Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{Unknown gunmen shot dead a Somali radio producer on Friday, the first journalist to be killed this year, an editor with his Somali radio station said. Eighteen journalists were killed last year, making Somalia one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.}}

Two gunmen shot dead Shabelle producer Abdihared Osman Aden in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, said Mohamed Bashir Hashi, the radio station’s editor.

Somali journalists say impunity is fueling the killings.

The National Union of Somali Journalists said in November that journalists in almost every region of the country commonly face harassment, blackmail and arbitrary police detention.

In addition, criminals are hired to suppress them.

“It’s an appalling murder but my message is they cannot silence us from telling the truth,” Hashi said.

No action has ever been taken following a case of violence against a Somali journalist, The National Union of Somali Journalist said in a report to mark the International Day to End Impunity on Nov. 23, sponsored by the free expression group, IFEX.

Somalia’s government should implement judicial reforms that will aid free and fair trials, as well as provide judicial protection for the media and ensure that police adhere to the law, according to the report titled “Impunity: War on Somali Journalists.”

The international community can assist Somalia’s federal government to put in place effective and functional public law and order, the report said.

AP

{{The Eastern Africa Police Chiefs’ Cooperation Organisation (EAPCCO), bringing together 11 countries in the region, met in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday to discuss effective coordination and collaboration in the regional police body.}}

The aim was to effectively deal with illegal immigration and human trafficking threats from the Horn of Africa to the Southern Africa corridor.

The meeting was part of annual ones which evaluate implementation of decisions reached in the October 2012 general meeting held in Uganda.

The Dar es Salaam session was also attended by the Tanzania Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr Said Mwema, who is also the chairman of the Southern Africa Police Chiefs’ Cooperation Organization (SAPCCO).

Others included the head of Interpol Regional Bureaus in Harare and Nairobi, Messrs Chilika Simfukwe and Francis Rwego as well as stakeholders of other security agencies.

Addressing journalists, the EAPCCO chairman, Mr Kale Kaihula, who is also the Uganda IGP singled out terrorism, human and drug trafficking as well as theft of motor vehicles, as trans-national crimes that need immediate attention.

He said: “All these crimes are of trans-national nature, not only involving citizens from the region but even beyond. Unless we cooperate and share intelligence information, no single nation can address these threats effectively on its own.”

He noted that illegal immigration and human trafficking have been worse since there was a long chain of organisation from the Horn of Africa to Southern Africa.

“We realise that for efficiency the police in the region has to involve other organisations such as the Southern Africa Police Chiefs’ Cooperation Organisation (SAPCCO), to abolish this illegal trade,” he stressed.
For his part, IGP Mwema, who is also the SAPCCO chairman, said the meeting passed four resolutions that they should jointly implement. The first is a joint exercise in the region that will take place in April in Uganda for members to share experiences.

“Secondly, we want to build the capacity on how to deal with criminals internationally by exchanging skills and equipment… this is how our cooperation can be useful,” IGP Mwema said.

Thirdly, the joint meeting agreed that at the bilateral level Tanzania and Uganda should strength their relationships to solve promistakes through exchange of criminals and learning Kiswahili as the means of communication in both countries.

Lastly, the meeting decided to establish sports and games among security organs to be used for physical fitness and a unifying factor apart from boosting relationships that will enhance efforts towards combating crime in the African corridor.

{{Leaders from Eastern African countries have expressed “strong support” to a proposal by the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP), which aims to resolve the dispute over the status of the contested region of Abyei, South Sudan’s national security minister, Oyai Deng Ajak, said Tuesday.}}

General Ajak was one of the senior government officials who accompanied President Salva Kiir on a trip on Sunday 13 January to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where they held talks with President Yoweri Museveni on how to strengthen ties between the two countries.

The two heads of state, he told Sudan Tribune, also discussed expected diplomatic roles which Eastern African countries can play in helping the new nation resolve its outstanding differences with Sudan.

The African Union it is upcoming summit which will take place on 24 January will discuss the Sudanese and south Sudanese dispute over Abyei.

The African Union Peace and Security Council supported a proposal made by the mediation aiming to hold a referendum in the region without the Sudanese Misseriya nomads.

But Khartoum which is opposed to the proposal asks to continue talks sponsored by the African mediation and refuses to refer the issue to UN Security Council.

Since, both nations have been lobbying African countries to support their stance on the disputed region ahead of an AU summit.

Sudanese minister Ali Karti started Tuesday a tour to the northern African countries to explain the position of hius government. He met in Tripoli with Libyan counterpart before to head for Tunis, and Algiers.

The two vice-presidents visited last week southern, eastern and western Africa countries.

Kiir briefed his Ugandan counterpart on his recent talks with President Bashir of Sudan in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Museveni, was an ally of the former southern rebels – the SPLM – who now govern South Sudan during the civil war that led to the partition of the country in July 2011.

The Ugandan leader has been a persistent critic of the Sudanese government, with Kampala also hosting numerous Sudanese rebel, political and civil society groups.

The discussions were “successful”, the minister told Sudan Tribune from Kampala on Monday.

“President Museveni, as you know stood with us during our struggle. He remains one of the African leaders still giving us unwavering supports, and has reaffirmed not only his stance and support, but also the commitment of the African leaders, particularly the Eastern African Countries to support implementation of the African Union proposal on Abyei; I mean the September proposal as the basis of resolving the dispute,” Ajak said.

The latest proposal from the AUHIP has been rejected by Sudan as it allows for a referendum in Abyei not including members of the nomadic Misseriya tribe, who are not permanently residents in the area.

If the Misseriya are not accorded voting rights, the Southern-aligned population are expected to vote to transfer Abyei – defined as the area belonging to the nine Chiefdom’s of the Dinka Ngok – back into South Sudan from where it was transferred to Sudan by colonial power Britain in 1905.

President Kiir, according to Ajak, assured the Ugandan leaders of South Sudan commitment in honouring all the agreements reached with neighbouring Sudan during the last African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

At the meeting, both Kiir and his Sudanese counterpart, Omer al-Bashir agreed to implement the deal they had signed in September, covering border security, oil, citizenship and other issues.

The South Sudan leader, the ministers said, Museveni “a thorough briefing on the latest positive developments that have taken place after the last AU summit held in Addis Ababa which accorded discussions between President Salva Kiir Mayardit and Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and the agreement reached between the two presidents regarding the outstanding and pending issues between the two countries.”

“The president also delivered to president Museveni a special message and New Year greetings from our people and the leadership in relation to the existing bilateral relationship between the two countries.

Our people both on Uganda side and on our side feel no difference wherever they are living. Ugandan nationals feel being at home in the Republic of South Sudan and so are South Sudanese in Uganda. This is because of our existing historical relations”.

Meanwhile, President Museveni, Ajak further said, also used the opportunity to reaffirm the Uganda’s position to support the new nation both at regional and international levels.

“He assured that Uganda will always be supporting South Sudan both in the international and regional levels. He further assured that Uganda will keep its support to South Sudan until peace prevails,” said South Sudan’s national security minister.

The Prime Minister of Lesotho, early this week, assured the new nation of his country’s support for the AU proposal that a referendum be held in the contested oil-producing region in October.

Motsoahae Thomas Thabane, while meeting South Sudan’s Minister for the Presidency, Emmanuel Lowilla, also urged the two Sudan’s to follow protocols of the 2005 peace deal, which ended over two decades of civil war between them.

(ST)

{{In Kenya Local media reports indicate that Five people are feared dead and several others are trapped after a building under construction collapses in Kisumu.}}

The five storey building, adjacent to Imperial hotel, collapsed on Wednesday evening.

Among those trapped are construction workers and women who were curing the building.

Members of the public rescued one person who has been rushed to hospital.

Rescue operation is underway.

{{A Ugandan woman activist Engineer Winnie Byanyima has been appointed executive director of Oxfam International.}}

Her new role will provide strategic direction and co-ordination for the worldwide confederation of Oxfam affiliates.

Oxfam operates in 94 countries to find effective ways to end the injustice of poverty, through its 17 affiliates.

She takes over in April 2013, replacing Jeremy Hobbs, who has served as Executive Director of Oxfam International since 2001.

A statement issued by Oxfam International yesterday said she was selected after a global search, led by the chairman of Oxfam International, Keith Johnston, with the help of an international executive search firm.

“In an outstanding field of candidates, Winnie stood out as exemplifying Oxfam’s values and ambitions,” Keith Johnston said.

He added: “She brings clear vision fired by her commitment to social justice, the toughness of an able negotiator and campaigner, and leadership based on her capacity to inspire and convene, in many circles, cultures and levels.”

Byanyima said: “The world is witnessing a shift in global development, growing inequality, volatility on many levels and mounting aspirations and impatience for change.”

“Oxfam understands how this changing context means it must be strategic and adaptable in its mission to overcome poverty and reinforce peoples’ rights.

Byanyima is married to Uganda’s former leader of Oppsition retired Colonel Dr.Kizza Besigye.

{{The Congolese government delegation at the ongoing peace talks in Kampala has been boosted with the arrival of the head of delegation Raymond Tshibanda, who is also the foreign affairs minister.}}

Tshibanda arrived in Kampala on Sunday from the Gabon capital Libreville where he took part in negotiations between the Central African Republic government of Francois Bozize and the Seleka rebels.

{{Two men accused of the attempted hijacking of a tanker off the coast of Oman admitted their crimes in a court on Tuesday, reports said, in the first piracy prosecution in Japan.}}

The two are among four African men arrested in March 2011 over an attack on a Japanese-operated tanker in the Indian Ocean.

Men armed with submachine guns tried to seize the tanker, which was operated by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and had 24 crew members aboard, reports said.

US Navy personnel captured the men and Japan’s coastguard for the first time applied the nation’s new anti-piracy law to transport them to Tokyo to face trial.

In a hearing at Tokyo District Court that used two sets of interpreters — one from Japanese to English and another from English to Somali — the two pleaded guilty to charges against them, Kyodo News and Jiji Press reported.

The men were identified in court as Mohamed Urgus Adeysey and Abdinur Hussein Ali, and believed to be in their 20s or 30s, but reportedly said they were not certain of their own dates of birth.

The leading Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted one of their lawyers saying that communicating with them was difficult because “they did not receive basic education and are illiterate”.

“I have tried to explain what this trial means and about its proceedings, but I doubt that they understand,” the lawyer said, according to the paper.

Under Japanese law, defendants, lawyers, prosecutors and judges meet before court hearings formally commence to establish points of arguments.

One of the men, both of whom say they are from Somalia, asked one of the judges who he was, the Asahi said.

Defence lawyers have argued the prosecution should have been dropped because neither the place of the attack nor the tanker — which was registered in the Bahamas — were Japanese territory, reports said.

The men will hear the court’s formal verdict on February 1.

Agencies

{{Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab said Monday a French soldier wounded and captured during a failed hostage rescue raid has died and published pictures of the purported commando chief’s body.}}

“The French soldier who was part of the invasion to Somalia died (from) the injury he sustained,” Al Shabaab military spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab told AFP by telephone. “Our medical staff attempted to help him but he was unlucky.”

France’s military operation Saturday to free a French spy held hostage by the Shebab since July 2009 was a failure, with another French soldier killed and the situation of the hostage unclear.

The Shebab, who claim the hostage is alive, said they would announce later Monday their decision regarding his fate, while France believes he was killed during the rescue attempt.

The Shebab have posted on their Twitter account two pictures they claim are of a French commando chief killed in the botched raid.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Monday denounced the publication of the photographs.

“This is a particularly odious display,” he said.

The French defence ministry earlier had expressed fears that the Somali Islamists would put on display the bodies of the missing French soldier and the hostage.

AFP

{{Sudan and South Sudan have failed to strike a deal on the composition of an interim administration for the contested oil-rich Abyei region, an official said Monday.}}

South Sudan chief negotiator Pagan Amum Okiech said Sudan had in the latest round of talks in Addis Ababa over the weekend made new demands on the nominees to the Abyei Legislative Council in contradiction of previous agreements.

Sudan’s ruling party was to initially front nominees for 40% (eight) of the seats of the 20-member assembly, while South Sudan was to nominate members for the remaining 60%.

Of the eight, Sudan was to front four Dinga Ngok members–who are the original inhabitants of Abyei–while four would come from the Misseriya tribe that grazes its cattle in the area during the dry season.

Under this model, 16 members of the council would be from the Dinka Ngok.

But during the talks, Mr Pagan said Sudan raised its representation to 50 per cent, without guaranteeing that the Dinka could still hold their four seats.

“Sudan has presented different conditions from those we agree upon. So the talks have ended without agreement,” Mr Pagan told this correspondent.

“We would like the African Union to exercise its influence to persuade Sudan to drop the new conditions,” he said.

The nine Dinka Ngok chiefdoms of Abyei, which was administratively transferred from Southern Sudan to Southern Kordofan in 1905, fought alongside the south against the successive Khartoum governments in the decades-long civil war that ended with the 2005 peace deal, paving the way for independence of South Sudan in July 2011.

NMG