The man had handed himself in to authorities, but was dragged out of a police van and set on fire
Algerian police have announced another 25 arrests over the lynching of a man falsely accused of starting deadly forest fires last week, taking the total number of suspects to 61.
The latest arrests were made in several provinces across the country, police said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that the suspects were also accused of damaging public and police property.
Continue reading...The fate of a planned line from Uganda to Tanzania will be the first test of whether anyone was listening to António Guterres’ call to end fossil fuels
If there is one world leader trying to look out for the planet as a whole, not just their own nation, it’s the UN secretary general. Last week, António Guterres was resolute in the wake of the damning report from the IPCC on the perilious climate crisis. It should, he said, sound “a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet”.
He called for an end to “all new fossil fuel exploration and production”, and told countries to shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy.
Continue reading...Five years after Willie Kimani’s death, his father is still waiting for a resolution. But as killings continue, cases like his pile up within a crippled justice system
Paul Kinuthia will never forget the moment he saw his son’s body lying on the bank of the river he played in as a child. He threw his hands up in despair and begged God to intervene.
It has been five years since Kinuthia’s son, Willie Kimani, a lawyer, was murdered along with his client, Josephat Mwenda and driver, Joseph Muiruri, in Nairobi in June 2016. At the time, Kimani was representing Mwenda in court, after Mwenda had been shot and injured by police.
Continue reading...While western governments get ready to administer booster shots, millions in Africa are still completely unprotected
In a shocking symbol of the west’s failure to honour its promise of equitable vaccine distribution, millions of Covid vaccines manufactured in Africa that should have saved the lives of Africans have been shipped to Europe in recent weeks. Indeed, this month and next, I have learned from African leaders that about 10m single-shot Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines filled and finished at the Aspen factory in South Africa will be exported to Europe, at the very time that Africa is grappling with its deadliest wave of Covid-19 infections yet.
Compared with the swift development of the pathbreaking Covid vaccines, getting shots into all the world’s arms should be straightforward. But vaccine nationalism – and Europe’s neocolonial approach to global health – is dividing the world into rich and protected people, who live, and those who are poor, unprotected and at risk of dying.
Continue reading...Former UK prime minister calls on western leaders to convene summit to address Africa’s vaccine deficit
Gordon Brown has accused the EU of adopting a “neocolonial approach” to the supply of Covid-19 vaccines and demanded rich western nations relinquish their stranglehold on pandemic treatments.
The former UK prime minister has called on Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Mario Draghi to convene a special summit to coincide with next month’s UN general assembly in New York to address Africa’s vaccine deficit.
Continue reading...From Khartoum to Kansas, vaccine conspiracy theorists share one thing in common: they have lost their faith in government
It’s hard to explain what it feels like when someone you thought you knew intimately starts to repeat conspiracy theories about the pandemic and vaccines. You don’t really grasp what’s happening immediately: it’s too vast and jarring a realisation to gulp down in one go. So you go through phases. First you clutch at straws. Perhaps it’s a bad joke, or they didn’t really mean it, or they’re just misinformed. Then you enter a stage of hot, disorienting rage and frustrated remonstration. Once that is spent, finally you cool off. But inside you is a leaden realisation that not only is this person you love putting their life at risk: perhaps you never really knew them at all.
People with the wildest theories about the pandemic can be found in countries even where most people don’t have access to the internet, cable TV or the shock jocks of commercial radio. A common impulse is to write off those espousing conspiracies, consigning them to the casualties claimed by WhatsApp groups, disinformation or silent mental health issues. These things may be true – but vaccine hesitancy is a symptom of broader failures. What all people wary of vaccines have in common, from Khartoum to Kansas, is their trust in the state has been eroded. Without understanding this, we will be fated to keep channelling our frustrations towards individuals without grasping why they have lost trust in the first place.
Continue reading...Woman, 18, is in intensive care in Abidjan as emergency plan to identify her contacts begins
Ivory Coast has recorded a case of Ebola, its health minister has said, the first occurrence of the deadly disease in the country in nearly three decades.
Officials at the Institut Pasteur confirmed the case after testing samples taken from an 18-year-old Guinean woman, health minister Pierre N’Gou Demba said on RTI state television.
Continue reading...A round-up of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Thailand to Mexico
Continue reading...Hundreds of sexual assaults reported in south-east Tanganyika province as armed groups fight over goldmines
The UN has raised the alarm over widespread, systematic sexual violence in the south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), saying women were reporting armed groups carrying out mass rape.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, said its staff have heard horrific testimonies from forcibly displaced persons in Tanganyika province.
Continue reading...Tributes paid to doctor whose NGO set up world-class hospitals in war zones such as Iraq, Yemen and Sudan
Tributes have been paid to Gino Strada, the Italian surgeon and “maestro of humanity” known for setting up world-class hospitals for the victims of war, who has died aged 73.
The medic, who in 1994 co-founded the humanitarian organisation Emergency to provide free, quality healthcare for those injured in conflict, died on Friday in France, reports said.
Continue reading...The writer on a stressful commute in Nigeria’s largest city on a day of downpours in 2007
• Read other authors on their memorable urban summers
It had been raining all day the way an old goat pees, in fits and starts, with bleats of sunshine in between. This was a weekday in July 2007, the magical year I moved to Lagos, and only a few months into the nine-to-five that lured me over. The excitement of waking up every day at 5am and catching a jam-packed danfo bus for the two-hour commute had since curdled in my wannabe-writer’s heart. I was standing at Obalende bus stop that afternoon after work, with no bus in sight for the past 40 minutes and rumours of a citywide gridlock swirling around, when the rain started again, a sun shower, proof, they say, that a lion is being born.
Fare hikes were expected on days of heavy traffic, but this time the fare had tripled. Outraged howls rent the air
Continue reading...Damage from pandemic could quash ambitions, exacerbate tensions and deepen repression in parts of continent
Analysts and experts are warning of many years of instability across Africa, possibly leading to wars and political upheavals, as the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic deepens across the continent.
Though many of the likely consequences are yet to become evident, recent unrest in southern Africa, increased extremist violence in the Sahel and growing instability in parts of west Africa can all be attributed in part to the outbreak, observers say.
Continue reading...Fears grow that military presence and alleged restrictions on opposition campaign could tarnish reputation for fair elections
As Zambia goes to the polls today, fears are growing that political meddling in the process could push its long-treasured democracy towards a “tipping point”.
Zambia has long been considered a model of democracy for its neighbours. But today’s vote has been accompanied by a military deployment, while the run-up to the election has been marred by political violence and restrictions on opposition campaigning, analysts and human rights monitors have said.
Continue reading...Medics fear government is failing to gather data as ‘social media conspiracies’ slow vaccination take-up
Lesotho’s prime minister, Moeketsi Majoro, has said he is isolating after testing positive for Covid-19, as doctors warned that the true tally of cases in the country was going unrecorded.
Majoro tweeted that he had taken a travel-related test that came back positive.
Continue reading...Rights defenders describe threats and abuse while working to protect their communities
A report has found that sex worker activists are among the most at risk human rights defenders in the world. Published on Thursday by Front Line Defenders following a four-year investigation, it found activists face multiple threats and violent attacks. Their visibility within their communities makes them more vulnerable to abuse, the report said.
Here, sex worker activists from Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and El Salvador share their experiences.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Front Line Defenders report says rights defenders working in sex industry face ‘targeted attacks’ around the world
Sex worker activists are among the most at risk defenders of human rights in the world, facing multiple threats and violent attacks, an extensive investigation has found.
The research, published today by human rights organisation Front Line Defenders, found that their visibility as sex workers who are advocates for their communities’ rights makes them more vulnerable to the violations routinely suffered by sex workers. In addition, they face unique, targeted abuse for their human rights work.
Continue reading...Established in 2016, the Reteti sanctuary rescues and rehabilitates young elephants so that they can be reintroduced to the wild. It is the first to be owned and run by an indigenous community
In the mountains of northern Kenya, a Samburu community has built a sanctuary for orphaned elephants. Reteti is the first indigenously owned and run sanctuary, which rescues and raises the orphaned elephants, and has the ultimate goal of reintroducing them to the wild.
The sanctuary isn’t just about saving elephants but about breaking down stereotypes and redefining wildlife management. It is the beginning of a transformation in the way the Samburu people relate to wild animals. This oasis where orphans grow up, learning to be wild so that one day they can rejoin their herds, is as much about the people as it is about the elephants.
Continue reading...Life and death on the Atlantic migrant route. Plus, is it too late to halt global heating?
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When we think of Europe’s migrant crisis, much of our attention understandably focuses on Mediterranean sea crossings from North Africa. But the Guardian Weekly’s big story this week casts light on another deadly route, from Africa’s western coast to the Spanish Atlantic territory of the Canary Islands. While official death rates are comparatively low, concerns are growing that undocumented fatalities on this extremely dangerous crossing could be many times higher. Sam Jones reports from Gran Canaria.
As extreme weather-fuelled wildfires continued to blaze in several parts of the world this week, a major new report from hundreds of top scientists laid bare the severe extent of our damage to the Earth’s climate and the disaster looming if the slim chance to avert global heating above 1.5C is not grasped. Environment editor Damian Carrington analyses what the IPCC report means, while on our Opinion pages, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, warns starkly that only a complete transformation of our societies can now arrest the warming process.
Mutilation, slavery and torture of women and girls detailed in accounts published by Amnesty, in what organisation says could amount to war crimes
Ethiopian government forces have been systematically raping and abusing hundreds of women and girls in the current conflict in Tigray, according to a new report from Amnesty International.
Adding to a growing body of evidence that rape is being used as a weapon of war in the northern region of Ethiopia, Amnesty’s research offers a snapshot of the extent of the crimes in an area where communications with the outside world have been deliberately restricted by federal authorities.
Continue reading...Abiy Ahmed issues call for all eligible civilians to ‘show your patriotism’ amid fighting with Tigrayan forces
The Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has issued a call for all eligible civilians to join the armed forces as fighting rages in multiple regions of Africa’s second-most populous nation.
“Now is the right time for all capable Ethiopians who are of age to join the defence forces, special forces and militias and show your patriotism,” Abiy’s office said in a statement released less than two months after he declared a unilateral ceasefire against Tigrayan rebels.
Continue reading...