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We found 74 books in our category 'AFRICA'

We found 44 news items

We found 74 books

ARNOLD Guy
Africa. A modern history
Very thick paperback, large in-8, xliii + 1028 pp., illustrated, chronology, maps, bibliography, index
ARNOLD Guy@ wikipedia
€ 25.0
AYITTEY George B.N.
Africa in chaos
Paperback, in-8, 399 pp., bibliografische noten, bibliografie, index/register.
AYITTEY George B.N.@ wikipedia
€ 15.0
AZEVEDO Mario
Historical Dictionary of Mozambique [African Historical Dictionaries, No 47]
Hardcover, in-8, xxix + 250 pp., map, dictionary, bibliography, index. Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique (Portuguese: Moçambique or República de Moçambique), is a country in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest. The capital city is Maputo, formerly known as Lourenço Marques. Area: 801.590 km². Independence from Portugal came on 19750625. In 2012, large natural gas reserves were discovered in Mozambique, revenues from which might dramatically change the economy. M. started talks with Shell (source: WSJ 20120509) Azevedo (°1940)

AZEVEDO Mario@ wikipedia
€ 20.0
BALARD Martine
Dahomey 1930. Mission catholique et culte vodoun. L'oeuvre de Francis Aupiais (1877-1945), missionnaire et ethnographe
Broché, in-8, pp., illustrations, notes bibliographiques, bibliographie, index.

De la page 216:
Entre 1919 et 1930 l'église va donner au monde missionnaire des directions nouvelles. Le 30 novembre 1919 le pape Benoît XV décrète en substance dans l'encyclique Maximum Illud que l'église devait être l'église particulière d'une métropole que l'Église catholique. Mettant en garde les missionnaires qui placeraient les préoccupations de leur patrie avant celle du ciel et qui serait tenté avant tout autre chose d'en favoriser l'extension politique.
BALARD Martine@ wikipedia
€ 15.0
BASELITZ Georg (interview with -)
Arts & Cultures 2001/2. Antiquity, Africa, Oceania, Asia, Americas
Wrappers, more than 210 pp. + advertising. Illustrations, maps and photos in colour
BASELITZ Georg (interview with -)@ wikipedia
€ 10.0
BAUER P.T.
West African Trade. A Study of Competition, Oligopoly and Monopoly in a Changing Economy.
Hardcover, dj, in-8, xix + 450 pp., bibliographical notes, end paper maps, bibliography, index.
BAUER P.T.@ wikipedia
€ 15.0
BENNETT R. Norman
Africa and Europe. From Roman Times to National Independence.
Second edition. Pb 196 pp. Bibliography and index.
BENNETT R. Norman@ wikipedia
€ 10.0
BERNOLLES Jacques
Permanence de la Parure et du Masque Africains.
Broché, grand in-8, non-coupé, cxxxiv + 632 pp., planches, notes, bibliographie, index. Thèse principale. Ethnologie du symbolisme africain. Métaphisique et ethnopsychologie.
BERNOLLES Jacques@ wikipedia
€ 99.0
BEUMERS Erna & HESMERG Erik (fotografie)
Africa meets Africa - Collectie Afrika Museum voor Volkenkunde Rotterdam
Hardcover ill. red linnen, in-4, 127 pp., ill. in colour, 142 items in this catalogue: weapons, statues, masks, textile, ... Text in Dutch.
Afbeelding van zeer mooi doek uit Madagascar.
BEUMERS Erna & HESMERG Erik (fotografie)@ wikipedia
€ 25.0
BINEBINE Ahmed-Chouqui
Histoire des Bibliothèques au Maroc
Broché, in-8, 255 pp.
BINEBINE Ahmed-Chouqui@ wikipedia
€ 10.0
BIRMINGHAM David (red.)
L'Europe et l'Afrique de 1914 à 1970
Broché, in-8, 407 pp.
BIRMINGHAM David (red.)@ wikipedia
€ 15.0
BLANCHOD Fred
Les Moeurs étranges de l'Afrique noire
Broché, in-8, 311 pp., illustrations
BLANCHOD Fred@ wikipedia
€ 10.0
BLUSSE L., WESSELING H.L., WINIUS G.D.
History and underdevelopment. Essays on underdevelopment and European expansion in Asia and Africa (eng & fr)
Softcover, pb, 8vo, 160 pp.
BLUSSE L., WESSELING H.L., WINIUS G.D.@ wikipedia
€ 10.0
BRYCESON Deborah, JAMAL Vali
Farewell to Farms. De-agrarianisation and Employment in Africa.
Paperback, in-8, 265 pp., illustrations, tables, bibliographical notes, bibliography, index.
BRYCESON Deborah, JAMAL Vali@ wikipedia
€ 15.0
BUIJTENHUIJS Robert
Le Frolinat et les révoltes populaires du Tchad, 1965-1976
Broché, in-8, 526 pp., notes bibliographiques, bibliographie, index.
BUIJTENHUIJS Robert@ wikipedia
€ 15.0
CAMPBELL Kurt M.
Southern Africa in Soviet Foreign Policy
Paperback, in-8, 76 pp.
CAMPBELL Kurt M.@ wikipedia
€ 10.0
CAWTHRA Gavin
South-Africa's police. From police state to democratic policing?
Paperback, in-8, 40 pp.
CAWTHRA Gavin@ wikipedia
€ 10.0
CLOT René-Jean
Paysages Africains. Tchad - Tibesti - Fezzan - Borkou
68 full-page drawings, paintings/sepia, dessins à la plume, e.a. Wrappers with dustjacket. 4to. 16, 68 pp. Précede de 'La Colonne du Tchad par le Général Leclerc'. Table des planches: Bas Chari; Fort-Lamy; Borkou; Kanem; Tibesti; Fezzan; Tunisie. Interesting title.
CLOT René-Jean@ wikipedia
€ 50.0
COQUERY-VIDROVITCH Catherine, GOLLNHOFER Otto, MAZENOT Georges, PEPPER Herbert, RANDLES W.G.L., SAUTTER Gilles, SILLANS Roger, VANSINA Jan
Brazza et la prise de possession du Congo. La mission de l'ouest africain 1883-1885 [Congo Brazzaville]
Broché, grand in-8, 502 pp., illustrations, notes bibliographiques, bibliographie, index.
Bien qu'il s'agit de Congo Brazzaville, les liens avec le Congo Kinshasa sont évident.
COQUERY-VIDROVITCH Catherine, GOLLNHOFER Otto, MAZENOT Georges, PEPPER Herbert, RANDLES W.G.L., SAUTTER Gilles, SILLANS Roger, VANSINA Jan@ wikipedia
€ 45.0
DAVIDSON Basil
Afrika en de vloek van de natie-staat. (vertaling van 'The Black Man's Burden. Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State).
Wrappers, 318 pp. Bibliografische noten, bibliografie, index/register. Noemt de redenen waarom zovele jonge Afrikaanse staten in de vernieling gaan.
DAVIDSON Basil@ wikipedia
€ 10.0

We found 44 news items

UN News
South Africa levels accusations of ‘genocidal conduct’ against Israel at world court
ID: 202401112359
South Africa addressed the UN's highest court on Thursday in a bid to end the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, accusing Israel of carrying out genocide against Palestinians there – a claim that Israel has strongly denied as "baseless".

P.M.:

Genocide is defined in international law as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This can include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. This definition is outlined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Land: ISR
YT shorts
The Chinese in Africa
ID: 202312140242


Land: COD
nws
Winners of the Wolfson History Prize (GBR)
ID: 202212318971
The first awards were made in 1972. Until 1987, prizes were awarded at the end of the competition year. Since then, they have been awarded in the following year.

Until 2016, up to three awards were made every year. Since 2017, a shortlist of six titles have been announced in advance of one overall winner.

(Winners are listed alphabetically by author)

2022
Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688
Clare Jackson
(Allen Lane)

2022 Shortlist:

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs
Marc David Baer
(Basic Books)

The Ruin of all Witches: Life and Death in the New World
Malcolm Gaskill
(Allen Lane)

Going to Church in Medieval England
Nicholas Orme
(Yale University Press)

God: An Anatomy
Francesca Stavrakopoulou
(Picador)

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues that Made History
Alex von Tunzelmann
(Headline)

​2021
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
Sudhir Hazareesingh
(Allen Lane)

2021 Shortlist:

Survivors: Children’s Lives after the Holocaust
Rebecca Clifford
(Yale University Press)

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
Judith Herrin
(Allen Lane)

Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood
Helen McCarthy
(Bloomsbury)

Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack
Richard Ovenden
(John Murray Press)

Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution
Geoffrey Plank
(Oxford University Press)

​2020
The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans
David Abulafia
(Allen Lane)

2020 Shortlist:

A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths
John Barton
(Allen Lane)

A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
Toby Green
(Allen Lane)

Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire
Prashant Kidambi
(Oxford University Press)

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
Hallie Rubenhold
(Doubleday)

Chaucer: A European Life
Marion Turner
(Princeton University Press)

2019
Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice
Mary Fulbrook
(Oxford University Press)

Shortlist:

Building Anglo-Saxon England
John Blair
(Princeton University Press)

Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson
Margarette Lincoln
(Yale University Press)

Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words
Jeremy Mynott
(Oxford University Press)

Oscar: A Life
Matthew Sturgis
(Head of Zeus)

Empress: Queen Victoria and India
Miles Taylor
(Yale University Press)

2018
Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation
Peter Marshall
(Yale University Press)

Shortlist:

Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination
Robert Bickers
(Allen Lane)

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
Lindsey Fitzharris
(Allen Lane)

A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War
Tim Grady
(Yale University Press)

Black Tudors: The Untold Story
Miranda Kaufmann
(Oneworld)

Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea
Jan Rüger
(Oxford University Press)



2017
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
Christopher de Hamel
(Allen Lane)

Shortlist:

The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile under the Tsars
Daniel Beer
(Allen Lane)

Henry IV
Chris Given-Wilson
(Yale University Press)

Sleep in Early Modern England
Sasha Handley
(Yale University Press)

Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet
Lyndal Roper
(The Bodley Head)

Henry the Young King, 1155 – 1183
Matthew Strickland
(Yale University Press)



2016
Augustine: Conversions and Confessions
Robin Lane Fox
(Allen Lane)

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
Nikolaus Wachsmann
(Little, Brown)



2015
National Service: Conscription in Britain, 1945-1963
Richard Vinen
(Allen Lane)

Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918
Alexander Watson
(Allen Lane)



2014
The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World
Cyprian Broodbank
(Thames & Hudson)

Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History
Catherine Merridale
(Allen Lane)



2013
Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest
Susan Brigden
(Faber & Faber)

Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy
Christopher Duggan
(Random House)



2012
Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life
Susie Harries
(Chatto & Windus)

The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity & Memory in Early Modern Britain & Ireland
Alexandra Walsham
(Oxford University Press)



2011
The Man on Devil’s Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France
Ruth Harris
(Allen Lane)

Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire
Nicholas Thomas
(Yale University Press)



2010
Russia against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe 1807 to 1814
Dominic Lieven
(Allen Lane)

The Hundred Years War, vol. III: Divided Houses
Jonathan Sumption
(Faber & Faber)



2009
Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town
Mary Beard
(Profile Books)

Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession
Margaret McGowan
(Yale University Press)



2008
After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405
John Darwin
(Allen Lane)



God’s Architect: Pugin & the Building of Romantic Britain
Rosemary Hill
(Allen Lane)



2007
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947
Christopher Clark
(Allen Lane)

City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London
Vic Gatrell
(Atlantic Books)

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
Adam Tooze
(Allen Lane)



2006
Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600
Evelyn Welch
(Yale University Press)

Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800
Christopher Wickham
(Oxford University Press)



2005
The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia
Richard Overy
(Allen Lane)

In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
David Reynolds
(Allen Lane)

For distinguished contribution to the writing of history
Christopher Bayly



2004
Transformations of Love: The Friendship of John Evelyn and Margaret Godolphin
Frances Harris
(Oxford University Press)

The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940
Julian Jackson
(Oxford University Press)

Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700
Diarmaid MacCulloch
(Allen Lane)



2003
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
William Dalrymple
(HarperCollins)

Marianne in Chains: In search of the German Occupation 1940-1945
Robert Gildea
(Macmillan)



2002
Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its Peoples 8000BC-AD1500
Barry Cunliffe
(Oxford University Press)

London in the Twentieth Century: A City and its People
Jerry White
(Viking)

For distinguished contribution to the writing of history:
Roy Jenkins



2001
Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis
Ian Kershaw
(Allen Lane)

The Balkans: From the End of Byzantium to the Present Day
Mark Mazower
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World
Roy Porter
(Allen Lane)



2000
An Intimate History of Killing: Face-To-Face Killing In Twentieth-Century Warfare
Joanna Bourke
(Granta Books)

Salisbury: Victorian Titan
Andrew Roberts
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

For distinguished contribution to the writing of history
Asa Briggs



1999
Stalingrad
Antony Beevor
(Viking)

The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England
Amanda Vickery
(Yale University Press)



1998
The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century
John Brewer
(HarperCollins)

Jennie Lee: A Life
Patricia Hollis
(Oxford University Press)



1997
A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924
Orlando Figes
(Jonathan Cape)

For distinguished contribution to the writing of history
Eric Hobsbawm



1996
Gladstone, 1875-1898
HCG Matthew
(Oxford University Press)



1995
William Morris: A Life for Our Time
Fiona MacCarthy
(Faber & Faber)

The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany
John Röhl
(Cambridge University Press)



1994
The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350
Robert Bartlett
(Allen Lane)

Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience
Barbara Harvey
(Oxford University Press)



1993
Britons: Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837
Linda Colley
(Yale University Press)

John Maynard Keynes, vol. 2: the Economist as Saviour 1920-1937
Robert Skidelsky
(PanMacmillan)



1992
Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair
John Bossy
(Yale University Press)

Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives
Alan Bullock
(HarperCollins)



1991
The Architecture of Medieval Britain: A Social History
Colin Platt
(Yale University Press)



1990
The Quest for El Cid
Richard Fletcher
(Hutchinson)

How War Came
Donald Cameron Watt
(William Heinemann)



1989
Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910
Richard Evans
(Oxford University Press)

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Control from 1500-2000
Paul Kennedy
(Unwin Hyman)



1987
Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063-1415
Rees Davies
(Oxford University Press)

The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South
John Pemble
(Oxford University Press)



1986
The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline
John Elliott
(Yale University Press)

European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750
Jonathan Israel
(Oxford University Press)



1985
Dudley Docker: The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior
Richard Davenport-Hines
(Cambridge University Press)

Lloyd George: From Peace to War, 1912-1916
John Grigg
(Methuen)



1984
The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England
Antonia Fraser
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Chivalry
Maurice Keen
(Yale University Press)



1983
Winston S. Churchill, vol. VI: Finest Hour
Martin Gilbert
(Heinemann)

King George V
Kenneth Rose
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)



1982
Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death Among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France
John McManners
(Oxford University Press)

For distinguished contribution to the writing of history
Steven Runciman



1981
A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past
John Burrow
(Cambridge University Press)

For distinguished contribution to the writing of history
Owen Chadwick



1980
The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700: An Interpretation
Robert Evans
(Oxford University Press)

Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890-1939
FSL Lyons
(Oxford University Press)



1979
Death in Paris , 1795-1801
Richard Cobb
(Oxford University Press)

Clementine Churchill
Mary Soames
(Cassell)

The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1: The Renaissance
Quentin Skinner
(Cambridge University Press)



1978
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962
Alistair Horne
(Macmillan)

For distinguished contribution to the writing of history
Howard Colvin



1977
Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813
Simon Schama
(Collins)

Mussolini’s Roman Empire
Denis Mack Smith
(Longman & Co)



1976
A History of Building Types
Nikolaus Pevsner
(Thames & Hudson)

The Eastern Front 1914-17
Norman Stone
(Hodder & Stoughton)



1975
Edward VIII
Frances Donaldson
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-1789
Olwen Hufton
(Oxford University Press)



1974
The Ancient Economy
Moses Finley
(Chatto & Windus)

France, 1848-1945: Ambition, Love & Politics
Theodore Zeldin
(Oxford University Press)



1973
Henry II
WL Warren
(Eyre & Spottiswoode)

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
Frances Yates
(Routledge & Kegan Paul)



1972
Grand Strategy, vol. IV: August 1942 – September 1943
Michael Howard
(HMSO)

Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England
Keith Thomas
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Land: GBR
HENRIET Benoît
Colonial Impotence. Virtue and Violence in a Congolese Concession (1911–1940)
ID: 202109161519


Verschenen bij De Gruyter
About this book
In Colonial Impotence, Benoît Henriet studies the violent contradictions of colonial rule from the standpoint of the Leverville concession, Belgian Congo’s largest palm oil exploitation. Leverville was imagined as a benevolent tropical utopia, whose Congolese workers would be "civilized" through a paternalist machinery. However, the concession was marred by inefficiency, endemic corruption and intrinsic brutality. Colonial agents in the field could be seen as impotent, for they were both unable and unwilling to perform as expected. This book offers a new take on the joint experience of colonialism and capitalism in Southwest Congo, and sheds light on their impact on local environments, bodies, societies and cosmogonies.

Author information
Benoît Henriet, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

Reviews
"This is a major contribution to the historiography of colonial central Africa and the growing literature on the concessionary model used in many different colonial contexts." – Jeremy Rich, Professor of History, Marywood University

"This compelling book unveils the importance of hubris and self-deception in the deployment of colonial capitalism. Henriet recreates Leverville as a capitalistic site and a matrix of emotions and affects, of virtuous excesses and moral failures. His concept of 'impotence,' broadly conceptualized as a sexual, social, political, and economic formation, is an important addition to our knowledge of relations of power in the colony." – Florence Bernault, Centre d'histoire, Sciences Po (Paris)
nws
Afrikaanse Unie gaat troepen sturen om moslimterrorisme te bestrijden in de Sahel: Burkina Fasso, Mali, Mauretania, Niger en Tjaad (Chad)
ID: 202002281613
Ook de situatie in Lybië kreeg aandacht.
Addis Ababa, 24 February 2020: The taskforce met on 20 February 2020 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Convened as a follow up to the September 2019, New York meeting that was held at the margins of the high-level General Debate of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, the meeting noted with concern the deplorable and deteriorating humanitarian and security situation in Libya.

The meeting that was chaired by H.E. Amira Elfadil, the Special Envoy of the Chairperson and Commissioner for Social Affairs, and attended by H.E. Zainab Ali Kotoko, Executive Secretary, Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA), the Head of the EU Delegation to the AU, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representatives to the AU, as well as representatives from relevant AU directorates, took stock of progress made by the taskforce in 2019 and deliberated on the emerging issues, including the situation of the Emergency Transit Mechanisms (ETM) established in Rwanda and Niger, status of the assisted voluntary humanitarian return program and failing humanitarian space as the conflict in Libya continues to rage on unimpeded.

The Special Envoy in her remarks reiterated the commitment of the taskforce exemplified in the bid to expand both the mandate and geographical coverage of the taskforce to include trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants, as well as to cover the G5 Sahel region. She informed of the new Interdepartmental Taskforce on Libya created by the Peace and Security Department to coordinate AU response to the Libyan crisis, and emphasized need to fast-track reintegration initiatives for returnees from Libya as well as operationalization of the three AU migration centres in Morocco, Mali and Sudan approved by the just concluded Assembly of Heads of State in order to address challenges of inadequate migration data and information. Noting that the establishment of the ETMs in Rwanda and Niger was an expression of African solidarity that resonates to seeking African solutions to African problems. The meeting was also briefed on the establishment of the AU Contact Group to prepare for the planned Inter-Libyan Reconciliation Conference and for the deployment of the AU multi-dimensional observer mission to Libya, once a ceasefire agreement has been reached.

The Head of the EU Delegation to the AU on his part echoed the importance of the taskforce as a convergence of efforts to improve cooperation and highlighted the need for continued advocacy by the taskforce vis-à-vis the Libyan authorities to ensure access while aiming to put an end to the arbitrary detention system, establish shelter opportunities and improve the situation at the Gathering Departure Facility (GDF). He called for the need to strengthen activities aimed at supporting IDPs, migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.

The UNHCR representative informed the meeting that 306 persons of concern had been evacuated to Rwanda since the establishment of the ETM. While more than 3,000 were evacuated to Niger. Noting that based on confirmed resettlement places from some countries, UNHCR is undertaking the necessary procedures though the process is inherently slow due to its complexity. He informed most evacuees needed more psychosocial support to deal with their post traumatic experiences sustained in Libya, and further highlighted the plight of about 2,000 Sudanese refugees in Niger that warrants immediate attention of the taskforce.

The meeting was appraised by IOM that about 630,000 migrants continued to be stranded in Libya and as of February 2020 approximately 50,000 stranded migrants had been assisted to return to their countries of origin since November 2017. IOM reported that continued limited access to detention centres and closure of Mitiga airport, as well as delayed issuance of exit visas and temporary travel documents impacts on the assisted voluntary humanitarian return program (AVHRP) as about 2,151 migrants continue to be held in various detention centres. Whereabouts of many migrants also continues to be unknown and the growing number of internally displaced persons warrants grave concern.

CISSA noted with concern that in spite of the current international efforts, arms continued to flow into Libya and that transfer of sophisticated weaponry to Libya will continue to dissuade the political process and increase risk of spirals to neighboring countries. The continued increased influx of migrants to Libya despite the ongoing conflict, reports of serious human right abuses and the presence of many illegal detention centres in Libya is worrisome, as organized criminal groups continue to exploit the situation and profiteer from the misery of many migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Resolving that the criminal economy was so huge and needed concerted and urgent attention to tackle human traffickers and migrant smugglers networks.

As part of the recommendations going forward, the taskforce agreed: 1) to fast-track holding of the taskforce senior officials’ meeting to deliberate on the next steps and expansion of the mandate of the taskforce; 2) undertake measures to resolve the complex situation of Sudanese refugees in Niger; 3) organize missions to Niger and Libya to assess the situation on ground as well as to ETM in Rwanda; 4) brief concerned Member States on the situation in Libya and engage with Libyan authorities with a view to facilitate assisted voluntary return program; and 5) engage in advocacy to prevent perilous journeys, improve access to migrants in detention centres and end to arbitrary system of detention, among others.

The taskforce also recommended working closely with the AU Interdepartmental Taskforce on Libya and other stakeholders including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and committed to remained seized with the matter.

Abigail Watson
ORG Explains 12: The UK’s Pivot to the Sahel
ID: 202001278833
27 January 2020

As the UK moves resources and personnel to the Africa’s Sahel region, we examine what the “pivot to the Sahel” is, why it is happening and what it will look like.


Author's note: Thanks to Zoe Gorman and Delina Goxho for their help with the piece (all the mistakes are the author’s own)


What?
During a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2018, then-Prime Minister Theresa May laid out the UK’s new “Africa Strategy”, promising “a new partnership between the UK and our friends in Africa…built around our shared prosperity and shared security.” This new strategy was further fleshed out both by the former Minister for Africa, Harriett Baldwin, during an evidence session with the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) in March 2019 as well as in written evidence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the same committee’s inquiry into the UK’s Africa strategy.

All three have said that the strategy is made up of five key “shifts” or areas:



The first of these has been referred to as the UK’s “pivot to the Sahel” and – while this is just one aspect of the UK’s Africa Strategy – it has been an important change. The FCO’s written evidence to the FAC stated: “We will pivot UK resources towards Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania, which are areas of long-term instability and extreme poverty.” This has instigated a large uplift in staff (working both in Whitehall and in the region) and resources (including additional aid, military support and embassies) aimed at this region of the continent, including 250 soldiers to be deployed to Mali and new embassies opening in the region.

Where?
Definitions of the exact boundaries of the Sahel vary; however, according to Britannica, the Sahel is a “region of western and north-central Africa extending from Senegal eastward to Sudan. It forms a transitional zone between the arid Sahara (desert) to the north and the belt of humid savannas to the south. The Sahel stretches from the Atlantic Ocean eastward through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, the great bend of the Niger River in Mali, Burkina Faso…, southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, south-central Chad, and into Sudan.”



Figure 1 International engagement in the Sahel region (Image data source: Africa Centre Strategic Studies)

Why?
As the FCO recently noted, this is an area “where [the UK has] traditionally had little representation”. Mali, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania were French colonies that gained independence in 1960. Even after this, France has maintained significant economic and political ties to the region. As such, the UK has previously conceived of this region as France’s domain. The recent “pivot to the Sahel” begs the question: why has the UK started working in this region?

1. Instability and threats to the UK

One reason for the UK’s pivot is to help address the instability that has engulfed the region in the last few years. In her Cape Town speech, Theresa May said the UK will be “supporting countries and societies on the front line of instability in all of its forms. So, we will invest more in countries like Mali, Chad and Niger that are waging a battle against terrorism in the Sahel.”

The Sahel is a region that has historically been troubled by weak governance, high levels of youth unemployment, porous borders, frequent drought, high levels of food insecurity and paltry development progress. Since the 2012 crisis in Mali, the region has also witnessed an escalation in jihadist activity and a burgeoning of illicit migratory networks and trafficking. The area is therefore the subject of increasing international concern, as ungoverned spaces could provide ‘safe havens’ for terrorist activity.

Seven years ago, in March 2012, Islamist groups gained control over the northern part of Mali. They had benefited from the instability (and the spread of weapons) following the Libyan civil war. Returning fighters after the fall of Muammar al-Gadhafi’s regime in Libya brought weapons and sparked a new rebellion under the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), some of these were tied to jihadist groups but others were not. Meanwhile, a political coup in Mali ousted President Amadou Toumani Touré, creating a momentary power vacuum. Northern Islamist groups Ansar Dine, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) also took up arms, driving the MNLA from strategic cities in Timbuktu and Gao regions. The absence or inability of the state to respond to growing insecurity has contributed to a proliferation of self-defence militias which may be party to one community or ethnic group, lack legitimacy and contribute to cycles of violence.

In January 2013 French forces intervened at the request of the Malian government to stop the groups advancing on Bamako (the capital of Mali) through a military operation called Opération Serval.

The same year, David Cameron, British Prime Minister at the time, said the French action in Mali was "in our interests" and the UK “should support the action that the French have taken." He promised that the UK would be "first out of the blocks, as it were, to say to the French 'we'll help you, we'll work with you and we'll share what intelligence we have with you and try to help you with what you are doing'."

The UK sent the following support to the French operation:

330 military personnel were deployed – including 200 soldiers going to West African nations and 40 military advisers to Mali
Two cargo planes (used to ship French military equipment to Mali) and a surveillance plane, supported by 90 support crew
None of these soldiers were deployed in combat roles; instead they focused on non-kinetic activity such as logistical support and training.

Opération Serval proved militarily successful in pushing jihadist groups back and stopping them from overtaking key airports. In 2014, the military campaign moved to a different stage with Operation Serval becoming Opération Barkhane. Broader in its purpose than Serval, Opération Barkhane was launched to provide long-term support to the wider region, in order to prevent ‘jihadist groups’ from regaining control. Opération Barkhane is a longer-term military intervention that operates not within a country, but over the countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

In the same year, Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz galvanised the creation of the G5 Sahel while president of the African Union. Bringing together Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, the G5 Sahel joint force (FC-G5S) gained support from the African Union and United Nations, although the US has repeatedly blocked Security Council Chapter VII funding of the force. An agglomeration of 5000 military personnel, police officers, gendarmerie and border patrol officers from the five states, the FC-G5S undertakes operations in conflict hotspots in border regions between the countries to curtail terrorism, illicit trafficking and illegal migration. According to General Lecointre, the Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces, France hopes that the FC-G5S will take over some of the responsibilities of Opération Barkhane – but the FC-G5S has been slow to operationalise.

The following year, in March 2015, the Malian government and coalitions of armed groups in the North agreed on a peace accord in Algiers following months of negotiations. Unfortunately, this agreement does not include jihadist groups or the multitude of armed groups flourishing in the centre, and its provisions have gone largely unimplemented.

The French government has also continued calls for help from regional and international actors. The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) was established in 2013 to support political processes in the country and carry out a number of security-related tasks. It currently has 14 874 staff from nearly 60 countries. The European Union Training Mission in Mali (EUTM-Mali) also started in the same year, to strengthen the capabilities of the Malian Armed Forces. It is now made up of 600 soldiers from 25 European countries. More generally, the EU and its member states are projected to spend €8 billion on development assistance in the Sahel.

France, Germany, the EU, the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme also launched the Alliance for the Sahel in July 2017 to coordinate donor activity. The UK – along with Italy, Spain and most recently, Saudi Arabia – have now joined the Alliance. In July 2018, the UK also announced its support to Opération Barkhane, sending three Royal Air Force Chinook helicopters (supported by almost 100 personnel.

In August 2019, France and Germany announced the “Partnership for Stability and Security in the Sahel” to bring together countries in the region and international partners to identify gaps in the counter-terrorism response. Operation Tacouba, a planned operation to reinforce Malian forces with European special forces, will also seek to support regional forces in their fight against jihadist groups.

Despite this, violence has continued, the northern region of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, have been suffering some of the deadliest attacks to date, with the area ravaged by inter-community conflict and attacks on military, peacekeepers and civilians. The number of reported violent events linked to militant Islamic group activity in the Sahel has been doubling every year since 2016 (from 90 in 2016 to 194 in 2017 to 465 in 2018). Added to this, there have abuses against civilians by state forces, for instance the Malian armed forces have been accused of shooting civilian market-goers and burning members of a pro-government self-defence militia. This has worsened the humanitarian situation. For instance, since January 2018, more than one million people have been internally displaced across the Sahel region.

In light of this continued instability, the UK is reassessing its engagement to help stem the violence. The FCO has suggested that: “Our efforts in the Sahel seek to contain threats to regional security and wider UK interests, and make migration safer while providing critical humanitarian support to those who need it.” Similarly, when announcing the UK’s most recent contribution to the UN mission then-UK Defence Secretary, Penny Mordaunt, said “[t]he UK is committed to supporting the international community in combating instability in Mali, as well as strengthening our wider military engagement across the Sahel region.”

2. Global Britain
The UK’s pivot to the Sahel is also part of the UK’s Global Britain strategy. This strategy is “about reinvesting in our relationships, championing the rules-based international order and demonstrating that the UK is open, outward-looking and confident on the world stage.” The Global Britain strategy is referenced throughout UK policy documents and public statements and is often seen as an attempt to demonstrate the UK’s global focus – especially in light of the UK’s imminent withdrawal from the EU. The pivot to the Sahel helps this strategy in two ways: it maintains international relationships (especially with European allies) and it coincides with the UK’s renewed commitment to the UN.

To the first of these, the focus on the Sahel is an important way of maintaining alliances with the UK’s (especially European) allies. For instance, the FCO has said the pivot to the Sahel will “support our alliances with international partners such as France, Germany and the [African Union] as we exit the European Union.” A number of officials we spoke to also argued that maintaining relations with France was a key driver for the UK’s renewed focus in the region; for example, one soldier in Kenya said of the pivot to the Sahel, “post-Brexit we need trade deals with France.”

Another aspect of this is supporting the UN. In September 2019, ahead of his trip to the UN General Assembly in New York, Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab said: “As we make progress in our Brexit negotiations, we are also taking our vision of a truly Global Britain to the UN – leading by example as a force for good in the world.” The UK has exceeded its commitment to double its 2015 contribution of personnel to UN Peacekeeping operations, increasing their number from 291 to 740 by May 2018, and is now globally the sixth largest contributor financially.

There is already evidence of the UK’s commitment to the UN impacting the UK’s approach to the Sahel. For example, the UK has pledged £49.5 million to the UN mission in Mali as part of the UK’s regular contributions to UN peacekeeping missions. It is clear then that there will be a number of big changes in how the UK engages in this region of Africa. Below we set out some concrete changes that we might expect to see in the year ahead.

How?
It still remains unclear exactly what this pivot to the Sahel will look like, but it is likely to see a shift of British people and resources to the region. In the FCO’s own description of this shift, it listed a number of new funding streams, including:

£2.3 million of humanitarian aid across the region between 2015-19 (making it “the third largest humanitarian donor to the Sahel”)
£50 million to support climate change resilience
£30 million “to support education in the Sahel and neighbouring countries.”
To support these commitments, more UK personnel will be working (in the region and in Whitehall) on the Sahel. Harriet Matthews, Director for Africa at the FCO, noted that the UK Government has “expanded a joint unit on the Sahel” (a unit made up of people from different UK departments, such as the FCO, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development) to oversee activity in the region.

The UK has also promised “an increased UK presence” in the Sahel. It has said that it will increase the size of UK embassies in Mali and Mauritania, open “a regional hub” in Dakar, Senegal, and establish new embassies in Niger and Chad. The FCO does not provide a specific timeline for these changes.

In one of her last acts as British Defence Secretary, in July 2019, Penny Mordaunt also announced that a long-range reconnaissance task group of 250 personnel will be deployed to Mali in 2020. These UK soldiers will be “asked to reach parts of Mali that most militaries cannot, to feed on-the-ground intelligence back to the [UN] mission headquarters.” This represents one of the biggest British peacekeeping deployments since Bosnia and it will be the most dangerous mission for British forces since Afghanistan. MINUSMA is the UN peacekeeping mission with the highest casualty rate in the world and, since its inception, 206 UN peacekeepers have been killed as part of it.

Internationally, the UK is also likely to play a greater role in conversations about the region. For instance, it is a member of the Sahel Alliance, which was set up by France, Germany and the EU to focus on increasing coordination between partners working in the region. The UK also aims to place “extra staff in Paris to work alongside the French government on the Sahel.” The UK has said that it hopes that engaging with other international partners more effectively will allow it to “drive forward progress on long-term solutions to the drivers of conflict, poverty, and instability.”





Want to know more?
This has been a brief overview of the key issues and considerations of the UK’s recent “pivot to the Sahel”, something which our team look at for its own work. You can read some more in depth pieces we have written on the pivot and what it means for UK foreign policy here:

Improving the UK offer in Africa: Lessons from military partnerships on the continent by Abigail Watson and Emily Knowles
Fusion Doctrine in Five Steps: Lessons Learned from Remote Warfare in Africa by Abigail Watson and Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen
Mali: Consequences of a War by Paul Rogers
Devils in the Detail: Implementing Mali's New Peace Accord by Richard Reeve
Security in the Sahel: Two-Part Briefing by Richard Reeve
The Military Intervention in Mali and Beyond: An Interview with Bruno Charbonneau
Libya: Between the Sahel-Sahara and the Islamic State Crises by Richard Reeve
From New Frontier to New Normal: Counter-terrorism Operations in the Sahel-Sahara by Richard Reeve and Zoë Pelter
Too Quiet on the Western Front? Counter-terrorism Build-up in the Sahel-Sahara by Richard Reeve
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

About the author

Abigail Watson is the Research Manager at ORG's Remote Warfare Programme.
Transparency International
The Corruption Perceptions Index 2019 published - Belgium 17th best - Bad score of Turkey not commented in the report - RDC Congo at place 168 in the ranking
ID: 202001247812
The Corruption Perceptions Index 2019 reveals a staggering number of countries are showing little to no improvement in tackling corruption. Our analysis also suggests that reducing big money in politics and promoting inclusive political decision-making are essential to curb corruption. The CPI scores 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to experts and business people.

In the last year, anti-corruption movements across the globe gained momentum as millions of people joined together to speak out against corruption in their governments. Protests from Latin America, North Africa and Eastern Europe to the Middle East and Central Asia made headlines as citizens marched in Santiago, Prague, Beirut, and a host of other cities to voice their frustrations in the streets. From fraud that occurs at the highest levels of government to petty bribery that blocks access to basic public services like health care and education, citizens are fed up with corrupt leaders and institutions. This frustration fuels a growing lack of trust in government and further erodes public confidence in political leaders, elected officials and democracy. The current state of corruption speaks to a need for greater political integrity in many countries. To have any chance of curbing corruption, governments must strengthen checks and balances, limit the influence of big money in politics and ensure broad input in political decision-making. Public policies and resources should not be determined by economic power or political influence, but by fair consultation and impartial budget allocation.

Land: INT
Categorie: POLITICS - GESJOEMEL
One Earth Future
ANNUAL RISK of COUP REPORT 2019
ID: 201904009998


Overview:
The goals of this first ever Annual Risk of Coup Report are two-fold. First, it provides an in-depth global and regional look at the likelihood of coup events for 2019 based on a combination of quantitative forecasting and qualitative analysis of specific coup-prone states. Examining historical trends, it provides analyses on the risk of coup events and the geographic hotspots for the coming year. This information is further broken down regionally by examining Asia, the Americas, and Africa individually. These regions represent the most recent hotspots for coup events, thus warranting a closer look at the most coup prone countries for 2019 and the reasons why they are more likely to face a coup attempt.

Second, our forecast and analysis are not meant to supplant incredibly important regional and political expertise surrounding coups and political instability, but to add to it by using a different kind of tool-kit for forecasting future coup risk. Coups, and political instability broadly, are unique, and no single quantitative forecast will provide perfect information about the risk governments face going into the future. Knowing this, we can still utilize historical trends in coup events alongside social, environmental, political, and economic data to identify the conditions in which individual coup plotters will make decisions.

Key Findings:
Coup events (both attempts and successes) have declined considerably over the past two decades.
Even though coup events have declined globally, Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a disproportionate number of coup events in the post-2000 time period. Roughly 70 percent of all coup events since 2000 have taken place in this region.
Greater democratization has changed the nature of coups. Less consolidated democracies face higher forecasted risks for a coup attempt, while elections were found to be triggers of coup risk.
The global forecasted risk of at least one coup attempt in 2019 fell to nearly 80 percent, compared to more than 90 percent in 2018.
Sub-Saharan Africa saw a decrease in the forecasted risk of at least one coup attempt in 2019 but remains comparatively high at roughly a 55 percent probability of at least one coup attempt.
Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau, Burundi, Mauritania, and Somalia are forecasted to be the top 5 most at risk countries for at least one coup attempt in 2019.
Across Asia, the Americas, and Africa, a history of coups, infant mortality rate, GDP per capita, and length of democracy, time since last incumbent electoral loss, and population size were found to be the biggest drivers of coup risk.
Qualitative assessment of at-risk countries within Asia, the Americas, and Africa found that each region contained diverse causes of political instability and unique drivers of coup-risk. Consequently, each region requires a tailored approach to mitigating coup risk for the most at-risk countries.
Given the unexpected failed coup in Gabon on January 7th, 2019, quantitative forecasting alone may not capture the full extent to which countries may risk a coup. The analysis of three low-risk African countries highlights that expert knowledge is necessary to bridge the gap between macro-quantitative forecasting and the potential micro-dynamics driving coup risk.
UN
Statement to the media by the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, on the conclusion of its official visit to Belgium, 4-11 February 2019
ID: 201902111471

Brussels, 11 February 2019

The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent thanks the Government of Belgium for its invitation to visit the country from 4 to 11 February 2019, and for its cooperation. In particular, we thank the Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. We also thank the OHCHR Regional Office for Europe for their support to the visit.
The views expressed in this statement are of a preliminary nature and our final findings and recommendations will be presented in our mission report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in September 2019.
During the visit, the Working Group assessed the human rights situation of people of African descent living in Belgium, and gathered information on the forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, Afrophobia and related intolerance they face. The Working Group studied the official measures taken and mechanisms to prevent systemic racial discrimination and to protect victims of racism, as well as responses to multiple forms of discrimination.
As part of its fact-finding mission, the Working Group visited Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Namur and Charleroi. It met with senior officials of the Belgian Government at the federal, regional, community and local levels, the legislature, law enforcement, national human rights institutions, OHCHR Regional Office, non-governmental organizations, as well as communities and individuals working to promote the rights of people of African descent in Belgium. The Working Group toured the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA). It also visited the St. Gilles prison in Brussels.
We thank the many people of African descent and others, representing civil society organizations, human rights defenders, women’s organizations, lawyers, and academics whom we met during the visit. The contributions of those working to promote and protect the rights of people of African descent, creating initiatives, and proposing strategies to address structural racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, Afrophobia and related intolerance are invaluable.
The protection of human rights and the prohibition of racial discrimination is enshrined in Articles 10-11 in the Belgian Constitution. Belgium’s national anti-racism legislation is the 1981 anti-discrimination law, updated in 2007. Regions and communities also have anti-discrimination legislation.
We welcome the initiatives undertaken by Government at the federal, regional and community levels to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. We encourage efforts to raise awareness and support civil society including through the provision of funding.
The Working Group recognizes the important work of the Inter-Federal Centre for Equal Opportunities (Unia) in the protection and promotion of human rights, and in documenting racism and inequality at the federal and regional levels. Unia also provides recommendations on participation, tolerance, discrimination and diversity as well as their implementation in Belgium. Its diversity barometers provide important information on the human rights situation of people of African descent.
Throughout our visit we appreciated the willingness of public officials to discuss how public and private institutions may sustain racial disparities. We welcome the national network of expertise on crime against people, a robust infrastructure for combatting hate crime. In Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Namur and Charleroi, the Working Group received information about social integration and intercultural efforts for new arrivals, including referral to language tuition. In Liege, we welcome the commitment enshrined in the Charter, Liege Against Racism.
The Working Group also welcomes the civil society initiatives to promote the International Decade for people of African descent in Belgium.
One of the ways the African diaspora in Belgium is expressing its voice is through cultural events such as the Congolisation festival to highlight the contribution of Congolese artists to the Belgian cultural landscape and make people begin to appreciate and reflect on the diaspora’s artistic heritage.
Despite the positive measures referred to above, the Working Group is concerned about the human rights situation of people of African descent in Belgium who experience racism and racial discrimination.
There is clear evidence that racial discrimination is endemic in institutions in Belgium. Civil society reported common manifestations of racial discrimination, xenophobia, Afrophobia and related intolerance faced by people of African descent. The root causes of present day human rights violations lie in the lack of recognition of the true scope of violence and injustice of colonisation. As a result, public discourse does not reflect a nuanced understanding of how institutions may drive systemic exclusion from education, employment, and opportunity. The Working Group concludes that inequalities are deeply entrenched because of structural barriers that intersect and reinforce each other. Credible efforts to counter racism require first overcoming these hurdles.
We note with concern the public monuments and memorials that are dedicated to King Leopold II and Force Publique officers, given their complicity in atrocities in Africa. The Working Group is of the view that closing the dark chapter in history, and reconciliation and healing, requires that Belgians should finally confront, and acknowledge, King Leopold II’s and Belgium’s role in colonization and its long-term impact on Belgium and Africa.
The most visible postcolonial discourse in a Belgian public institution takes place within the recently reopened Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), which is both a research and a cultural institution. RMCA has sought to review its approach to include critical, postcolonial analysis- a marked shift for an institution originally charged with promulgating colonial propaganda. The Working Group is of the view that the reorganization of the museum has not gone far enough. For those communities that do engage in vibrant postcolonial discourse, i.e., civil society and activists, the reorganization falls short of its goal of providing adequate context and critical analysis. The Working Group notes the importance of removing all colonial propaganda and accurately presenting the atrocities of Belgium’s colonial past. The RMCA admits that decolonization is a process and reports its intention to evolve towards sharing power with people and institutions of African descent.
The Working Group welcomes this process of decolonization, as even recent cultural production in Belgium reflects enduring legacies of the colonial past. For example, a 2002 exhibit of eight Africans in a private zoo in Belgium (Cameroonians brought to Belgium without visas) recalls Belgium’s notorious “human zoos” between 1897 and 1958.
Reportedly, between 1959 and 1962, thousands of children born to white fathers and African mothers in Belgian-ruled Congo, Rwanda and Burundi were abducted and sent to Belgium for adoption. The Working Group notes with approval that the 2016 appeal by Metis de Belgique for state recognition was met with an apology from the Catholic Church the following year and a 2018 parliamentary resolution on la ségrégation subie par les métis issus de la colonisation belge en Afrique. The Working Group commends the provision of funding for data gathering, research and accountability within this framework.
Belgium often refers to intercultural, rather than multicultural, goals with the idea of preserving individual cultural heritage and practices while coexisting in peace and prosperity with respect and regard for the intersection and interaction of diverse cultures. This diversity includes citizens, migrants, people of first, second, and third generation residency, highly educated people, and groups that have contributed enormously to the modern Belgian state. Interculturality requires reciprocity, rejection of harmful cultural stereotype, and valuing of all cultures, including those of people of African descent.
The Working Group notes with concern the absence of disaggregated data based on ethnicity or race. Disaggregated data is required for ensuring the recognition of people of African descent and overcoming historical “social invisibility”. Without such data, it is impossible to ensure that Belgium’s reported commitments to equality are actually realized. Some anti-discrimination bodies have found proxy data (relating to parental origin) that have informed equality and anti-racism analyses; additional data relating to regroupement famille (and other data) may also extend these analyses to Belgian citizens of African descent.
Belgium has a complex political system. This must not impede fulfilment of its obligations to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The lack of an A-Status National Human Rights Institution and a National Action Plan to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, Afrophobia and related intolerance must be addressed. Belgium should engage actively in partnership with people of African descent, particularly experts in navigating these complexities, to promote equality and to diminish entrenched racial disparity.
The Working Group notes both civil society and law enforcement acknowledge the prevalence of racial profiling in policing. Reportedly, counter-terrorism policies have contributed to an increase in racial profiling by law enforcement. The federal police recognized the concern with racial profiling and offered additional information about a pilot study in Mechelen to document all stops and searches (including a narrative basis for the stop) over a two-year period. However, it is unclear how this may effectively target racial profiling as the race of the community members stopped by the police are not included among the data captured by the stop report.
The Working Group visited St. Gilles Prison in Brussels. The Working Group found the prison dilapidated and overcrowded. It is scheduled for relocation in 2022. Frequent strikes by prison personnel dramatically impact the conditions of confinement for incarcerated people housed there, including suspensions of visitation, showers, phone access, recreation, and prolonged lockdowns. Another concern raised by the detainees was the lack of attention to their requests for medical attention. There were also individual reports of racist behaviour by some of the guards, and the administration committed to individually counselling perpetrators and zero-tolerance for racism.
The Working Group notes with deep concern, the lack of representation of people of African descent in the judiciary, law enforcement, government service, correctional service, municipal councils, regional and federal parliaments. These institutions do not reflect the diversity of the Belgian population. When the Working Group visited Belgium in 2005, the federal police reported the existence of a robust recruitment program to promote diversity. While this program was again presented as a serious commitment, no data are currently available to establish what improvements, if any, had been made in the past fourteen years and whether the program has been successful.
Civil society and community members commented on the lack of positive role models in the news media, on billboards, and in Belgian television and film. The French Community referenced best practices involving a barometer of print media aimed at measuring equality and diversity among journalists and in news content, and creating of an expert panel to broaden representation.
The Working Group noted deficiencies in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, among people of African descent in Belgium. According to research, sixty percent of Afro-Belgians are educated to degree level, but they are four times more likely to be unemployed than the national average. Eighty percent say they have been victims of discrimination from a very young age. Public officials consistently rationalized systematic exclusion of people of African descent with references to language and culture, even in cases involving second generation Belgians.
The Working Group repeatedly heard from civil society that Belgians of African descent faced “downgrading” and other employment challenges. People with university and graduate degrees reported working well-below their educational levels, including in manual labor despite possessing university certificates from Belgian universities. They also highlighted the difficulty in obtaining recognition of foreign diplomas. They also reported systematic exclusion from job assistance as job centers declined to refer people of African descent to employment opportunities at their educational levels. UNIA has also documented pervasive downgrading of employment and the prevalence of people of African descent working well below their education levels, despite the fact that they are among the most educated in the Belgian society.
The Working Group is concerned that primary and secondary school curricula do not adequately reflect the history of colonization as well as history and contributions of people of African descent in Belgium. Whether colonial history of Belgium is mentioned is largely dependent on interest and initiative of individual teachers. Where curriculum exists, it appears to recapitulate colonial propaganda including the suggestion that economic development came to Africa as a result of colonization while omitting references to key historical figures of African descent such as Patrice Lumumba. Reportedly, one-fourth of the high school graduates are unaware that Congo was a former Belgian colony.
At every interaction with civil society, the Working Group heard testimonies of the systematic practice of diverting children of African descent to vocational or manual training and out of the general education trajectory. This severely impacts the right to education and the right to childhood. Parents reported struggling to keep their children from being diverted, resisting transfers to vocational education, fighting to avoid having their children classified with behavioural or learning disorders and being threatened with the involvement of child protective services. A few parents discussed creative strategies to navigate these systems and secure their children’s education, including using the home school testing process and enrolling their children in boarding school. University students also reported being discouraged from continuing their educations or progressing.
Several community members discussed severe impact to their mental health due to racial discrimination. This included individualized racial slurs and hostile treatment, and several members of civil society in different locations mentioned the dramatic impact of daily racism on their lives – including depression and becoming withdrawn – and the fact that no one in authority in their schools ever noticed or intervened.
Civil society reported frequent discrimination in housing and rental markets. They would be immediately rejected by landlords who could detect an African accent over the phone or who recognized their names as African or informed the apartment was unavailable once they met the landlord face-to-face. Government informed of the use of “mystery calls,” a process involving the use of testers where landlords were identified as potentially discriminating unlawfully. The program was only recently commenced, pursuant to the Unia report and in conjunction with them, and few cases had been completed at the time of our visit.
The Working Group heard considerable testimony from civil society and community members on intersectionality, that people who meet the criteria for multiple marginalized groups may be particularly vulnerable, face extreme violence and harassment, and yet often remain invisible or deprioritized even within communities of African descent. This is particularly true for undocumented people of African descent whose lives are particularly precarious and who lack regularisation for years. In addition, women of African descent, particularly recent migrants, faced challenges pursuing justice, social support, or even shelter for domestic violence.
People of African descent and Muslim religious identity questioned why law enforcement authorities assumed they had terrorist ties. Some public officials implicitly acknowledged their role in this, including defending the use of racial profiling as a counter terrorism tactic and suggesting a false equivalence between anti-radicalism efforts and anti-racism programs, i.e., failing to understand that race-based assumptions regarding radicalism are inaccurate, grounded in bias, and divert key resources from protecting Belgian society from actual threats.
The Working Group is concerned about the rise of populist nationalism, racist hate speech and xenophobic discourse as a political tool. We reiterate the concerns raised by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2015 that the government has yet to adopt legislation declaring organizations which promote and incite racial discrimination illegal, in conformity with Article 4 of the Convention.
The use of blackface, racialized caricatures, and racist representations of people of African descent is offensive, dehumanizing and contemptuous. Regrettably, the re-publication of Tintin in the Congo unedited and without contextualization perpetuates negative stereotypes and either should be withdrawn or contextualized with an addendum reflecting current commitments to anti-racism.
The Working Group found little awareness about the International Decade for people of African descent. Civil society stands ready to support implementation of the Programme of Activities of the International Decade.
The following recommendations are intended to assist Belgium in its efforts to combat all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, Afrophobia and related intolerance:
The Government of Belgium should adopt a comprehensive inter-federal National Action Plan against racism, upholding the commitments it made 2002, following the World Conference Against Racism. The National Action Plan against racism should be developed in partnership with people of African descent.
Adopt a National Strategy for the inclusion of people of African descent in Belgium, including migrants, and create a National Platform for people of African descent.
Establish an independent National Human Rights Institution, in conformity with the Paris Principles, and in partnership with people of African descent.
The Government should consider ratifying the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
The Working Group urges the Government to comply with the recommendations made by the Unia, including those relating to combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
The Working Group urges the government to fund creative projects by people of African descent such as the House of African Culture, among others, with the view of raising the visibility of all forms of African expression and preserving the history and memory of the African Diaspora.
We urge universities throughout Belgium to endow chairs in African Studies, and prioritize the hiring of faculty of African descent, with the view to foster research and the dissemination of knowledge in this area, as well as to diversify the academy.
The Government should ensure funding for anti-racism associations run by people of African descent to enable them to be partners in combatting racism. The Working Group also recommends inclusive financing mechanisms for entrepreneurs of African Descent.
We welcome the renaming of the former Square du Bastion to Patrice Lumumba Square in June 2018 as well as an exhibit commemorating Congolese soldiers who fought in World War I, and encourage further, durable commemoration of contributions of people of African descent and the removal of markers of the colonial period.
We urge the government to give recognition and visibility to those who were killed during the period of colonization, to Congolese soldiers who fought during the two World Wars, and to acknowledge the cultural, economic, political and scientific contributions of people of African descent to the development of Belgian society through the establishment of monuments, memorial sites, street names, schools, municipal, regional and federal buildings. This should be done in consultation with civil society.
The Working Group recommends reparatory justice, with a view to closing the dark chapter in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing. We urge the government to issue an apology for the atrocities committed during colonization. The right to reparations for past atrocities is not subject to any statute of limitations. The Working Group recommends the CARICOM 10-point action plan for reparatory justice as a guiding framework.
The Working Group supports the establishment of a truth commission, and supports the draft bill before Parliament entitled “A memorial work plan to establish facts and the implication of Belgian institutions in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi”, dated 14 February 2017.
The authorities should ensure full access to archives relevant for research on Belgian colonialism.
The Working Group urges the relevant authorities to ensure that the RMCA be entrusted with tasks and responsibilities in the context of the International Decade for people of African Descent. In this context, the Working Group recommends that the RMCA be provided with appropriate financial and human resources, which would allow it to fully exercise the potential of this institution and engage in further improving and enriching its narrative, thus contributing to a better awareness and understanding of the tragic legacies of Belgian colonialism as well as past and contemporary human rights challenges of people of African descent.
The Working Group encourages the RMCA, in collaboration with historians from Africa and the diaspora, to remove all offensive racist exhibits and ensure detailed explanations and context to inform and educate visitors accurately about Belgium’s colonial history and its exploitation of Africa.
The Working Group urges the Government to provide specific, directed funding to the RMCA to enrich its postcolonial analysis. This funding should allow for innovations like QR codes on museum placards to provide more context and enrich intersectional analyses, including the historical and current interplay of race, gender, sexuality, migration status, religion and other relevant criteria.
The Working Group urges the Government to financially support a public education campaign in partnership with people of African descent, to learn and better understand the legacies of Belgian colonialism.
The Working Group strongly recommends that the Government collects, compiles, analyses, disseminates and publishes reliable statistical data disaggregated by race and on the basis of voluntary self-identification, and undertakes all necessary measures to assess regularly the situation of individuals and groups of individuals who are victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
The Working Group calls on the Government to address racial profiling and institute a policy of documenting and analyzing stops and searches nationwide, including race and skin color, in order to promote and ensure equality and fairness on policing; mitigate selective enforcement of the law; address enduring bias, stereotype, and beliefs about the need to surveil and control people of African descent.
Ensure that the robust framework set up for the prosecution of hate crimes is used more in practice.
Review diversity initiatives within justice institutions as well as other sectors including education and media, to develop clear benchmarks to increase diversity measurably and overcome structural discrimination and unconscious bias through positive measures, in accordance with the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Clarify and simplify jurisdiction of anti-discrimination authorities, creating one point of entry to ease reporting for victims and to coordinate and enhance accountability for perpetrators of racist harassment and violence, including accelerated judicial procedures.
The Government should review and ensure that textbooks and educational materials accurately reflect historical facts as they relate to past tragedies and atrocities such as enslavement, the trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism. Belgium should use UNESCO’s General History of Africa to inform its educational curriculum, among similarly oriented authoritative texts. We urge the government to promote greater knowledge and recognition of and respect for the culture, history and heritage of people of African descent living in Belgium. This should include the mandatory teaching of Belgium’s colonial history at all levels of the education system.
The Ministries of Education and the local Communities must determine whether there is a statistically significant difference in diversion of children of African descent from mainstream education into vocational or technical education streams, as compared to white Belgian children.
All teachers should complete anti-racism training, including training on implicit bias and specific manifestations in the context of their work. The training should involve testing to evaluate the understanding of diversity among teachers.
All public officials charged with education responsibilities must develop clear, objective, and transparent processes and criteria that govern when a child should be diverted from mainstream education, the need to guard against implicit bias and race-based outcomes in decision-making, and the right of parents to resist or overrule the recommendations of teachers without harassment.
The Government should take all necessary measures to combat racial discrimination and ensure full implementation of the right to adequate standard of living, including the right to adequate housing, access to affordable health care, employment and education for people of African descent.
Invest in integrated trust-building measures between the police, judicial institutions, the Unia, social integration institutions, anti-racist associations, and victims of racial discrimination and race and gender based violence, to ensure that racist acts, violence or crimes are systematically reported, prosecuted and compensated.
Belgium should conduct a racial equity audit within its public institutions and incentivize private employers and institutions to do the same. The purpose of the audit is to look for systemic bias and discrimination within the regular and routine operation of business. Belgium should commit to a public release of the findings and to implementing recommendations developed in the audit process.
Belgium should examine existing statistics and proxy data to determine whether people of African descent in Belgium, including Belgian citizens of African descent, experience and exercise their human rights consistently with the averages for all Belgians. This includes data on citizenship, parents’ place of birth, and regroupement famille (family reunification) data for reunification from countries of African descent.
Belgium should adopt clear, objective, and transparent protocols for job centers to ensure they do not perpetuate stereotype and bias, including requiring referrals to be based on level of education or experience, and recognizing that language should not be a disqualifying factor once a measurable competence is determined.
The Working Group recommends the Government support and facilitate an open debate on the use of blackface, racialized caricatures and racist representation of people of African descent. The republication of Tintin in the Congo should be withdrawn or contextualized with an addendum reflecting current commitments to anti-racism.
The Working Group calls on politicians at all levels of society to avoid instrumentalzing racism, xenophobia and hate speech in the pursuit of political office and to encourages them to promote inclusion, solidarity, non-discrimination and meaningful commitments to equality. Media is also reminded of its important role in this regard.
The Working Group reminds media of their important role as a public watchdog with special responsibilities for ensuring that factual and reliable information about people of African descent is reported.
The Working Group urges the Government to involve civil society organisations representing people of African descent when framing important legislations concerning them and providing those organizations with adequate funding.
The International Decade on People of African Descent should be officially launched in Belgium at the federal level.
The Working Group also encourages the Government to further implement the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda within Belgium, with focus on indicators relevant for people of African descent, in partnership with civil society. In view of Statbel’s 2018 report on poverty, the Working Group calls on the government to eradicate structural racism to attain the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Working Group would like to reiterate its satisfaction at the Government’s willingness to engage in dialogue, cooperation and action to combat racial discrimination. We hope that our report will support the Government in this process and we express our willingness to assist in this important endeavour.
****
MIKA J.P.
Les Chefs [au Congo-Kinshasa]
ID: 201801301338
olie op doek, 78x60 cm, gesigneerd en gedateerd 2010 O.M., privé-collectie. Kunstwerk op bestelling uitgevoerd.

Hoe gaat Congo naar verkiezingen?

Land: COD
AUCH Ted
Tracking Global Oil Refineries and their Emissions
ID: 201712291469
December 29, 2017/2 Comments/in Articles, Data and Analysis /by Ted Auch, PhD
Potential Conflict Hotspots and Global Productivity Choke Points

Today, FracTracker is releasing a complete inventory of all 536 global oil refineries, along with estimates of daily capacity, CO2 emissions per year, and various products. These data have also been visualized in the map below.

Total productivity from these refineries amounts to 79,372,612 barrels per day (BPD) of oil worldwide, according to the data we were able to compile. However, based on the International Energy Agency, global production is currently around 96 million BPD, which means that our capacity estimates are more indicative of conditions between 2002 and 2003 according to BP’s World Oil Production estimates. We estimate this disparity is a result of countries’ reluctance to share individual refinery values or rates of change due to national security concerns or related strategic reasons.

These refineries are emitting roughly 260-283 billion metric tons (BMT) of CO2[1], 1.2-1.3 BMT of methane and 46-51 million metric tons of nitrous oxide (N2O) into the atmosphere each year. The latter two compounds have climate change potentials equivalent to 28.2-30.7 BMT and 14.1-15.3 BMT CO2, respectively.

66 million
Assuming the planet’s 7.6 billion people emit 4.9-5.0 metric tons per capita of CO2 per year, emissions from these 536 refineries amounts to the CO2 emissions of 52-57 million people. If you include the facilities’ methane and N2O emissions, this figure rises to 61-66 million people equivalents every year, essentially the populations of the United Kingdom or France.

BP’s data indicate that the amount of oil being refined globally is increasing by 923,000 BPD per year (See Figure 1). This increase is primarily due to improved productivity from existing refineries. For example, BP’s own Whiting, IN refinery noted a “$4-billion revamp… to boost its intake of Canadian crude oil from 85,000 bpd to 350,000 bpd.”

Potential Hotspots and Chokepoints
Across the globe, countries and companies are beginning to make bold predictions about their ability to refine oil.

Nigeria, for example, recently claimed they would be increasing oil refining capacity by 13% from 2.4 to 2.7 million BPD. Currently, however, our data indicate Nigeria is only producing a fraction of this headline number (i.e., 445,000 BPD). The country’s estimates seem to be more indicative of conditions in Nigeria in the late 1960s when oil was first discovered in the Niger Delta. Learn more.

Is investing in – and doubling down on – oil refining capacity a smart idea for Nigeria’s people and economy, however? At this point, the country’s population is 3.5 times greater than it was in the 60’s and is growing at a remarkable rate of 2.7% per year. Yet, Nigeria’s status as one of the preeminent “Petro States” has done very little for the majority of its population – The oil industry and the Niger Delta have become synonymous with increased infant mortality and rampant oil spills.

Sadly, the probability that the situation will improve in a warming – and more politically volatile – world is not very likely.

Such a dependency on oil price has been coupled to political instability in Nigeria, prompting some to question whether the discovery of oil was a cure or a curse given that the country depends on oil prices – and associated volatility – to balance its budget: Of all the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries, Nigeria is near the top of the list when it comes to the price of oil the country needs to balance its budget – Deutsche Bank and IMF estimate $123 per barrel as their breaking point. This is a valuation that oil has only exceeded or approached 4.4% of the time since 1987 (See Figure 2).

Former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Charles Soludo, once put this reliance in context:

… For too long, we have lived with borrowed robes, and I think for the next generation, for the 400 million Nigerians expected in this country by the year 2050, oil cannot be the way forward for the future.

Other regions are also at risk from the oil market’s power and volatility. In Libya, for example, the Ras Lanuf oil refinery (with a capacity of 220,000 BPD) and the country’s primary oil export terminal in Brega were the focal point of the Libyan civil war in 2011. Not coincidentally, Libya also happens to be the Petro State that needs the highest per-barrel price for oil to balance its budget (See Figure 2). Muammar Gaddafi and the opposition, National Transitional Council, jostled for control of this pivotal choke point in the Africa-to-Europe hydrocarbon supply chain.

The fact that refineries like these – and others in similarly volatile regions of the Middle East – produce an impressive 10% (7,166,900 BPD) of global demand speaks to the fragility of these Hydrocarbon Industrial Complex focal points, as well as the planet’s fragile dependence on fossil fuels going forward.

Dividing Neighbors
These components of the fossil fuel industry, and their associated feedstocks and pipelines, will continue to divide neighbors and countries as political disenfranchisement and inequality grow, the climate continues to change, and resource limitations put increasing stress on food security and watershed resiliency worldwide.

Not surprisingly, every one of these factors places more strain on countries and weakens their ability to govern responsibly.

Thus, many observers speculate that these factors are converging to create a kind of perfect storm that forces OPEC governments and their corporate partners to lean even more heavily on their respective militaries and for-profit private military contractors (PMCs) to prevent social unrest while insuring supply chain stability and shareholder return.[2,3] The increased reliance on PMCs to provide domestic security for energy infrastructure is growing and evolving to the point where in some countries it may be hard to determine where a state’s sovereignty ends and a PMC’s dominance begins – Erik Prince’s activities in the Middle East and Africa on China’s behalf and his recent aspirations for Afghanistan are a case in point.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, whiskey is for drinking and hydrocarbons are for fighting over.

The international and regional unaccountability of PMCs has added a layer of complexity to this conversation about energy security and independence. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela provide examples of how fragile political stability is, and more importantly how dependent this stability is on oil refinery production and what OPEC is calling ‘New Optimism.’ To be sure, PMCs are playing an increasing role in political (in)stability and energy production and transport. Since knowledge and transparency are essential for peaceful resolutions, we will continue to map and chronicle the intersections of geopolitics, energy production and transport, social justice, and climate change.

By Ted Auch, Great Lakes Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance; and Bryan Stinchfield, Associate Professor of Organization Studies, Department Chair of Business, Organizations & Society, Franklin & Marshall College

Relevant Data
Inventory of all 536 Global Oil Refineries: Download zip file
Inventory of all Global Oil and Gas Shale Plays: Download zip file
Footnotes and References
Assuming a tons of CO2 to barrels of oil per day ratio of 8.99 to 9.78 tons of CO2 per barrel of oil based on an analysis we’ve conducted of 146 refineries in the United States.
B. Stinchfield. 2017. “The Creeping Privatization of America’s Armed Forces”. Newsweek, May 28th, 2017, New York, NY.
R. Gray. “Erik Prince’s Plan to Privatize the War in Afghanistan”. The Atlantic, August 18th, 2017, New York, NY.


see link
geconsulteerd 20200128
Land: INT
Article 201712061497: Mau Mau Rebellion: The Emergency in Kenya 1952-1956
VAN DER BIJL Nicholas
Mau Mau Rebellion: The Emergency in Kenya 1952-1956
ID: 201712061497
In The Mau Mau Rebellion, the author describes the background to and the course of a short but brutal late colonial campaign in Kenya. The Mau Mau, a violent and secretive Kikuyu society, aimed to restore the proud tribe’s pre-colonial superiority and rule. The 1940s saw initial targeting of Africans working for the colonial government and by 1952 the situation had deteriorated so badly that a State of Emergency was declared. The plan for mass arrests leaked and many leaders and supporters escaped to the bush where the gangs formed a military structure. Brutal attacks on both whites and loyal natives caused morale problems and local police and military were overwhelmed. Reinforcements were called in, and harsh measures including mass deportation, protected camps, fines, confiscation of property and extreme intelligence gathering were employed. War crimes were committed by both sides.

As this well researched book demonstrates the campaign was ultimately successful militarily, politically the dye was cast and paradoxically colonial rule gave way to independence in 1963.

Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements vii

Maps ix

Introduction 0

Chapter 1 British East Africa 1

Chapter 2 The Colonization of Kenya 17

Chapter 3 The Emergence of the Mau Mau 28

Chapter 4 Declaration of the Emergency 46

Chapter 5 The Crisis Deepens 66

Chapter 6 The Military Response 87

Chapter 7 Brigade Operations June/July 1953 100

Chapter 8 Consolidation 1953 122

Chapter 9 Opening the Offensive 1954 142

Chapter 10 The Initiative Seized 156

Chapter 11 The Defeat of Mau Mau 1955 181

Chapter 12 Mopping Up and Independence 205

Conclusion 224

Appendix A Order of Battle 226

Appendix B Casualties 228

Glossary 231

Bibliography 233

Index 237
Land: KEN
Olivier PIOT dans Le Monde Diplomatique
Au Gabon, la mécanique du népotisme s’enraye
ID: 201610008547
Violente répression postélectorale

Au Gabon, la mécanique du népotisme s’enraye
Contrairement à un scénario bien ficelé depuis des décennies, la France n’a pas reconnu immédiatement l’élection, contestée et suivie d’émeutes, du président gabonais le 31 août dernier. Que M. Ali Bongo parvienne ou non à se maintenir au pouvoir, il s’agit d’un tournant dans l’histoire de ce petit pays d’Afrique centrale, symbole d’une « Françafrique » vacillante.


Boris Nzebo. – « Le vainqueur écrit l’histoire » (diptyque), 2016
(Exposition à la galerie Jack Bell du 4 au 21 octobre 2016) / Jack Bell Gallery, Londres
«On n’organise pas des élections pour les perdre. » Bien connue des Gabonais, cette formule attribuée à Omar Bongo, qui dirigea le pays de 1967 à 2009, résonne avec une acuité toute particulière à Libreville. La crise postélectorale qui a débuté le le 31 août 2016 apparaît comme une réplique quasi parfaite de celles qui ont régulièrement embrasé le Gabon depuis 1990, date de l’instauration du multipartisme. Avec une différence de taille : l’Union européenne, la France et l’Organisation des Nations unies (ONU) ont, cette fois, d’emblée appelé au respect de la « transparence » des résultats, se départissant ainsi du silence qui avait tant pesé lors de l’élection de 2009 (1). À l’époque, la succession de feu Omar Bongo, doyen des chefs d’État africains et grand ami de la France, était à l’ordre du jour. L’annonce de la victoire de M. Ali Bongo avait aussitôt suscité les plus vives critiques de l’opposition, qui dénonçait des fraudes dans le décompte des voix. Missions internationales d’observation (Union européenne, Union africaine, Organisation internationale de la francophonie), manifestations réprimées, plaintes déposées devant la Cour constitutionnelle… rien n’y fit. Le fils présumé (2) succéda donc au père, sous le regard bienveillant du président français de l’époque, M. Nicolas Sarkozy, qui félicita son « ami » avant même la décision de la Cour constitutionnelle.

Avec un score officiel de 41,79 % lors d’un seul et unique tour, M. Bongo avait alors officiellement devancé ses deux concurrents, MM. Pierre Mamboundou (25,64 %) et André Mba Obame (25,33 %). Par la suite, plusieurs enquêtes attestèrent que les scores avaient été truqués. Dans un documentaire diffusé sur la chaîne de télévision France 2 en décembre 2010, M. Michel de Bonnecorse, ex-conseiller Afrique du président Jacques Chirac, accrédita cette version des faits (3).

Quelques mois plus tard, en février 2011, les câbles WikiLeaks la confirmaient : « Octobre 2009, Ali Bongo inverse le décompte des voix et se déclare président », écrivait l’ambassadeur des États-Unis à Paris, M. Charles Rivkin, dans un télégramme transmis en novembre 2009 à la secrétaire d’État, Mme Hillary Clinton, qui conseilla aussitôt à M. Barack Obama de ne pas reconnaître la victoire de M. Bongo (4)… Sans succès, le président américain recevant même son homologue en 2011. Le 16 janvier dernier, sur le plateau de l’émission « On n’est pas couché » (France 2), le premier ministre Manuel Valls avait lâché par mégarde qu’en 2009 M. Bongo n’avait pas été élu « comme on l’entend »…

Un taux de participation de 99,93 %
En 2016, ce sont les résultats officiels de la province du Haut-Ogooué, la terre ancestrale de la famille Bongo, qui font à nouveau polémique : 95,46 % des électeurs se seraient prononcés en faveur du président sortant, avec un taux de participation de 99,93 % ; ce qui signifie que seuls 50 électeurs sur les 71 714 inscrits se seraient abstenus ! Le Haut-Ogooué serait-il tout simplement un fief acquis au clan Bongo ? « Pas du tout, il faut en finir avec ce mythe : Ali n’y a plus du tout le soutien dont bénéficiait son père », s’insurge Mme Claire H., profession libérale, très en vue au Gabon (5). Alors, pourquoi cette province administrative se retrouve-t-elle sous les projecteurs ? « Ali s’est fait surprendre par le vote dans les huit autres provinces, commente Gustave D., journaliste d’investigation gabonais. Même si quelques ajustements frauduleux y ont été réalisés, l’écart en faveur du candidat de l’opposition Jean Ping était énorme — autour de soixante mille voix. Le pouvoir a donc dû concentrer la fraude dans le Haut-Ogooué pour rattraper le retard et passer juste devant. »

Trop grosse et précipitée, la ficelle s’est progressivement transformée en corde à pendu. Détentrice d’une partie importante des 297 procès-verbaux de cette région où elle avait diligenté des observateurs, « la mission d’observation de l’Union européenne ne pourra pas fermer les yeux. C’est une simple question de temps », assure M. Pierre P., un célèbre avocat gabonais de Libreville.

Chargé du recours déposé en 2009 par l’opposition devant la Cour constitutionnelle, ce juriste connaît bien le dossier. « La mission européenne d’observation électorale au Gabon est tenue, par son contrat, au respect de la souveraineté gabonaise et de ses procédures. Mais, en parlant d’“anomalies” dans son rapport préliminaire, elle a cette fois mis en garde Ali Bongo. » Pour autant, le scénario de 2009 n’est-il pas en passe de se répéter ? « Non ! Le Gabon de 2016 n’est pas celui de 2009, commente M. Michel K., un ancien haut fonctionnaire toujours proche de la famille Bongo. Certes, la présidente de la Cour, Marie-Madeleine Mborantsuo, est toujours aussi inféodée au pouvoir ; mais la société, elle, a changé. Ali n’a pas l’envergure de son père. En quelques années, il a transformé le système centralisé et unitaire de celui-ci en une véritable prédation dynastique, exacerbant la volonté farouche de changement des Gabonais. »

C’est bien dans un double mouvement de continuité et de rupture que s’est inscrit le régime de M. Bongo. Et, curieusement, ces deux tendances nourrissent la crise politique actuelle. Continuité d’abord, car la prospérité de la République gabonaise repose sur une stratégie de rente inchangée depuis l’indépendance du pays, en 1960 : l’économie est entièrement consacrée à la production et à l’exportation de ressources naturelles. « À l’époque coloniale, c’est le bois précieux de l’okoumé qui faisait vivre le pays et l’Afrique-Équatoriale française tout entière. Par la suite sont venus s’ajouter le manganèse, l’uranium et, bien sûr, le pétrole », nous rappelle le géographe Roland Pourtier, professeur émérite à l’université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne (6). En 1975, le Gabon rejoint l’Organisation des pays exportateurs de pétrole (OPEP). Pour faciliter cette adhésion, le président Albert-Bernard Bongo adopte alors le nom musulman d’El Hadj Omar Bongo. S’ouvre ensuite une période faste pour l’économie nationale, dite des « douze glorieuses », jusqu’au contre-choc pétrolier de 1985, puis de nouveau un épisode prospère, de la fin des années 1990 jusqu’en 2014.

À l’exploitation du bois — 85 % du territoire est recouvert de forêts — ont donc succédé les « cycles miniers » puis le pétrole. Partant d’une production de 250 000 barils par jour en 1975, le pic de la production de pétrole est atteint en 1997 (350 000 barils par jour, soit une production annuelle record de 18,5 millions de tonnes). Le Gabon fait alors figure d’« émirat tropical ». Avec une population modeste (1,8 million d’habitants en 2013), l’État vit de ses rentes, au gré des fluctuations des cours des matières premières. Au cœur du dispositif, « de grosses entreprises, essentiellement françaises, dans différents secteurs (bois, pétrole, uranium), et un État gabonais qui entre systématiquement dans leur capital à hauteur de 20 % », poursuit Roland Pourtier. Pourvoyeuse de milliards de francs CFA pendant presque quatre décennies et source d’enrichissement pour les élites au pouvoir, la rente des matières premières n’a été que très marginalement réinvestie dans l’économie du pays. « L’État rentier gabonais a fonctionné durant des années sur la prédation des ressources au profit de sa classe dirigeante », autour de laquelle « s’est développé un capitalisme parasitaire qui n’a guère permis d’améliorer les conditions de vie des populations, loin de là », souligne le politologue Thomas Atenga (7).

Longtemps emblématique de la « Françafrique » (lire « L’élève modèle de la “Françafrique” »), le Gabon s’est doté d’un État centralisé avec à sa tête Omar Bongo, inventeur d’un mode de redistribution fait de corruption et de prébendes habilement réparties entre les régions, les ethnies et les forces politiques du pays. Ce partage (très partiel) de la rente suivait une logique aujourd’hui bien connue. Il empruntait des canaux officiels — via des « enveloppes » versées dans l’entourage du pouvoir et le maillage des administrations territoriales — et des voies officieuses — via des dons personnels du « chef-président » au gré des crises sociales (universités, hôpitaux, etc.) et le réseau des maîtresses du président et de son entourage. « À une époque, des quartiers entiers de Libreville vivaient de ces largesses dictées par le “vagabondage sexuel” des élites dirigeantes », rappelle Roland Pourtier. Cette structure étatique de « rente-corruption » a été finement étudiée par de nombreux universitaires, français ou américains (8).

La malédiction du pétrole
Héritier de la dynastie Bongo depuis 2009, le fils n’a pas fondamentalement modifié l’organisation millimétrée concoctée par son père. « Pour l’essentiel, l’État gabonais et son économie fonctionnent dans la continuité », commente encore Roland Pourtier. Mme Marie-Madeleine Mborantsuo (alias « 3M »), par exemple, ex-maîtresse de feu Omar Bongo et présidente de la Cour constitutionnelle (une instance créée en 1991, dans la foulée de l’instauration du multipartisme), occupe ce poste stratégique depuis plus de vingt ans…

Sur le plan économique, M. Bongo s’était en 2009 présenté aux suffrages de ses concitoyens avec un ambitieux « plan stratégique du Gabon émergent » (PSGE), articulé autour de l’industrialisation et de la gestion durable des ressources. Le PSGE, qui était censé donner de nouvelles perspectives au pays, recoupait la volonté affichée par de nombreux dirigeants africains d’atteindre l’« émergence » grâce à une « intégration gagnante » dans la mondialisation. Il obéissait aussi aux injonctions des institutions internationales (Banque mondiale, Fonds monétaire international), celles-là mêmes qui avaient imposé les plans d’ajustement structurel dans les années 1990. Le PSGE a donné lieu à quelques innovations. Dans la filière bois, par exemple, les compagnies étrangères se sont vu imposer l’obligation de transformer les grumes avant exportation. Une usine de meubles est ainsi née de cette volonté de maîtriser la valeur ajoutée par des transformations industrielles locales. Dans l’agroalimentaire également, des investissements ont été réalisés, au profit notamment d’une extension des plantations de palmiers à huile et d’hévéas. Mais, après sept années de pouvoir, aucune de ces initiatives n’a réussi à limiter le poids de la rente pétrolière ou à sortir le pays de sa dépendance alimentaire (80 % de produits importés) — un schéma typique de la « maladie hollandaise » qui affecte les économies adossées aux matières premières (9).

Dans les faits, la seule rupture d’envergure est venue de l’inversion des cours du pétrole. Certes, en 2016, le Gabon demeure le quatrième producteur d’or noir de l’Afrique subsaharienne, derrière le Nigeria, l’Angola et le Congo-Brazzaville. Mais cette manne si essentielle à l’État (70 % des exportations, 20 % du produit intérieur brut et 40 % des recettes budgétaires) a fondu après le choc économique de l’été 2014. Après avoir franchi la barre des 100 dollars deux ans plus tôt, le prix du baril a chuté sous les 40 dollars en 2016. Résultat : la dette publique flambe, grevant le budget et les investissements. Port-Gentil, la capitale économique du pays, reste asphyxiée par ce retournement. En un an, les acteurs de la filière pétrole (Total, Shell, Vaalco, etc.) ainsi que les sous-traitants (Schlumberger, Addax Petroleum, Satram, etc.) ont stoppé net les investissements, fermé certains sites et licencié massivement. Selon l’Organisation nationale des employés du pétrole, près de 4 000 emplois (sur une population de 140 000 habitants) y ont été précarisés ou perdus en dix-huit mois.

Un retournement conjoncturel de cet ordre (qui a aussi, selon la Banque mondiale, frappé des secteurs comme l’agroalimentaire, la construction, le bois et les transports) affecte très vite le cœur même de la société (10). En effet, comme l’État rentier et prédateur laisse peu aux citoyens pour s’en sortir au quotidien, le moindre dérèglement se traduit par des drames sociaux. Si le pays caracole en tête des pays africains pour ce qui est du revenu par habitant — calculé en parité de pouvoir d’achat, le PIB par habitant est passé de 15 100 dollars en 2009 à 20 100 dollars début 2015 —, il dégringole au 112e rang mondial de l’indice de développement humain, qui intègre des critères sociaux comme l’accès aux soins ou à l’éducation. Plus de la moitié des Gabonais se trouvent aujourd’hui sous le seuil de pauvreté.

La conjonction de ces facteurs — persistance de l’État rentier, corruption, forte dégradation économique et sociale — explique la profondeur et la radicalité de la crise politique ouverte fin août 2016. Au cours des dernières années, la vie quotidienne dans la capitale comme dans la plupart des autres villes (85 % de la population du pays réside en zone urbaine) s’est dégradée au point de désagréger un tissu social précaire. La liste des maux quotidiens des Gabonais comprend à la fois la paupérisation d’une jeunesse frappée par le chômage (autour de 30 % de la population active, dont 60 % sont des jeunes), des arrestations expéditives lors des manifestations étudiantes ou syndicales (nombreuses depuis janvier 2016), la dégradation de l’accès aux soins (une caution de 300 000 francs CFA, soit 450 euros, est désormais exigée pour entrer à l’hôpital), déficience des services publics, coupures récurrentes d’électricité…

Telles sont les facettes d’une violence qui « recouvre les actes physiques autant que les actions ou interactions engendrant des agressions psychologiques et des disqualifications sociales, et [qui] inclut les coercitions et les actes de violence ordonnés par l’État et ses représentants (11) ». Cette brutalité multiforme se retrouve dans la radicalisation d’une partie de la culture hip-hop massivement adoptée par la jeunesse dans les années 1990.

« La plupart des membres de l’opposition craignent à présent pour leur vie à Libreville, lâche le journaliste gabonais Gustave D. Les forces répressives d’Ali Bongo ont intégré des “mercenaires encagoulés” chargés des basses besognes. » Le 8 septembre, l’opposant Jean Ping s’est finalement résolu à déposer un recours devant la Cour constitutionnelle. « Je connais bien les arcanes de cette institution, commente l’avocat Pierre P. Comme toujours au Gabon, les apparences de démocratie sont sauves. Nous avons cette cour ainsi qu’une Commission électorale nationale autonome et permanente (Cenap) : deux institutions censées garantir la transparence et le respect de la loi. Mais grattez un peu et vous verrez le vrai visage de ces autorités : elles sont littéralement phagocytées par le pouvoir. Voilà pourquoi le camp de Jean Ping a si longtemps hésité avant de déposer plainte. »

En reprenant la composition (neuf juges, dont trois nommés par le président de la République, trois par le président du Sénat et trois par le président de l’Assemblée nationale, deux proches du clan Bongo) et l’histoire de la Cour constitutionnelle (sa présidente vient d’être reconduite pour un quatrième mandat de sept ans !), une conviction se forge : cette institution ne paraît guère avoir usurpé son sobriquet de « tour de Pise », penchant toujours du même côté, celui du pouvoir. Les Gabonais savent à quoi s’en tenir. Depuis des décennies, leur État les a habitués à un vaste jeu d’ombres où chaque secret est à la fois bien gardé et connu de tous.

Mobilisation de la rue
Une autre différence de taille distingue l’élection de 2016 de celle de 2009 : la mobilisation de la population, des associations, des syndicats... Convaincus de s’être fait « voler » le scrutin de 2009, de très nombreux Gabonais se sont mobilisés, encouragés par des événements extérieurs : la vague du « printemps arabe » de 2011 et la chute de régimes autocratiques, la défaite de M. Sarkozy (l’« ami » de M. Bongo) à la présidentielle française de 2012, et surtout l’effondrement du pouvoir autocratique de M. Blaise Compaoré au Burkina Faso en 2014 (12). Après le boycott des élections législatives par l’opposition, en 2011, plusieurs organisations se sont structurées pour promouvoir des réformes politiques et institutionnelles. Le mouvement Ça suffit comme ça !, par exemple, s’est fixé dès 2012 comme objectif un meilleur gouvernement et… la transparence de l’élection de 2016. Il a mené un intense travail de lobbying auprès des autorités françaises et internationales, au travers notamment de nombreuses conférences organisées à Paris et à Strasbourg.

À plusieurs reprises, cette organisation — comme d’autres mouvements civiques — a alerté sur les risques de fraude à l’approche du scrutin d’août dernier. Le président François Hollande a ainsi reçu un document de « sortie de crise » dès son arrivée au pouvoir en mai 2012. Le désistement de divers candidats au profit de la liste unique menée par M. Ping a été la dernière étape de cette stratégie d’anticipation. Cette mobilisation politique et juridique suffira-telle à briser l’épine dorsale du clan Bongo ? Ancien ministre de la défense (1999-2009), M. Bongo peut sans doute compter sur la loyauté de son armée et de sa police. Mais ces corps organisés sont eux aussi traversés par des pressions sociales et familiales. M. Compaoré en a fait l’expérience en 2014, tout comme M. Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali en Tunisie en 2011. Quant aux soutiens extérieurs, le président sortant ne dispose que de peu d’alliés sûrs sur le continent. Surtout, et contrairement au scénario de 2009, Paris, Washington, Strasbourg et Addis-Abeba (siège de l’Union africaine) ont publiquement regretté certaines « anomalies » dans le scrutin et exigé le respect de la « transparence » en demandant un « recomptage » des voix, bureau par bureau, en présence d’observateurs internationaux.

Paris, 18 septembre 2016. L’avocat Pierre P. commente les récentes attaques du pouvoir contre le champion de l’opposition. « Ils n’ont pas compris que personne ne se fait beaucoup d’illusions sur Ping et sur son programme s’il devait arriver au pouvoir, plaide-t-il calmement. C’est un ancien du clan Bongo, personne ne l’a oublié. Mais c’est derrière sa bannière que la dynastie Bongo peut tomber, et c’est cela le plus important. » Soudain, l’avocat prête une oreille attentive à son poste de radio. En visite dans la capitale française, M. Séraphin Moundounga, garde des sceaux fraîchement démissionnaire (il a rendu son portefeuille le 6 septembre), fait part des « craintes » qu’il éprouve pour sa vie sur les ondes de Radio France Internationale (RFI). Il dénonce la répression politique et les tentatives d’assassinat dont il aurait été victime au Gabon. « L’histoire est en marche, lâche M. Pierre P., le regard brillant. Cette fois, le peuple gabonais ne se laissera pas déposséder de son élection. Si les recours juridiques et les instances internationales d’observation ne poussent pas Bongo à accepter la transparence et sa défaite, c’est par la rue que les Gabonais rendront leur verdict. » Reste à savoir à quel prix.

Parti pour effectuer un reportage avec toutes les autorisations nécessaires, Olivier Piot a été refoulé sans ménagement à son arrivée à Libreville le 9 septembre.

Olivier Piot
Journaliste.

(1) Lire Philippe Leymarie, « Au Gabon, Ali Bongo joue avec le feu », Défense en ligne, 31 août 2009.

(2) Depuis les années 2000, la filiation de M. Ali Bongo fait polémique : est-il bien le fils d’Omar Bongo ou bien un enfant adopté au Biafra dans les années 1950 ? L’enjeu est de taille puisque la naissance au Gabon conditionne le droit de se présenter à une élection.

(3) Cf. le film de Patrick Benquet, Françafrique : 50 années sous le sceau du secret, Infrarouge, 2011.

(4) Cf. notamment Régis Marzin, « Gabon : du coup d’État électoral de 2009 au départ anticipé d’Ali Bongo ? », blog Regard excentrique, 2 janvier 2015.

(5) Pour des raisons de sécurité, certains de nos interlocuteurs ont souhaité conserver l’anonymat.

(6) Auteur notamment de l’ouvrage Le Gabon (deux tomes), thèse d’État publiée à L’Harmattan, Paris, 1989.

(7) Thomas Atenga, « Gabon : apprendre à vivre sans pétrole », Politique africaine, no 92, Paris, décembre 2003.

(8) Cf. par exemple Douglas A. Yates, The Rentier State in Africa : Oil Rent Dependency and Neocolonialism in the Republic of Gabon, Africa World Press, Trenton (New Jersey), 1996.

(9) Cf. Bertrand Feutemio, Le Gabon, un pays si riche… mais très pauvre, Publibook, Paris, 2008.

(10) Cf. Banque mondiale, « Gabon. Vue d’ensemble », 2016.

(11) Alice Aterianus-Owanga, Maixant Mebiame Zomo et Joseph Tonda (sous la dir. de), La Violence de la vie quotidienne à Libreville, Academia, coll. « Anthropologie prospective », Louvain-la-Neuve, à paraître en octobre 2016.

(12) Lire David Commeillas, « Coup de Balai citoyen au Burkina Faso », Le Monde diplomatique, avril 2015.
Statista / ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller
Alarmerende resultaten van recent onderzoek: 13 procent van de arabische jongeren arabieren in het Midden-Oosten en Noord-Afrika steunen ISIS/DAESH
ID: 201604131925
Why Young Arabs Are Joining The Islamic State

A recent poll spanning 16 nations across the Middle East and North Africa has found that most young Arabs are against the so-called Islamic State and believe it will ultimately fail to establish a caliphate. The 2016 Arab Youth Survey revealed that 77 percent of Arabs aged 18 to 24 are concerned about the terror group’s rise with 50 percent considering it the biggest obstacle facing the Middle East. Only 13 percent of young Arabs feel they could support the group, even if it was less violent.
Commentaar LT: De interpretatie van Statista is discutabel. Statista spreekt van "only 13 percent". Wij vinden dit een alarmerend percentage! In absolute cijfers: 26 miljoen jongeren steunen ISIS/DAESH !

The poll also examined the primary reasons people are joining the terror group with a major lack of jobs in the region proving a driving factor. Across the countries polled, employment and few opportunities for young people proved a bigger draw than religious extremism or the presence of Western troops in the region.

Infographic: Why Young Arabs Are Joining The Islamic State | Statista



ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller behoort tot de WPP-groep van Sir Martin Sorrell
Article 201601080261: REVIEW: Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II
WILLIAMS Susan
REVIEW: Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II
ID: 201601080261
The core in America’s first atom bombs came from rich uranium deposits deep inside Belgian Congo, and Williams (Who Killed Hammarskjöld?), a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, details the Allied efforts to secure that source of uranium in light of reports that Nazi Germany had begun to develop an atomic weapon. He uses newly released records from American, British, and Belgian archives, including from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Derring-do is in short supply, and the ore shipments proceeded smoothly, but readers will not regret learning about the activities of some of America’s least heralded spies. Williams’s central figure is Dock Hogue, an engineer with a taste for adventure who was recruited by the OSS and sent to Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) in 1943. He and colleagues suffered from heat and disease. They mostly enjoyed working with British agents but held a lower opinion of Belgian officials; many were corrupt, some sympathized with the Nazis, and all treated Africans terribly. As a cover for uranium-based activities, agents were publicly engaged in fighting diamond smuggling. They turned up little uranium smuggling but risked their lives, engaged in a few gun battles, often ruined their health, and received scant recognition. Williams’s niche but engrossing story offers new insight on intelligence activities in sub-Saharan Africa during WWII.

YouTube
The Forgotten European Slaves of Barbary North Africa and Ottoman Turkey
ID: 201511081161



Gepubliceerd op 8 nov. 2015
Ohio State University history Professor Robert Davis describes the White Slave Trade as minimized by most modern historians in his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800 (Palgrave Macmillan). Davis estimates that 1 million to 1.25 million white Christian Europeans were enslaved in North Africa, from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th, by slave traders from Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli alone (these numbers do not include the European people which were enslaved by Morocco and by other raiders and traders of the Mediterranean Sea coast), 16th- and 17th-century customs statistics suggest that Istanbul's additional slave import from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700. The markets declined after the loss of the Barbary Wars and finally ended in the 1830s, when the region was conquered by France.
Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries. These slave raids were conducted largely by Arabs and Berbers rather than Ottoman Turks. However, during the height of the Barbary slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Barbary states were subject to Ottoman jurisdiction and ruled by Ottoman pashas. Furthermore, many slaves captured by the Barbary corsairs were sold eastward into Ottoman territories before, during, and after Barbary's period of Ottoman rule.

The Barbary Muslim pirates kidnapped Europeans from ships in North Africa’s coastal waters (Barbary Coast). They also attacked and pillaged the Atlantic coastal fishing villages and town in Europe, enslaving the inhabitants. Villages and towns on the coast of Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were the hardest hit. Muslim slave-raiders also seized people as far afield as Britain, Ireland and Iceland.

In 1544, the island of Ischia off Naples was ransacked, taking 4,000 inhabitants prisoners, while some 9,000 inhabitants of Lipari Island off the north coast of Sicily were enslaved.870 Turgut Reis, a Turkish pirate chief, ransacked the coastal settlements of Granada (Spain) in 1663 and carried away 4,000 people as slaves. In 1625, Barbary pirates captured the Lund Island in the Bristol Channel and planted the standard of Islam. From this base, they went ransacking and pillaging surrounding villages and towns, causing a stunning spectacle of mayhem, slaughter and plunder. According to Milton, ‘Day after day, they struck at unarmed fishing communities, seizing the inhabitants, and burning their homes. By the end of the dreadful summer of 1625, the mayor of Plymouth reckoned that 1,000 skiffs had been destroyed and similar number of villagers carried off into slavery.’871 Between 1609 and 1616, the Barbary pirates ‘captured a staggering 466 English trading ships.’

In 1627, Pirates went on a pillaging and enslaving campaign to Iceland. After dropping anchor at Reykjavik, his forces ransacked the town and returned with 400 men, women and children and sold them in Algiers. In 1631, he made a voyage with a brigand of 200 pirates to the coast of Southern Ireland and ransacked and pillaged the village of Baltimore, carrying away 237 men, women and children to Algiers.

The barbaric slave-raiding activities of the Muslim pirates had a telling effect on Europe. France, England, and Spain lost thousands of ships, devastating to their sea-borne trade. Long stretches of the coast in Spain and Italy were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants until the nineteenth century. The finishing industry was virtually devastated.

Paul Baepler’s White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives lists a collection of essays by nine American captives held in North Africa. According to his book, there were more than 20,000 white Christian slaves by 1620 in Algiers alone; their number swelled to more than 30,000 men and 2,000 women by the 1630s. There were a minimum of 25,000 white slaves at any time in Sultan Moulay Ismail’s palace, records Ahmed ez-Zayyani; Algiers maintained a population of 25,000 white slaves between 1550 and 1730, and their numbers could double at certain times. During the same period, Tunis and Tripoli each maintained a white slave population of about 7,500. The Barbary pirates enslaved some 5,000 Europeans annually over a period of nearly three centuries.
Kurdpress News Agency - KNA
Arab league condemns Turkey operations against PKK
ID: 201508060901
All members of the Arab League but Qatar have condemned Turkey's operations against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
Nabil al-Araby, secretary-general of the Arab League, an organization of Arab country members in and around North Africa, the Horn of Africa and Arabia, condemned the military operations.
The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) started bombing PKK targets in northern Iraq since July 22, when some 22 people were killed in a suicide attack by the Islamic State (IS) in Suruc, a city in southeastern province of Sirnak. The PKK blamed Turkey government for allowing the IS to kill dozens of people, Zaman daily reported.
The TSK has since been bombing PKK depots in the Qandil Mountains. Ankara has also arrested hundreds of alleged PKK alleged sympathizers across Turkey.
Araby called on Turkey and Iraq to increase cooperation in order to preserve peace in both countries in a press statement according to a report by the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).
Only Qatar expressed its reservations about the condemnation.
News Code: 11040 | Date: 2015/08/06 | Time: 8 : 39
Land: TUR
Article 201506040924: The Dark Side of Sunlight - The Story of King Leopold, Lord Leverhulme and The Congo
HOLLETT David
The Dark Side of Sunlight - The Story of King Leopold, Lord Leverhulme and The Congo
ID: 201506040924
With a great deal of political manoeuvring, and the able assistance of the famous explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, in 1885 King Leopold II of Belgium founded the Congo 'Free' State. However, this was not as a Belgian colony, but as his own private domain which extended to 905,000 square miles of Central Africa. Leopold then set up a system of forced labour under which millions suffered and died due to brutal treatment, exhaustion, hunger or disease. Eventually, in 1908, the Belgian government took control of the Congo away from Leopold and the worst excesses of his despotic rule came to an end. However the forced labour system established by Leopold remained largely in place. It is against this historical background that Lever Brothers, the soap manufacturers of Port Sunlight, became significantly involved in the affairs of the Congo. In 1911 the Belgian Government offered the company land "Concessions" to develop as oil palm plantations. A decade later William Hesketh Lever was controlling vast palm plantations, oil mills and a fleet of 74 steam vessels on the Congo River. In 1930 the firm was employing no less than 28,000 Congolese workers. The rise and rise of Lever Brothers wealth and good fortune was to continue, throughout the Congo and West Africa in general.
Land: COD
Human Rights Watch
DR Congo: Climate of Fear - Police Operation Kills 51 Young Men and Boys
ID: 201411200404
(Kinshasa) – Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo summarily killed at least 51 youth and forcibly disappeared 33 others during an anti-crime campaign that began a year ago, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. “Operation Likofi,” which lasted from November 2013 to February 2014, targeted alleged gang members in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa.

The 57-page report, “Operation Likofi: Police Killings and Enforced Disappearances in Kinshasa,” details how uniformed police, often wearing masks, dragged kuluna, or suspected gang members, from their homes at night and executed them. The police shot and killed the unarmed young men and boys outside their homes, in the open markets where they slept or worked, and in nearby fields or empty lots. Many others were taken without warrants to unknown locations and forcibly disappeared.

“Operation Likofi was a brutal police campaign that left a trail of cold-blooded murders in the Congolese capital,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Fighting crime by committing crime does not build the rule of law but only reinforces a climate of fear. The Congolese authorities should investigate the killings, starting with the commander in charge of the operation, and bring to justice those responsible.”
Land: COD
RT
American-allied nations are secretly helping ISIS to grow - US Colonel Ann Wright
ID: 201409080901
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 came with many warnings that it would lead to a dire consequences for the whole region. A decade later, and the brutal jihadists from ISIS are dominating the north of the devastated country. Now, the US is again mulling the possibility of sending its army to Iraq once more - but would that actually help solve the issue? From where does the money come for the Islamic State? Is America obliged to save Iraq after what it's done to that nation? We ask these questions to American Colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright on Sophie&Co today.

Follow @SophieCo_RT

Sophie Shevardnadze:Colonel, the 2003 war in Iraq was a reason you left the U.S. military after many years. Do you feel the roots of what’s happening now lie back then?

Ann Wright: Well, yes. In 2003 I did resign from the Federal government. I actually had order to retire from the military; I was a U.S. diplomat, and I was one of the three diplomats who resigned in opposition to the war in Iraq. And I do feel that there are so many similarities now, 11 years later with the issue that the Obama administration is bringing forward, and they are seeming intent that they will be using military force to resolve the further issues in Iraq, and perhaps even in Syria.

SS: But what I really meant was that… I’m talking about ISIS expansion and the will of the ISIS to create a caliphate. Do you think that, what’s going on right now, has to do something with the invasion in Iraq in 2003, or those are two separate things?

AW: I think they are two separate things. Certainly, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has precipitated what we now see, 11 years later, with the growth of ISIS and other forces that initially came in to the region to battle with Assad in Syria, but are taking the opportunity with the disarray that came starting with the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. And then, the Al-Maliki government that has been so brutal towards the Sunnis in Iraq, that the ability of ISIS to move remarkably quickly, to gain territories in Syria and now in Iraq is very worrisome and dangerous.

SS: Now, president Obama has authorized deployment of additional 350 american troops to Iraq. Last month, the U.S. launched an aerial campaign against the Islamic State. Will any good come out of this?

AW: Well, the issue of the protection of the U.S. facilities in Baghdad and other cities of Iraq by U.S. military forces is one rational for the deployment of certain number of military folks. And then, the administration has already said that they will be sending in special forces to help train or re-train Iraq military to battle ISIS. And also, the use of CIA operatives up in the north, in northern Iraq and the Kurdish area of Iraq - one could argue that this does give the Iraqi military and the Kurdish Peshmerga a better opportunity to battle ISIS. One of the fears, though, is that the continuation of the U.S. providing U.S. military equipment will end up as we've seen what has happened now, when ISIS has overrun Iraqi military facilities and have taken U.S. military equipment that has been given to the Iraqi military. So, one of the great dilemmas is when you start funneling more military equipment into this type of situation, it may be turned up on you as we've seen - that equipment now being in hands of ISIS and being used to battle almost in one way the remnants of the Iraqi military.

SS: Steven Sotloff was the second journalist executed by the Islamic State. Let’s hear president Obama’s response to this:

OBAMA: And those who make a mistake of harming Americans will learn that we will not forget, and that our reach is long and that justice will be served.

SS: Now, the U.S. president has vowed to avenge the death of U.S. journalist and called for the war plan to be drawn up. Should there be further involvement?

AW: Well, indeed, it’s horrific what ISIS is doing, not only to the international media, to U.S. reporters that are being beheaded, but in even greater measure, what ISIS is doing to Iraqis and Syrians that they have captured. The wholesale murder, massacre of large numbers of Iraqi military and people in villages who have repelled or attempted to repel the ISIS military onslaught. There’s no doubt about it, ISIS is very brutal, terrible group of people who are rampaging across that area of the world.

SS: Well, yeah, but that’s my question - does the U.S. really have any other choice but to get involved and act in the face of these kidnappings?

AW: The people that have been kidnapped - I mean, the international folks have been in the hands of ISIS for quite a few months now. The beheadings of course are horrific, and as vice-president Biden has said...something about the “gates of hell” being opened; I think the administration certainly feels the pressure that something needs to be done about it, about this group of horrific people. Now, whether it is further american military on the ground - I suspect not, because the feeling in the U.S. is that we do not want our military involved in ground operations any further in Iraq or in Syria. However, I do believe that the types of pressure that can be put on groups that do support ISIS, that have allowed ISIS to purchase military equipment, that are working with ISIS to buy on the black market oil from the oil fields that ISIS has captured - I think that’s really where ultimately the pressure points are…

SS: Which groups are you talking about? Could you be more precise?

AW: If you look at who is behind the oil, who is behind the oil from those oil fields, where it is going, through what borders is it going - some of it is going up into Turkey, so you've got to put pressure on the Turkish government to stop the flow of oil; you've got to put pressure on the Turkish government to stop allowing these large groups of international fighters that have crossed the border from Turkey for the last several years. I would say, you have to put pressure on the Saudis: the Saudis have been pouring a large amounts of money, as have the governments of Kuwait and of Qatar, into various groups of the foreign fighters.

SS: But so had the Americans, I don’t think these are the only people that are funding the foreign fighters in Syria. Americans are the ones who are funding them just as much as are the Qataris or the Saudis…

AW: Yes, I totally agree with you on that; I do not believe that they are funding ISIS, the U.S. is funding other, what they think are more moderate groups that are fighting the Assad government, but the ones I was actually talking about were those that either by turning a blind eye, or by actually funneling money and weapons into ISIS are giving it the power to gain territory and hold it.

SS: So there’s my question - the U.S. has propped up many allies that it later had to confront. The likes of Al-Qaeda, or Taliban - do you feel like it contributed to the rise of ISIS in Syria as well - involuntarily, of course - by funding the rebels?

AW: Certainly, the instability that has been caused by the U.S., starting 10, 11 years ago, from 2003, with the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and earlier than that, the U.S. going in to Afghanistan after 9/11 - all of those events have triggered a large number of people from Arab and Muslim worlds, who have to the U.S.: “we don’t like what you’re doing in those areas”, and they have been coming in to Iraq and in Afghanistan and have been trained, and equipped and then have been available to go to other parts of the world, including Libya, to act as mercenaries for whomever wants to hire them.

SS:Now, if president Obama had launched a bombing campaign in Syria in 2013, do you think that could have stopped the rise of ISIS?

AW: One could argue that yes, bombing of not only ISIS but of other radical groups in Syria could perhaps have decimated some of their fighting force. However, the thing that people are very concerned about is that that in itself is drawing more of the foreign fighters to the fight, that indeed the U.S. bombing of Muslim fighters does draw in even more of the Muslim fighters.

SS: Just to wrap the subject of ISIS in Iraq - do you feeling like that Washington has the responsibility for the future of Iraq and what becomes of it?

AW: Part of the problem is, first, the initial invasion and occupation by the Bush administration; then, you have the Al-Maliki government that was… many people say that U.S. put that government in: Al-Maliki who brought in more Shia leaders and pushed out the Sunni leaders that should have been brought in to the government that was all-inclusive of all of the groups in Iraq. One could say that the U.S. has spent billions of dollars on the training and equipping Iraqi military and it folded against the force that was not nearly as large as it actually was. I personally, as a person that resigned initially over the theory that military force was going to resolve the issue of Saddam Hussein regime, I don’t believe that further use of our military is what ultimately going to resolve the issues in that region.

SS: Afghanistan is another unresolved issue - the U.S. troops may leave for good by the end of this year, but will the weak Afghan government be left to deal with the Taliban like Iraq was left to deal with ISIS, what do you think?

AW: You’re exactly right - here we have Afghanistan after 13 years that U.S. has been involved in there, and weak government, in fact, it is still disputed on who’s going to be the next president of the country. You have many of the people who were called warlord prior to the U.S. invasion, or the groups of people that the U.S. hired to work with it to push the Taliban and Al-Qaeda out, many of them with severe human rights abuses allegations to start with… I myself am not too optimistic that here, 13 years later and hundreds of billions of dollars later and the expenditure of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives, that the future of Afghanistan is a stable secure country, where all groups will be treated honestly and fairly and that country will progress in a way that one would hope it would - I myself am not very optimistic about it.

SS: Now, ISIS is being called the “new Al-Qaeda”, but the actual Al-Qaeda has declared a new front in India. How do these groups fit together? Are we seeing expansion into new territory after ISIS took over the old “feeding grounds”?

AW: It’s kind of “targets of opportunity” it looks like that various groups are using. As ISIS fills into one area of Iraq and Syria and becomes the dominant force there, Al-Qaeda is looking for another place where it can stake its own territory. Certainly it had its inroads into Pakistan… It’s interesting here that they indeed have claimed that they are going to India.

SS: So, what are we going to see? Jihadist corporate rivalry unraveling?

AW: Indeed, “Jihadist inc.” When we really look at it, sadly, throughout the North Africa and the Middle East and then going on into South Asia, you do see the rise of various types of militant groups, to include not only Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Al-Nusra; you've got the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban. It is a growth industry. You look also to Libya, where there are many groups, each fighting for different parts of the territory of the country, to the extent that the U.S. had to close its embassy there, because none of the locations where we had embassies or consulates are safe enough, in the opinion of the State Department, that we can leave our diplomats. So, it is a tragic function in this era, that we see the growth and expansion of these jihadist groups.

SS: You've mentioned earlier on in the program that the pressure should be put on groups that are actually helping ISIS to get money from the oil sales - it’s true that ISIS is raking in billions through things like oil. Could this movement be more about money than establishing a religious state?

AW: I think it certainly is a movement about money, it’s a very well-funded organisation, but from I gather, it is a group that is intent on establishing a geographical location for it’s beliefs, the caliphate that they talk about. They intent to hold territory and indeed they have, to the extent that they control major cities, that they are generating their own income through oil and I think it is going to be a challenge for the international community to go in and push them back from these established areas that they've had some of them for almost a year now.

SS: Israeli-Palestinian conflict is something that you've also spoken a lot about, spoken strongly against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Is there any way that international pressure can push Israel into a genuine peace process?

AW: It’s a very good question. How the international community has pressured Israel - has been ineffective, mainly because it really hasn't used the full force that it has at its disposal. The U.S. itself could do much more to pressure Israel to stop the illegal settlements of which they have just announced that they are annexing a thousand acres of Palestinian land into Israel. The pressure to stop the occupation of the West Bank and to lift the siege of Gaza - these are things that have been demands of the Palestinians for the longest time. The U.S. is the greatest pressure point of Israel, because we give Israel almost $3 bn a year in military assistance alone, plus all sorts of economic incentives. The U.S. is allowing itself to be pressured by very large and well-funded Zionist lobby that works for the protection of the State of Israel, and works primarily in the U.S. Congress to threaten the U.S. Congress people that if they don’t vote for pro-Israeli issues then they will be turned out of office; we've seen that AIPAC, the American-Israeli Public Affairs committee, the big lobby for Israel, has been very effective at threatening and scaring and then trowing out of office people that say that they are going to look honestly at what’s happening there, and may support the Palestinian cause in cases.

SS: I want to talk a little bit about Hamas. You know how the appearance of ISIS with its deliberate focus on cruelty and no compromises, does it make you feel like it’s easier to treat groups like Hamas with more respect? As a matter of fact, you know, “we don’t negotiate with the terrorists” - that attitude is almost universal, but do you feel like maybe these days there are groups of terrorists that you can talk to and that slogan actually should change?

AW: Yes, I certainly think so, and the latest of this week, the Israeli propaganda is that “ISIS is Hamas, Hamas is ISIS” - well, that’s just not true. Hamas was elected as the governing body of Gaza. I don’t agree with the rockets that Hamas and other groups in Gaza have sent into Israel, but the level of violence that is between Palestinians and Israelis is overwhelmingly from the Israeli side towards the Palestinian side - there’s no doubt about that. Over 2000 Palestinians were killed versus 64 Israelis in this latest attack, and in 2009, fourteen hundred Palestinians versus 11 Israelis… Hamas does not have 24 hour drone coverage over Israel, it does not have F-16 that are bombing Israel every single day as is happening with the Israelis in their naval attacks and ground attacks, and air attacks on Gaza. So, there’s a very distinct difference in the level and the proportion of violence in there.

SS: Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. Colonel Ann Wright, U.S. veteran and former diplomat. We were talking about what brought upon the spread of ISIS and could it be contained, and also are there terrorists that we can talk to, and are there groups that we can’t. That’s it for this edition of Sophie&Co, we’ll see you next time.
Land: IRQ
Article 201404091004: Dag Hammarskjöld
BORGER Julian - The Guardian 20140404
Dag Hammarskjöld's plane may have been shot down, ambassador warned. Newly declassified 1961 cable called for grounding of Belgian mercenary hours after UN secretary general crashed in Africa theguardian.com, Friday 4 April 2014 14.27 BST
ID: 201404091004
Hours after a plane carrying the UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, crashed over central Africa in September 1961, the US ambassador to Congo sent a cable to Washington claiming that the aircraft could have been shot down by a Belgian mercenary pilot.

In the newly declassified document, the ambassador, Ed Gullion, does not directly implicate the Belgian or Rhodesian governments in what he calls "this operation", but calls for US pressure on them to ground the mercenary, adding it was "obviously [a] matter of highest importance". He said the pilot had been hampering UN operations and warned that if not stopped "he may paralyse air-rescue operations".

The document was released after an international panel of retired judges called last year for a fresh inquiry into the Hammarskjöld crash, saying that new evidence "undoubtedly" existed. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, decided in February to put the panel's findings on the agenda of the UN general assembly.

The Gullion cable was not seen by previous official inquiries. A commission formed by the Rhodesian colonial authorities blamed the crash on pilot error, while a later UN investigation recorded an open verdict.A Guardian investigation in 2011 found surviving witnesses near the crash site outside Ndola, in what is now Zambia, saying they saw a second plane shooting at the DC-6 aeroplane carrying Hammarskjöld and his aides. A book published later that year, Who Killed Hammarskjöld? by Susan Williams, a University of London researcher, found further evidence of foul play.

Williams's book pointed to the existence of US National Security Agency (NSA) radio intercepts of warplanes in the area, which are still top secret after 52 years. Hammarskjöld's death came at the height of a conflict between the UN-backed Congolese government in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, and secessionists from the mineral-rich province of Katanga, supported by Belgian colonialists.

The US and British were angry at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general had ordered days before his death on behalf of the Congolese government against the rebellion in Katanga, which was backed by western mining companies and mercenaries.

The Hammarskjöld commission, chaired by a former British court of appeal judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, called for the NSA intercepts to be released.

The commission highlighted several key pieces of evidence, including the testimony of two policemen of seeing sparks and a flash in the sky, and the account of a local official who said he saw a smaller aeroplane flying above and then alongside the DC-6, known as the Albertina.

In his cable, sent at 11am on 18 September, Gullion correctly identifies the Ndola area as the crash site. He also names the suspected Belgian pilot as "Vak Riesseghel", almost certainly a mis-spelling of Jan van Risseghem, who had served in the South African and Rhodesian air forces, and commanded the small Katanga air force.


In another cable sent two days before the crash, Gullion passed on a commercial pilot's report that the Belgian mercenary, flying a Katangese jet, "flew wing to wing" with him – a highly dangerous manoeuvre.

Gullion's two telegrams call into question Van Risseghem's insistence that he had not been in Katanga in September 1961. Van Risseghem was never questioned by any of the official inquiries.

"The telegram reveals that on the morning after the crash, the ambassador thought it credible that the plane had been shot down by a mercenary pilot – so credible, in fact, as to justify asking US diplomats in Brussels and Salisbury [now Harare] to put pressure on the Belgian and Rhodesian governments to ground the pilot," said Williams, a senior researcher at the University of London's Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

In her book, Williams provides the account of an American naval pilot, Commander Charles Southall, who was working at the NSA listening station in Cyprus in 1961. Shortly after midnight on the night of the crash, Southall and other officers heard an intercept of a pilot's commentary in the air over Ndola – 3,000 miles away.

Southall recalled the pilot saying: "I see a transport plane coming low. All the lights are on. I'm going down to make a run on it. Yes, it is the Transair DC-6. It's the plane," adding that his voice was "cool and professional". Then he heard the sound of gunfire and the pilot exclaiming: "I've hit it. There are flames! It's going down. It's crashing!"

Williams said: "We need to know if the US state department holds the raw intelligence that led Gullion to think [the plane could have been shot down] and … if there is other intelligence, notably in the form of intercepts, that is held by the NSA in relation to Hammarskjöld's flight on the night of 17-18 September 1961.

"This newly released document reinforces the argument that the UN general assembly should ask US agencies, including the NSA, to produce the evidence they hold."
Land: COD
Human Rights Watch
Saudi Arabia: New Terrorism Regulations Assault Rights
ID: 201403200901
(Beirut) – Saudi Arabia’s new terrorism law and a series of related royal decrees create a legal framework that appears to criminalize virtually all dissident thought or expression as terrorism. The sweeping provisions in the measures, all issued since January 2014, threaten to close down altogether Saudi Arabia’s already extremely restricted space for free expression.

“Saudi authorities have never tolerated criticism of their policies, but these recent laws and regulations turn almost any critical expression or independent association into crimes of terrorism,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These regulations dash any hope that King Abdullah intends to open a space for peaceful dissent or independent groups.”

The new regulations come amid a campaign to silence independent activists and peaceful dissidents through intimidation, investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and imprisonment. On March 9, the prominent human rights activists Abdullah al-Hamid and Mohammed al-Qahtani completed their first year in prison, serving 11 and 10-year sentences, respectively, for criticizing the government’s human rights abuses and for membership in an unlicensed political and civil rights organization.

Two other human rights activists, Waleed Abu al-Khair and Mikhlif al-Shammari, recently lost appeals and will probably begin their three-month and five-year respective sentences soon for criticizing Saudi authorities.

On January 31, Saudi authorities promulgated the Penal Law for Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing (the “terrorism law”). The law has serious flaws, including vague and overly broad provisions that allow authorities to criminalize free expression, and the creation of excessive police powers without judicial oversight. The law cites violence as an essential element only in reference to attacks carried out against Saudis outside the kingdom or onboard Saudi transportation carriers. Inside the kingdom, “terrorism” can be non-violent – consisting of “any act” intended to, among other things, “insult the reputation of the state,” “harm public order,” or “shake the security of society,” which the law fails to clearly define.

On February 3, two days after the terrorism law came into force, King Abdullah issued Royal Decree 44, which criminalizes “participating in hostilities outside the kingdom” with prison sentences of between three and 20 years. On March 7, the Interior Ministry issued further regulations designating an initial list of groups the government considers terrorist organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Houthi group in Yemen, along with “Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Da`ish [the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, or ISIS], Jabhat al-Nusra, and Hezbollah inside the kingdom.”

The interior ministry regulations include other sweeping provisions that authorities can use to criminalize virtually any expression or association critical of the government and its understanding of Islam. These “terrorism” provisions include the following:

Article 1: “Calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”
Article 2: “Anyone who throws away their loyalty to the country’s rulers, or who swears allegiance to any party, organization, current [of thought], group, or individual inside or outside [the kingdom].”
Article 4: “Anyone who aids [“terrorist”] organizations, groups, currents [of thought], associations, or parties, or demonstrates affiliation with them, or sympathy with them, or promotes them, or holds meetings under their umbrella, either inside or outside the kingdom; this includes participation in audio, written, or visual media; social media in its audio, written, or visual forms; internet websites; or circulating their contents in any form, or using slogans of these groups and currents [of thought], or any symbols which point to support or sympathy with them.”
Article 6: “Contact or correspondence with any groups, currents [of thought], or individuals hostile to the kingdom.”
Article 8: “Seeking to shake the social fabric or national cohesion, or calling, participating, promoting, or inciting sit-ins, protests, meetings, or group statements in any form, or anyone who harms the unity or stability of the kingdom by any means.”
Land: SAU
Financial Times
gronddeal Madagascar-Daewoo: 1,3 miljoen hectare
ID: 200811197842
Daewoo to cultivate Madagascar land for free

Financial Times

19-Nov-2008

By Song Jung-a and Christian Oliver in Seoul, and Tom Burgis in Johannesburg



Daewoo Logistics of South Korea said it expected to pay nothing to farm maize and palm oil in an area of Madagascar half the size of Belgium, increasing concerns about the largest farmland investment of this kind.



The Indian Ocean island will simply gain employment opportunities from Daewoo's 99-year lease of 1.3m hectares, officials at the company said. They emphasised that the aim of the investment was to boost Seoul's food security.



"We want to plant corn there to ensure our food security. Food can be a weapon in this world," said Hong Jong-wan, a manager at Daewoo. "We can either export the harvests to other countries or ship them back to Korea in case of a food crisis."



Daewoo said it had agreed with Madagascar's government that it could cultivate 1.3m hectares of farmland for free when it signed a memorandum of understanding in May. When the company signed the contract in July, it agreed to discuss costs with Madagascar. But Daewoo now believes it will have to pay nothing.



"It is totally undeveloped land which has been left untouched. And we will provide jobs for them by farming it, which is good for Madagascar," said Mr Hong. The 1.3m hectares of leased land is almost half the African country's current arable land of 2.5m hectares.



But Madagascar could also benefit from Daewoo's in­vest­ment in roads, irrigation and grain storage facilities.



However, a European diplomat in southern Africa said: "We suspect there will be very limited direct benefits [for Madagascar]. Extractive projects have very little spill-over to a broader industrialisation."



Asian nations have increasingly looked to Africa to meet their resource needs in the past five years or so. China has been particularly aggressive in building up stakes in oilfields and mines on the continent, sometimes facing accusations of neo-colonialism.



But now the countries are moving from minerals and oil into food. Roelof Horne, who manages Investec Asset Management's Africa fund, said he expected to see more farmland investments on the continent. "Africa has most of the underutilised fertile land in the world," he said, though he cautioned that "land is always an emotive thing".



Apart from Daewoo, an increasing number of South Korean companies are venturing into Madagascar, investing in projects from nickel mines to power plants. State-run Korea Resources recently signed a preliminary agreement with Madagascar to expand collaboration on resources development including mining projects for other metals.



Daewoo plans to start maize production on 2,000 hectares from next year and gradually expand it to other parts of the leased land. The company plans to plant maize on 1m hectares in the western part of Madagascar and oil palm trees on 300,000 hectares in the east.



The company plans to ship the bulk of the harvests back to South Korea and export some supplies to other countries. It is unclear if any of the production will remain in Madagascar, an impoverished nation where the World Food Programme provides food relief to about 600,000 people - about 3.5 per cent of the population.



The WFP, the UN agency in charge of emergency food relief, said more than 70 per cent of Madagascar's population lives below the poverty line. "Some 50 per cent of children under three years of age suffer retarded growth due to a chronically inadequate diet," it said.



The pursuit of foreign farm investments follows this year's food crisis, which saw record prices for commodities such as wheat and rice, and food riots in countries from Egypt to Haiti. Prices for agricultural commodities have tumbled by about half from such levels but nations are concerned about long-term supplies.



Daewoo said it chose to invest in Madagascar because it remains relatively untouched by western companies. "The country could provide bigger opportunities for us as not many western companies are there," said Mr Hong.



Daewoo plans to develop the arable land in Madagascar for farming over the next 15 years, and intends to provide about half South Korea's maize imports. South Korea, a heavily populated but resource-poor nation, is the fourth-largest importer of maize.



Additional reporting by Javier Blas in London

LT, 20090325
Land: MDG
LT
documentaire over wreedheden Leopold II in Congo
ID: 200402244573
King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence

Mark Dummett

Former BBC Kinshasa correspondent

Of the Europeans who scrambled for control of Africa at the end of the 19th century, Belgium's King Leopold II left arguably the largest and most horrid legacy of all.

King Leopold II left arguably the largest and most horrid legacy

While the Great Powers competed for territory elsewhere, the king of one of Europe's smallest countries carved his own private colony out of 100km2 of Central African rainforest.

He claimed he was doing it to protect the "natives" from Arab slavers, and to open the heart of Africa to Christian missionaries, and Western capitalists.

Instead, as the makers of BBC Four documentary White King, Red Rubber, Black Death powerfully argue, the king unleashed new horrors on the African continent.

Torment and rape

He turned his "Congo Free State" into a massive labour camp, made a fortune for himself from the harvest of its wild rubber, and contributed in a large way to the death of perhaps 10 million innocent people.

I was so moved, Your Excellency, by the people's stories that I took the liberty of promising them that in future you will only kill them for crimes they commit

John Harris

Missionary in Baringa

What is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo has clearly never recovered.

"Legalized robbery enforced by violence", as Leopold's reign was described at the time, has remained, more or less, the template by which Congo's rulers have governed ever since.

Meanwhile Congo's soldiers have never moved away from the role allocated to them by Leopold - as a force to coerce, torment and rape an unarmed civilian population.



Chopping hands

As the BBC's reporter in DR Congo, I covered stories that were loud echoes of what was happening 100 years earlier.

Men who failed to bring enough rubber for agents were killed

The film opens with the shocking images of some of Leopold's victims - children and adults whose right hands had been hacked off by his agents.

They needed these to prove to their superiors that they had not been "wasting" their bullets on animals.

This rule was seldom observed as soldiers kept shooting monkeys and then later chopping off human hands to provide their alibis.

'Foreign correspondents'

Director Peter Bate uses documented accounts of such atrocities to present an imaginary court case against the monarch who he compares to a subsequent European tyrant, Adolf Hitler.

He has an actor play the bearded, heavily-set Leopold, fidgeting nervously as damning testimonies are read out, compiled by the foreign correspondents of the day, the missionaries.

John Harris of Baringa, for example, was so shocked by what he had come across that he felt moved to write a letter to Leopold's chief agent in the Congo.

"I have just returned from a journey inland to the village of Insongo Mboyo. The abject misery and utter abandon is positively indescribable. I was so moved, Your Excellency, by the people's stories that I took the liberty of promising them that in future you will only kill them for crimes they commit."

Positive legacy

In the film's most powerful sequences we see reconstructions of the terror caused by Leopold's enforcers and agents.

We see a village burnt without warning and its people rounded up; its men sent off into the forests, and its women tied up as hostages and helpless targets of abuse until their husbands return with enough wild rubber to satisfy the agent.

This, we are told, was the "moment of truth" for the whole community.

If the men did not bring back enough and the agent lost his commission, he would order the deaths of everyone.

Children and adults had their hands chopped off

There is no doubt that Congo's history, and White King, Red Rubber, Black Death are almost too upsetting to bear, however Leopold did leave, albeit unwittingly, one positive legacy - the birth of modern humanitarianism.

The campaign to reveal the truth behind Leopold's "secret society of murderers," led by diplomat Roger Casement, and a former shipping clerk ED Morel, became the first mass human rights movement.

Its successors like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Kinshasa-based Voix des Sans Voix and Journaliste En Danger mean abuses in modern day DR Congo can never be hidden for long.

Congo: White king, red rubber, black death will be shown on BBC Four in the UK on Tuesday, 24 February at 2100

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3516965.stm (20040402)
Land: COD
VAN MAELE Benoît
UM: bibliografie over export COD in 1939-1940
ID: 199900001489
Bibliografie

1. Bronnen
1.1 Niet gepubliceerde bronnen
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Fonds Force Publique( neutraliteit, mobilisatie, defensie, voorzieningen, dienst Hygiëne, bijzondere machten, dienst inlichtingen : buurkolonies) Fonds 3ème Dir. Générale (pouvoir éxécutif, correspondance interministérielle, Conseil colonial, législatif, relations extérieure, mesures prises pour parer à la situation internationale)
Archief buitenlandse Zaken : Fonds A. F. (Affaires Africaines étrangères 1937-40), Correspondance Diplomatique (VK : 1939-40),

1.2 Gepubliceerde Bronnen
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