Login to BlackFacts.com using your favorite Social Media Login. Click the appropriate button below and you will be redirected to your Social Media Website for confirmation and then back to Blackfacts.com once successful.
Enter the email address and password you used to join BlackFacts.com. If you cannot remember your login information, click the “Forgot Password” link to reset your password.
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called for an independent probe into the deadly crackdown on protests that rocked Eswatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy, in June.
In May, Burundi held a presidential election which was won by Evariste Ndayishimiye, candidate of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy - Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party.
Ndayishimiye was hurriedly sworn in after the untimely death of president Pierre Nkurunziza in June.
Rights violations continue
The Council encouraged donor countries which had suspended aid to Burundi to continue dialogue towards resumption of development assistance.
A report by a UN watchdog in September said human rights violations were still being committed in Burundi, including sexual violence and murder.
The country was plunged into a crisis in April 2015 when Ndayishimiye’s predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a controversial third term, which he ultimately won in July 2015.
His candidature, which was opposed by the opposition and civil society groups, resulted in a wave of protests, violence and even a failed coup in May 2015.
Hundreds of people were killed and over 300,000 fled to neighboring countries.
(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says “under no circumstances” will Trinidad and Tobago implement an open-door policy to migrants.
The article Trinidad will not have open-door policy for migrants - PM appeared first on Stabroek News.
The party has used violence to ride roughshod over political opponents civic society or anybody who threatens its power or rule. This maybe the new dispensation of Mugabe’s long-time ally, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, but the party is certainly living up to that boast, with fights, factional clashes and bloodshed the order of the day since the ruling Zanu PF party started internal elections.
The post A party with degrees in violence appeared first on NewsDay Zimbabwe.
[HRW] Beirut -- Infringes on Basic Freedoms as Elections Loom
The International Criminal Court has convicted a Ugandan child soldier-turned-Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Netherlands-based court on Thursday found Dominic Ongwen, 45, guilty of 61 charges relating to crimes including murder, widespread rape, sexual enslavement, abducting children, torture and pillaging carried out in the early 2000s. In a legal first, Ongwen, who was abducted by the LRA as a child, was also convicted by the tribunal in The Hague for the crime of forced pregnancy for atrocities committed against seven women. Judges at the court said Ongwen had acted out of free will in committing the offences between 2002 and 2005. “There exists no ground excluding Dominic Ongwen’s criminal responsibility. His guilt has been established beyond any reasonable doubt,” presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt said as he read out the verdict. Ongwen could now be imprisoned for life, though judges will address his sentencing at a later date. His lawyers had asked for an acquittal, arguing he had suffered psychological damage as a result of being abducted as a child and was a “victim and not a victim and perpetrator at the same time”. Schmitt said that Ongwen’s history could be considered at the sentencing stage of the trial. But he made clear: “This case is about crimes committed by Dominic Ongwen as a fully responsible adult as a commander of the LRA in his mid-to late 20s”. ‘Morally complicated’ Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from The Hague, said Ongwen’s case was “morally the most complicated” the ICC had ever dealt with. “The main question has been can a former child soldier be held accountable for the crime he has committed? And the crimes are numerous. The ICC has not seen such a list of war crimes before,” she said. “[But the] defence has always said that he is mentally unstable, that he was indoctrinated, [and] he never had a way to form his consciousness.” Kristof Titeca, a senior lecturer at the University of Antwerp and an expert witness during Ongwen’s trial, added the case had raised a “huge grey area which is difficult to determine in international law, which thinks in terms of victims and perpetrators”. “It is a huge dilemma between structure and agency,” Titeca told Al Jazeera. Under the leadership of fugitive rebel Joseph Kony, the LRA terrorised Ugandans for nearly two decades as it battled the government of President Yoweri Museveni from bases in the north of the country and in what is now South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. In 2004, the Ugandan government referred the conflict with the LRA to the ICC, the world’s first permanent tribunal for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The United Nations says the LRA killed more than 100,000 people and abducted 60,000 children during its campaign of violence. Military pressure forced the armed group out of Uganda in 2005, and its members scattered across parts of central Africa. Ongwen surrendered to US special forces who were hunting Kony in the
[HRW] Tunis -- Ensure Humane Treatment, Due Process, Medical Care
The global onset of the coronavirus and the attendant need for health-related responses have exposed the debilitating limitations of the health services in Latin America and the Caribbean countries, says a recent report prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC).
While most countries in the region have, over the years, managed to attract only periodic serious outside attention to their national health deficiencies, the ECLAC report, which deals with health services as part of a wider summary of how COVID-19 is impacting Latin America and the Caribbean (“Latin America and the Caribbean and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Economic and social effects:” April 2020) asserts that the underdevelopment of the health sector in most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean has been the result of “underinvestment in health,” a circumstance that has resulted in “shortages of skilled labour and medical supplies” and “escalating costs.”
A year ago, Mohammed al-Magri’s son disappeared when fighting intensified in Tripoli, Libya.
The 60-year old fears his son then 20- years old may be buried in one of the mass graves discovered in his city near Tarhouna, in the southeast of the Libyan capital.
\"Someone knocked on the door, my son went to open the door and said some people were asking for me. I went out and found four vehicles with masked and armed men parked outside our house.\"\"He told me to leave, we will talk to Haitham for a bit and then let him go. I left, then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday came (and I never heard from him).\"
Haitham was taken by force by an armed group at the end of 2019. The discovery of mass graves in June has horrified the United Nations.
Lotfi Tawfiq is Head of committee tasked by the Government of National Accord in Tripoli to search for missing persons.
\"We took some of the families to the city of Benghazi to check if there have been any prisoners who have been transferred there. As it appears to us, there are no prisoners there. We've taken the DNA samples from the parents and from the corpses to match them and see if they belong to the families or not\", Tawfiq said.
\"Bodies have not yet been identified, while the searches carried out by the technical teams \"are still underway, he told AFP.
The young man disappeared the day after the departure of forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, a strongman of Eastern Libya, who had been trying since April 2019, to conquer Tripoli.
Human Rights Watch has called on pro-Haftar forces to \"urgently investigate apparent evidence of torture and summary executions committed by fighters affiliated with them.’’
Libya plunged into anarchy following the ouster and subsequent death of long-serving leader, Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
In September last year, Doudou Diene, chairman of the commission of inquiry set up by the UN on Burundi, said the country was primed for a genocide.
His commission, working with the UN Office for the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect, established risk factors in Burundi for criminal atrocities likely to lead to genocide.
We facilitated meetings with communities in Nairobi’s informal settlements, with Yves Niyiragira from Burundi and Leonie Abela from Democratic Republic of the Congo.
For instance, the identity of Niyiragira as a Hutu from Burundi and Abela Tutsi from the DRC confused Kenyans.
Burundi and Rwanda have several commonalities such as being the only two African countries who speak the same language—Kinyarwanda in Rwanda or Kirundi in Burundi.
[HRW] Goma -- The Congolese authorities have not arrested a rebel commander wanted for multiple crimes under a June 2019 warrant even as his forces have continued to carry out summary killings, rapes and sexual slavery, extortion, and forced recruitment of children.
It's not only the festive season for millions of celebrants in India, but also a promising season for hundreds of thousands of people who are being hired by e-commerce giants during this prime shopping period. [...]
[Nation] The eSwatini government on Tuesday dismissed reports that King Mswati III had fled the country following the violent, pro-democracy protests that escalated on Monday.
WHAT a low-spirited start to the New Year it has been. All the dark episodes of 2020, with all the grief and death seem to have spilled to 2021 with COVID-19 arguably the worst nightmare. This time, it appears it is more deadly and has a strong appetite to devour judging by the soaring numbers of infections and deaths. After the reckless partying that ushered merrymakers into the New Year, authorities had to act and indeed, the lockdown was the only viable action. The swift reaction by the government to impose a lockdown that includes closure of bars, bottlestores, gyms and other facilities could not have come at a better time. It was timely and life-saving but of course with its own negativity. In the last week alone, Zimbabwe recorded 1 342 COVID-19 cases and 29 deaths, representing the highest number of cases recorded to date. On January 2, 2021, 407 new cases were recorded and eight deaths and such numbers are nothing to ignore. The reality we all feared is with us now. COVID-19 is a killer and is ravaging communities hence the need to stop the recklessness that had taken centre stage. The lockdown will, however, mean nothing if there is no proper enforcement and this time, vigilance is needed by enforcers. Of course we are not saying the military and police should use maximum force that borders on human rights violations like we witnessed last year. Soaring cases, particularly in the last two months have risen to terrifying levels and we have been waiting for the government to act. Government was relaxed in that period with some of its officials posting on their social media platforms pictures of themselves partying, completely oblivious of COVID-19 regulations. That was inexcusable recklessness by Cabinet ministers at a time the people needed to be shepherded into responsible behaviour. As if such carelessness by ministers was not enough, President Emmerson Mnangagwa addressed hundreds of Zanu PF supporters in Chivi, Masvingo province, exposing them to the deadly disease. Well, that is now in the past but the point remains that it is incumbent upon the leadership to lead by example so that the followers will follow responsibly. We also witnessed towards the end of the year a “super-spreader” event in the form of a chaotic MDC-T extraordinary congress and that Thokozani Khupe was immediately taken ill after the indaba. This is no longer a joke and the deaths, some of them of prominent people in the last two days, should be enough lessons for authorities to act responsibly. Thankfully, the lockdown is a step in the right direction. It will, however, come to naught if it ends just as a lockdown without putting in place other measures including availing ventilators in hospitals and improving testing for the virus. In these trying times, we must not forget those in the frontline, the health workers who are daily exposed to COVID-19 as they try to save lives. The government needs to act and provide all the necessary support. It is a fight we must win together, and we will.
… American history. Discrimination against Black Americans applying for mortgage loans is … neighborhood with “even a tiny African American population” received a D … restrictive housing covenants that prohibited Black Americans from buying certain properties, …
It’s called Mobility Data Specification (MDS), and it’s a new program developed by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT).
Using MDS, mobility companies are required to provide LADOT with access to real-time rider location data in order to receive operating permits.
To my brothers and sisters marching for equal justice, does MDS sound like something you want to see added to a system that already heavily surveils you?
This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles to halt the implementation of MDS, arguing that it plainly violates the Fourth Amendment and California privacy law.
With thousands of people in our city crying out for the foundational right to equal justice under law, city officials should commit to protecting us, like shepherds keeping the wolves at bay, and recognize that moving forward with MDS will place a stain on that commitment.
June 2020: African nations drag US to UN human rights council
\tAfrican nations have prepared a draft resolution at the U.N.’s top human rights body that singles out the United States and would launch intense international scrutiny of systemic racism against people of African descent in the wake of recent high-profile killings of blacks by American police.
It calls for a Commission of Inquiry — the rights body’s most powerful tool to inspect human rights violations — to look into “systemic racism” and alleged violations of international human rights law and abuses against “Africans and of people of African descent in the United States of America and other parts of the world recently affected by law enforcement agencies” especially encounters that resulted in deaths.
On Monday, the council agreed unanimously to hold the urgent debate on “racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and the violence against peaceful protests” in the wake of the George Floyd killing in the United States.
AP report
May 2020: US must sit up, eliminate racial discrimination: AU on George Floyd ‘murder’
\tThe Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat has waded into the death of a black American man, George Floyd at the hands of police in the United States.
Over in South Africa, the Economic Freedom Fighter, EFF, also lambasted the US in a statement calling on African countries to call the US government to exercise restraint and to “call on Trump to seize from his genocidal deployment of the military against protesters.”
Even as his recent report on the performance of Trinidad and Tobago’s extractive industries point to a decline in their revenue, going forward, the country’ Energy and Energy Industries Minister Stuart Young, speaking at the virtual launch of the Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TTEITI) report, covering the performance of 2018 has said that the country’s economy will continue to look to the energy sector as a “pillar’ in pursuit of the twin-island Republic’s economic recovery from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.
The article Despite drop in oil, gas earnings… T&T economy still looks to energy sector appeared first on Stabroek News.
Press Release - 79th Pre-Session
While the police reform proposals are reasonable and fair, there will likely be some folks who don’t think so. The ultimate resolution will require sustained support from the electorate.
The post Police reform will require sustained effort appeared first on The Bay State Banner.
