TIGblogs TIG | TIGblogs GROUP TIGBLOGS LOGIN SIGNUP
Believe Africa - My Blog
Believe Africa - My Blog
« previous 5


Ghadafi's United States of Africa
Related to country: Libya

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Qardafi is a Believer, a Promoter & a Builder of United African States.

February 9, 2009 | 4:26 PM Comments  0 comments

Tags:


This will crack you up!
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Baby Parrot Predicts The Next President

Our 8 month old Wall.E, an African Grey Parrot, has begun to talk; we have a TV next to his cage so that he can listen to people... of course we always have it on CNN... so his first words were...

Click the following link to view the full article:
http://www.ireport. com/docs/ DOC-117755? ref=email

October 19, 2008 | 12:53 PM Comments  0 comments

Tags:


Two Weeks Prayer for Obama
Related to country: United States
About the book: "A Long Walk to Freedom Triumph of Hope, 1962-1994"

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

This is a clarion call for two weeks of prayer for Senator Barrack Obama and the America economy. Everyone is strongly encouraged to participate in “Two Weeks of Prayer”.

As you pray, praise, and worship God, then pray for Obama that:

God will continue to break any curse against him
God will continue to cover him with the blood of Jesus
God will continue to bless and guide him
God will continue to direct him and give him strength
God will continue to shower him with wisdom
God will continue to use him as an instrument of peace, reconciliation, unity, atonement, hope, peace,and change for the America and the world in general.

Let’s do it! Where the presence of God dwells, great things happen.

Evangelicals for Obama

September 25, 2008 | 8:21 AM Comments  1 comments

Tags:


France accused in Rwanda genocide
Related to country: Rwanda

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Rwanda has accused France of playing an active role in the genocide of 1994, in which about 800,000 people were killed.

An independent Rwandan commission said France was aware of preparations for the genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia perpetrators.

The report also accused French troops of direct involvement in the killings.

It named 33 senior French military and political figures that it said should be prosecuted. France has previously denied any such responsibility.

Among those named in the report were the late former President, Francois Mitterrand, and the then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur.

Two men who went on to become prime minister were also named - Alain Juppe, the foreign minister at the time, and his then chief aide, Dominique de Villepin.

The French foreign ministry told the BBC it would only respond to the fresh allegations after reading the report, which was released on Tuesday afternoon.

Checkpoints

Earlier this year France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide, but said political errors had been made.

Some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias in just 100 days in 1994.

The report says France backed Rwanda's Hutu government with political, military, diplomatic and logistical support.

It accuses France of training Hutu militias responsible for the slaughter, helping plan the genocide, and participating in the killings.

"French forces directly assassinated Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis... French forces committed several rapes on Tutsi survivors," said a statement from the justice ministry cited by AFP news agency.

"Considering the seriousness of the alleged crimes, the Rwandan government has urged the relevant authorities to bring the accused French politicians and military officials to justice," the statement said.

It further alleged that French forces did nothing to challenge checkpoints used by Hutu forces in the genocide.

"They clearly requested that the Interahamwes continue to man those checkpoints and kill Tutsis attempting to flee," it said.

Testimonies

The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, says the commission spent nearly two years investigating France's alleged role in the genocide.

It heard testimonies from genocide survivors, researchers, writers and reporters.

The 500-page document was presented to the Rwanda's government last November, but was not made public until now.

Rwanda has repeatedly accused France of arming and training the Hutu militias that perpetrated the genocide, and of dragging its feet in co-operating with the investigations that followed.

France has maintained that its forces helped protect civilians during a UN-sanctioned mission in Rwanda at the time.

The two countries have had a frosty relationship since 2006 when a French judge implicated Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the downing in 1994 of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana' s plane - an event widely seen as triggering the killings.

President Kagame has always denied the charge.

He says Mr Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed by Hutu extremists who then blamed the incident on Tutsi rebels to provide the pretext for the genocide.

August 6, 2008 | 7:02 AM Comments  0 comments

Tags:


ETHIOPIA: ARMY COMMITS EXECUTIONS, TORTURE, AND RAPE IN OGADEN
Related to country: Ethiopia

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Donors Should Act to Stop Crimes Against Humanity

(Nairobi, June 12, 2008) – In its battle against rebels in eastern Ethiopia’s Somali Region, Ethiopia's army has subjected civilians to executions, torture, and rape, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The widespread violence, part of a vicious counterinsurgency campaign that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity, has contributed to a looming humanitarian crisis, threatening the survival of thousands of ethnic Somali nomads.

The 130-page report "Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Ogaden Area of Ethiopia's Somali Regional State," documents a dramatic rise in unchecked violence against civilians since June 2007, when the Ethiopian army launched a counterinsurgency campaign against rebels who attacked a Chinese-run oil installation. The Human Rights Watch report provides the first in-depth look at the patterns of abuse in a conflict that remains virtually unknown because of severe restrictions imposed by the Ethiopian government.

"The Ethiopian army's answer to the rebels has been to viciously attack civilians in the Ogaden," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "These widespread and systematic atrocities amount to crimes against humanity. Yet Ethiopia’s major donors, Washington, London and Brussels, seem to be maintaining a conspiracy of silence around the crimes."

Human Rights Watch researchers located and interviewed more than 100 victims and eyewitnesses to abuses, as well as traders, business leaders, and regional government officials located in neighboring Kenya, the semi-autonomous region of Somaliland in northern Somalia and in Ethiopia. The research, largely carried out between September and December 2007, was further supplemented with satellite imagery that confirmed the burning of some villages. In chilling accounts, witnesses and victims described to Human Rights Watch nightly beatings with the barrel of a gun, public executions, and the burning of entire villages.

The report describes the army's response to the April 2007 attack by the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) on a Chinese-run oil installation in Obole that killed more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian civilians. During the peak of the army’s counterinsurgency campaign from June to September 2007, witnesses described how Ethiopian troops forcibly displaced entire rural communities and destroyed dozens of rural villages; executed at least 150 civilians, sometimes in demonstration killings to terrorize those communities suspected of supporting the ONLF; and arbitrarily detained hundreds of civilians in military barracks where they experienced beatings, torture, and widespread rape and other forms of sexual violence. Thousands of civilians fled the conflict-affected areas for neighboring countries. Some of the patterns of violence are ongoing, and Human Rights Watch believes its findings represent only a fraction of the actual abuses.

Ethiopian authorities also stepped up their forced recruitment of local militia forces, many of whom are sent to fight against the ONLF without military training, resulting in large casualty rates.

The rebel ONLF has also been responsible for serious violations of the laws of war, including the summary executions of Chinese and Ethiopian civilians during the April 2007 attack on the Obole oil installation and killing suspected government collaborators, which are considered war crimes.

Many civilians living in the conflict zone are nomads who must move to fresh grazing areas and regional markets to sell their livestock. Since mid-2007, Ethiopian forces have imposed a series of measures aimed at cutting off economic support to the ONLF, including a trade blockade on the war-affected region, restricted access to water, food and grazing areas, confiscation of livestock and trade goods, and obstruction of humanitarian assistance. In combination with the drought produced by successive poor rains, this “economic war” is threatening the lives of thousands of civilians, yet many of them lack access to food aid due to government manipulation of food distribution.

"The government's attacks on civilians, its trade blockade, and restrictions on aid amount to the illegal collective punishment of tens of thousands of people," said Gagnon. “Unless humanitarian agencies get immediate access to independently assess the needs and monitor food distribution, more lives will be lost."

The Ethiopian government did not respond to Human Rights Watch’s requests for access to the conflict-affected area, and has tried to stem the flow of information from the region. Some foreign journalists who have attempted to conduct independent investigations have been arrested and residents and witnesses have been threatened and detained in order to prevent them from speaking out. In July 2007, the government expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross from Somali Region, although it has since permitted some UN and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations to operate, albeit under tight controls.

The report also analyzes the Ethiopian government and international community’s responses to the continuing abuses. Ethiopia continues to deny the allegations but has yet to investigate them or hold anyone accountable. Human Rights Watch says that donor governments are failing to demand human rights accountability, despite the substantial economic aid to Ethiopia and its partnership in regional counterterrorism efforts.

Western governments and institutions alone, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, give at least US$2 billion in aid to Ethiopia annually, but have remained silent on the widespread abuses being committed in the Ogaden area. The US government, which views Ethiopia as a key partner in regional counterterrorism efforts, has failed to use its significant leverage, including military aid, to press for an end to the crimes.

Human Rights Watch called on major donors to press Ethiopia to end the violence and recommended that:

- The US government should investigate reports of abuses by Ethiopian forces, identify the specific units involved, and ensure that they receive no assistance or training from the United States until the Ethiopian government takes effective measures to bring those responsible to justice, as required under the "Leahy law," which prohibits US military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity.


- The UK government and the European Union should condemn the abuses, publicly call on the Ethiopian government to investigate the crimes in Somali Region, demand that civilian and military officials are held accountable, and monitor development funding to ensure it is not being used for security operations.


"Influential states use many excuses – such as lack of information and strategic priorities – to downplay the grave human rights concerns in Somali Region," said Gagnon. "But crimes against humanity can't be swept under the carpet. Donor governments should reconsider their policies on Ethiopia until these abuses end and those responsible are brought to justice."

Witness accounts from the report:

"The soldiers came to Aleen, after they burned down Lahelow. Then they burned Aleen. We were there at the time. The soldiers arrived and ordered the people out of their homes. They gathered all of the people together. Then the commander ordered the village burned. The commander told us, ‘I have told you already to leave these small villages,’ and then they forced us out. Then they burned down all the homes. The houses are just huts, so it is easy to burn them."
– Villager, September 23, 2007

"I was taken away with two men, Hassan Abdi Abdullahi and Ahmed Gani Guled. First, they pulled ropes around the necks of the two men and pulled in opposite directions, and both fell down. They put me in a ditch while they were strangling the other two. One soldier tried to strangle me with the metal stick used for cleaning the gun [by pushing it down on my throat], but I twisted his finger until he released me. Then two other soldiers came and they put a rope around my neck and started pulling. That is the last thing I remember, until I woke up, still in the ditch. A naked body was on top of me, it was Ahmed Gani Guled, who was dead. I couldn't move out of the ditch until I was found by some women who came to the waterhole."
– Ridwan Hassan-rage Sahid, October 30, 2007

"They started beating me with the backs of their AK-47 guns. They hit me once with the gun in my face, and then started beating me. They also hit me with the gun barrel in my teeth, and broke one of my teeth. Then they started beating me with a fan belt on my back and my feet. It lasted for more than one hour. Then they tied both my legs and lifted me upside down to the ceiling with a rope, and kept beating me more, saying I had to confess. For two months, we underwent this same ordeal, being taken from our rooms at night and being beaten and tortured."
– Thirty-one-year-old shopkeeper, September 20, 2007

"They wanted to intimidate the rest of us, so they brought the two girls who they said were the strongest ONLF supporters. They made the rest of us watch while they killed the two girls. First they tried to get them to confess, saying they would kill them otherwise. Then they shot both of them with their guns. Their names were Faduma Hassan, 17, and Samsam Yusuf, 18. Both were students."
– Student, September 23, 2007

"We have a well in Qoriley which is surrounded by wire. The army has prohibited us from using it, so you have to sneak in at night. All these things have been imposed on us this year. At nighttime, we will try and get some water to store in our houses. But if the soldiers see you are fetching water, they can kill you."
– Villager, September 22, 2007

"If [the federal government] followed the law, it would be good, but even the law they’ve created is not being followed."
– Former regional court judge, December 5, 2007



June 15, 2008 | 6:06 AM Comments  0 comments

Tags:


« previous 5


BELIEVE AFRICA's Profile

BELIEVE AFRICA's Friends


Latest Posts
In South Africa, rape...
South Africa swine-flu...
Aid agencies say G8...
Strike halts...
Absa's ATM...

Monthly Archive
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009

Change Language


Tags Archive
africa andinothernews... angola archive business congodr epidemics international militarytricks national nigeria other sport sudan swineflu uganda zimbabwe

Filter By Type
Travel
Topics

Friends
'Gbenga Sesan
'Tunde David
A Better Community for All (ABC4All)
abbo
abolaarin musodiq
ADEOLA
adewole taiwo
African
agnes
Ahed Ali
ajlink
Akindele Oyeyemi
Alex
Alex B. Hill
Amalu
AMESH
angelviny
Anna Lieberg
Anu maheshwari
Arif Reza Anwary
ASHISH SHARMA
ashpaa
Atta ur Rehman Qureashi
AZIZ
Bakka
Belal jahjooh
BENGA
Benn
Bismah Haq
Brian
Camelia
carmen cabrejos carrasco
Carolina
Caroline Damba
cedrino
Cheikh Mamina Diédhiou
Chika
Chinwe
Christabell
clarita zarate
Dabesaki
DAKE KOFI SELORM
DAN
Dave Matthews
David katamba
davyk
Dennis Dames
diana
DOUMBIA
Edgar
Edionseri Endurance Omorogiuwa
Elijah Nyakina Odundo
Elizabeth Arceo
enock
Eric
esra
Faïd Souhaïli
Fi McKenzie
Francis Anyaegbu
Francisco Pereira
frank
Germain
GHANA FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE FOUNDATION
gypo3
Hafiidhaturrahmah
Hajie Bah
harisstavr
harrison akadidi
harya
Henry Davids
Herman
Herman
Humphrey
Ibukun
Ikahota
ISIAKA AKANNI WAHAB
Islam
Jacques
Jean-Yves
Joel
john
Jonathan Kidney
Judith Bosire
ken
King TUT JR.
Kirsten
KOUYATE
Kristle Calisto-Tavares
Kylee
LauraK
Liam O'Doherty
lief strong
lloyd
lucasrc
Maged Hassan
Malcolm Lawrence
Malkia Affiah
Margie Brand
Mark Okowa
Maz!n Khal!l
Medaer Frans
meddahi
Meniru Hamilton Chidozie
Mfon Usen
Mohammed Lamarana Barry
Monik Kumwenda
Mpasua Msonobari
Ms Saky
Muhammad Rauf
MUKAMA Nicholas
Muma Laura Sirri
Nabil Chemli
Neema Mgana
niang aly
Niombo Sylvie
Nosiku Ketata
oladimeji
Olebogeng Eunice Morebodi
Olowoyeye Oluwatosin Anu
Ooma
ostatee
Patricia Sudi
PEACE-SEEKER
Peter Koll
Reality
Richie
Robert Masenamela
Sabrine Herrira
Sah Ahmed
sahr yillia
Saladin
Saladin Abuhamdieh
salam
Samira Hassan
Sessi
Shymal
Stephen Kasoma
Stephen Ojeremen
Sulmaz Ghoraishi
Tebogo M Thekiso
teema
thatoski
Thembi Ngulani
Timothy G. Branfalt Sr.
Timothy Odiaga
Tk Mawuli Azaglo
Topsy
Tracy Webb
Trevor Kellogg
UGIRASHEBUJA Jean Luc
Usigbe George
vridhi sinha
vrman
wako-joel
Waleed Sorour
wilfried fink
Yashoda
zidanye
Весна

Links
Believe Africa Website


100568 views
Important Disclaimer