Tunisia: A Remission, A Strike

TUNISIA

A Remission, A Strike

Two suicide bombers hit the capital of Tunisia on Thursday, killing a police officer and injuring at least eight other people.

The attacks came as the country’s 92-year-old president was rushed to the hospital for treatment for a “serious illness,” the second time he has been hospitalized this month, the Associated Press reported.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks via its Aamaq news agency. However, a connection between the group and the bombers has not yet been substantiated.

One of the bombers detonated explosives in a commercial district near the French embassy around 11 a.m., apparently targeting a police patrol. This bomb killed the police officer, as well as injuring another. Nearly simultaneously, the second bomber detonated a device at the entrance to the offices of the anti-terrorism brigade on the outskirts of the capital. Four officers were hospitalized with injuries sustained in that blast.

Islamic State also claimed credit for Tunisia’s deadliest terror attacks, which killed 22 people at the Bardo Museum in Tunis and 38 people in the coastal city of Sousse in 2015.

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The Big Century 21 Population Growth Will Be In Africa

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/22/the-un-revises-down-its-population-forecasts?cid1=cust/dailypicks/n/bl/n/20190625n/owned/n/n/dailypicks/n/n/na/261722/n

Mauritania Still Has Slavery

MAURITANIA

First, or the Umpteenth

Ruling party candidate Mohamed Ould Ghazouani won Mauritania’s presidential election with 52 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said Sunday.

For the record books, it’s a historic first – the country’s first election to pass the torch from one democratically elected leader to another. But Biram Dah Abeid, who came in second with nearly 19 percent of the vote, called it the “umpteenth coup d’etat against the will of the people,” alluding to alleged irregularities, Al Jazeera reported.

Mohamed Ould Boubacar, who came third, said that “multiple irregularities… eliminated any credibility” the election might have had.

For many, especially Abeid’s supporters, the result was disappointing for another reason.

Though slavery was abolished nationwide in 1981 and criminalized in 2007, human rights activists say tens of thousands of black Mauritanians still live as slaves “owned” by lighter-skinned masters of Arab or Berber descent.

Ghazouani has denied the problem is widespread, while Abeid, an anti-slavery activist who is himself the descendant of slaves, made the issue a main focus of his campaign.

Ethiopia: Change Is Hard

ETHIOPIA

Change Is Hard

Ethiopia put down a coup attempt in the northern Amhara region, but the country’s army chief and the head of the regional government were killed in connection with the incident.

Amhara President Ambachew Mekonnen and Amhara Regional Government Office Advisor Ezez Wassie were killed by gunshots Saturday evening, CNN reported.

The Army Chief of Staff General Seare Mekonnen and retired Major General Gezai Abera were killed at Seare’s Addis Ababa home by his bodyguard, according to a statement from the office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Seare was coordinating a response to the coup attempt when he was killed, the prime minister’s press secretary told CNN.

A Brigadier General named Asaminew Tsige was responsible for the failed coup, Abiy said.

The first ethnic Oromo to lead the country, Abiy took office in 2018 after years of Oromo protests over their economic and political marginalization – though they are the country’s largest ethnic group. Since then, he has forged a landmark peace deal with Eritrea, freed thousands of political prisoners and taken other dramatic steps to transform the country. But ethnic tensions remain high.

Mauritania: Of Bondage, Of Shame

MAURITANIA

Of Bondage, Of Shame

Voters in the conservative West African state of Mauritania go to the polls to elect a new president on June 22. It will arguably be their first real exercise of their democratic rights since a series of coups between 1978 and 2008, reported Africanews.

It might also be the beginning of the end of the desert country’s greatest shame.

Incumbent President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, a 62-year-old former general, is stepping down after his second term due to term limits, the London-based Arab Weekly explained. He helped stage a 2005 coup and rose to power after a 2008 coup.

In office, Abdel Aziz portrayed himself as a peacemaker between the country’s Arab-Berber community and the Haratines, who are former slaves and their descendants, wrote Al Jazeera. Recently, in an Eid al-Fitr holiday address, he asked voters to “demonstrate their democratic sense” and “engage in responsible competition in an atmosphere of tolerance and brotherhood” in the run-up to the election, Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported.

Human rights advocates disagree with the president’s assessment of himself. They had a different message for voters.

“Mauritania’s next president must urgently tackle the country’s poor human rights record by taking a tougher stance against slavery, human trafficking, and attacks on the rights to freedom of expression, including intimidation and harassment of activists speaking out against discrimination,” proclaimed Amnesty International and 32 local human rights organizations in a statement.

Human Rights Watch implored Abdel Aziz to show some respect for civil liberties before he left office and release blogger Mohamed Ould Cheikh Mkhaïtir, who has been in prison for the past five years for an allegedly blasphemous post.

The president has also failed to squelch Mauritania’s most notorious violation of human rights: the institution of slavery. The country was the last to ban slavery, in 1981, but lawmakers didn’t pass a law to enforce the ban until 2007. As many as one out of every five people in Mauritania’s population of 4.4 million are slaves, according to CNN.

Six candidates are running, making a July 6 runoff possible. The contenders include the president’s pick, former Defense Minister Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, and two candidates who have made slavery part of their campaigns: anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid and the main opposition candidate, former Prime Minister Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar.

“I am thinking of those who have suffered and continue to suffer from slavery, of all those who suffer from bitterness, arbitrariness, injustice and marginalization,” Boubacar said as he announced his candidacy in March, Radio France Internationale reported.

Whoever wins will have a rare historic opportunity. Whether they take it is another question.

The Congo-A Fearful Toll

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

A Fearful Toll

Civil society groups said ethnic violence has claimed more than 240 lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo since last week and convinced some 300,000 others to flee their homes.

The rising tide of strife in the volatile eastern province of Ituri has sparked frightening memories of clashes between the Hema and Lendu ethnicities that resulted in an estimated 50,000 deaths between 1999 and 2007, Reuters reported.

A witness told the news agency that machete-wielding attackers believed to belong to the rival Lendu farming community hacked her husband and other herders to death in the Hema village of Kpatsi, then set fire to their houses.

Fighting between the two communities had led to widespread displacement in late 2017 and early 2018, but the situation had been calm until recently, the UN Refugee Agency said. Following the recent killings, people are fleeing their homes on a massive scale in three of Ituri’s five administrative territories. That’s exacerbating an already dire situation, as the DRC has an estimated 4.5 million internally displaced people.

Nigeria: Back In Black

NIGERIA

Back in Black

Three suicide bombers killed at least 30 people in the northeast Nigerian state of Borno on Sunday, marking the deadliest attack by Islamist militants in the country this year.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. But both Boko Haram and Islamic State have previously carried out terrorist attacks in Borno during a decade-long insurgency that has claimed more than 30,000 lives, Reuters reported.

“Yesterday (Sunday) around 8 p.m. it was reported that there was a very loud explosion in (the village of) Konduga. On reaching the scene of the incident we found there was a lot of casualties. In fact, the death toll was over 30 and the injured over 42,” an emergency service official told the news agency.

The three suicide bombers targeted a crowd gathered to watch a soccer game on a large screen, the agency said, noting that Boko Haram regards the sport as corrupting and un-Islamic.

In response, President Muhammadu Buhari called for security measures to be put in place at such open-air screenings around the country, according to a spokesman.