Month: June 2024

Nairobi, Kenya — Four hundred Kenyan security officers arrived in Haiti on Tuesday, part of a contingent of international police forces sent to quell gang violence and restore democratic rule in the Caribbean nation. At the same time, protests over proposed tax increases in Kenya turned violent as demonstrators stormed the parliament building, and clashes with police turned deadly.

Some of the protesters question the point of sending police to Haiti when there is such unrest in Kenya.  

“They went yesterday to Haiti but it’s so ironic because back at home here, we don’t have peace, the police themselves are fighting us … but we have taken our police to Haiti to fight people from other nationalities, when at home we are not at peace,” one protester named Denish said. “I think the government tries to tell us we don’t have a voice, we don’t have a say.” 

Kelvin Moses was not a protester Tuesday, but he echoed those views. 

“For me it’s a double-edged sword, because you can’t take some troops out of the country when the same country is facing instability, so it’s like you are trying to help a neighbor whereas your house is on fire,” he said. “So, for me it’s self-centered … we don’t know what procedures have been taken, there was a court order which halted the same process from going on, but the government has bulldozed its way to send troops to Haiti.” 

Speaking at a send-off ceremony earlier this week, Kenyan President Willam Ruto told police officers departing for Haiti their mission will help lasting peace return to the conflict-ravaged country. 

“This mission is one of the most urgent, important and historic in the history of global solidarity. It’s a mission to affirm the universal values of the community of nations and a mission to take a stand for humanity,” Ruto said at the ceremony. 

Last year, a United Nations Security Council resolution approved the Kenyan-led mission to help tackle violence and restore peace in the mostly gang-controlled nation. But earlier this year the High Court of Kenya ruled against the deployment, saying it was unconstitutional. Issues cited by the court include the lack of a “reciprocal agreement” between the countries.  

The Kenyan government eventually secured that agreement, but the same people who sued the government recently filed another lawsuit seeking to block the deployment. The High Court has yet to make a ruling.  

Javas Bigambo, a Kenyan lawyer and governance consultant, expressed concern over the possible fallout following a decision. 

“In the event this issue is settled as unconstitutional again, what then will befall the Kenyan government, especially on the part of the executive; the issue of security officers being deep in mission in Haiti and perhaps being demanded they’d be recalled back to base, back to the country, it’s something that will leave a very bad taste in the mouth of the leadership of the country,” Bigambo said. 

Bigambo told VOA that while this mission puts Kenya on the global map as a player in international peacekeeping, all Kenyan eyes will be on Haiti to see whether the police are making a difference. 

“The success of this mission or its failure is what now will determine whether there was wisdom and appropriateness in the deployment of Kenyan police forces to Haiti,” Bigambo said. “Secondly, the way the peace mission will be handled and how the number of casualties that will emerge or fail to emerge from the deployment will also count among the major success factors.”  

In a televised address to the nation late Tuesday evening, Ruto condemned protesters’ storming of the parliament as treasonous and a threat to national security. 

In a subsequent address to the nation Wednesday, the Kenyan president said that after reflecting on the content of the finance bill, and listening to the people who are against it, he decided not to sign it. His deputy Rigathi Gachagua appealed to the demonstrators to call off planned protests Thursday.
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New York — A Congolese teenager appealed to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday to protect children in his country, where conflict between the military and armed groups in the country’s east is exacting an appalling toll on children.

“I ask you all to take up the cause of defending children’s rights internationally and in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” the 16-year-old boy, whose identity was protected, told a meeting focusing on children and armed conflict through an interpreter.

Last year, the United Nations verified almost 4,000 grave violations against children in the Central African nation, where armed groups have been vying for years with the military for control over the country’s vast natural resources.

More than 1,800 children were recruited by armed groups last year, according to the annual U.N. report that verifies violations against children.

Sixteen armed groups operating in the country were named and shamed for a range of offenses, from abducting and forcibly recruiting children, to maiming and killing them.

The Congolese armed forces were listed for committing rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, but the U.N. noted they have taken formal steps aimed at preventing such abuses.

More than 650 children were verified to have been killed or maimed last year, the majority by three armed groups — CODECO, the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, and M23. Thirty child casualties were attributed to the army and police.

The teenager who addressed the Security Council spoke of how he was abducted, beaten and forcibly recruited by an armed group on his way to school one day with two friends.

“We cried and trembled, begging them to let us go home to our families, but they wouldn’t listen,” he recounted. “That’s when they started whipping us and keeping us in the bush. We were heavily guarded, and they had orders to kill anyone who tried to flee. I had to leave school to serve this armed group by force.”

His job was to steal food from farmers’ fields.

“During the fighting, many [child recruits] were exposed to being killed by the enemy, and others were killed by their groups themselves, for fear they would divulge their secrets if caught by the military,” he said.

After three years in the bush and losing hope of ever seeing his family again, one day he took his chance and escaped while out searching for food. Found by the army, he was taken into custody and briefly sent to a military prison. He went through demobilization rehabilitation and has now returned to school. But not all children are as fortunate.

“Girls were also abducted,” he said. “Some became wives of the chiefs, while others were taken by other soldiers.”

Spiraling sexual violence

The United Nations report says sexual violence was perpetrated against 279 girls and two boys last year — including rape, gang rape, forced marriage and sexual slavery.

“The use of sexual violence as a modus operandi of armed groups is spiraling,” Ted Chaiban, UNICEF deputy executive director, told the council.

“During my recent visits to the DRC, I met with adolescent girls who had run away with their siblings when their villages were attacked, and who now headed their households,” he said.

Chaiban said it is especially worrying that the conflict is intensifying at the same time the large U.N. peacekeeping mission is beginning to leave the country, at the government’s request.

“There is a very real risk that the humanitarian crisis in the DRC could soon become a catastrophe,” he said.

It is not just children who are experiencing horrific abuse. Women are also subjected to staggering rates of sexual violence.

In Goma, capital of North Kivu province, instances of sexual violence in the first half of 2024 were double the amount recorded over the same time last year, from 7,500 reported cases to 15,000, said Francois Moreillon, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s head of delegation in DRC.

“Anyone with a gun feels that he can do whatever he wants,” he told reporters.

Moreillon recounted how a woman that the ICRC had treated after being raped told caregivers that she and other women were taking condoms with them into the forest when they went to collect firewood — a prime time for women to be attacked.

She said they hoped to persuade their potential rapists to wear them so they could prevent sexually transmitted diseases and lessen the anger of their husbands, who often leave women after finding out they have been raped.

The Congo has one of the largest internal displacement crises in the world, with more than 7 million people affected.
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BAMAKO, Mali — Opposition politicians who were arrested in Mali were sent to prisons across the country this week, their families said, in a move rights groups decried as another step back for the country where the ruling junta has suspended all political activities.

Mali, a landlocked nation in the semiarid region of the Sahel, has been embroiled in political instability that swept across West and Central Africa over the last decade. The nation has seen two military coups since 2020 as an insurgency by jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group worsened. The junta has ruled the country with an iron fist, and earlier this year it suspended all political activities.

The 11 opposition politicians were arrested earlier this month during a meeting in a private residence, the Malian National Human Rights Commission, a government agency, said in a statement.

The commission denounced what it called “arbitrary arrests” and “violations of private homes.”

A family member of one the detainees said Wednesday that they were divided into two groups, one sent to Koulikoro prison, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Bamako, and the other to a new prison 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Bamako. The family member spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from authorities.

The dissidents are held on charges of attacks and conspiracy against the government, opposition to legitimate authority and breach of public order, but they haven’t been tried yet, a judicial official said.

Ousmane Diallo, Dakar-based researcher on the Sahel region at rights group Amnesty International, said the arrests demonstrated “the pattern of abuse of civil and political rights” in Mali since February.

“We denounce the crackdown on the opposition politicians in Mali, the dissolution of political parties and suspension of all political activities,” Diallo said. “We denounce how the security and intelligence services and sheer force have been used to clamp down on any possibility for Malian citizens to share their political views.”

In April, the junta issued a decree suspending all activities by political parties and “associations of political nature” in the name of maintaining public order. The political parties appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, but it is not clear when the appeal would be considered.

It’s becoming increasingly perilous to express dissatisfaction with the Malian authorities, experts said, with those who dare to speak out risking arrest. Journalists and activists have also disappeared, only to return later, while many media correspondents have left Mali because they were not allowed to work.

The junta is driving the country toward “a political impasse,” said Alioune Tine, the founder of research organization AfrikaJom Center and a U.N. expert on human rights in Mali. “The complex security crisis can be resolved by bringing Malians together, respecting political and democratic pluralism, but not by the dogmatic use of repression against all political dissent.”

Earlier this month, a coalition of political parties opposed to the junta, Appel du 31 Mars, called on citizens to demonstrate against the shortage of electricity in Bamako and the high living costs, and to demand a return of constitutional order.

Only one person showed up to cover the event — Yeri Bocoum, a young social media activist.

The next day, Bocoum wrote on Facebook that he was being followed by unidentified men and threatened. A day later, on June 8, as he was leaving his house in the city of Kati, the junta’s stronghold, he was kidnapped.

“He left his house at 2 p.m. on June 8, and a few hundred meters away, armed men arrested him and asked local people watching the scene to go back into their homes and close their doors,” his sister, Kadidia Bocoum, told The Associated Press. “The men who kidnapped him took him and his car away.”

The family reached out to the authorities but has not heard from him since, Bocoum said.
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Nairobi, Kenya — Several people were shot outside Kenya’s parliament on Tuesday as police clashed with protesters who stormed the complex after lawmakers passed highly controversial tax increases.

Police fired live ammunition after tear gas and rubber bullets failed to disperse the thousands who had gathered to protest the tax hikes. 

Witnesses told VOA they saw a number of bodies on the ground outside the building, and news reports say that at least five people were killed.

Meanwhile, fires broke out in the parliament buildings after protesters made it past police barricades.  At least two vehicles in the area were set on fire and burned.

Protesters had demonstrated peacefully near parliament in Nairobi most of the day to demand that lawmakers vote against the 2024 Finance Bill. However, the bill was approved on a 195 to 106 vote.

One protester told VOA he disagrees with what the government is trying to do and had to be there to make his voice heard. 

“We are protesting against government impunity. You see the finance bill is not something that is going to make Kenyans live at peace,” he said. “And you’ve seen we’ve tried to talk to the government but they are forcing it down our throat. So I’ve decided as a youth to come here and protest and tell them that the government is made by the people, we are the people and we want the government to listen to us.” 

Kelvin Moses works near where the protests were taking place. He told VOA the demonstrations have affected many businesses in the Central Business district.

“The businesses are really down, the traffic and flow of customers has really been affected,” Moses said. “You can see that in the CBD [Central Business District], very few shops are open. We hope this matter can be resolved as soon as possible because we business people are feeling the pinch.”

After the vote, some lawmakers fled the parliament complex as hundreds of protesters broke through police barricades and rushed inside.

Kenya has seen a growing youth-led movement in recent days against the tax increases, which the government says are necessary to continue to pay the interest on its high sovereign debt.

Lawmakers made some compromises on the tax bill, dropping proposed increases on bread, car ownership and financial transactions. 

But that was not enough for protesters who said the cost of living is already too high.

The protests have been led largely by young people. However, Kenyan lawyer Javas Bigambo told VOA the opposition to the finance bill is not just limited to the youth. 

“There has been the assumption that the protests are merely a creation of the Gen-Z or the youth in the country forgetting that these protests, organic as they are, have continued to receive overwhelming support from civil society organizations, from the farmers, manufacturers, the private sector and religious leaders,” Bigambo said.

The Finance Bill still needs President William Ruto’s signature to become law.
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NIAMEY, Niger — An ambush by a “terrorist group” killed 21 Nigerien soldiers near the country’s border with Burkina Faso on Tuesday, Niger’s ruling military junta said in a statement read on national television.

The statement Tuesday evening did not specify which group was behind the attack. Niger is struggling with a deadly security crisis involving several armed groups.

Last week, the rebel Patriotic Liberation Front attacked a China-backed pipeline and threatened more attacks if the $400 million deal with China isn’t canceled. The group, led by Salah Mahmoud, a former rebel leader, took up arms after the junta staged a coup last year ousting a democratically elected government.

Niger and neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso are also battling movements linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State extremist group in a decade-long conflict in the Sahel region that is worsening.

The violence killed thousands of people last year, and more than 2 million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations

Mali and Burkina Faso are also led by juntas and have experienced two coups each since 2020. Both juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russian mercenaries as they struggle to quell the Islamist groups.
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