Communication ministers from the Economic Community of Central African States, ECCAS, are meeting in Bangui, Central African Republic, this week to map out ways to stop the spread of hate speech.

Officials from central African states say some influential politicians, business moguls and community leaders are using radio, television and social media to propagate information that has fueled regional crises, resulting in the displacement of millions of people.

Simplice Mathieu Sarandji, prime minister of the Central African Republic, said leaders of the 11-member ECCAS expect communication ministers at the meeting in Bangui to propose lasting solutions to xenophobic statements that are propagated on media outlets.

Sarandji said humanitarian crises are spiraling in ECCAS states because of widespread hate speech.

A separatist crisis in western Cameroon, which has killed more than 6,000 people, was fueled in part by social media propaganda by rebel leaders who are based in Europe and the United States, according to Cameroonian officials.

Hate on social media also fueled an ongoing conflict between ranchers and fishers in northern Cameroon and Chad. Clashes there have killed more than 100 people and displaced more than 80,000.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda was sparked by hate speech, mostly over radio, by Hutu extremists against Tutsis.

Joanne Adamson, deputy head of MINUSCA, the U.N. stabilization mission in the Central African Republic, spoke about the Bangui meeting on state TV in the CAR.

She said the focus on hate speech is an important step toward finding solutions to fighting that sparked a mass movement of people fleeing in search of safety. By organizing the forum, Adamson added, the 11 ECCAS member states indicate they are ready to support and defend values that are vital to consolidate peace and security and promote human rights.

The ministers said they will enact legislation to punish people who use TV, radio and print media to propagate hate speech, but gave no further details. They also have agreed to control harmful content they say runs rampant on social media.

Charly Gabriel Mbock, an anthropologist and conflict resolution specialist at the Yaounde-headquartered Catholic University of Central Africa, said the ministers should launch campaigns against hate speech in restive central African towns and villages.

To do this, Mbock said, ECCAS communication ministers must educate clerics and traditional rulers that peace is priceless, before using radio, television and print media to call on civilians to reject and denounce calls for violence, especially on social media. He said central African governments should also make sure media laws being prepared against hate and xenophobic language do not infringe on press freedom.

The communication ministers say they will submit their recommendations to ECCAS governments with the hope that if hate speech and xenophobic statements can be stopped, peace will return to restive areas.

Source: VOA

Floods have wreaked chaos in Kinshasa – the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo – with water pouring into homes and residents navigating submerged roads via canoe.

The overflowing River Congo, passing through much of the country, has also swamped places outside the capital.

The vast, vital waterway has reached its highest level in six decades.

More than 300 people have died in floods over the past months, officials say.

On Thursday, residents in the impoverished megacity of Kinshasa told the BBC how “schools, hospitals and churches” have been washed away.

“I had lived here with my relatives… I have lost everything,” Jonas Mungindami said.

Similarly, Denise Tuzola said her house is now “full of water”.

“There is no church here anymore and there is no way for the children to go to school,” she added.

Kinshasa is home to several small rivers and streams, which often double as open sewers. Many have now overflown.

On one flooded street, a man waded through through thigh-level water, hauling a canoe full of passengers behind him. Trucks drove cautiously through the same waters, while dozens of discarded bottles bob on the surface.

The RVF, the agency overseeing DR Congo’s waterways, sounded the alarm in late December.

It warned that heavy rains would cause “exceptional flooding” around the Kinshasa area.

By this point, provinces such as Mongala and Ituri had already faced serious flooding.

In Kinshasa, flooding is common but this year the Congo River has risen just shy of 6.26 metres, the level reached during record flooding in 1961.

Further upstream, in the city of Kisangani, the mayor said that over 200 houses have been submerged.

The Congo River has also caused turmoil in Congo-Brazzaville, a nation that borders DR Congo.

Flooding there has impacted more than 336,000 people and 34 health facilities, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.

Just over a year ago, floods in Kinshasa left more than 120 people dead.

Source: BBC

Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye has called on citizens to stone gay people, escalating a crackdown on sexual minorities in a country where LGBT people already face social ostracism and jail terms of up to two years if convicted of same-sex offences.

“If you want to attract a curse to the country, accept homosexuality,” Ndayishimiye said in a question and answer session with journalists and the public held in Burundi’s east on Friday.

“I even think that these people, if we find them in Burundi, it is better to lead them to a stadium and stone them. And that cannot be a sin,” he said, describing homosexuality as imported from the West.

His comments were the latest show of widening intolerance of LGBT people in the region.

Uganda passed a law in May that carries the death sentence for certain categories of same-sex offences and lengthy jail sentences for others – a move that was widely condemned by Western governments and human rights activists.

The United States has imposed a range of sanctions including travel restrictions and removing Uganda from a tariff-free trade deal. The World Bank also suspended all future loans to the east African country in protest.

Some lawmakers in Kenya, South Sudan and Tanzania are pushing for similarly tough anti-gay laws in their countries.

The politicians in these countries see their efforts as buttressing African values and sovereignty against what they view as Western pressure on the issue.

Source: Reuters

UN peacekeepers are due to finish their withdrawal from Mali on Sunday, after a long-running mission lasting a decade.

Minusma – the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission – began in 2013 after an armed rebellion, but has been asked to leave by the country’s ruling military government.

The UN mission’s head said it did a lot but fell below expectations.

With some 310 peacekeepers killed, Minusma was the UN’s second deadliest mission worldwide, after Lebanon.

In the summer, Mali told the UN that its 12,000 peacemakers needed to leave, and the UN Security Council voted to withdraw the mission.

UN staff have been leaving in stages for months, with a deadline of 31 December for full withdrawal.

On Friday, local media reported that Minusma had handed over control of one of its last major camps in the northern Timbuktu region ahead of the deadline, for security reasons.

Timbuktu was one of three sites which were supposed to remain open to manage the end of the mission after 31 December, but the UN was worried about the presence of militants, reports said.

Source: BBC

The last French troops deployed in Niger left on Friday, an AFP journalist reported, marking an end to more than a decade of French anti-jihadist operations in west Africa’s Sahel region.

“Today’s date (…) marks the end of the disengagement process of French forces in the Sahel,” Niger army lieutenant Salim Ibrahim said at a ceremony in Niamey marking the end of France’s military presence.

The French exit from Niger leaves hundreds of US military personnel, and a number of Italian and German troops, remaining in the country.

France said it would pull out its roughly 1,500 soldiers and pilots from Niger after the former French colony’s new ruling generals demanded they depart following the coup on July 26.

It was the third time in less than 18 months that French troops were sent packing from a country in the Sahel.

They were forced to leave fellow former colonies Mali last year and Burkina Faso earlier this year following military takeovers in those countries too.

All three nations are battling a jihadist insurgency that erupted in northern Mali in 2012, later spreading to Niger and Burkina Faso.

But a string of coups in the region since 2020 have seen relations nosedive with former colonial power France and a pivot towards greater rapprochement with Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron in September announced the withdrawal of all French troops from Niger by the end of the year, with a first contingent leaving in October.

The Nigerien army said last week their departure would be complete by Friday.

Perilous desert routes

Most French troops in Niger are at an air base in the capital Niamey.

Smaller groups have been deployed alongside Nigerien soldiers to the border with Mali and Burkina Faso, where jihadist groups linked to the Islamic State group and al Qaeda are believed to operate.

The withdrawal is a complex operation, with road convoys having to drive up to 1,700 kilometres (1,000 miles) on sometimes perilous desert routes to the French centre for Sahel operations in neighbouring Chad.

The first French road convoy of troops withdrawing from Niger arrived in neighbouring Chad’s capital N’Djamena in October, after 10 days on the road.

From Chad, French troops can leave by air with their most sensitive equipment, although most of the rest has to be moved by land and sea.

According to a source close to the matter, some of the French containers carrying equipment will be driven from Chad on to the port of Douala in Cameroon, before they can be ferried back to France by sea.

US, German troops

France’s former ally in Niger, overthrown president Mohamed Bazoum, remains under house arrest.

A US official said in October that Washington was keeping about 1,000 military personnel in Niger but was no longer actively training or assisting Niger forces.

The United States said earlier this month it was ready to resume cooperation with Niger on the condition its military regime committed to a rapid transition to civilian rule.

Niger’s rulers want up to three years for a transition back to a civilian government.

Military leaders in Niamey early this month said they were ending two European Union security and defence missions in the country.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius visited Niger earlier this week to discuss the fate of around 120 German troops based in the country.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in September banded together in a joint defence pact to fight jihadists.

France’s withdrawal from Mali last year left a bitter aftertaste, after the bases it once occupied in Menaka, Gossi and Timbuktu were rapidly taken over by the Wagner Russian paramilitary group.

Source: AFP

Sudanese paramilitaries on Monday pressed deeper into the former safe haven of Wad Madani, the capital of Al-Jazira state where they also seized the town of Rufaa, witnesses said.

It came a day after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces set up a base in Wad Madani, where their offensive has sent thousands fleeing Sudan’s second city and former aid hub, many of them already displaced.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “took control of Rufaa”, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Wad Madani, the witnesses told AFP.

They said the RSF took over “the army headquarters, the police office, and the hospital after a clash that lasted for one hour” in the town.

Since fighting broke out on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the city of Wad Madani, 180 kilometres (110 miles) south of Khartoum, became a haven for thousands of displaced people during the conflict.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that the city’s population had reached 700,000, after more than half a million people took shelter there, among them 270,000 who “need humanitarian assistance”.

The RSF announced on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday that they “seized control of the SAF (army) First Infantry Division in Wad Madani”.

It said its “operation included the liberation of the central reserve camp and the strategic Hantoob Bridge from the eastern side”.

On Sunday, the army reported in a statement that the RSF attempted to capture Wad Madani.

“The security situation in Al-Jazira state has stabilised,” the army said, adding, “we call on our people not to leave their homes.”

The RSF had on Sunday “set up bases in the Al-Malikiyah neighbourhood, east of the city of Wad Madani,” an AFP correspondent said.

The Norwegian Refugee Committee and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) East African bloc expressed concern over the spiralling violence in Al-Jazira state.

The American embassy warned on Sunday in a statement that “the continued advance of the Rapid Support Forces threatens massive civilian casualties and significant disruption to humanitarian assistance efforts”.

It said the advance of Daglo’s forces “has already caused large-scale displacement of civilians from Al-Jazira State… and the closure of markets in Wad Madani that many depend on.”

Bombing in Nyala

In the western Darfur region, an army source told AFP that the air force struck military buildings, over which the RSF had announced its control in October, and the airport in Nyala, the state capital of South Darfur.

The source said “the RSF’s Al-Zurq base, which is the main centre for supplies, was bombed”.

The “Emergency Lawyers” advocacy group said in a statement on Monday that the bombardment “hit populated neighbourhoods at dawn today, and last Thursday the city witnessed bombing with explosive barrels that killed 10 civilians and left 37 injured”.

The war between the army and the RSF has killed 12,190 people, according to conservative estimates by the Armed Conflict Locations and Events Data project.

It has displaced 5.4 million people inside the country, according to the UN, and sent over 1.3 million fleeing abroad.

Both sides in the conflict have been accused of indiscriminately bombing residential areas, using human shields, and robbing and harassing civilians.

Source: AFP

At least eight people were killed and 84 injured following a blast at an oil terminal in Guinea’s capital Conakry early on Monday, a senior police officer said.

The officer said the toll was provisional, adding that the blaze was being contained.

The blast at the West African nation’s only oil terminal, rocked the Kaloum administrative district in downtown Conakry, blowing out the windows of several nearby homes and forcing hundreds to flee the area, according to a Reuters witness.

A huge fire and billowing black smoke could be seen from miles away as firefighters rushed to the area, while several tanker trucks left the depot, escorted by soldiers and police.

A spokesman for the government of Guinea did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Reuters

Chad voters go to the polls on Sunday for a referendum on a new constitution, in a key step towards elections and the return of civilian rule promised, but postponed, by the ruling military junta.

A large section of the opposition and civil society in the central African country are calling for a boycott.

They argue the plebiscite is designed to pave the way for the election of the current transitional president, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, and the continuation of a “dynasty” begun by his late father 33 years ago following a coup.

The “yes” camp seems assured of victory after a well-financed campaign by the ruling junta against a divided opposition, which has faced arrest, intimidation and threats for more than a year.

The capital N’Djamena has been plastered with posters championing a “yes” vote to bring in a constitution for a “unitary and decentralised state”.

It is not very different from the constitution that the military repealed in 2021, enshrining a regime in which most of the power is concentrated in the head of state.

The opposition, which advocates federalism, backs the “no” vote.

The “yes” camp retorts that a unitary state is the only way to preserve unity, while federalism would encourage “separatism” and “chaos”.

Provisional results are scheduled to be published in late December, with the Supreme Court due to validate them four days later.

‘Deby dynasty’

 The two main platforms of parties and civil society organisations hostile to the junta have called for a boycott, hoping a low turnout will delegitimise a leader whom they accuse of perpetuating a 33-year “Deby dynasty”.

Where they can find space, they have put up posters with the words “Stop the referendum” and a big red cross.

They are hoping a low turnout will undermine the credibility of the referendum, which is “purely and simply legitimising the dynasty that they want to impose on us”, said Max Loalngar, coordinator of one of the groups, Wakit Tamma.

He was speaking to AFP by telephone from a country of exile that he declined to name.

Some advocates of a boycott were dismissive of both sides.

“They’re all the same, whether they’re campaigning for ‘yes’ or ‘no’. They’ve shared the money out between themselves,” Badono Daigou for the GCAP opposition platform told a rally.

“The result is a foregone conclusion. The ‘yes’ vote will win.”

Mahamat Deby, 37, was proclaimed transitional president by the army in April 2021, following the death of his father Idriss Deby Itno, who was killed by rebels on his way to the front line of the fighting.

Deby senior had ruled Chad, the second least developed country in the world according to the United Nations, with an iron fist for more than 30 years.

When he took power, his son promised elections after a transition period of 18 months and made a commitment to the African Union not to stand in them.

But 18 months later, his regime extended the transition by two years and authorised him to run in the presidential election, now scheduled for the end of 2024.

Opposition repressed

On the anniversary of the 18-month transition – October 20, 2022 – between 100 and 300 young men and teenagers were shot dead in N’Djamena by police and military, according to the opposition and national and international NGOs.

They had been peacefully demonstrating against the two-year extension of the transitional government.

More than 1,000 others were imprisoned before being pardoned, while dozens more were tortured or disappeared, according to NGOs and the opposition.

Most were supporters of prominent opposition figure Succes Masra, a longtime opponent of the Deby dynasty.

Yet in late October, Masra signed a reconciliation agreement with the regime and went into exile, from where he has been encouraging his followers to vote “yes” on Sunday.

Since what has come to be known as the “Black Thursday” crackdown, demonstrations have been systematically banned and many opposition leaders have fled Chad in fear of their lives.

“For there to be any legitimacy, the opposition parties and their activists must feel free to meet and campaign,” the Human Rights Watch group said in October.

“Otherwise, there is a risk that the referendum will be seen as a means of transforming the transitional government into a permanent one.”

Source: AFP