Day: December 12, 2021

Rebellious Tigrayan forces have recaptured the Ethiopian town of Lalibela, witnesses told Reuters on Sunday, less than two weeks after the military and its allies took control of it as part of a broader offensive that pushed back Tigrayan forces on multiple fronts.

Lalibela is a town in the Amhara region bordering the northern region of Tigray that is famed for its churches hewn from single lumps of rock and has been designated a U.N. World Heritage site.

Government spokesperson Legesse Tulu and a military spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on the reported recapture of the town by forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda also did not respond to a Reuters phone call seeking comment. He tweeted a comment saying “our forces are doing very, very, very good!” but gave no details.

One of the witnesses who spoke to Reuters said that Amhara forces, who are allies of the Ethiopian government, began leaving Lalibela on Saturday night.

“The last batch left this morning. We heard gunshots from a distance last night, but the Tigrayan forces recaptured Lalibela without firing guns in the town,” the witness, a hotel receptionist, said by phone.

A second witness told Reuters on Sunday that residents had begun fleeing the town. “We panicked, we never saw this coming. TPLF forces are now patrolling the town wearing their uniforms,” the witness said.

Tigrayan forces had taken control of the town in early August, as part of a push into Amhara territory that began in July. But the tide turned against the Tigrayans at the end of November after they had threatened to march on the capital.

The government declared a state of emergency and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed went to the frontlines to direct an offensive. On Dec. 1, the Ethiopian military and Amhara forces recaptured Lalibela, a site of enormous religious significance.

The year-old conflict between the federal government and the leadership of Tigray has killed thousands of civilians, forced millions to flee their homes, and made more than 9 million people dependent on food aid.

On Sunday, Ethiopian Minister of Education Birhanu Nega said Amhara would need over 11 billion birr ($220 million) to rebuild 4,000 educational institutions and schools that he said were destroyed by Tigrayan forces.

Ethiopian state television has also published pictures of what it described as the looting of a hospital in the town of Dessie by Tigrayan forces. Footage showed empty shelves and boxes of medicines and equipment destroyed or strewn on the floor.

Reuters was unable to reach the TPLF spokesperson for a comment.

Source: Voice of America

The United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is condemning the forced expulsion of asylum seekers and migrants by Libyan authorities, warning of the risks many face when returned to the homes they fled to escape persecution.

Two large groups of Sudanese are among those forcibly deported from Libya over the past month. United Nations monitors say most have been summarily expelled from the Ganfouda and al-Kufra detention centers. Both centers are controlled by the Interior Ministry’s Department for Combatting illegal Migration. The monitors say the Sudanese apparently have been transported across the Sahara Desert to the Libya-Sudan border and dumped there.

The U.N. Human Rights Office says Libya’s expulsion of the Sudanese asylum seekers and migrants without due process and procedural guarantees violates international human rights and refugee law.

U.N. spokesman Rupert Colville says the group of 18 Sudanese expelled Monday reportedly were arrested, detained, and arbitrarily expelled. He says no hearing was held to assess their need for protection from persecution, torture, and other abuse in their home country. He says they were not granted legal assistance.

“Those expelled have often already survived a range of other serious human rights violations and abuses in Libya at the hands of both state and nonstate actors, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, trafficking, sexual violence, torture and ill-treatment,” he said.

Colville says other migrants from Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Chad —including children and pregnant women — also have been detained in recent months. He says they either already have been expelled or are at imminent risk of deportation.

“Now of immediate concern is a group of 24 Eritreans who are currently being held in the same Ganfouda detention center, and who are believed also to be at risk of imminent deportation,” he said. “On the third of December, we were informed that, in a pattern mirroring the experience of the expelled Sudanese, they had been transferred to the al-Kufra detention center in preparation for their deportation.”

The U.N. high commissioner’s office is calling on the authorities to protect the rights of all asylum seekers and migrants in Libya. It says they should investigate all claims of violations and abuse and bring perpetrators to justice in fair trials. It urges Libya to meet its obligations under international human rights law, which prohibits collective expulsions.

Source: Voice of America

The head of Mali’s military-dominated government on Sunday promised west Africa’s regional bloc he would provide it with an election timetable by January 2022.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) suspended Mali following military coups in August 2020 and May 2021, sanctioning officials deemed responsible for delaying elections and threatening further measures.

West African leaders on Sunday were due to hold a summit in Nigeria’s capital Abuja to discuss how to respond to Mali’s failure to hold elections by February 2022 before a return to civilian rule.

The head of Mali’s transitional government, Colonel Assimi Goita justified postponing the election and holding a national consultation which he said would be “indispensable” for peace and stability.

“Mali… commits to providing you with a detailed timetable by January 31, 2022 at the latest that could be discussed during an ECOWAS mission,” Goita wrote to the heady of the bloc of West African states head, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, in a letter obtained by AFP.

“The return to constitutional order is and will remain my number one priority,” Goita said.

Goita emerged as Mali’s strongman leader after a coup that toppled former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020.

Several civil society organizations are boycotting the consultation launched on Saturday.

The ECOWAS summit will also discuss vaccine supplies, travel bans imposed on African countries and Guinea, which has been under military rule since September after a coup ousted former president Alpha Conde.

Source: Voice of America

South Africa on Sunday paid an official tribute to FW de Klerk, the final president of white rule, who freed Nelson Mandela from prison and steered the country from apartheid to democracy.

De Klerk died on November 11 aged 85 following a battle with cancer. Four days of national mourning were declared in his honor.

He served as president from 1989 to 1994 and is remembered most for leading South Africa’s transition from white-minority rule to the first multi-racial elections in 1994.

South Africa on Sunday paid an official tribute to FW de Klerk, the final president of white rule, who freed Nelson Mandela from prison and steered the country from apartheid to democracy.

De Klerk died on November 11 aged 85 following a battle with cancer. Four days of national mourning were declared in his honor.

He served as president from 1989 to 1994 and is remembered most for leading South Africa’s transition from white-minority rule to the first multi-racial elections in 1994.

De Klerk also shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela in 1993 after freeing him from prison in 1990. Mandela then became South Africa’s first black president after his African National Congress party won the 1994 election.

President Cyril Ramaphosa attended Cape Town’s Protestant Groote Kerk — one of South Africa’s oldest churches — on Sunday morning to deliver a eulogy in De Klerk’s honor.

“He was often misunderstood due to his over-correctness,” De Klerk’s widow Elita Georgiadis told around 200 attendees.

“I shall never forget this man who mesmerized me, who made me want to help him achieve this huge task ahead of him.”

A private mass and the national anthem preceded the ceremony, which featured a portrait of De Klerk between two candles and a choir decorated with white flowers.

Despite a positive reputation abroad, De Klerk divided opinion in South Africa and his death prompted mixed reactions.

Critics say he remains inseparable from apartheid-era crimes and could have been held accountable for them had he lived longer.

De Klerk represented the National Party, which in 1948 formally established apartheid’s racial segregation and disenfranchisement of South Africa’s non-white majority.

Outside the church, a small group of protesters held signs saying, “Justice denied” and “Justice for apartheid victims” and were swiftly led away by police.

The surrounding area was closed to traffic and placed under high security.

Comments in his final years also tarnished De Klerk’s image amid criticism for his failure to apologize officially for the crimes of apartheid.

In 2020, he denied apartheid was a crime against humanity before retracting the statement and apologizing.

De Klerk’s foundation issued a posthumous video apologizing “for the pain, hurt, indignity and damage that apartheid has done” to South Africa’s non-white populations.

Source: Voice of America