Tag: GreatLakesNews

{Corruption cases are likely to remain rife in African nations, save for Tanzania and Rwanda, which have intensified wars against graft, making it difficult to transact fraudulently.
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East African Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities’ (EAAAC) President Valentino Mlowola, said here yesterday that efforts to combat the vice have started bearing fruits in the region, with Tanzania becoming second after Rwanda in the list of less corrupt nations out of eight EAAAC member states.

Mr Mlowola who doubles as Director General of the Prevention and Combatting of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) was speaking at the opening session of the 10th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of EAAAC, which brought together heads of anti-corruption agencies from Ethiopia, South-Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania. PCCB is hosting the EAAAC’s AGM for the third time, having already hosted the meeting in 2008 and 2012.

The rotational meetings among member states discuss challenges and experiences related to the fighting of graft.

Minister of State in the President’s Office, Public Service Management and Good Governance, Ms Angella Kairuki, Switzerland Ambassador to Tanzania, Florence Tunguely Mattli and Executive Secretary of African Union Advisory Board on Corruption, Charity Nchimuya, were among the distinguished personalities at the meeting.

Ms Kairuki described corruption and fraud as cross-border rackets through which dishonesty people make fortunes and then transfer the loots to other countries to evade investigations and persecution.

The issue of introducing special subjects in the school curriculum to impact knowledge about corruption among the school children emerged, with Mr Mlowola saying already

Tanzania has been involving the youth in the fight against the vice.

He said as of June 2016, Tanzania had 3,601 anti-corruption clubs, with 273,245 members in primary schools, 4,169 clubs with 285,000 members in secondary schools and 109 clubs with 11,745 members in colleges and universities.

{After the Burundian government criticized a planned UN human rights probe in the country this week, thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital Bujumbura on Saturday in support of President Pierre Nkurunziza. There were reports that similar protests took place in more than 100 other areas across the country.
Bujumbura Mayor Freddy Mbonimpa, an ally of Nkurunziza’s, led the protests and accused the UN of producing “false reports.”
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“We have called on the population of the capital to stage a massive protest against the nomination of three so-called UN experts to investigate Burundi,” Mbonimpa told AFP.
Burundi’s Solidarity and Human Rights Minister Martin Nivyabandi told a press conference on Thursday that the three UN investigators who have been mandated to look into human rights violations in Burundi are not welcome.

“We were not part of the process of setting up the commission. As the government of Burundi, we are not involved in the investigation to be made by this commission,” said Nivyabandi.

He went on to call the investigation “neo-colonialism” and stated that the issue of human rights should be monitored by Africans themselves.
“There are some international organizations whose goal is to destabilize certain governments in Africa,” he said.

{{Critical reports}}

The UN Human Rights Council has decided to appoint the investigators following a UN report from September that detailed atrocities and warned of “genocide.” The alleged atrocities occurred after Nkurunziza announced his plan to run for a third term in April 2015. Commissioners from Algeria, Benin and Britain were appointed to lead the investigation.

The UN estimates that more than 500 people have died in Burundi since the announcement. Another report by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said more than 1,000 had lost their lives and hundreds more were missing. At least 270,000 people are estimated to have fled the country.

According to Richard Shaba, an analyst at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Dar es Salaam, international organizations need to accept the fact that they will have to work with the Nkurunziza government to get anything done in Burundi.

“Nkurunziza is the president whether we say he is a legitimate leader or not. But at the moment he is holding the reigns,” said Shaba.

{At least 30 civilians were killed Sunday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo village of Luhanga.}

Most of those slain were Hutus, and local officials said an ethnic Nande militia was behind the killings, which are the latest in a year-long cycle of violence between the two ethnic communities DRC’s North Kivu province.

Joy Bokele, a territorial administrator in North Kivu, said militants first attacked a DRC military post before the assault on Luhangabegan.

“They started by attacking the FARDC position. While they were attacking the FARDC, another group was executing the population with bladed weapons or bullets,” Bokele told AFP.

Ethnic rivalries, foreign invasions and competition for mineral-rich land have stoked persistent conflict among eastern Congo’s dozens of rebel groups over the last two decades, costing millions of lives.

Tensions have spiked between the Hutu and neighboring communities since Congo’s army launched a 2015 military offensive against the FDLR, displacing large numbers of fighters and Hutu civilians.

{Amnesty International on Monday denounced as “shocking” weekend clashes between security forces and royal guards in Uganda which left 62 dead, saying many victims appeared to have been executed.}

The bloodshed, which took place in a traditional kingdom in the west, broke out when a joint patrol of police and troops was attacked by the royal guards in the town of Kasese.

The clashes continued into Sunday until police stormed the palace, arresting King Charles Wesley Mumbere of the Rwenzururu kingdom.

Speaking to the media on Monday, police spokesman Andrew Felix Kaweesi said the intial death toll of 55 had risen to 62, including 16 police officers and 46 royal guards.

The royal guards are believed to be part of a militia agitating for the creation of an independent republic straddling Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Police said the king had been taken into custody in Kampala, with another spokesman telling NTV television that 139 royal guards had been arrested,

The violence drew a sharp reaction from the London-based rights watchdog, which said emerging evidence suggested some of the victims had been shot after their arrest.

“The full picture of the weekend’s events is yet to emerge, but there appears to be shocking examples of unlawful killings and a complete disregard for human rights during the arrests,” said Abdullahi Halakhe, Amnesty International’s East Africa Researcher.

“In a shocking display of heavy-handedness, many people appear to have been summarily shot dead and their bodies dumped.”

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{Tanzania Horticulture Association’s (TAHA) efforts to boost horticultural production in the country have attracted a five million US dollar (over 10bn/-) funding from Sweden.}

Speaking shortly after signing the five-year deal, the Deputy Head of Mission responsible for Development Corporation Division (DCD) at the Swedish Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Mr Ulf Källsting said the funding will straight go to improve production by small holder farmers struggling to meet international market standards.

The support that comes from DCD will see the horticulture sector doubling its contribution to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to from 542 million US dollars to one billion dollars. Mr Källsting said the funding was in line with the government’s industrialisation drive, adding: “We want to add more value to farmers.”

He further said that the programme expectation is to increase engagement between the farmers and government towards a better understanding of the local and regional markets.

“We expect on the other hand, the government’s support to facilitate an effective trade which stimulates improvements in production, and revenues to individuals and the community involved,” he noted.

Horticulture industry in Tanzania has been receiving insufficient attention and support in terms of interventions, as the country has been focusing much on cash crops majorly ranging from cotton, sisal, to coffee at the expense of staple food like maize.

This has been despite horticultural crops increasing export earnings and impressive growth rate in the last decade, estimated to be around 8-10 per cent per annum, two times more than an average growth rate in the agricultural sector in general.

Besides that, while many regions in the country have experienced potential horticultural production, the sector has mainly well developed in the northern part of the country which includes Arusha.

In the development, TAHA Chief Executive Officer Ms Jacqueline Mkindi confided to the Sweden official that the new grant will help the association to unlock untapped potential horticultural industry, particularly in the Lake Zone of Mwanza.

{After President Pierre Nkurunziza declared his decision to run for a third term in office in April of 2015, violence in Burundi exploded. The Constitution of Burundi clearly states that a president can only serve for two terms, but Nkurunziza and his party argue that since lawmakers selected him for his first term, rather than the population at large, he is eligible for a second term. Infuriated by this announcement, Burundian citizens rushed to the streets to voice their frustration with the Nkurunziza administration. Street fighting and gunfire erupted in the Spring of 2015, primarily in Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital and largest city, and leaving the city and its people in total chaos.
}

As a response to hundreds of protesters’ demands, their most prominent being that the 52 year-old rebel-turned-President step down, Nkurunziza staged a series of attacks and murders in neighborhoods and communities harboring clear opposition. Resistance to his decision to run for a third term was quickly squashed, with many human rights activists fleeing the country. Nkurunziza has received heavy criticism for his consistent use of force throughout his presidency—resorting to torture frequently—but since the announcement of his decision to run for reelection, the reports of attacks, murders, and disappearances have grown exponentially. His leadership at the helm of the Republic of Burundi has sent the nation into complete turmoil. The hysteria of the nation has grabbed the attention of the international community, but Nkurunziza’s crimes against humanity as a sitting president have raised questions about how he can be held accountable for his actions, and how these human rights violations may be investigated.

These crimes against humanity have not been confined to a single incident. The killings, disappearances, and arrests have been systematic, without any sign of stopping in the near future. Nkurunziza’s attacks on those who voice their opinions as anti-government protesters have been swift, and the total number of deaths as a result of these killings is growing every day. Over 1,000 people have been systematically killed by the Nkurunziza administration since the start of this crisis.

The international community has a responsibility to take action against the mass human rights violations in this region. Political crisis, ethnic violence, and general unrest in Burundi have spread quickly, and have put the entire region in danger of protracted war, or worse, a new cycle of genocide. Citizens of Burundi continue flee the region, fearing that the election will spark even more violence in their communities. As of September of this year, over 300,000 people had fled the country in response to the crisis. The United Nations Human Rights Council has an obligation to combat the corruption in the Burundian government to protect the human rights of Burundian citizens.

In the last few of weeks, there have been a few major developments. First, the United Nations Human Right Council approved an investigation that looked into the human rights violations committed by President Nkurunziza and his administration over the last year and a half. A majority of members in the UN voted to investigate the violence in Burundi in an attempt to improve human rights in the country. In addition, this commission of inquiry wanted to hold the government of Burundi accountable for both their past human right offenses as well as any future violations. On September 27, according to The International Justice Resource Center, the UN confirmed that the government of Burundi had committed gross human rights offenses, confirming an “environment of suppression,” and since then, the United Nations has begun efforts to monitor the situation more closely in the hopes of holding Burundi’s government accountable for their actions.

Unfortunately, President Nkurunziza responded to this inquiry by announcing Burundi’s intention to leave the International Criminal Court. According to The Guardian, no country has ever attempted to withdraw from the ICC. With this move, Nkurunziza dismissed the UN decision to investigate the human rights violations committed by the Burundian government, and addressed what he calls a double standard in the international community. In his words, accounts of killings were one-sided, and the decision to investigate these allegations of human rights violations illustrated a “double standard” in human rights, where leaders of non-western nations are condemned more frequently than leaders of western nations. Nkurunziza argues that even though western leaders have been actors in instances of human rights violations in their own countries, no actions have been taken to hold these leaders accountable. Nevertheless, Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term as President, his alleged systematic killing of protesters who oppose his presidency, and his decision to leave the ICC have raised even more concern in the international community about his leadership.

Nkurunziza is not a leader; he works solely for his own good, and makes his own interests the bottom line in his decision-making. He dismisses and blatantly ignores law and order, and chooses violence as the path to end resistance to his agenda. President Pierre Nkurunziza is a murderer, and the international community needs to address this reality before the eruption of violence becomes another genocide. Burundi is no stranger to ethnic massacres; its first major genocide between Hutu and Tutsi in 1972 left behind a legacy of enduring ethnic tensions, and the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s only set the stage for recurring large-scale ethnic massacres between these same groups. However, the people of Burundi, who must be commended for their resistance to such divisionism, don’t deserve to become victims of another ethnic cleansing.

More has to be done. The African Union had plans to send a force, but the Burundian government threatened to fight them, which halted their troops and prevented them from intervening. The European Union cannot simply cut funding to the nation and expect the problem to dissolve. The situation is becoming more complex every day. Nkurunziza’s primary concern at this time is the strength of his country’s military, which leaves the health and safety of the people of the Republic of Burundi in the hands of the United Nations. The solution must come in two forms: sanctions and troops. The international community must place sanctions on Nkurunziza and his administration so that he fears and acquiesces to the world powers that can put limits on his power. Second, troops must be prepared to step in in order to save the citizens of Burundi from their own government, and to fight to end the violence that has been ripping the Republic of Burundi at the seams for over a year. Genocide is not an option, and violence is not the answer; President Pierre Nkurunziza’s power needs to be extinguished before it is too late.

[Crimes Against Humanity & Risk of Genocide in Burundi->http://standnow.org/2016/11/15/crimes-against-humanity-risk-of-genocide-in-burundi/]

{The Uganda Police Force have confirmed that 46 royal guards were killed in an offensive at Obusinga Bwa Rwenzururu Palace in Kasese District on Sunday.}

The guards were killed in an exchange with UPDF soldiers according to Rwenzori East police spokesperson Mansur Suwed, who also said 139 royal guards were arrested and are being detained at Kasese Police Station.

Several items were recovered at the palace including 16 patrol bombs, 42 knives, three metal detectors, one SMG rifle, and one pistol with two magazines. Others include four radio calls and 47 pangas.

Brig Peter Elwelu, the UPDF 2nd Division Commander defended the army’s attack on the palace, saying King Mumbere had been given an ultimatum of two hours to disband and disarm all royal guards from the palace. He added that Mumbere was told to remain with only nine royal guards but he declined to adhere, forcing the army to launch an offensive on the palace.

Brig Elwelu described the actions of the royal guards as those of a terrorist group destabilising the region.

He said the operations in the district will continue and the camps belonging to the royal guards will be razed down.

Omusinga Mumbere was detained at Kasese Police Station after which he was airlifted to Kampala. He is now at th Special Investigations Unit awaiting a meeting with President Museveni later today.

{EAST African Community (EAC) members states have seemingly agreed to disagree in their attempts to harmonise their traffic regulations.}

When it comes to traffic regulations in the EAC, Rwanda and Burundi drive on the ‘right,’ as Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and South- Sudan stand accused of driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

It was previously proposed to Rwanda and Burundi to change their driving system to the majority members’ driving left, but a commissioned study has ruled out the possibility.

“We commissioned the Bureau of Industrial Cooperation (BICO) of the University of Dar es Salaam to carry out a study on the harmonisation of traffic regulations among EAC member states,including driving sides,” Director of Economics with Kenyan Ministry of EAC Affairs Peter Njoroge said here over the weekend.

He said the study concluded that compelling all member states to drive on one side of the road was impossible because the shift will cost the affected countries billions of money in changing, or totally overhauling their transport infrastructure.

Previously, Rwanda had expressed interest in directing motorists to drive on the left side of the roads but following the study’s conclusion, Kigali may no longer need to bother.

Three years ago, while attending the 17th East African Standards Committee (EASC) conference here, the Deputy Director General of Rwanda Bureau of Standards, Mr Patrice Ntiyamira revealed his country’s plans to shift to the left.

Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda drive on the left side of the road having inherited the system from their former Anglophonic rulers while the Francophone Rwanda and Burundi maintained their culture to drive right.

Motorists operating in the EAC member countries find themselves ‘driving on the wrong sides of the road,’ whenever crossing onto other territories.

Driving on different sides of the road is also proving to be expensive for Rwanda and Burundi, the two land-locked countries that depend on Tanzania and Kenyan coastlines to ship in their vehicles all of which, being destined for East Africa come with the driving wheels fixed on the right.

Once in Rwanda or Burundi, the owners are compelled to spend over 500 US dollars (about 1.2m/-) to shift the cars’ driving systems from the right to the left to fit in the right-side driving conditions.

Over 200,000 motor vehicles are imported into East Africa annually, excluding those assembled in country.

{President Uhuru Kenyatta on Sunday ended his retreat that brought together top advisers at Sagana State Lodge.}

On Monday, he is expected to start a whirlwind 48-hour tour of central Kenya to re-energise his political backyard and address voter apathy fears.

During the weekend retreat, a select number of Cabinet secretaries and advisers met to strategise on his re-election.

The meeting, which brought together key ministries on infrastructure, finance and security, also touched on campaigns, nominations and government projects, key to Jubilee’s success.

Fears of voter apathy in President Kenyatta’s stronghold has pre-occupied Jubilee’s political strategists as elections loom.

During the 2013 elections, turnout in most counties in Central was over 93 per cent, enabling Jubilee to avoid a run-off by a margin of 0.5 per cent. It is this margin that the President’s supporters want protected if not increased.

Across the region, there are also fears on the fairness of Jubilee nominations, dissatisfaction over slow pace of projects and poor returns on cash crops such as coffee, rice and tea.

{{UNVEIL PROJECTS}}

The President is expected to unveil billions of shillings worth of projects in four Central counties. On Monday, President Kenyatta will launch the Naromoru–Nairutia–Ngobit Road.

“So far, this government is tarmacking 147km of roads in Kieni alone,” said Kieni MP Kanini Kega yesterday. Mr Kenyatta is also expected to commission the Sh800 million Chaka market in the constituency.
State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu said: “The Head of State will then open the Mukurweini–Othaya Water Sewerage Plant.”

Later in the day, the President will be at Nanyuki Level Five Hospital — where he will commission the installation of equipment under the Managed Equipment Services.

On Tuesday, Mr Kenyatta will be in Kirinyaga and Murang’a.

In Kirinyaga, he will inspect the ongoing construction of the 29km Kutus–Kianyaga–Kibugi Road. In Murang’a, he will commission the Kangema–Gacharage road and launch the Murang’a–Mukuyu–Gwathamaki road.

“Residents also want Mugoiri wa Tiiri Road tarmacked as Deputy President William Ruto promised,” said Kiharu MP Irungu Kang’ata.