Category: General

The African Union insisted Sunday it had a “zero tolerance” policy toward unconstitutional change as it maintained its suspension of four military-ruled countries.

The Sahel states of Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali as well as Sudan were sanctioned by the Pan-African body after coups in recent years, but the AU said Sunday it was ready to help them return to democratic rule.

“The assembly reaffirmed zero tolerance against unconstitutional change (of government),” said the AU’s Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Bankole Adeoye.

“The Commission is ready to support these member states to return to constitutional order, the idea is that democracy must take root and must be promoted and protected,” he told a news conference on the final day of the weekend AU summit in Addis Ababa.

“It is necessary to reemphasize that the AU remains intolerant to any undemocratic means to political power,” he added.

The regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc also said it has maintained sanctions on the three Sahel countries.

West African leaders met on the sidelines of the AU summit to review the measures and discuss the progress in restoring civilian rule in the three states.

“The Authority of Heads of State and Governments decided to maintain the existing sanctions on all three countries,” the bloc said in a statement signed Saturday but shared on Sunday.

ECOWAS has also decided to impose travel bans on government officials and senior leaders in those countries, it added.

Sanctions in spotlight

Fearing contagion in a region notorious for military takeovers, ECOWAS imposed tough trade and economic sanctions against Mali, but lesser punishments against Guinea and Burkina Faso.

All three countries are under pressure by ECOWAS to return swiftly to civilian rule by 2024 for Mali and Burkina and a year later for Guinea.

Juntas seized power in Mali and Burkina Faso amid anger at the military over the toll from a jihadi insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and forced millions from their homes.

The coup in Guinea had different causes, being rooted in public anger against then President Alpha Conde over a lurch toward authoritarianism.

Sudan has been gripped by deepening political and economic turmoil since the coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in 2021 that derailed a short-lived transition to civilian rule following the ouster of Omar al-Bashir in 2019.

In an address to the summit Saturday, AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat said the Pan-African bloc needed to look at new strategies to counter the backsliding of democracy.

“Sanctions imposed on member states following unconstitutional changes of government… do not seem to produce the expected results,” he said.

“It seems necessary to reconsider the system of resistance to the unconstitutional changes in order to make it more effective.”

Source: Voice of America

The head of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group accused of widespread human rights abuses, said on Sunday he was committed to intergrating the force into a reformed national armed forces.

RSF commander General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, joined Sudan’s leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in a coup in 2021 that ended a ruling partnership between the military and pro-democracy groups and plunged the country into political and economic turmoil.

The RSF is Sudan’s largest paramilitary group. It emerged from the “janjaweed” militias accused of atrocities during the early 2000s conflict in Darfur.

They are also accused by human rights groups of killing scores of protesters since the military overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Dagalo, who is known as Hemedti, has denied most of these claims, blaming infiltrators, while allowing the prosecution of some soldiers.

Pro-democracy groups and army leaders have called for the RSF to be integrated into the main military and for the formation of a single army.

The military leadership has reached an initial agreement with political groups, with discussions going on to formalise a new political settlement and create a new government.

But in a speech on Thursday, Burhan said the army would only support the deal as long as it provided for the integration of the RSF.

On Sunday, Dagalo defended the RSF’s legitimacy.

“We are committed to the principle of a single military formed according to agreed upon timelines, and we are sincerely committed to being involved in security and military reform,” he said in a speech.

The framework agreement, signed in December, recognises the RSF as a force alongside the military, police, and general intelligence. It assigns the head of state as its highest commander and also calls for its integration.

“The Sudanese military is a historic institution, and it will not be captured by any party,” Dagalo said. “We are part of it and we will not spare any effort to defend it from anyone who abuses or belittles it.”

He also warned against any interference by Islamists who lost control of the country in 2019 with the overthrow of Bashir.

Source: Voice of America

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Saturday that African countries are being denied needed debt relief, noting that because of a lack of financial support, the African continent is facing a very difficult situation.

Speaking at a news conference held at African Union headquarters after the opening of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Guterres said in order to draw on the continent’s potential, a series of challenges must first be overcome.

“A dysfunctional and unfair global financial system that denies many African countries the debt relief and concessional financing they need,” he said. “Systems and structures, from health and education to social protections, job-creation and gender equality are starved of investment for lack of support.”

Guterres mentioned the impact that debt has on the continent’s economy in his remarks earlier in the day at the opening ceremony of the AU Summit. He emphasized that developing African countries are often left out when global investment lenders create their financial plans.

“African countries cannot invest in these critical areas and climb the development ladder with one had tied between their backs … behind their backs.”

Guterres pointed out that Africa is dramatically underrepresented at the United Nations Security Council and at Bretton Woods Institutions.

“We need a new debt architecture that provides debt relief and re-structuring to vulnerable countries, including middle-income countries, while providing immediate debt suspension and write-downs to countries in need,” he said.

AU Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat made opening remarks to kick off the AU Summit and was followed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

The opening ceremony included the handover of the AU chairmanship from Senegalese President Macky Sall to Comoros President Azali Assoumani.

The theme of this year’s AU assembly is Year of AfCFTA: Acceleration of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Source: Voice of America

KYIV, UKRAINE — They fought on the same side and together won Olympic gold, young men from Russia and a newly independent Ukraine, joined for one last medal-winning hurrah on a short-lived post-Soviet Unified Team at the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Now, former fencers Vadym Guttsait and Stanislav Pozdnyakov are on opposite sides of the war that Russia is waging on Ukraine. Both have risen to become senior sports administrators, respectively heading the Ukrainian and Russian Olympic committees. The nearly year-old invasion has utterly shredded what was left of their friendship and they’re now fighting each other in a divisive and growing split within the Olympic movement over whether Russia and ally Belarus should be barred from next year’s Paris Games.

Guttsait, who is also Ukraine’s sports minister as well as its Olympic committee president, now has only contempt for his former teammate. Guttsait calls Pozdnyakov “my enemy” and says their friendship began to collapse when Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Moscow’s full-scale invasion, which enters its second year next week, was the last straw. Guttsait blames the Russian Olympic Committee president for making supportive comments of the assault.

“I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to know him at all. He is my enemy, who supports this war, who considers it an honor for athletes to take part in the war against Ukrainians, to kill Ukrainians,” Guttsait said. “Therefore, for today and forever, this person does not exist for me.”

The issue of whether athletes from Russia and Belarus should be allowed to compete is shaping up as the biggest potential spoiler of next year’s Paris Olympics. Guttsait is threatening a Ukrainian boycott if Russians and Belarusians are there and he is mobilizing support from other countries, backed by the wartime star power of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Russia and Belarus, on the other hand, are clinging to a lifeline thrown to them by the International Olympic Committee, which says some of their athletes may be able to return to international competition despite the war. The IOC suggests that their athletes who have not actively supported the war could try to qualify and compete as “neutral athletes,” stripped of national team uniforms, flags and anthems. Pozdnyakov has said Russia is preparing as if its athletes are going to Paris.

In an interview late Tuesday with The Associated Press, Guttsait laid out the process that could lead to a Ukrainian boycott of Paris if that happens. The minister said his own personal opinion is that “we need to boycott” if Russians and Belarusians attend. But he added that the decision isn’t his alone to make and said the Ukrainian Olympic Committee will convene an extraordinary meeting and “we will decide together whether we will participate or not.”

“This is a very important question, it is a very serious question and difficult for every athlete, for every coach who prepares all his life to go to the Olympic Games,” he said. “But while our people are dying, women and children are being killed, our cities are being destroyed, we stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. In my opinion, this is more important than going to the competition. But we need to make this political decision together with our Olympic family.”

Before any decision for a full boycott, Ukrainian athletes could also show opposition by withdrawing from Olympic qualifying competitions that allow Russian and Belarusian entrants. Guttsait cited the example of the European wrestling championships in Croatia in April. If Russian and Belarusian athletes compete, Ukrainian wrestlers will either not attend “or they will come and not take part,” Guttsait said.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach is facing a widespread backlash from Ukraine and its allies for opening a door for some athletes from Russia and Belarus to return to international competition. Bach argues that the Olympic movement has a “unifying mission of bringing people together” and a proven track record of opening lines of communication between nations divided by conflict. He cites the example of North and South Korea, which fielded a joint women’s hockey team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Guttsait noted, however, that there are also Olympic precedents for keeping nations out. Germany and Japan were not invited to the 1948 London Olympics after they were the aggressors in World War II and South Africa was excluded from 1964-1988 because of its racist Apartheid laws.

The minister said support among Russian athletes for the invasion makes their presence at the Paris Olympics unthinkable while the war rages. He also noted that Russian athletes are often enrolled in the country’s armed forces.

Ukrainian athletes, on the other hand, are facing the miseries of war as they try, as best they can, to ready themselves for Paris.

“I really want all people to understand how we prepare, how our athletes live, that our athletes train while cruise missiles are flying, bombs are flying,” Guttsait said. “The Olympic Games are great, they unite the whole world, but not those athletes who support this war and this aggression.”

Source: Voice of America

A multinational force of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, on Thursday handed five children rescued from Boko Haram over to Cameroon. The Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin Commission says scores of children were rescued last year in operations against the militant group. Cameroonian authorities are working to locate the children’s parents.

The Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin, or MNJTF, that is fighting the jihadist group, says the five children it handed to Cameroonian authorities on Thursday were rescued by Chadian troops.

The children were handed over to government officials in Mora, a town in Cameroon’s Far North region on the border with Chad and Nigeria.

The task force said Chadian troops found the five boys in the volatile Lake Chad basin, looking unkempt, tired, hungry and sick.

The task force commander, Nigerian Major General Abdul Kalifa Ibrahim, said the teenage children spent several months in Boko Haram captivity. He spoke on Cameroon’s state broadcaster CRTV.

“They were unfortunate to be abducted by Boko Haram, but they were able to escape,” said Ibrahim. “Chadian soldiers found out they are Cameroonian children. We are going to carry out more operations. Our hope is for the Boko Harams themselves to come out and say this is enough.”

Cameroon says 25 out of the 60 children transferred to the country by the joint forces in the past three weeks were either saved by the military during operations or escaped from Boko Haram camps and surrendered to troops from Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria fighting the jihadists.

The task force says scores of the children were rescued last year in a military operation that killed 800 militants in lake Chad basin. The children were kept in Chad about 8 months for psychological care and to determine where they were from.

The government says the children range in age from 9 to 17 years old.

The governor of Cameroon’s Far North region, Midjiyawa Bakari, says Cameroonian President Paul Biya has ordered that the children be provided with food, medical care and an education while their parents are being found. He spoke to VOA via a messaging app from Maroua, capital of Cameroon’s Far North region.

Bakari says Cameroon has well-constructed centers for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, or DDR, in Meri and Mora, northern towns on the border with Chad and Nigeria. He says the children will be enrolled in a school at the DDR center in Mora. Bakari says Cameroons medical staff members are at DDR centers ready to attend to the health needs of the children.

Bakari said in 2021, Cameroon successfully hosted more than 2,000 former Boko Haram militants including 950 Nigerians and about a hundred Chadians who defected from the jihdist group.

In June 2022, the Multinational Joint Task Force said 3,000 troops killed 800 jihadis on Lake Chad’s islands and neighboring areas between March 28 and June 4 in an operation called Lake Sanity.

Officials of the force said they were investigating the countries of origins of several hundred children who were rescued in the operations.

The troops say parents of some of the children may have been killed in battles with jihadist groups or have remained in Boko Haram camps as militants or captives.

The Lake Chad basin stretches across the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

The multinational force with troops from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad says although attacks have been drastically reduced, Boko Haram and another group, the Islamic State West Africa Province, have established bases in the vast Lake Chad basin.

According to the U.N., 36,000 people have been killed and 3 million have fled their homes in Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad since 2009 when the fighting deteriorated into an armed conflict with Nigerian government troops.

Source: Voice of America

KIGALI/KINSHASA— Rwanda’s army has said its troops briefly exchanged fire with soldiers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo at a border post, as tension continues to spike between the neighbours.

In a statement, Kigali said that 12 to 14 Congolese soldiers entered the neutral zone near the western district of Rusizi and opened fire at a Rwandan border post, in “an act of provocation”.

“Our security forces responded and [the Congolese] soldiers withdrew,” the statement said. “There were no casualties on the Rwanda side and the situation is calm.”

Meanwhile, Kinshasa has denied entering the neutral zone and said there were clashes between its military and a group of “bandits” near the border in Bukavu.

“In no case did the [army] cross the neutral zone, let alone open fire in the direction of Rwanda,” Theo Ngwabidje Kasi, governor of South Kivu province, said in a statement.

He said the accusations were “a lie” and described the incident as an “altercation” involving an exchange of fire between the Congolese security forces and “bandits,” who sustained one dead and one wounded.

“Rwanda’s tendency to want to portray itself as a victim and stoke tensions by making false accusations reveals without any doubt its intention to attack South Kivu province, as is currently the case in the war of aggression that it is carrying out in North Kivu,” he added.

The incident occurs against a backdrop of existing tensions between the DRC and its smaller neighbour over an offensive in the eastern Congolese province of North Kivu.

Last month, Rwanda accused a Congolese fighter jet of violating its airspace near Goma, a town on North Kivu’s border. The plane came under fire but was able to land safely in Goma.

Kinshasa described the attack on its aircraft as “a deliberate act of aggression that equals an act of war” to sabotage regional peace efforts.

The DRC for months has accused Rwanda of supporting an armed rebel group called M23, that’s fighting in the DRC’s east.

The conflict in eastern DRC has gone on for decades, with more than 100 armed groups fighting for control of valuable mineral resources while others protect their communities, and has triggered an exodus of refugees.

Rwanda in turn accuses the DRC of supporting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), another rebel group based in the DRC that has carried out raids into Rwanda in the past.

The FDLR has been accused of participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which ethnic Hutus killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them.

Last year, United Nations experts said they had “substantial evidence” of Rwandan government forces crossing into the DRC to reinforce M23 rebels or to conduct operations against the FDLR.

The United States and the European Union have urged Rwanda to stop supporting the rebels.

The Rwandan government has denied supporting M23 and says the accusations are part of a “tired old blame game” undermining efforts for peace, “to which Rwanda is fully committed”.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has said DRC authorities should solve their problems. In January he said that the crisis in the DRC “is not Rwanda’s problem, and we are going to make sure that everybody realises it is not Rwanda’s problem”

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK