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Global NGO Save the Children says more than 1.7 million children and adults are displaced as a result of Ethiopia's Tigray conflict.
He replaces Debretsion Gebremichael, whose immunity from prosecution was removed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Thursday that scores of civilians were killed in a \"massacre\" in the Tigray region, that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party.
The \"massacre\" is the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
\"Amnesty International can today confirm... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest of Ethiopia's Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,\" the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty said it had \"digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.\"
The dead \"had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,\" Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, though Amnesty said it \"has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings\".
It nonetheless called on TPLF commanders and officials to \"make clear to their forces and their supporters that deliberate attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and constitute war crimes\".
Abiy ordered military operations in Tigray on November 4, saying they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps -- a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since, making it difficult to verify competing claims on the ground.
Abiy said Thursday his army had made major gains in western Tigray.
Thousands of Ethiopians have fled across the border into neighboring Sudan, and the UN is sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Jano Admasi, a resident of the small farming village of Bisober, said soldiers killed escaping civillians, including her son.
The area is known for oil spills that have polluted the waters and left fish and other wildlife inedible.
The massive die-off was first reported in February when community people in Delta State complained of the schools of dead fish floating and littering their shores.
Samples of the fish were taken by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA).
Idris Musa, head of NOSDRA, declared the die-off had nothing to do with the continual oil leakages from offshore platforms as claimed over the years by Amnesty International, the U.N. Environmental Program, the Fishnet Alliance, and dozens of other groups in and outside of Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) this month said that the dead fishes floating and littering the Niger Delta coastline had nothing to do with its operations.
[Daily Trust] The International Criminal Court, ICC has said that it will \"analyse materials\" it has received about the violence which hit Nigeria last month following protests against police brutality.
On Tuesday ( Oct 20) Beyoncé took to Instagram to share her support of protestors and activists fighting on the frontlines of the #EndSARS movement and speak out against the violent attacks that they are facing at the hands of police. According to published reports, Amnesty International has confirmed that the Nigerian army and police killed at least 12 peaceful protesters Tuesday at two locations in Lagos.
[Ethiopian Herald] There is no any single reason to prevent the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) second round filling as it is a matter of life and death to Ethiopia, so said Prof. Yacob Arsano.
[VOA] Omar Radi wasn't surprised to find he was the target of apparent surveillance by Moroccan authorities. The freelance investigative journalist has been threatened and arrested for his coverage of the government, and was most recently summoned by police on June 24.
[Monitor] By Agencies
Black Americans across the country are uniting with Nigerians against Police Brutality. Learn how you can join them.
State reckons that several players, including Egypt with whom it is entangled in a row over the Grand Renaissance Dam, may have had a hand in fanning recent unrest.
By CARA ANNA and SAMY MAGDY Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Up to 200,000 refugees could pour into Sudan while fleeing the deadly conflict in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, officials said Wednesday, while the first details are emerging of largely cut-off civilians under growing strain. Nearly 10,000 people have crossed the border, including some wounded in the fighting, and the flow is growing quickly. 'There are lots of children and women,' Al-Sir Khalid, the head of the refugee agency in Sudan's Kassala province, told The Associated Press. 'They are arriving very tired and exhausted. They are hungry and thirsty […]
The post Sudan braces for up to 200,000 fleeing Ethiopia fighting appeared first on Black News Channel.
In 1997, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda – an international court established by the UN in 1994 to judge people responsible for the genocide – indicted Kabuga for his role.
It was set up to perform the remaining functions of both the Rwanda tribunal and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The International Criminal Court was set up to hear cases of crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression crimes.
From my experience working in Rwanda, Rwandans perceive international-based justice as aiding the conscience of the international community, which failed to intervene before or during the genocide.
The original warrant for his arrest was issued by the now-dissolved International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Nigeria must urgently address its failure to protect and provide education to an entire generation of children in the Northeast, a region devastated by years of Boko Haram atrocities and gross violations by the military, Amnesty International warned today in a chilling new report.
The 91-page report, 'We dried our tears': Addressing the toll on children of Northeast Nigeria's conflict, examines how the military's widespread unlawful detention and torture have compounded the suffering of children from Borno and Adamawa states who faced war crimes and crimes against humanity at the hands of Boko Haram.
Between November 2019 and April 2020, Amnesty International interviewed more than 230 people affected by the conflict, including 119 who were children when they suffered serious crimes by Boko Haram, the Nigerian military, or both.
Military detention
Children who escape Boko Haram territory face a raft of violations by the Nigerian authorities, also including crimes under international law.
A 14-year-old boy whom Boko Haram abducted as a young child before he fled and was placed in detention by the Nigerian military, said: \"The conditions in Giwa are horrible.
Ethiopia's confirmed Covid-19 cases on Sunday reached 582 after 88 more infections were confirmed, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health said in a statement.
This is so far the highest daily increase in the Horn of Africa country, which on Saturday reported 61 new confirmed Covid-19 cases.
The Ministry of Health said all 88 new Covid-19 cases are Ethiopian nationals – 51 males and 37 females – with their ages ranging between 8 to 75 years.
The Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health also said that 152 patients who tested positive for Covid-19 have so far recovered from the virus.
Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous nation with about 107 million people, confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on March 13.
Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), founded in 1990, is one of the earliest and highly regarded LGBTI (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Intersex) advocacy organizations in Southern Africa. GALZ is the country’s only gay rights group and the first one in the nation to start HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns. The organization also promotes gay rights in the Southern African region and encourages emerging LGBTI groups in other countries.
GALZ was originally a small social club of mostly middle class professionas drawn from the active urban social scene in Harare, the nations capital, which flourished after Zimbabwean independence in 1980. GALZ launched in 1990 with seventy members, grew to approximately 500 in 2000, but had about 300 members by 2012. The drop in membership was caused mainly by its members seeking asylum in other nations. Whites or mixed race persons were the early members, but most GALZ members today are LGBTI people from the nation’s urban black communities. The involvement of lesbians increased dramatically with the establishment of the Gender Department in 2002. With its national headquarters in the capital of Harare, as of 2012 GALZ had ten centers throughout Zimbabwe.
The mission of GALZ is to serve the needs of LGBTI persons in Zimbabwe, advance social tolerance of sexual minorities, and repeal homophobic laws. A 1995 incident propelled GALZ into the national and international spotlight. The Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF), with that year’s theme of “Human Rights and Justice,” banned GALZ from participating. The rejection attracted local and regional news coverage. In response, regional and international organizations such as Amnesty International began to recognize homosexuality as a human rights issue and international groups also began to fund GALZ.
GALZ offers a wide variety of services. They began providing HIV/AIDS awareness at a time when their nation’s political leadership and many citizens remained in denial of the dangers and risks of the disease. This program has evolved
Ethiopian forces blocked people from the country's embattled Tigray region from crossing into Sudan on Thursday at the busiest crossing point for refugees, Sudanese forces said.
Their account follows allegations by refugees in previous days of Ethiopian forces stopping people from fleeing the month-old deadly conflict in Tigray.
The Sudanese forces, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the events, said people tried to cross from Ethiopia around 6 a.m. to Hamdayet in Sudan but were stopped, and refugees waiting on the Sudan side became upset and began throwing rocks.
The Sudanese forces then cleared the area, and on Thursday evening they confirmed that the border crossing remained closed.
Tensions have been rising at the border in recent days as the flow of Ethiopians crossing has slowed to hundreds per day from several thousands.
A senior Ethiopian government official who has served as spokesman during the conflict did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
End fighting
The European Union's crisis management commissioner Thursday urged the Ethiopian government to restore communications in its northern Tigray region and called on both sides to cease hostilities.
\"I urge... the Ethiopian authorities to lift the communication blockade,\" Janez Lenarcic said at Um Raquba camp in neighboring Sudan, where he spoke with Ethiopian refugees who had fled their homeland over the last month.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last month ordered military operations against the northern Ethiopian region's ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), in response to what he said were attacks on Ethiopian federal army camps.
Tens of thousands of refugees have since poured into eastern Sudan, with many complaining that they have not been able to re-establish contact with those left behind or lost on the scramble to leave due to a communications blackout.
\"I spoke with a number of refugees in this camp today and what is perhaps most painful to hear is that they have zero information... about their relatives and friends who stayed behind,\" Lenarcic said.
Abiy on Saturday claimed the conflict was over after federal troops took control of the Tigrayan capital, Mekele, but the TPLF threatened a full-scale counter-offensive on Wednesday.
Lenarcic also urged Ethiopia's government to provide access for humanitarian workers and goods, while calling on both sides to \"cease the hostilities\".
Ethiopia has formally granted the United Nations access to deliver aid to Tigray.
AFP
Press Release - Egyptian human rights activist Sanaa Seif was detained today outside the Public Prosecutor's office in New Cairo, where she was waiting to file a complaint after suffering a violent assault. Amnesty International is calling for her immediate release and an end to the \"relentless harassment\" of her and her family.
By SAM OLUKOYA Associated Press LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian protests against police brutality continued Friday for the ninth day, with demonstrators fending off attacks from gangs suspected to be backed by the police, warnings from the Nigerian military, and a government order to stop because of COVID-19. In Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, protesters blocked the road to the international airport and the main highway into the city. The Lagos-Ibadan highway, one of Nigeria's busiest, is the main road linking the port city to the rest of Nigeria. Protesters in the capital, Abuja, dedicated the day to Nigerians they charge […]
The post Nigeria's anti-police brutality protests block major roads appeared first on Black News Channel.
Analysis - The unsolved fatal shooting of the celebrated Oromo resistance singer has ruptured Ethiopia's brittle political system. Can talks on a national scale avert a bad-to-worse outcome for the multiethnic nation?
