Category: Human Rights

Gambia’s truth commission has wrapped up more than two years of public hearings into alleged human rights violations committed during the 22-year rule of former dictator Yahya Jammeh.

A steady parade of witnesses concluded their testimony Friday, delivering accounts of arbitrary arrests, torture, corruption and summary executions, in some cases with the victims’ bodies fed to crocodiles.

Jammeh took power in a 1994 military coup, controlling the tiny West African nation until losing the presidency to Adama Barrow in a December 2016 election. Jammeh, now 56, fled with his wife into exile in Equatorial Guinea.

Barrow’s government set up the independent Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, which began the hearings in January 2019 and heard from 392 witnesses. The commission is expected to submit a report to the president in July. Barrow then will have six months to implement the commission’s recommendations.

“The testimonies heard during the 871 days of public hearings brought pain and bewilderment,” said Lamin Sise, the commission’s chairman.

Arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention and killings, torture, enforced disappearances and sexual violence allegedly committed by Jammeh and accomplices “achieved the desired effect of instilling fear among the Gambian population,” Sise said. “It also gave them time and space to pillage the country’s resources.”

Commissioners visited a crocodile pond that Jammeh ran in his native village of Kanila. They were presented with evidence that the animals were fed people, including babies, who were killed for ritual purposes.

The commission also investigated abuses including the 2005 slaughter of roughly 50 African migrants. Lead counsel Essa Faal said that, based on testimony and other evidence, he calculated that 214 people died at the hands of Jammeh and his accomplices.

Soldiers accused of coup attempts under Jammeh’s rule were summarily executed, student protesters were massacred, and journalists were killed or exiled, said those offering testimony, which included some perpetrators.

Human Rights Watch noted, in a May 24 report, that three of Jammeh’s alleged accomplices “already have been detained and are facing trial abroad under the legal principle of universal jurisdiction.”

It said Michael Sang Correa faces trial in the United States and Bai L. in Germany, where suspects’ full names are not disclosed because of privacy rules. Both were members of Jammeh’s elite guard, called the “junglers.” Ousman Sonko, the former interior minister, faces trial in Switzerland.

The truth commission cannot convict, but it could recommend criminal charges against Jammeh and others, according to Agence France-Presse. The commission is expected to recommend steps for accountability, with proposals focusing “on the possibility of a “hybrid” court with Gambian and international staff operating within the Gambian judicial system,” Human Rights Watch said.

Faal said if Jammeh is not prosecuted in Gambia, he could be held to account elsewhere, including in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Source: Voice of America

The International Criminal Court has begun hearing evidence against Sudanese para-military commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, the alleged leader of a notorious militia blamed for atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The hearing will determine if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial on one or more of the 31 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity Kushayb is facing.

During her presentation Monday, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda called Ali Kushayb a “willing and energetic” perpetrator of crimes committed in 2003 and 2004 as Sudan’s central government tried to crush an insurgency in Darfur.

Kushayb was arrested after he surrendered himself to authorities in the Central African Republic last year and was transferred to the ICC in the Hague. The court had issued a warrant for Kushayb’s arrest in April 2007.

The hearing is expected to last four days, said Fadi El Abdallha, spokesperson and head of public affairs at the ICC.

“The purpose of this hearing is to decide whether or not a trial will be held at a later stage. It’s a preliminary hearing in which the judges will check the evidence of the prosecutor, will listen to the defense answers and will listen to the victims who are represented through their lawyers,” El Abdallha told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

The judges will have 60 days to decide whether or not to confirm one or more of the charges, “and that means whether or not they believe for each of the charges the prosecutor has presented enough evidence to believe or to have substantial reasons to believe that Mr. Abdelrahman committed these crimes,” said El Abdallha.

The judges may also decide to ask the prosecutor for additional evidence or suggest different legal characterizations of certain elements of the case.

Following his arrest last year, the ICC released a statement saying Kushayb was one of the most senior leaders in the tribal hierarchy in the Wadi Salih locality and a member of the para-military group the Popular Defense Forces and reportedly commanded thousands of Janjaweed militiamen from August 2003 until March 2004.

It was Kushayb who allegedly implemented the counter-insurgency strategy of the Sudan government which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur.

The militia leader is accused of personally participating in some of the attacks against civilians between August 2003 and March 2004, including the killing of civilians, rape, and torture, according to El Abdallah.

Initially, Kushayb faced 50 counts of crimes but Bensouda recently reduced the number to 31, El Abdallah told VOA. The remaining charges include counts of rape, torture, pillaging and attacking civilians, he said.

Kushayb has not entered a plea to the charges but at a hearing last year he told judges the allegations were “untrue.”

Former Sudanese president Omar al Bashir and his former defense minister, state minister for interior and a rebel commander are also accused of war crimes committed in Darfur. The ICC issued arrest warrants against all of them years ago.

Bensouda visited Sudan in October urging Sudanese authorities to cooperate with the ICC on all five individuals.

“Sudan has an obligation to cooperate with the ICC because of the resolution of the [U.N.] Security Council which created this obligation for Sudan, and cooperating with the ICC means respecting the ICC founding treaty, the Rome Statute, which allows for different possibilities such either surrendering the suspects against whom there’s arrest warrants, or raising for example changes to the admissibility of the case based on the complementarity principle,” said El Abdallah.

The principle of complementarity allows Sudan to submit a request to the ICC to try the accused at home. El Abdallah said if Sudan chooses to try Bashir and the other accused, ICC judges must decide whether Sudan fulfils all the legal criteria for a competent tribunal. If Sudan fails to meet the criteria, it must surrender the accused to the ICC.

Sudanese officials have reiterated their commitment to cooperating with the ICC but have yet to agree with the court on a process for trying the accused in Sudan.

Source: Voice of America

Kenya’s population of donkeys is under threat after the High Court lifted a 2020 ban on donkey slaughterhouses, allowing them to resume selling the meat and hides to Asian markets.

The high price for donkey hides for use in Chinese medicine has led to donkey poaching and sparked fears the animals could eventually go extinct.

Kilena Simeon, a Masai farmer living in the border county of Kajiado, drives her herd of donkeys in search of pasture. For years, she says, women like her have relied on the donkeys to ease the burden of labor in their homes and on their farms.

“We get our earnings from our donkeys. We use them to help us in our work. We fetch water with them, we carry luggage, we fetch fodder for our calves, and sometimes we sell them to earn money to educate our children,” she said.

This reliable source of labor is now under threat once again. In early March, Kenya’s High Court lifted a ban on the slaughter of donkeys for both meat and hide for medicine in the Asian market.

Donkey slaughter was legalized in Kenya in 2012, leading to a rapid decimation of the animal’s population and cross-border theft. Josiah Ojwang, the program’s director for the African Network for Animal Welfare, says these developments are likely to reoccur.

“There were many issues that were coming up of donkey theft, of slaughtering of underage donkeys, of cross-border smuggling of donkeys, but most importantly, communities were losing their livelihoods, because abattoirs were slaughtering very many donkeys a day, much more than naturally the donkeys can replenish,” Ojwang said.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said in 2019 that the country’s donkey population had decreased over the previous 10 years, from 1.8 million donkeys in 2009 to 1.17 million in 2019.

Ojwang says this figure is expected to decline even further with the renewed slaughter of the most significant and profitable domestic animals in Kenya.

“These slaughterhouses were slaughtering about 200 donkeys a day, sometimes 250, but they have an installed capacity of about 1,000, so if you look at even our country’s population, if they continue slaughtering at that rate, which is too high, it will be a few short years before the population of donkeys in Kenya gets almost decimated,” he said.

Kenya has four donkey abattoirs spread across four counties. The four haven’t resumed operations yet, as they are waiting to get approved by the licensing authorities.

When that happens, activists say, donkey numbers will resume their downward slide, presenting a real problem for rural women of the country and the region.

Source: Voice of America

An Egyptian appeals court on Sunday said it lacks jurisdiction to consider the Suez Canal Authority’s demands to uphold financial claims that led to the seizure of the massive Ever Given ship after it blocked the waterway in March.

The authority and the ship’s owner are in dispute as to whose fault it was that the ship ran aground in the canal linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea — and how much compensation should be paid.

The appeals chamber of the Ismailia Economic Court referred the case to a lower court to decide whether the Ever Given can legally be held until the settlement of the compensation claim between the Suez Canal Authority and Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the ship’s Japanese owner, according to Hazem Barakat, a lawyer representing the vessel’s owner.

The Ever Given was on its way to the Dutch port of Rotterdam on March 23 when it slammed into the bank of a stretch of the canal about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez.

A massive effort by a flotilla of tugboats, helped by the tides, freed the skyscraper-sized ship six days later, ending the crisis and allowing hundreds of waiting vessels to pass through the canal. The Suez Canal Authority on Sunday revealed for the first time that a salvage boat capsized during the operation, leaving one worker dead.

Since it was freed, the Panama-flagged vessel, which carries cargo between Asia and Europe, has been ordered by authorities to remain in a holding lake midcanal while its owner and the canal authority try to settle the compensation dispute.

At first, the Suez Canal Authority demanded $916 million in compensation, which was later lowered to $550 million, the head of the canal authority, Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, said in comments Sunday on a television program.

The compensation amount would account for the salvage operation, costs of stalled canal traffic and lost transit fees for the week the Ever Given blocked the canal.

Barakat, the lawyer, said the next court hearing on the case will take place on May 29.

The six-day blockage disrupted global shipment. Some ships were forced to take the long alternate route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip, requiring additional fuel and other costs. Hundreds of other ships waited in place for the blockage to end.

About 10% of world trade flows through the canal, a pivotal source of foreign currency to Egypt. Some 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, according to official figures.

Source: Voice of America