Day: August 25, 2021

A plane carrying 51 people fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan has landed in Uganda, where the evacuees have been granted temporary asylum, Uganda’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

The ministry said the plane carrying 51 Afghan nationals, including men, women and children, landed Wednesday in Entebbe, where they were received by U.S. Ambassador to Uganda Natalie Brown. The evacuees were taken by bus convoy to a hotel. A Ugandan government spokesperson told VOA’s Swahili Service the Afghans are in transit and would be sent to a third country.

Other Afghan nationals fleeing their homeland are expected to arrive in Uganda in coming days.

The foreign ministry said the move follows a U.S. request to provide temporary asylum to Afghans and other travelers on their way to the United States and other parts of the world.

Speaking to VOA correspondent Peter Clottey earlier this week, Uganda’s foreign minister, General Al-Haji Abubaker Odongo Jeje, said the East African country had the capacity to provide safe refuge for 2,000 evacuees.

“We have the capacity, we have the area, we have the land,” Odongo said, noting that his government is still negotiating terms. “… We will discuss our responsibilities, our responsibilities and what the roles and responsibilities of our partners in this operation. So, it will not be a Ugandan thing alone.”

Uganda hosts about 1.5 million refugees worldwide — mostly from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo — according to the United Nations.

Brian George, the U.S. Mission head of Public Affairs, expressed appreciation for Uganda’s generosity.

“The government of Uganda has once again demonstrated a willingness to play its part in matters of international concern. We commend its efforts and those of the local and international organizations in Uganda who are providing humanitarian support in partnership with the government of Uganda for these evacuees from Afghanistan.”

Source: Voice of America

Malawi’s Constitutional Court has agreed to hear a challenge to last year’s presidential election rerun from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party. President Lazarus Chakwera defeated the DPP’s Peter Mutharika in the rerun after the court nullified the 2019 election, which Mutharika had won. The DPP argues the rerun should also be nullified after the High Court quashed the appointment of four DPP commissioners to the Malawi Electoral Commission.

This past June, the High Court quashed the appointment of four DPP commissioners Jean Mathanga, Linda Kunje, Steven Duwa and Arthur Nanthuru, saying their appointment was invalid and unconstitutional.

The court acted after the governing Malawi Congress Party had challenged the appointment of the commissioners.

In his ruling, Judge Kenyatta Nyirenda further said the quashing of the appointments did not affect the validity of the June 2020 re-run presidential election.

But the opposition DPP said Nyirenda erred in his ruling because he touched on issues beyond his mandate.

The party wants the court to also invalidate the rerun election because it was managed by commissioners who it says were wrongly appointed.

They argue that the Malawi Constitution does not recognize an election that was presided over by undeserving commissioners.

Charles Mhango is a lawyer for the opposition DPP.

“My clients believe strongly that the elections that took place on 23rd June, electing President Chakwera, is also null and void because the principal of the law is very clear; out of nothing, come nothing,” he said.

Critics fear the case will result in another long and protracted legal battle which will cost the government a lot of money.

They believe the case could have been avoided had the government listened to the advice of the former attorney general, Chikosa Silungwe, that the government should recognize the commissioners.

Osman Kennedy, a law lecturer at Blantyre International University, told VOA that serious implications will happen only if the court rules in favor of the DPP.

“Because what will happen is that we will revert back to 2020 when Mutharika was the president. Because the court may say ‘no, if you [President Chakwera] were elected by the commission that was illegal, then you were not elected, then you were no longer the president and therefore we are reverting the status quo back to Mutharika and Chilima respectively.’”

Social commentator Humphrey Mvula said the case demonstrates failure by political leaders to accept electoral defeat.

“Our challenge as most African countries including Malawi is that we rarely accept that we have lost the elections. We always want to fight and always want the court to tell us that we have lost the elections. Even at that time, we have been able to trash the decision of the court,” he said.

Former president Mutharika has said he does not recognize the results of the rerun election he lost to Chakwera.

In the meantime, the Constitutional Court has set Monday next week to decide whether to proceed with the case and if so, how.

Source: Voice of America

The former president of Chad, Hissène Habré, died on Tuesday at age 79, five years into a life sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

His trial in Senegal marked the first time an African country tried a former leader of another African country for crimes committed in office. However, his conviction was less than perfect justice.

Hissène Habré oversaw the killing and torture of tens of thousands of people during his rule as Chad’s president from 1982 to 1990. He was also accused of rape and sexual slavery.

At the time, Habré received support from the United States and France to defend against Libya’s invasions of northern Chad.

He was found guilty of crimes against humanity in 2016 by a Senegalese court, and was still serving his life sentence when he died of COVID-19.

Allan Ngari is the organized crime observatory coordinator for West Africa with the Institute of Security Studies in Dakar.

“It was the first time for universal jurisdiction to be successful in Africa. It was the first time that a former head of state was found guilty for personally committing acts of rape. But it came almost 26 years later from when he was deposed of presidency in Chad,“ he said.

Habré’s victims and their supporters worked tirelessly over those years to bring the former dictator to justice.

Reed Brody is a member of the International Commission of Jurists and a human rights lawyer who has worked with Habré’s victims since 1999.

“That a band of torture victims never gave up and were able to turn the tables and bring a dictator to justice in Africa before an African court — these are enormous achievements that I feel proud of and that I know the victims feel proud of,“ he said.

One of those victims is Clément Abaifouta, the president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of the Hissène Habré Regime.

Abaifouta endured four years of torture at the hands of Habré’s regime. During that time he not only witnessed the deaths of many of his co-detainees from torture, illness and sexual violence, but he was forced to dig their graves.

He says when Hissène Habré was convicted, all of Africa celebrated and jumped for joy because Africans proved they were capable of trying dictators on African soil. “The case of Hissène Habré is a lesson for all dictators: you cannot hide. Justice is like the sun. It will always catch you,” he said.

Habré and the Chadian government were ordered to pay Abaifouta and the other victims tens of millions of dollars, and the African Union was tasked with setting up a trust fund. The victims, however, have yet to see a penny and the fund was never established.

Abaifouta said he will continue to pressure the Senegalese authorities and the African Union to begin the process of reparations.

Habre is to be buried in Dakar on Thursday, his family told the Agence France-Presse.

Source: Voice of America