Over 1,000 people protested outside the federal courthouse for the Southern District of Texas in Brownsville on Thursday, decrying the separation of undocumented children from their parents.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Campaigns Director Natalie Montelongo was attended the protest. She said: “there was a recent injunction that happened two nights ago that demanded that children under five be reunited within 14 days and the rest of the children within 30 days, but we must continue vocalising our views and mobilising in action to make sure the administration implements that.”

Another protester, Ryan, said that it was fundamental that people start taking action. “We absolutely have to occupy spaces. This won’t be done through voting anymore. We cannot turn this around through legislation or bureaucracy”, he said.

The immigration policy which entailed separating children from their parents as the parents awaited trial caused intense criticism both within the country and abroad. Trump eventually signed an executive order allowing children to remain with their parents as they wait for trial.

Source: Ruptly

Malian forces involved in the fight against Islamist militants in the West African nation executed 12 civilians in retaliation after a soldier was killed in an attack in May, the U.N. mission in Mali said on Tuesday.

Mali’s fight against jihadist groups in the centre and north of the country has been marred by a series of alleged abuses, some of which the government has acknowledged.

Those abuses, as well as tit-for-tat attacks by rival ethnic groups, have fuelled surging violence across vast swathes of Mali, raising doubts about the government’s ability to organise a presidential election scheduled for July 29.

The U.N. mission in Mali, MINUSMA, said in a statement that its investigation had concluded that Malian troops from the G5 Sahel – a joint task force with Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania – “summarily and/or arbitrarily executed 12 civilians at the Boulkessy cattle market” on May 19.

It said that the report has been handed to Mali’s government and that Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the head of MINUSMA, “calls on the Malian authorities to ensure that the investigation underway is carried out as quickly as possible”.

There was no immediate comment from Malian authorities. ​

Mali’s government said last week that some of its soldiers were implicated in gross rights violations after the discovery of mass graves in central Mali. Rights groups have alleged widespread abuses, but the government has rejected those claims.

Source: Africa News

Cameroon’s government says the number of soldiers and police killed while fighting armed English-speaking separatists who want to split from the French speaking regions of the country has increased from 80 to more than 100 in the last two weeks and kidnapping of members of the security forces also continue to rise.

With civilians and separatists complaining of widespread human rights abuses by the military and police, calls are growing for genuine dialogue to end the war.

Members of civil society are pressing Cameroonian President Paul Biya to free arrested leaders of armed groups for peace to return and the carnage to stop.

Speaking before an unusually quiet parliament, Cameroon Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo read the names of soldiers and policemen who have died in the war against armed separatists fighting for the independence of an English-speaking-state in Cameroon.

As Beti Assomo read through the list, VOA counted more than 120 names of slain servicemen.

The defense minister was invited by the lawmakers to give a balance sheet of a war that Cameroon president Paul Biya declared seven months ago against people he said were “terrorists” wanting to divide his country.

Robert Bapooh Lipot, a UPC opposition political party lawmaker, says it was the most touching plenary session of parliament he has ever witnessed in Cameroon.

“This is the worst thing which can happen to a soldier,” he said. “A soldier knows that he can die while defending the integrity of his nation against another army, but never against its own citizens. That is why we think that those who took guns against our nation, they must now abandon this option and know that we are belonging to the same country.”

The figures given by Beti Assomo indicate that about 40 more soldiers had lost their lives in less than one week since Cameroon’s prime minister, Philemon Yang, announced that the country had lost about 84 military and policemen and launched a $23 million emergency humanitarian assistance plan for hundreds of thousands of citizens who he said live in precarious and life-threatening conditions in Cameroon and in neighboring Nigeria due to war.

He said hundreds had been killed, and 74,000 internally displaced persons were facing famine along with disastrous health conditions. He said 21,000 others had fled to Nigeria.

United Nations estimates are even higher. The world body says more than 100,000 people, a majority of them school-aged children, have fled the violence in the English-speaking regions for safer locations. Forty thousand have crossed over to Nigeria and many are missing.

A new report published two weeks ago by the international human rights group Amnesty International criticizes both the Cameroon military and armed separatists for using unnecessary and excessive force, stating that civilians are frequently caught up in the violence.

Amnesty said Cameroon’s military has been responding with arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful killings and destruction of property, which the group says radicalizes youths and drives them to join the separatists. Cameroonian government officials described Amnesty’s allegations as unfounded.

Emmanuel Tatah, a civil society activist and leader of a group known as Unite Cameroon, says the conflict continues to claim lives because many people do not trust the military and the leadership.

“We should be guided by truth. There is a lack of confidence between the people, the government and the institutions,” he said.

There have been calls for President Biya to be open to dialogue and to release Ayuk Tabe, the man who proclaimed himself as president of what he called the English-speaking “Republic of Ambazonia.” Tabe was arrested in Nigeria with 47 of his collaborators and extradited to Cameroon. His supporters have vowed on social media that Cameroon will not have peace if he and his peers are not released.

Violence broke out in the English-speaking northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon in November 2016 when a strike by English-speaking lawyers and teachers against what they described a marginalization by the French-speaking majority in the bilingual country degenerated into calls for secession. In November 2017, President Paul Biya declared war on the separatists, labeling them “terrorists.”

Biya has said on several occasions he is not ready to listen to anything that may compromise the unity of his country.

Source: VOA

A former baron of the Biya Francophone regime with strong ties to the Francophone dominated security services in Yaoundé has hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that the Cameroon government has hatched diabolic plots aimed at the assassination of prominent Southern Cameroons activists in Europe and America including Mark Bareta, Eric Tataw and Tapang Ivo. The onetime cabinet minister and close aide to President Biya told our chief intelligence officer in Yaoundé that the Biya regime has set up numerous anti Ambazonian cells in Europe and the USA, which are led by the security chiefs of the various Cameroon embassies.

The Biya acolyte whose name we are withholding went on to say Yaoundé has requested and gotten the support of some countries in the CEMAC region to help in carrying out the mission. We also gathered from a well-placed source that discussions were held on whether to recruit the services of assassination squads in Eastern Europe or in South Africa.

A huge number of Francophone army soldiers have been deployed to Southern Cameroons and tasked with gunning down family relations of those serving with the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. All these would-be assassins have been told to operate as factions within the Ambazonia Restoration Forces but must obey commands being issued by the military leadership based in Buea, our source disclosed.

Ever since the crisis in Southern Cameroons started two years ago, Francophone army officers have tortured and sexually abused hundreds of Ambazonia detainees at their detention centers in Yaoundé, Mbouda, Douala and Buea. Many of the Southern Cameroonians, who are held without charges, have been sodomized, raped, probed and stripped down in Kondengui and New Bell prisons.

Ambazonian detainees who resisted were killed and those still being held are wishing for death every day and can’t find it. The French government is French Cameroun’s key partner in its deadly war against Southern Cameroons. The United Nations announced in a statement recently that the crisis in Southern Cameroons had left 160,000 civilians displaced and many injured. The United Nations also stated that it had registered some 21,000 Southern Cameroons refugees in the Cross River State in Nigeria.

By Chi Prudence Asong

UN human rights investigators have accused security forces and militia fighters in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) of committing atrocities amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity in the restive central region of Kasai.

In a report denouncing “a serious problem of impunity”, the investigators on Tuesday called on the Kinshasa government to prosecute perpetrators and provide justice to victims.

“Some of the abuses committed by the defense and security forces, the (pro-government) Bana Mura militia and the (rebel) Kamwina Nsapu militia constitute crimes against humanity (and) war crimes,” independent experts said in the report, which will be presented to the UN Rights Council next month.

The UN report, based on interviews with 524 victims, witnesses and perpetrators, focused on violations in Kasai.

The ethnic conflict was marked by the burning down of villages, the UN report said, and Kamwina Nsapu forced child soldiers to decapitate enemies.

The Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and the allied militia opposed the Kamwina Nsapu militia in a partially ethnic conflict that largely ended at the end of 2017. The year-long rebellion killed up to 5,000 people and forced some 1.5 million people from their homes.

“Numerous acts have been committed by the FARDC and the Kamwina Nsapu militia against people not participating directly in the hostilities … including murder, mutilation, rape and other forms of sexual violence, looting … and conscription of children under age 15,” the report said.

“Many children have been abducted, wounded, mutilated, detained or executed,” the report said. “Some saw their parents beaten, decapitated or their mothers raped. Many were forced to fight, put on the front lines without arms or with fake weapons, knives and sometimes traditional rifles. They were forced to kill and decapitate,” it said.

In July 2017, a Congolese court convicted seven soldiers of the murder of suspected militia members in Kasai after a video showed soldiers shooting people at point blank range.

Back in March, militants also killed two UN workers, a Swede and an American, after abducting them in the same region.

Over a dozen people have been detained in connection with the crime but separate UN experts complained that Congolese authorities were obstructing their efforts to assist probe.

The conflict in the previously peaceful Kasai region was one of a series of deadly flare-ups to hit Congo around the time long-serving President Joseph Kabila. The guerrilla movement has been leading a bloody rebellion against moves by Kabila to extend his stay in power.

The UN, which has discovered dozens of mass graves in the area, accuses both security forces and the militants of gross human rights violations.

Millions died in wars around the turn of the century across the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UN food agency warned last year that more than three million people were at risk of starvation in in Congo’s Kasai province.
Source: Presstv

Named as a powerful woman on the continent by CNN, Media Entrepreneur and Head of Digital Media and Partnership for Forbes Africa, Peace Hyde, has opened another branch of her innovative entrepreneurship development and skills acquisition non-profit, Aim Higher Africa (http://AimHigherAfrica.com/) in Lagos.

Located in the Silicon Valley of Nigeria, Yaba, The AHA skills acquisition center is designed to train unemployed youth and grassroot entrepreneurs as well as startups through its innovative Mind-set Reorientation and Design Thinking Curriculum (MRDT) to build scalable and sustainable businesses that will create value for their communities and also provide opportunities for the thousands of unemployed youth in Lagos.

“Aim Higher Africa MRDT Curriculum responds to the problem of unemployment through youth entrepreneurship, which offers innovative solutions for economic growth among young people. To address these critical issues, we are working with international organizations, the private sector and development organizations to increase and improve young people’s access to financial services, financial literacy and entrepreneurship and employment skills training,” says Hyde.

This year, the organization was profiled on CNN for its impact and building over 600 businesses in West Africa leading to some 3000 jobs for youth. Hyde who also has a background as a senior management executive from a leading UK education institution where she also taught as a Science teacher for 7 years, created the MRDT curriculum along with innovation and entrepreneurship professor, Dr. Gordon Adomdza, PHD. holder from the University of Waterloo and a lecturer at Harvard University.

“Our new center has a vision of helping entrepreneurial youth, build their business skills, their links to markets and access support such as from financial services and through mentoring. The world is bursting with opportunity; every day, new inventions answer questions we had never thought to ask.”

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Aim Higher Africa.

Officials from North and South Korea have met to discuss connecting the railways that run useless across their border amid a rapprochement on the long-divided peninsula.

The talks were held in the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas on Tuesday, the first on the issue in 10 years.

A train line connecting Seoul to Pyongyang and on to Sinuiju on the Chinese border already exists. It was built by Japan in the early 20th century, long before the 1950-53 Korean War, which politically divided the two Koreas.

Linking up the railways and modernizing the North’s aging rail infrastructure would benefit trade-dependent South Korea as it would give it a land route to the markets of China, Russia, and on to Europe.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have significantly eased since January this year, when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed interest in the betterment of relations with South Korea. Vigorous diplomacy soon followed, and Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in then met in a historic summit.

Later, the US, too, engaged in diplomacy with Pyongyang, which culminated in a summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore on June 12.

The two Koreas have, however, advanced their relations far more swiftly than Washington and Pyongyang. The US continues to maintain harsh sanctions on the North.

South Korea’s chief delegate Kim Jeong-ryeol said in the Tuesday meeting that progress on the railway issue would only become possible after international restrictions on North Korea are eased.

“But, he said, “we can thoroughly research and study various projects we can pursue after the sanctions are lifted.”

The UN human rights office has urged the Trump administration to find alternatives to its present immigration policies and stop detaining migrant children.

“While we acknowledge the US government’s decision not to continue separating children from their parents, we understand that the practice now will be to detain the children with their parents,” UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a Geneva briefing on Friday.

“We have said time and again the children should never be detained in relation to their or their parents’ migration status. It is never in the best interests of the child for them to be detained,” Shamdasani added.

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order to halt family separations at the country’s southern border, but asserted that his policy against illegal border crossing was still in place.

This comes as the Trump administration has reportedly decided to place up to 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on military bases starting as early as next month.

According to a new Pentagon memo, the request to the Department of Defense for assistance was made by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“HHS has requested DOD determine its capabilities to provide up to 20,000 temporary beds for unaccompanied children at DOD installations,” according to a notification, sent to lawmakers on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the Defense Department said later that Pentagon will make space available on military bases for the children detained after illegally crossing the US-Mexico border.

Thousands of people have been protesting in several US cities in recent days and activists are planning nationwide protests on June 30 following reports on the inhumane treatment of immigrants.

In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy towards undocumented migrants and refugees, promising to prosecute those who crossed the southern border illegally. Part of that approach has been separating children from their parents who are detained.

Currently, there are over 10,000 children being detained in the United States.

In a new 37 page report, the rights watchdog Amnesty International has documented “unlawful killings, destruction of private property, arbitrary arrests and torture” in two restive regions in Cameroon tied to a power struggle pitting French against English-speaking Cameroonians.

In the Amnesty report titled, “A turn for the worse: Violence and human rights violations in Anglophone Cameroon”, victims gave harrowing accounts of beatings and allegations of simulated electrocution and torture carried out by the military as well as attacks on schools and teachers by armed Anglophone separatists.

“Far from resolving the crisis, the clampdown on any form of dissent and the heavy-handed response by the Cameroonian authorities and security forces appear to have empowered and created space for more radical and violent movements to emerge, with a focus on secession and armed struggle,” Amnesty said.

Unrest in Cameroon drew international attention in November 2016 when English-speaking teachers and lawyers in the northwest and southwest began calling for reforms and greater autonomy. They marched on the streets, criticizing what they called the overbearing influence of French in the country, which has English and French as its official languages.

Last month, a military tribunal sentenced seven English-speaking detainees to 10 to 15 years in prison in connection with the unrest that has paralyzed business. Among them was radio host Mancho Bibixy, leader of the so-called “coffin revolution” who used an open casket in street demonstrations calling for better conditions for the poor.

While news accounts refer to “separatists” and “Anglophones”, few discuss the historic ties of the “separatists” to Ambazonia, the southern territory of Cameroon founded for freed slaves in the 19th century, ceded to Germany, regained by the armies of France, Britain and Belgium and finally becoming a UN trust territory in 1961.

Among the news sites that follow Ambazonia is the U.S.-based Waging Nonviolence. In a story this month on the deteriorating situation in southern Cameroon, they write:

“The patience of some Ambazonians has worn thin over the past several months, as government repression continues to escalate. While the majority have stuck with nonviolent resistance, a violent flank of separatists have armed themselves, using guerrilla tactics to abduct and kill agents of (President Paul) Biya’s government. This has enabled Biya to brand the military occupation of Ambazonia as a struggle against terrorism. And scorched-earth tactics have increased since late 2017 as a result.”

Culled from The Chronicle

Culled from Reuters