Day: June 15, 2022

Islamist militants launched an attack Saturday in the Seytenga commune in northern Burkina Faso, leaving at least 79 dead according to government reports.

The attack comes after months of increasing violence in both Mali and Burkina Faso, both countries currently under military rule. ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, now puts Burkina Faso as the epicenter of the Sahel conflict.

Though violence has drastically increased in Burkina Faso, Mali too has seen an increase in violence in 2022 – particularly in the Menaka and Gao regions, where there have already been more civilians killed by Islamist groups in 2022 than in any previous year.

Abdoul Aziz Azeibou, a security consultant working in Burkina Faso, said via messaging app from Ouagadougou that these Islamist groups work across borders, and have put not just the Sahel at risk, but coastal West African countries. Benin and Togo suffered attacks by Islamist militants in April and May.

He says, if we want to fight against people who have erased borders, we have to also work in an integrated manner. If Mali takes care of itself, and Burkina Faso also tries to move forward in its own manner, as long as there is no synergy of action, the problem will just get worse.

Dan Eizenga is a research fellow at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He says that in some way the Seytenga attack is characteristic of the violence that has plagued that region in recent years, but that the scale of civilian deaths sticks out.

“I think not only are we looking at a situation where the security situation in both countries is likely to continue to deteriorate, and possibly deteriorate at a much more rapid pace, that we can expect that these juntas will continue to make the claim that because of that deterioration they need to remain in power.”

Mali’s military government previously cited the country’s insecurity as a reason that elections could not be held in February of this year as originally promised. The army has launched a publicized military campaign against Islamists, the claims of which often conflict with local reports of the military killing civilians rather than Islamist extremists.

Mali was sanctioned by regional bloc ECOWAS over the elections delay in January, after they announced a new plan to hold elections in 2026. ECOWAS released a statement today condemning the Seytenga attack, and will be holding a meeting on the situations in Burkina Faso and Mali on July 3.

Source: Voice of America

A new study has found that Facebook has failed to catch Islamic State group and al-Shabab extremist content in posts aimed at East Africa as the region remains under threat from violent attacks and Kenya prepares to vote in a closely contested national election.

An Associated Press series last year, drawing on leaked documents shared by a Facebook whistleblower, showed how the platform repeatedly failed to act on sensitive content including hate speech in many places around the world.

The new and unrelated two-year study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found Facebook posts that openly supported IS or the Somalia-based al-Shabab — even ones carrying al-Shabab branding and calling for violence in languages including Swahili, Somali and Arabic — were allowed to be widely shared.

The report expresses particular concern with narratives linked to the extremist groups that accuse Kenyan government officials and politicians of being enemies of Muslims, who make up a significant part of the East African nation’s population. The report notes that “xenophobia toward Somali communities in Kenya has long been rife.”

The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab has been described as the deadliest extremist group in Africa, and it has carried out high-profile attacks in recent years in Kenya far from its base in neighboring Somalia. The new study found no evidence of Facebook posts that planned specific attacks, but its authors and Kenyan experts warn that allowing even general calls to violence is a threat to the closely contested August presidential election.

Already, concerns about hate speech around the vote, both online and off, are growing.

“They chip away at that trust in democratic institutions,” report researcher Moustafa Ayad told the AP of the extremist posts.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue found 445 public profiles, some with duplicate accounts, sharing content linked to the two extremist groups and tagging more than 17,000 other accounts. Among the narratives shared were accusations that Kenya and the United States are enemies of Islam, and among the posted content was praise by al-Shabab’s official media arm for the killing of Kenyan soldiers.

Even when Facebook took down pages, they would quickly be reconstituted under different names, Ayad said, describing serious lapses by both artificial intelligence and human moderators.

“Why are they not acting on rampant content put up by al-Shabab?” he asked. “You’d think that after 20 years of dealing with al-Qaida, they’d have a good understanding of the language they use, the symbolism.”

He said the authors have discussed their findings with Facebook and some of the accounts have been taken down. He said the authors also plan to share the findings with Kenya’s government.

Ayad said both civil society and government bodies such as Kenya’s national counterterrorism center should be aware of the problem and encourage Facebook to do more.

Asked for comment, Facebook requested a copy of the report before its publication, which was refused.

The company then responded with an emailed statement.

“We’ve already removed a number of these pages and profiles and will continue to investigate once we have access to the full findings,” Facebook wrote Tuesday, not giving any name, citing security concerns. “We don’t allow terrorist groups to use Facebook, and we remove content praising or supporting these organizations when we become aware of it. We have specialized teams — which include native Arabic, Somali and Swahili speakers — dedicated to this effort.”

Concerns about Facebook’s monitoring of content are global, say critics.

“As we have seen in India, the United States, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the consequences of failing to moderate content posted by extremist groups and supporters can be deadly, and can push democracy past the brink,” the watchdog The Real Facebook Oversight Board said of the new report, adding that Kenya at the moment is a “microcosm of everything that’s wrong” with Facebook owner Meta.

“The question is, who should ask Facebook to step up and do its work?” asked Leah Kimathi, a Kenyan consultant in governance, peace and security, who suggested that government bodies, civil society and consumers all can play a role. “Facebook is a business. The least they can do is ensure that something they’re selling to us is not going to kill us.”

Source: Voice of America

Rights groups in Malawi have urged authorities to quickly find and deport a Chinese man who was found to be making and selling exploitative videos of children. A BBC investigation found the man, Lu Ke, paid children to sing and speak Mandarin in disturbing videos that he sold online.

The BBC’s investigation found that Lu Ke was shooting hundreds of videos per day and selling them at up to $70 apiece to a Chinese website. The kids performing in the videos were paid about half a dollar each.

Lu Ke taught the children phrases in Mandarin in which they praised Chinese people, made fun of poverty, and chanted a racist epithet saying they are “a black monster” and that their “IQ is low.”

Sylvester Namiwa, executive director for the Center for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives in Malawi, said these videos are an insult not only to Malawians but also to Black people across the globe.

“We have also extended our call to [the] Chinese embassy to make a public apology to all people of Malawi and the Black community in the world,” Namiwa said. “Failure to do so, we will be forced to mobilize Malawians to stage endless peaceful demonstrations.”

The Chinese embassy in Malawi has condemned the contents of the videos, saying it will work with the Malawian government to ensure the matter is properly addressed.

In the statement on its official social media platforms, the Chinese government further said it has noted the videos were shot in 2020 and that China has in recent years been cracking down on such unlawful online acts.

But Namiwa said the statement is distasteful.

“It is like they want to create an impression that since this thing was done in 2020, then there is no need to worry,” he said. “We are telling them if … it was filmed in 1906, we should have asked them to apologize no matter what. What we want is action, not the rhetoric.”

Comfort Mankhwazi, president of the University of Malawi Child Rights Legal Clinic under the Faculty of Law, said her organization will hold street protests next week and present a petition to the Chinese embassy in the capital Lilongwe.

“One of the things we are going to highlight is that money was made at the expense of these children’s humiliation and maybe for ignorance to what they were actually doing,” she said. “We think that it’s only fair if these children were compensated for that because in a sense, it’s them that earns that money.”

In the meantime, Mankhwazi is appealing to the governments of Malawi and China to help track down the culprit, who is believed to have left the country.

Source: Voice of America