RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events AFRICA

Zimbabwe Leader: Dissent to Be Crushed
By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer
Wed Dec 20, 11:05 PM

HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe said Wednesday his government will not tolerate dissent created "under the guise of freedom of expression."

Mugabe, in his annual state of the nation address to parliament, said law enforcement agencies will continue to crush dissent in the troubled southern African nation. He said government opponents were bent on creating anarchy and pushing what he has described as a British attempt to topple his government.

In September, police thwarted a march by the main labor federation in Harare protesting deepening poverty. At least 16 labor leaders were assaulted by police, several of them suffering bone fractures and other injuries, according to independent doctors and human rights organizations.

Mugabe said afterward the labor leaders were resisting arrest for holding a banned protest and "reasonable force" was used to break up the march.

Britain, the United States and the European Union have imposed travel and visa restrictions on Mugabe and ruling party leaders to protest alleged violations of human and democratic rights since 2000.

Mugabe has repeatedly accused Britain, the former colonial power, the United States and Western nations of backing the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the labor-backed opposition Movement for Democratic Change in a campaign for his ouster.

"Our country continues to enjoy peace and tranquility and will defend its sovereignty," Mugabe said in the address broadcast on state television.

Mugabe blamed the worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980 on what he termed "illegal overt and covert sanctions" against the country by Western nations along with southern Africa's susceptibility to drought.

The country is suffering acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline and essential imports. Official inflation is running at 1,090 percent, the highest in the world.

Western aid, loans and investment dried up after Mugabe ordered the often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms in 2000, leading to six years of political and economic turmoil following disruptions in the agriculture-based economy.

Mugabe said embargoes were "the punishment for our daring recovery of the land" from the descendants of mostly British colonial-era settlers.

He said the next phase in black empowerment was to take majority control of foreign-owned mining companies and exports of gold and other minerals.

As the country became increasingly isolated by the West, Mugabe said his "Look East" policy paid dividends with promises of investment from China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Tourism to Zimbabwe from Asia increased this year, showing the nation was a safe and attractive destination "despite the hostile media" in the West, he said.

The state controls Zimbabwe's only broadcast stations and the main newspapers. Under sweeping media laws, the only independent daily newspaper was banned in 2003.

Since the ruling party dominated Parliament passed equally sweeping public order and security laws in 2002, opposition and labor meetings have been routinely banned or broken up violently by riot police.

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Foreign Oil Facilities in Nigeria Seized
By DULUE MBACHU, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 21, 2:24 PM

LAGOS, Nigeria - Armed men attacked two foreign oil facilities in southern Nigeria on Thursday, and both shut down production following the assaults in the restive, oil-rich region. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which came under attack earlier this week, began evacuating families of foreign workers, citing worsening security.

Before dawn Thursday, about a dozen gunmen attacked a Total SA pumping station, killing three security guards. The company shut the 40,000-barrel-a-day facility to "ensure the total protection of the site," spokesman Paul Floren said by phone from Paris.

Gunmen later occupied a facility owned by the Italian company Eni SpA. In a statement on its Web site, Eni said no injuries or damages were reported at the Tebidaba oil-pumping station, which shut down production. Eighteen local workers were in the facility when the attack occurred.

The station was still occupied Thursday evening, Eni said. The company said the Tebidaba station usually produces about 40,000 barrels a day.

Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer and the fifth-largest U.S. supplier, has seen its typical oil production of 2.5 million barrels per day cut by a quarter this year by a series of attacks and hostage-takings by militants _ some seeking ransoms and others political influence.

Militants say attacking the oil infrastructure is their only way to get a share of the country's oil wealth, and the attacks have become so common that oil markets that once sparked at each announcement of further assaults sometimes barely budge. And while the international oil companies have expressed concern about the security situation, they have not said they will pull back operations.

Floren said Thursday's attack was not political.

"They were looking to steal," he said, adding that the assailants broke into offices, but it was unclear if they took anything.

Four Total employees were slightly injured and were taken to a hospital, Floren said. He said he had no information on whether any attackers were killed or injured.

Floren said Total operates the pumping station and owns a 40 percent share of the facility.

On Monday, militants detonated two car bombs at oil company compounds in the southern river delta region that produces most of Nigeria's crude.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, claimed responsibility, demanding the government free a group of militant leaders. No injuries were reported.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which ran one of the compounds attacked Monday, began evacuating all dependents of foreign employees from the delta region Thursday, citing the deteriorating security situation following the car bombs _ one of which was set off in a Shell complex.

The move was "a precautionary measure," company spokesman Bisi Ojediran said. He declined to say how many people were being evacuated, but many in Nigeria's oil industry said hundreds were likely to be affected.

Ojediran said he could not recall the last time Shell took such a move, saying it was "the first time in recent times" that the company decided to evacuate all family members.

Total's Floren did not say if the company was considering any similar measures.

"We have put all measures in place to ensure that our employees are secure in Nigeria," he said. He said he could not discuss the measures for reasons of security.

MEND has been holding four foreign oil workers hostage since early this month, having captured them in an attack on an oil export station belonging to Agip, a subsidiary of Eni.

The group has said the three Italians and one Lebanese man will not be released until Nigerian authorities free Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, a militant leader on trial on treason charges, and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, former governor of a southern state, who is on trial on money-laundering charges.

___

Associated Press writer Katharine Houreld contributed to this report from Lagos.


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Nigeria Ruling Party Expels V.P.
By EDWARD HARRIS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 22, 11:36 PM


Nigeria Vice President Atiku Abubakar acknowledges cheers from supporters ...
ABUJA, Nigeria - The ruling party expelled Nigeria's vice president from its ranks Friday and called on President Olusegun Obasanjo to fire him as his deputy after he declared his candidacy in next year's presidential elections.

Vice President Atiku Abubakar fell out with Obasanjo this year amid the president's failed attempt to modify the constitution, which would have allowed him to run for a third term.

Abubakar had been accused of corruption by the ruling People's Democratic Party, or PDP.

The party said Abubakar's intentions to run in the April 27 elections under another banner had cemented the split between them.

"As far as PDP are concerned, (Abubakar) is no more a member of the party," a party spokesman, John Odey, told reporters in the capital, Abuja.

Odey said party leaders had resolved to demand Obasanjo begin working to strip Abubakar of his duties.

While Abubakar was elected in 1999 alongside Obasanjo in balloting that ended years of brutal military rule, the party said the constitution stipulates that the vice president must be of the ruling party.

The April elections are slated to become the first time an elected government has handed power to another since Nigeria became independent from Britain in 1960.

Nigeria, infamous for its official corruption, is the most populous nation in Africa, and the continent's largest exporter of crude oil.

Abubakar won the support of a small opposition party, the Action Congress, for his presidential candidacy. The ruling party is running a governor from the Muslim north as their candidate.

Katsina Governor Umaru Yar'Adua is considered a formidable candidate, boasting a party structure that was accused of vote rigging during Obasanjo's 2003 reelection. A former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari, is also in the race.

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Annan Hopes Darfur Ceasefire Can Stand
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 22, 2:52 PM

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday he is encouraged that Sudan's president will shortly agree to a hybrid African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur, along with a cease-fire and renewed peace efforts.

"I do fervently hope that we are now at last close to rescuing the people of Darfur from their agony," he said. "But after so many disappointments, I take nothing for granted."

Annan said he had received an optimistic report from an envoy sent to Khartoum to deliver a message to President Omar al-Bashir _ that his support is essential if the U.N. is to fund and strengthen the 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur.

"The reports I have received from my envoy in Khartoum, (Ahmedou) Ould Abdallah, encourages me to think we may tomorrow receive a green light from President Bashir for a full cease-fire, a renewed effort to bring all parties into (the) political process, and deployment of the proposed African Union-United Nations hybrid force to protect the population," he said.

Al-Bashir was fiercely opposed to a council resolution adopted in August that called for more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed African Union force, and has opposed deployment of U.N. troops in a hybrid force. He claims a U.N. force would compromise Sudan's sovereignty and try to recolonize the country.

Annan told the Sudanese president that every effort would be made to find African troops for the U.N. force, but if that proves impossible, it will use "a broader pool of troop-contributing countries."

In Khartoum, there was no official confirmation that al-Bashir had approved a new cease-fire, the deployment of an AU-U.N. force and a new effort to bring the Darfur rebels into the political process.

On Thursday, a Sudanese Foreign Ministry official, Sadeq Al-Magli, said the government had accepted the U.N. plan, but he stressed that the mission to be deployed in Darfur "represents a hybrid operation and not international or joint forces." In recent months, however, different officials within the Sudanese government have offered conflicting reactions to peace initiatives.

Annan said a cease-fire is "imperative" because of a significant increase in violence over the past few weeks, including a surge in attacks on civilians.

Fighting in Darfur began in 2003 when rebels from black African tribes took up arms, complaining of discrimination and oppression by Sudan's Arab-dominated government. The government is accused of unleashing Arab tribal militia known as the janjaweed against civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson _ a charge the government denies.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced by three years of fighting.

The U.N.'s top refugee official traveled to the volatile border region between Chad and Sudan on Friday and said an international peacekeeping force was vital to prevent regional meltdown.

Thousands of Sudanese refugees and Chadian villagers lined dirt roads as Antonio Guterres arrived. "We are poor people and we don't have the means to defend ourselves," one village chief told the U.N. official.

"The international community has a great responsibility to create a humanitarian space so we can keep working," Guterres said. "To do nothing would be unacceptable."

Since early November, some 300 people in eastern Chad have been killed in attacks on more than 70 villages. The tactics of the attackers resemble those used across the border in Darfur, with most villages looted, burned and emptied, the U.N. said.

The violence follows repeated warnings that the Darfur conflict could spill over and engulf the region where Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic meet.


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Ethiopia Attacks Somalia Islamic Council
By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Writer
4 hours ago

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Ethiopia launched an attack Sunday on Somalia's powerful Islamic movement, sending fighter jets across the border and bombarding several towns in a major escalation of the violence that threatens to engulf the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia confirmed the attacks, the first time it has acknowledged that its troops were fighting in Somalia, though witnesses have reported their presence for weeks.

"After too much patience, the Ethiopian government has taken a self-defensive measure and has begun counterattacking the aggressive extremist forces of the (Islamic council) and foreign terrorist groups," said Ethiopia's foreign affairs spokesman, Solomon Abebe.

The Council of Islamic Courts has vowed to drive out troops from neighboring Ethiopia, a largely Christian nation that is providing military support to Somalia's U.N.-backed government.

"They are cowards," said Sheik Mohamoud Ibrahim Suley, an official with Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts. "They are afraid of the face-to-face war and resorted to airstrikes. I hope God will help us shoot down their planes."

But Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf said his forces have gained the upper hand.

"I think they have met a resistance they have never dreamt of before," Yusuf said in brief remarks from Baidoa _ the only town the government controls _ as the battles began to die down Sunday afternoon.

Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, plunging the country into chaos. The Islamic courts have been steadily gaining power since June, raising concerns about an emerging Taliban-style regime. The United States accuses the group of having ties to al-Qaida, which it denies.

As Sunday's fighting wore on, the Islamic leadership in the capital, Mogadishu, began broadcasting patriotic songs about Somalia's 1977 war with Ethiopia. Abdi Mohamed Osman, who owns a shop in the capital, said businessman were closing their shops to go and fight.

"We are going to support our brothers on the front line," he said.

The Ethiopian airstrikes were the first against Somalia's Islamic movement. Ethiopia and Somalia have fought two wars over their disputed border in the past 45 years. Islamic court leaders have repeatedly said they want to incorporate ethnic Somalis living in eastern Ethiopia, northeastern Kenya and Djibouti into a Greater Somalia.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said his government has a legal and moral obligation to support and defend Somalia's internationally recognized government. He has repeatedly accused the Islamic courts of backing ethnic Somali rebels fighting for independence from Ethiopia and has called such support an act of war.

The militants, who want to govern Somalia according to Islamic law, invited foreign Muslims on Saturday to join their holy war against Ethiopian troops.

The clashes could mean a major conflict in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, which has one of the largest armies in the region, and its bitter rival, Eritrea, could use Somalia as the ground for a proxy war. Eritrea backs the Islamists.

In Kismayo, a strategic seaport captured from the government by Islamic militia in September, residents saw several foreign Arab fighters disembarking from ships this week.

Thousands of Somalis have fled their homes as troops loyal to the two-year-old interim administration fought Islamic fighters who had advanced on Baidoa, about 140 miles northwest of Mogadishu. Islamic militiamen control Mogadishu along with most of southern Somalia.

Government officials said more than 600 Islamic fighters had been killed during four days of clashes. Islamic militiamen said they killed around 400 Ethiopians and government fighters. Neither claim could be independently confirmed.

___

Associated Press writers Salad Duhul and Mohamed Sheik Nor contributed to this report.

I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time
to do the things we never had

Gas Pipeline Blast Kills 260 in Nigeria
By KATHARINE HOURELD, Associated Press Writer
4 hours ago

LAGOS, Nigeria - A gasoline pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into a blazing inferno Tuesday as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighborhood, killing at least 260 people in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa's biggest petroleum producer.

Braving a towering pillar of fire and a cloud of acrid black smoke, thousands of people in Lagos' Abule Egba neighborhood surged around rescue workers carrying away charred bodies, hoping to catch a glimpse of missing relatives.

"My brother, my brother," wept 19-year-old Suboke Adebayo as an unidentified male corpse was loaded into an ambulance. Adebayo, a student, had spent hours trying unsuccessfully to contact her sibling: "I've been calling him since this morning, but I can only hear a holding tone."

A woman in a yellow T-shirt sobbed uncontrollably, slapping herself on the face and clawing her own arms in grief over the devastation of bodies and gutted cars spread around the pipeline.

A senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, Ige Oladimeji, said his workers counted 260 dead by nightfall and took 60 injured people to hospitals. "We are still counting (dead), but there will not be hundreds more," he said.

Residents said a gang of thieves had been illegally tapping the pipeline for months, carting away gasoline in tankers for resale.

Tapping is common in Nigeria, where many of the 130 million people live in woeful poverty amid widespread graft that makes a handful wealthy in this major oil exporter. A single pilfered can of gasoline sold on the black market can earn two weeks of wages for a poor Nigerian.

But tapping also brings frequent accidents. Earlier this year, 150 people died in a similar explosion in Lagos, and a 1998 pipeline fire killed 1,500 in southern Nigeria.

Tuesday's blast, the worst in years, came after thieves opened the conduit during the night but left without fully sealing it, prompting hundreds of nearby residents to rush to collect spurting gasoline with cans, buckets and even plastic bags, witnesses said.

It was unclear what ignited the fuel just after dawn.

"There were mothers there, little children," said Emmanuel Unokhua, an engineer who lives nearby. "I was begging them to go back."

Unokhua said people had splashed fuel on him seeking to chase him away and also doused a few police officers who tried unsuccessfully to control the crowd.

"They were not arresting anyone because they had no vehicle to put them in," Unokhua said bitterly. "There are plenty of vehicles for the dead bodies now."

Bodies lay scattered around the periphery of the site. For many victims, only tiny reminders _ a child's flip flop blistered by the heat, a half-melted plastic bucket _ were the only identifiable items in a fused mass of bones, skulls and charred limbs.

Flames that nearly incinerated cars and melted electrical lines to pylons kept rescue workers away from much of the carnage until the fire began to wane in early afternoon. Crowds of anguished people impeded the passage of fire crews and ambulances.

Owned by Nigeria's state-owned petroleum company, the pipeline delivers refined fuel for domestic consumption, so the blast was not expected to affect oil pumped for export.

Residents blamed greed, graft and poverty for the disaster.

"This was a preventable tragedy," said Joel Ogundere, a lawyer whose home is next to the blast. "It was poverty, ignorance and greed."

Widespread corruption and mismanagement have left Nigeria's refineries unable to meet demand and fuel shortages are common. Christians heading home for Christmas and Muslims preparing for a feast day have jammed service stations for days across Lagos, a sprawling city of 13 million people.

Many Nigerians feel they have gained little from decades of oil production in their country, saying natural gas flaring and oil spills have polluted lands while they remain poor and a tiny elite grows rich.

"How can this be, that people are so poor in Nigeria that they will risk their lives for a little thing," said Bode Kuforiji, a university lecturer. "But boats leave for America every day filled with oil."

It's quite sad. Africa is very screwed up. It's mainly due to the harsh, desert environment that covers most of it. It's also aparthied, and other politics, too.

And human nature.

Thanks for the assist, G Man. I know that, so far, this thread is mostly cut & paste city, but am hoping that it will
take off.

Africa is a beautiful continent. I'd love to visit there someday. Alawys wanted to see Victoria falls, the Nile, The great Pyramids, the Sphinx, etc.

It's where human life began.

It's a land filled with problems. Don't know if they'll ever be solved, but I am kinda hopeful.

You left out HIV. The place will see more chaos as the epidemic destroys the population there. Oh, and of course, the enslaved child soldiers. Most of Africa is a hell. None of the institutions of colonialism stuck, except for rare places like South Africa.

My wife regularly goes to Mauritania, a former French colony on the west coast. The pictures she took indicate its a dustbowl.

I know, Dave... Africa is a fucking mess.

Africa is the world's second largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30,221,532 km² (11,668,545 mi²) including adjacent islands, it covers 6.0% of the Earth's total surface area, and 20.4% of the total land area.[1] With more than 890,000,000 people (as of 2005) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14% of the world's human population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west.

Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Because of the lack of natural regular precipitation and irrigation as well as glaciers or mountain aquifer systems, there is no natural moderating effect on the climate except near the coasts.

Ugandan Lesbian Seeks U.S. Asylum
By CHERYL WITTENAUER, Associated Press Writer
5 hours ago

ST. LOUIS - Olivia Nabulwala says her family in Uganda was so angry and ashamed to learn she was a lesbian that her relatives hurled insults at her, pummeled her and, finally, stripped her and held her down while a stranger raped her.

"I hated myself from that day," she says in a sworn statement. "I disliked my family for subjecting me to such torture, and yet they felt this was a good punishment for me."

Now, in a case that illuminates a relatively unexplored area of immigration law, the African immigrant is asking for asylum in the U.S. on the grounds she was persecuted over her sexual orientation. And a federal appeals court ruling last week in St. Louis has raised her hopes of success.

Persecution based on sexual orientation has been grounds for asylum in the U.S. since the 1990s, but such cases are still rare. Most involve gay men persecuted by the government. There are few cases involving women, who are more likely to be persecuted by family members, said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, a gay rights group that represents immigrants.

The Department of Homeland Security said it does not systematically track the number of asylum claims based on sexual orientation. Most immigration cases are dispensed without a published opinion.

"That's why we're so excited about this case," Tiven said. "A published opinion gives it greater weight, makes it citable."

Immigration Equality, based in New York, said that last year it won 18 asylum cases for gay men and transgender women from the Congo, Algeria, Jamaica, Russia, Egypt, Peru, Bangladesh, Venezuela and Colombia. It said it lost two such asylum cases.

Among some recent cases: A man who said he was beaten by Mexican police and threatened because he is gay won asylum in January. And another Mexican man was granted asylum in a 2000 appeals court ruling that extended protection to transvestites.

To qualify for asylum, applicants must demonstrate past persecution or well-founded fear of future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group, which now includes gays. Asylum-seekers must also show, among other things, that the government was unable or unwilling to protect them.

In 1990, a gay Cuban who said he was abused by government officials in his homeland won asylum in the first significant ruling of its kind in the U.S. That ruling became the basis for then-Attorney General Janet Reno's 1994 order allowing gays from other countries to seek asylum for persecution based on sexual orientation.

"It is a relatively new area of asylum law; there's not a lot of bricks in the wall as to how these cases get played out," Tiven said. "But here's a high-level court, citing a reasonable and relevant application of government passivity."

"For women, it's developed quite slowly," she added. "Around the world, women face harm, often severe harm, from the nearest and not so dearest."

In an affidavit in support of her application for asylum, Nabulwala, who is in her late 20s and now lives in St. Paul, Minn., says that being gay is shameful in African culture and illegal in Uganda, and that her family expelled her from the clan.

The Associated Press normally withholds the names of people who claim to be victims of sexual assault, but Nabulwala agreed through her lawyer to allow her name to be used.

In her affidavit, Nabulwala says she realized she was a lesbian while attending an all-girls Christian boarding school in Kampala. In her senior year, 1994, after the local newspaper wrote a story about lesbian relationships at her high school, and her parents confronted her, Nabulwala admitted she was gay.

She says her admission was a "big blow" to her father, who angrily told her she must end it or she "could no longer be his child." Later, she says, she was brought to a family meeting, where insults were hurled at her and an aunt "beat me so hard with clenched fists and said it would help bring me back to my senses."

In 2001, Nabulwala, by then in college, says she was called to another family meeting after relatives learned she was still involved in a lesbian relationship.

"During this meeting, my Dad said so many unpleasant and hurtful words to me," she says. "He was so angry that he reached out to grab my neck to strangle me. He stated he was going to kill me because I was an embarrassment to him, our family, as well as the entire clan."

She says two aunts dragged her out of the meeting into her room, where a young man was waiting.

"I was forced to have sex with a total stranger, which was very nasty, while my aunts watched in laughter," she says. "Afterwards, they all left me lying there in a lot of pain."

Three months later, she entered the U.S. on a visitor visa, overstayed, then fought deportation by asserting a right to asylum.

An immigration judge in Minnesota said he didn't doubt Nabulwala had suffered in Uganda because of her sexual orientation. But he ruled that the rape was a "private family mistreatment," and not sponsored or authorized by the government.

However, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the judge used the wrong legal standard, and ordered the case sent back for further proceedings on whether the Ugandan government was unwilling or unable to control the abuse, as Nabulwala contends.

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and punishable by one to four years in prison. But a police spokeswoman, Alice Nakoba, said no one has ever been convicted. And she defended her country's treatment of gays, saying that Ugandans seeking asylum in developed countries exaggerate.

Nabulwala is "extremely happy" about the March 21 ruling, said her attorney, Eric Dorkin. Dorkin would not allow her to be interviewed or photographed, citing concerns about her safety and privacy.

If Nabulwala is unsuccessful, she will be deported.

"She's afraid to go back," Immigration Equality legal director Victoria Neilson said. "There's no protection in Uganda for gay people."

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On the Net:

8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals:

http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/index.html

Immigration Equality:

http://www.immigrationequality.org