bedroom and then started dousing the bed with paraffin.

At that point, the girl decided to escape before her father set the house on fire. Her mother, father and three siblings perished.

Neighbours told police that the couple had been quarrelling since Saturday in what they described as a long-standing family dispute.

Cases of this nature are common in Western Kenya where a middle-aged man identified as James Mushikha Mukobero butchered eight family members in 2001—including his pregnant wife – in what was described then as Kenya’s worst domestic violence.

The incident occurred in Shibuye, Kakamega where Mukobero also worked as a mason.

After the killings, Mukobero was reported to have swallowed rat poison in a bid to commit suicide but survived after being rescued by neighbours and police officers who rushed him to hospital.

The man was later convicted of murder charges and is serving a sentence.

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{{The Sudanese foreign minister Ali Ahmed Karti has lambasted the United States and accused it of trying to open a “gate from hell” between Sudan and South Sudan over the disputed area of Abyei, saying that the newly appointed envoy Donald Booth is not welcome to mediate on the issue.}}

Booth who arrived in Khartoum this week in his first visit to the region since his appointment, has met on Saturday with al-Khair al-Fahim, the Sudanese Co-Chair of the Abyei Joint Oversight Committee who communicated to him Sudan’s categorical rejection of holding Abyei referendum next October per the plan submitted last year by the African Union (AU) mediation team.

The AU proposal states that only those residing permanently in the area would be allowed to vote in the plebiscite and decide whether they want to join Sudan or South Sudan.

This proposal would effectively make the majority of voters come from the Dinka Ngok tribe, aligned with South Sudan, thus putting the Arab Misseriya nomads, who spend several months in Abyei every year grazing, outside the voting population.

The Sudanese government however, swiftly rejected the AU plan and insisted that the Misseriya should be allowed to participate in the referendum.

Karti, who was speaking to reporters in Khartoum airport prior to leaving for a conference on Somalia in Brussels said that his government will not allow the U.S. to use Abyei as a “thorn in the throat” of Sudan and South Sudan and pointed that Washington is not qualified for determining Sudan’s relations with other countries.

The visibly angry Foreign Minister stressed that Sudan will not allow the US envoy to mediate in Abyei issue and accused Washington of trying to exploit the only remaining issue of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) to sour relations between Khartoum and Juba.

He told reporters that president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir and South Sudan president Salva Kiir Mayardit, have agreed in their recent meeting in Khartoum on setting up the civil and police institutions in Abyei and make the transitional arrangement, accusing unnamed parties in Juba of by bringing up the issue of Abyei.

The Sudanese top diplomat downplayed statements issued by leading figures in South Sudan on Abyei and said it is being made for “local consumption”.

He was likely referring to statements made by former cabinet affairs minister Deng Alor who hails from Abyei.

“We must be united so that we make strong position for the conduct of the referendum. We need to speak to international community, particularly the African Union to put enough pressure on Sudan to accept the September 21, 2012 proposal on resolution of the final status of Abyei.

This was the proposal which the African leaders accepted as a solution to the African problem. So African Union must push Sudan to respect decision of the African Union”, Alor said Friday.

“There is nothing which our people did not do for the international community not to respect their choice. Despite the suffering as the result of the continued violations of number of agreements, they decided to show respect and peacefully followed all the legal avenues beginning with negotiations which culminated to the agreement on Abyei, which is now the basis of the resolution”, Alor said in reference to the protocol on the resolution of Abyei.

Karti emphasized that Khartoum would only allow the AU mediation to work on the Abyei dispute stressing that Booth should be confined to improving relations between Sudan and South Sudan.

{sudantribune}

{{Tom Lalampaa has won a conservation award for his work in northern Kenya by the wildlife charity Tusk Trust.}}

He was one of five nominees and received his prize from Prince William at an awards ceremony in London.

Mr Lalampaa runs an organisation that helps remote and sometimes feuding communities co-exist with wildlife in a 200,000 sq km (4.9m-acre) area.

Zimbabwe’s Clive Stockil was also honoured with a lifetime achievement award for his work with rhinos.

Mr Stockil “is one of Africa’s great conservation pioneers, who long before many others recognised how critical it is to engage local communities in the conservation of their natural heritage,” one of the Tusk Conservation Awards judges said.

“Despite many setbacks, Clive Stockil has never waivered from his overall commitment to conservation.”

His career spans 40 years and in 1992 he helped create Zimbabwe’s biggest private reserve in the Save Valley in the the south-east of the country, which is now home to one of the biggest rhino populations in Africa.

The lifetime Prince William Award for Conservation in Africa comes with a £30,000 ($47,000) grant.

agencies

{{Amnesty International has denounced the forcible eviction of tens of thousands of homeless people from makeshift camps in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.}}

The human rights group says the process has led to “large-scale human rights abuses” including the killing of two people during protests.

Some 370,000 people have been living in the camps, having fled drought, famine and fighting.

But their presence is hampering the government’s drive to rebuild the city.

In the past year the authorities have gained greater control of Mogadishu from the Islamist group al-Shabab.

The government announced in January a plan to relocate hundreds of thousands of displaced people to camps on the outskirts of the city.

The Amnesty report says the “relocation plan could have been a positive development” if it had respected “the security, fundamental rights and basic needs” of displaced people.

However, Amnesty added, the government plan proved to be “inherently flawed” and “seems to have resulted in large-scale human rights abuses and forced evictions”.

Officials defended the evictions saying such reports had a tendency to be “far from the truth” and the removals were “good for security as well as the image of the city”.

“The government has the right to reclaim land and buildings belonging to its former institutions, so that it can offer the public service that is needed,” Mogadishu local government spokesman Mohammed Yusuf told reporters.

“For that purpose, we move out people living on such lands or in those buildings… We tell them to put the national interest before the individual interest.”

agencies

{{Kenya’s Wiper Democratic Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka has been appointed by the Commonwealth to lead the observer team to Sri Lanka’s Northern Provincial Council Elections slated for September 21.}}

The four-member observer mission, which was announced by the Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma, will comprise Musyoka as the Chairman, members Jenni McMullan former Electoral Officer for Victoria, Australia, Dr Shamsul Huda former Chief Election Commissioner Bangladesh, Ms Examin Philbert Secretary, Caribbean Association of Local Government Authorities Saint Lucia.

In his letter to the former Vice President, the Commonwealth Secretary-General said the elections were a “landmark to the Sri Lankan north province” and thus Musyoka’s vast political and diplomatic experience will be of great benefit.

The Wiper leader who left the country on Friday night for Colombo and later Jaffna, where he is expected to take up the new assignment as from September 14 to 28 said it is heartwarming to serve humanity and thanked the commonwealth for appreciating his work.

“We have just come from a hotly contested election and the fact that the Commonwealth secretariat has seen it fit to appoint an opposition leader to lead an observer mission to an election in the Asian continent speaks volumes,” he said.

Musyoka who has been involved in numerous peace missions said that Kenya has a pivotal role to play among the member nations as well as the international community.

The opposition leader who helped broker peace in the Sudan, Somalia and Burundi among others said the role of Kenya among the nation states cannot be ignored thus the Kenyan citizenry should embrace peace, tolerance and a common agenda for prosperity of the country in a globalised society.

The Sri Lankan North Province hit the headlines in the early 80’s up-to 2009 during the Sri Lankan Civil War, pitting the government against the Tamil Tigers who were agitating for cessation.

{CapitalFM}

{{With an already significant impact of climate change like floods, drought and erratic rainfall, one would expect the Africa to be at the forefront of producing energy efficient and clean energy technologies but the continent is yet to come up with technologies that are climate friendly.}}

According to a May 2013 United nations Environment Programme (Unep) study ‘Patents and clean energy technologies in Africa’ the continent has the least level of technology development with less than one per cent of all patent applications relating to Clean Energy Technologies coming from Africa.

South Africa tops the list of Africa’s leading inventor countries with 82.4 per cent of the applications filed in Africa, followed by Egypt with 2.8 per cent. Kenya and Burundi are the only East African countries that feature on the list with 1.2 per cent and 0.9 per cent respectively.