Month: May 2024

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Abuja, Nigeria — Representatives from more than 80 civil society and rights organizations in Nigeria held a moment of silence May 28 to remember some 9,000 people who have died in the last year due to various forms of violence. 

The annual National Day of Mourning initiative was launched seven years ago to pay tribute to victims of attacks and demand the government restore security in the country. 

“These incidents of violence have reduced citizens’ rights to life and dignity,” said Lois Auta of the nonprofit Cedar Seed Foundation, one of the event’s organizers. “The frequency of these atrocities have kept Nigerians in a state of perpetual fear and uncertainty, and is impacting social cohesion, the economy and education across the country. All Nigerians suffer the manifested consequences of food insecurity and economic hardships resulting from hindrances imposed by perennial insecurity.” 

Nigeria is struggling to reduce multiple forms of widespread insecurity, including kidnappings, communal clashes, terrorism, extrajudicial killings and secessionist violence. 

The coalition said more than 30,000 people have died in the last six years as a result. 

This year’s commemoration coincides with the one-year anniversary of President Bola Tinubu taking office.  

Tinubu pledged to improve security and boost the economy if elected president. But one year later, critics such as Frank Tietie, founder of Citizens Advocacy for Social and Economic Rights, say Tinubu has not only failed on his promises, but the situation has gotten worse.  

“His primary responsibility is to protect the Nigerian people. If nobody has told President Tinubu that he’s failing at this point, at the celebration of his one-year anniversary in government, we are telling him that he has not only failed [but] he has exhibited gross irresponsibility,” Tietie said. “Nigerians are suffering, there’s hardly any family that has not been touched by this level of insecurity.” 

According to a security tracker by Nigerian-based Beacon Security and Consulting Limited, incidents of attacks increased from 5,500 between 2022 and 2023 to 7,800 between 2023 and 2024. 

The number of fatalities and abductions were also higher during the same period. 

Security analyst Kabiru Adamu said despite the government making an effort, poor accountability and unwise appointments in the security sector pose major hurdles.

“It’s very obvious that the government is committed to addressing the security challenges as indicated in policy imperatives and those policy imperatives are very clear. As an expert, if they’re implemented, I believe they’ll reduce or even eliminate the security challenge,” Adamu said. “But the major challenge has been one of implementation, especially due to the absence of capability by some of the security sector leadership.” 

Last Friday, a local district head in Nigeria’s Niger state said gunmen made tea and cooked food as they terrorized villagers, killing 10 and abducting 160 others.  

Adamu said one year is not enough time for the insecurity issues to be fully addressed by a new administration, but that authorities should be able during 12 months to show a positive trajectory towards addressing the problem. 

But for now, rights groups and families of the victims will be reminding the president about the promise he made to keep their loved ones and the country safe.
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Cape Town — The run-up to South Africa’s general elections Wednesday has been mostly peaceful but not without incident. In Western Cape province, the opposition Democratic Alliance, or DA, accused rival parties of trying to intimidate voters in February by chanting violent slogans and brandishing weapons at voter registration locations. For years, some black voters in the province have been scared of being attacked if they admit to supporting the white-led DA.

This supporter of the Democratic Alliance is a single mother who works in a restaurant.

“I don’t want to identify because most of the people in my area is a black people. I don’t know, maybe I can get hurt because they don’t like a DA member. They still vote for the ANC even (though) ANC doesn’t give them nothing. ANC’s too much corruption. That’s why we get fed up with that,” she said.

The woman says she believes that the track record of the DA, South Africa’s main opposition party, speaks for itself.

According to reports from South Africa’s Auditor-General, the Western Cape, which the DA party governs at the provincial level, is the best run province in the country.

Despite this achievement, the DA’s critics say it protects only white business interests.

The voter, whom VOA spoke with, disagrees.

“To me the DA’s for everyone. Even if you are black or white or colored, you are in a rainbow nation,” she said.

The woman’s mother, who is in her late eighties, does not agree and remains a staunch ANC supporter, ever grateful to that party and its former president, Nelson Mandela, for the state-sponsored house she received in 1996.

“When Mandela was coming outside then I was voting ANC because ANC then, they give me a house because I was stay(ing) in a shed,” she said.

However, both women are afraid they will be targeted if people know whom the daughter votes for in the general election.

Political analyst Cherrel Africa, associate professor at the University of the Western Cape’s Department of Political Science, believes that attitudes will change when political leaders stop harping on race to win votes.

“That can often lead to inflammatory rhetoric, particularly racially divisive rhetoric where there’s an attempt to play on the anxiety of particular voters,” said Africa.

While intimidation is a legitimate concern for voters, the Western Cape is not known for political killings. They are far more common in KwaZulu-Natal province, where according to the National Police Minister Bheki Cele, at least 155 officeholders and city councilors had been killed between 2011 and September last year.

And with former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party making its debut in this election, tensions in that province, Zuma’s home, are heightened.

For this election, police have put more boots on the ground countrywide and urged political parties to adhere to the Electoral Code of Conduct, which makes intimidating candidates or voters an offense.

Parties that break the code can be fined up to 200,000 rand (about $11,000) or sent to prison for up to 10 years.
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Yaounde — Cameroon is observing World Menstrual Hygiene Day (May 28) with caravans visiting schools and public spaces to educate people about social taboos that women should not be seen in public during their menstrual periods. Organizations are also donating menstrual kits to girls displaced by terrorism and political tensions in the central African state.

Scores of youths, a majority of them girls, are told that menstruation is a natural part of the reproductive cycle.

Officials in Cameroon’s social affairs and health ministries say the monthly flows are not a curse and girls and women should never be isolated from markets, schools, churches and other public places because of their menstrual cycle.

The government of the central African state says it invited boys to menstrual health day activities because boys often mock girls in schools when they see blood dripping on their legs or skirts.

Tabe Edwan is the spokesperson of Haven of Rebirth Cameroon, an association that takes care of victims of sexual and gender-based violence. She says she participates in in activities to mark World Menstrual Health Day to battle taboos about menstruation that persist in Cameroon.

“We are looking at instances of stigmatization such as prohibition from cooking, prohibition from attending religious ceremonies or visiting such spaces,” she said. “Most often a young girl who is having her menstrual flow is considered to be unclean and so anything that she touches becomes unclean or it also becomes contaminated.”

Cameroon’s government says World Menstrual Day activities took place in many towns and villages, especially in the northwest and southwest regions, where a separatist conflict, now in its seventh year, has displaced about 750,000 people.

The country’s Social Affairs Ministry says displaced women and girls have lost nearly everything and lack even the $2 needed to buy sanitary pads each time they are on their monthly cycle.

Mirabelle Sonkey is founder of the Network for Solidarity Hope and Empowerment, a founding member of the International Menstrual Hygiene Coalition.

Sonkey says she is disheartened when women and girls use rags, papers and tree leaves or just anything unhealthy to stop blood flow because they cannot afford sanitary pads.

“We usually give about 1,000 dignity kits which include buckets, soap, pants and reusable, washable menstrual pads,” she said. “We are still advocating for pads to be free. Our mission is to have an environment where pads will be accessible, that is why we are opening pad banks now where vulnerable women and girls can go there and have pads.”

Sonkey pleaded with donors to provide sanitary pads to give to several thousand northern Cameroonian girls and women displaced by Boko Haram terrorism.

Cameroon’s government says 70% of menstruating women and girls lack access to regular basic sanitation products but it has not reacted to pleas from NGOs to distribute sanitary pads free of charge.

The central African state’s officials say families and communities should help put an end to stigmas by openly discussing menstrual flow and letting everyone know that menstruation is a normal and natural biological function.
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WARSAW, Poland — Polish President Andrzej Duda has spoken on the phone with Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to try to obtain the release of a Polish traveler who was sentenced to life in prison in the Central African country on espionage charges, an aide said Monday.

Congolese forces detained Mariusz Majewski, 52, in February and he later faced a military court in the restive nation, accused of spying.

The allegations against him said that he had “approached the front line with Mobondo militiamen,” moved along the front line without authorization and “took photos of sensitive and strategic places and secretly observed military activities.”

The Mobondo have been involved in intercommunal violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s southwest since 2022.

Majewski was convicted last week and sentenced to life in prison. No details have been released as to where he is being held. 

Duda’s aide, Wojciech Kolarski, did not say what the outcome of the conversation between the two presidents was but stressed that the state had the obligation to take care of its citizens who find themselves in such dramatic situations overseas.

Majewski’s family says he is in poor health and insists that he is just a traveler.

Last week, Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pawel Wronski said without elaborating that Majewski “is not a spy, he is a member of a travelers club” and was just following his “passion in life.”

Wronski said a chain of coincidental circumstances and events led to Majewski’s presence in Congo and his “behavior was the result of a lack of knowledge of local customs.”

Polish authorities are aware of the “very difficult political situation in Congo” and a recent coup attempt there but expressed hope that Majewski would not be implicated in a situation he has no connection to.

Poland does not have a diplomatic mission in Congo.

Earlier this month, the Congolese army said it had foiled a coup attempt and arrested the perpetrators, including some foreigners. Several U.S. citizens were among those arrested.
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