May 14, 2022 – Djibouti News Gazette

May 14, 2022

Rebels Kill 10 Civilians in Central African Republic, UN Says

BANGUI, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC — Rebels killed 10 civilians during an attack hundreds of kilometers northeast of the Central African Republic capital of Bangui, the spokesperson for the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country told AFP.

“Armed elements of the Union for Peace in Central Africa (UPC) have committed abuses on populations, killing 10 people” in the village of Bokolobo last Monday, said Lieutenant Colonel Abdoul Aziz Ouedraogo, spokesman for the Minusca force.

They had previously attacked security force positions, he added, without elaborating.

“In response to these atrocities, the force immediately deployed Mauritanian blue helmets to protect the populations,” Ouedraogo added.

He said a second patrol from the Nepalese contingent had been dispatched to the scene, which is more than 400 kilometers northeast of Bangui.

In a statement released on Friday, Ali Darassa, military leader of the UPC and chief of staff of the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), an alliance of rebel groups created in December 2020 to overthrow President Faustin Archange Touadera, condemned a massacre on Monday in the same village of “30 civilians of the Muslim faith, including 27 Fulani … by (Russian) mercenaries from the Wagner company, the FACA and the anti-balaka militia of the Touadera wing.”

The Central African Republic, the second least developed country in the world, according to the U.N., has been the scene of a civil war since 2013.

At the end of 2020, the most powerful of the many armed groups that then shared two-thirds of the territory had launched an offensive on Bangui shortly before the elections and Touadera sought help from Moscow for his impoverished army.

Hundreds of Russian paramilitaries then joined hundreds present since 2018 and made it possible, in a few months, to repel the rebels’ offensive and then to push them back from a large part of the territories and cities they controlled.

But they were unable to re-establish the authority of the state everywhere.

On March 30, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, condemned “serious human rights violations” in CAR including “murders and sexual violence” against civilians, committed by the rebel groups but also the armed forces of the regime and their Russian allies.

Source: Voice of America

May 14, 2022

Rights Group Accuses Cameroon Police of Abuses Against LGBTI People

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Cameroonian security forces are not protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex, or LGBTI, people from violent attacks and are instead arresting victims.

HRW said in a report this week that there has been an uptick in violence and abuse against LGBTI people in Cameroon as authorities continue to arrest and detain LGBTI and suspected LGBTI persons.

The report said since March 9, security forces have arbitrarily arrested at least six LGBTI people and detained 11, and that all of those arrested and detained were victims of group attacks for alleged consensual same-sex conduct and gender nonconformity. Officers beat two of those in detention, HRW said in the report.

Ilaria Allegrozzi, Human Rights Watch central Africa researcher, said Cameroon police are failing to protect LGBTI people from mob violence, conducting arbitrary arrests and detentions, perpetrating violence against LGBTI people and failing to bring perpetrators of mob violence on LGBTI people to book.

“The law criminalizing same-sex relations is [a] repressive, draconian backward law which does not only violate Cameroon’s obligation under national and international laws, but also contributes to create a climate of violence, to institutionalize an atmosphere of hate against LGBTI people,” Allegrozzi said. “And the criminalization of same-sex conduct renders LGBTI people vulnerable to violence at the hands of ordinary citizens as well as law enforcement officials.”

The HRW report said that on April 10 a crowd of about eight men armed with machetes, knives, sticks, and wooden planks, attacked a group of at least 10 LGBTI people attending a party at a private home in Messassi, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.

HRW said in the report that a local official took two of the victims to gendarmeries for protection from the mob but that the gendarmes beat and humiliated the LGBTI persons and released them after a $24 bribe was paid.

The other victims remained in the hands of the violent crowd for at least two hours. Some were injured and their money and phones were seized by the mob, HRW said.

Shashan Mbinglo, a solicitor and member of the Cameroon Bar Council, an association of lawyers, said abuses of LGBTI people’s rights are rampant in Cameroon because the central African country criminalizes same-sex relations.

“They (HRW) will say our law is discriminatory, unfair but they forget that our laws are founded not just on principles of justice, fairness, equality as obtains globally, but on traditions and customs peculiar to us, Mbinglo said. “The laws do not permit, the laws do not accommodate, the laws are against what the LGBTI stand for. Most of them (LGBTI persons) think it is normal to come out on social media forgetting that they expose themselves to assault and attacks.”

On state broadcaster CRTV, Cameroonian police denied HRW’s allegations that they abuse LGBTI persons’ rights. The police said they are there to enforce the laws and protect all civilians from violence and brutality.

Under Cameroon’s penal code, people found guilty of same-sex relations risk up to five years in prison.

HRW said by criminalizing LGBTI relations, Cameroon not only violates its obligations under national and international law but condones an atmosphere of violence and hate against LGBTI people.

Source: Voice of America

May 14, 2022

South Africa Has New Surge of COVID From Omicron Sub-Variants

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa is experiencing a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by two omicron sub-variants, according to health experts.

For about three weeks the country has seen increasing numbers of new cases and somewhat higher hospitalizations, but not increases in severe cases and deaths, said professor Marta Nunes, a researcher at Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Analytics at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

“We’re still very early in this increase period, so I don’t want to really call it a wave,” Nunes said. “We are seeing a slight, a small increase in hospitalizations and really very few deaths.”

South Africa’s new cases have gone from an average of 300 per day in early April to about 8,000 per day this week. Nunes says the actual number of new cases is probably much higher because the symptoms are mild and many who get sick are not getting tested.

South Africa’s new surge is from two variations of omicron, BA.4 and BA.5, which appear to be very much like the original strain of omicron that was first identified in South Africa and Botswana late last year and swept around the globe.

“The majority of new cases are from these two strains. They are still omicron … but just genomically somewhat different,” said Nunes. The new versions appear to be able to infect people who have immunity from earlier COVID infections and vaccinations, but they cause generally mild disease, she said. In South Africa, 45% of adults are fully vaccinated, although about 85% of the population is thought to have some immunity based on past exposure to the virus.

“It looks like the vaccines still protect against severe disease,” Nunes said.

Nunes said that the BA.4 and BA.5 strains of omicron have spread to other countries in southern Africa and a few European countries, but it is too early to tell if they will spread across the globe, as omicron did.

The increase in COVID cases is coming as South Africa is entering the Southern Hemisphere’s colder winter months and the country is seeing a rise in cases of flu.

At a COVID testing center in the Chiawelo area of Soweto, many people are coming in to be tested for COVID but are learning they have the flu.

“Now we’re in flu season … so it’s flu versus COVID-19,” said Magdeline Matsoso, site manager at the Chiawelo vaccination center. She said people come for testing because they have COVID symptoms.

“When we do the tests, you find that the majority of them, they are negative when it comes to COVID, but they do have flu symptoms,” said Matsoso. “So they get flu treatment and then they go home because the majority is related to flu and not COVID.”

Vuyo Lumkwani was one of those who came to get tested.

“I wasn’t feeling well when I woke up this morning. I woke up with body pains, a headache, blocked (nose), feeling dizzy, so I decided to come here,” she said.

“I was terrified about my symptoms because I thought it might be COVID-19, but I told myself that I’d be OK because I have been vaccinated,” said Lumkwani. She said she was relieved to be diagnosed with the flu. She was advised to go home with some medications and get some rest.

Source: Voice of America