Day: May 1, 2022

After water scarcity driven by climate change sparked deadly clashes in Cameroon’s Far North, UN High Commissioner for Refugees calls for reconciliation and more help for those affected.

When simmering disputes between herders, fishermen and famers over scarce water resources in Cameroon’s Far North region flared into violence last December, Tomma Ndjinda’s village was among those caught up in the deadly clashes. “Our village was attacked, and we were forced to flee without having time to take anything with us,” she says.

Ndjinda headed south in search of safety together with her husband and seven children, ending up at the Ardjaniré displacement site in Bogo. The site currently hosts around half of the 4,200 people in this area who fled the worst intercommunal violence ever seen in Cameroon’s Far North.

But faced with a desperate shortage of food and other resources despite the generous welcome shown by the local community, Ndjinda’s husband went back to salvage what he could of their crops and possessions.

“My husband tried to return to our village to harvest sorghum in our fields. But when he arrived, he discovered that migratory birds had eaten everything. All our belongings were also destroyed,” she explained. Tragically, her husband never made it back, and Ndjinda believes the shock of seeing what had become of their home led to his sudden death.

Now left to care for seven children on her own with no income, Ndjinda is at a loss to know how they will survive. “We are running out of everything. When the children get sick, I can’t take them to the hospital.”

The climate crisis is exacerbating competition for water and other resources in this part of Africa’s Sahel region, where temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average. Water levels in Lake Chad have decreased by as much as 95 per cent in the past 60 years, and the effects are being felt by communities that rely on the Logone and Chari rivers that feed the lake on Cameroon’s far northern border.

On a three-day visit to Cameroon that concluded on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi met with Ndjinda and other displaced families affected by the recent violence, who described to him the pressing needs they face.

“Beyond efforts made by the authorities and the generosity shown by host communities, the needs for food, education and health care remain,” Grandi said. “We have also heard concerns over pressure on local services, underlining the need to increase our support to both displaced families and members of the local community who are hosting them.”

UNHCR and partners are working to establish secure displacement sites and deliver life-saving aid including water, shelter and household items. Together with the Cameroonian authorities, the agency has also led conflict-resolution efforts aimed at putting an end to the violence.

“Identifying the causes of conflicts and addressing them would ensure peaceful cohabitation among communities,” Grandi said. “Reconciliation and reconstruction are key to pave the way for for voluntary and safe return of dispalced families.” He also called for an assessment of reconstruction needs in areas affected by violence.

During his visit to Ardjaniré, the High Commissioner visited a reforestation project that will plant 2,000 trees to help address the desertification being exacerbated by the climate crisis and provide additional resources and income opportunities for displaced and local communities.

The project is part of the Great Green Wall initiative, which aims to grow an 8,000-kilometre continent-wide barrier to combat land degradation, desertification and drought in the Sahel.

Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees

ADDIS ABABA— Ethiopian authorities have arrested over 200 people linked to the deadly religious violence last Tuesday in the country’s northern Gondar city of Amhara region.

The attack on a Muslim community in Gondar left 21 people dead, the Amhara Regional Islamic Affairs High Council said on Wednesday.

The Council further said that more than 150 people were also injured in the incident.

It is not yet clear if there are casualties from the attackers’ side.

In a statement issued late Thursday, Ethiopia’s Federal Intelligence and Security Task Force announced that it has arrested 280 suspects in connection with the incident that happened in the religious and historic tourist destination city of Gondar.

The Taskforce said the arrests are part of the measures being taken against some elements who are working to help “anti-Ethiopian forces” under the cover of religion.

The statement said that the suspects were involved in the violence and had intentions to spread it to larger parts of the Amhara region and beyond.

According to the statement, the perpetrators planned to launch an attack targeting religious institutions and individuals with the aim to broaden the scope of the violence.

“The conflict in Gondar is a conspiracy to provoke clashes between different religious groups thereby lead to a national chaos.

“There have been moves to instigate religious violence in different parts of the country with the pretext of the incident that happened in a funeral place in the central Gondar zone that involved Christians and Muslims. The goal was to cater to the interests of ant-Ethiopian forces.

“Those forces whose attempt to bring about a crisis failed due to the age-old shared values have been playing religion as a playing card in order to incite discord that could lead to violence between followers of different faith groups,” the task force added.

Furthermore, it said that anti-Ethiopian forces, internal and external, had attempted to instigate ethnic-based violence across the country to plunge the country into crisis.

The task force further claimed to have adequate information about the orchestrators of the attack who are based in Ethiopia and foreign countries, adding that they would take measures against them.

Tuesday’s attack was carried out during a Muslim burial at the Sheikh Elias Cemetery in the predominantly Christian city of Gondar.

Although the security task force blamed anti-peace forces for the attack, the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council has, however, pointed fingers at what it described as “radical Orthodox Church followers” for the deadly attacks.

The Addis Abeba Islamic Affairs’ High Council said that “Mosques were set ablaze and massive destruction of property was carried out by a mob blinded by bigotry, which clearly remarks Islamophobia.”

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

In a message addressed to Lebanese expatriates who will head to polling stations to cast their votes on May 6 & 8, House Speaker Nabih Berri called on them to “demonstrate widest participation in this national event par excellence and the most important in the history of Lebanon,” and to “go to the polls free from electoral discourse that is heavily charged with hateful sectarian incitement.”

He called on the Lebanese residing in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia and the United States to “vote massively” for the candidates of the “Amal and Loyalty” lists in the South, Central and Western Bekaa, Baalbek, Hermel, Zahle, Beirut, Southern Metn and Jbeil districts.

“Let your vote on the sixth and eighth of May be for national constants and not for electoral promises. Let your vote be for unity and not fragmentation. Let your vote be for Lebanon in its Arab identity and belonging; Lebanon that is committed to the best relations with its Arab brothers, all the Arabs, from the ocean to the Gulf, and with its friends all over the world,” Berri said.

He added: “Let your vote be for those who believe in dialogue as a way to approach all contentious issues under the constitution’s rooftop and to protect civil peace. Let your vote be for the independence and reform of the judiciary, rendering it an authority above maliciousness and free from political interference, an authority capable of realizing the truth and establishing the rules of justice in accordance with the logic of the constitution and the law.”

He urged all members of the Lebanese Diaspora to vote for “an open and transparent dialogue under the dome of Parliament to approve an economic recovery plan that enshrines the full rights of all depositors as a sacred right not to be neglected under any headlines.”

“Let your vote be for Lebanon as a civil state and the adoption of an electoral law outside the sectarian restriction on the basis of proportionality in accordance with expanded constituencies, and a senate in which all sects are represented fairly, and for lowering the voting age to 18 years and establishing a quota for women,” the Speaker went on.

“Let your vote on the sixth and eighth of May be for establishing the ministries of expatriates and planning,” Berri emphasized.

“Let your vote be to preserve the headlines of Lebanon’s power, the army and the people, and the resistance in order to curb Israel’s aggression and to invest all of Lebanon’s wealth in the sea without any compromise on the sovereign rights, and rejecting any form of normalization” he underlined, adding, “Let your vote be for rejection of settlement and support for the return of the displaced.”

Berri asserted that all of the above headlines are at the core of the “Amal and Loyalty” ballot lists, calling for the “trust and immeasurable loyalty” of the Lebanese, concluding: “You are the hope, and always and forever with you lies the utmost endeavour!”

Source: National News Agency

RABAT— Morocco’s prison authority has been offering “de-radicalization” training since 2017 to former ISIS fighters and others convicted of terrorism offenses.

As a combatant for the ISIS who left his native Morocco to join what he felt was a holy fight in Syria, Mohsin says he saw all the horrors of war. “A terrifying experience,” he says.

Now a prisoner, the 38-year-old claims he is no longer the fanatic he was then, enraged with a murderous hatred for non-Muslims. Captured in Turkey and extradited to Morocco, he is serving a 10-year prison term on terrorism charges.

Now the former fighter has graduated with 14 other prisoners convicted of terror offenses from a Morocco de-radicalization program that might make them more eligible for an early release.

The media were invited to observe their graduation ceremony in a prison in Sale near the Moroccan capital, Rabat, and to interview some prisoners under monitored and controlled conditions.

The 15 inmates in crisp shirts and trousers stood solemnly for Morocco’s national anthem and were handed certificates.

Prison officials said the de-radicalization program consisted of three months of classes in prison on religion, law and economics, and that inmates also received training on how to start a business.

These most recent graduates were the ninth batch since the program started in 2017.

Moulay Idriss Agoulmam, the director of social-cultural action and prisoner reintegration at Morocco’s prison administration, said the program is entirely voluntary and works with inmates “to change their behavior and improve their life path.”

“It enables prisoners to form an awareness of the gravity of their mistakes,” he said.

Graduating from the program doesn’t make inmates automatically eligible for early release, but does increase their chances of getting a royal pardon or a reduced sentence.

That’s been the case for just over half of the program’s 222 graduates so far, the prison administration says. Since 2019, the training has also been offered to women convicted under Morocco’s Anti-Terrorism Act. Ten women have graduated so far — all of them since released, including eight with pardons.

Called “Moussalaha,” meaning “reconciliation” in Arabic, the program is offered to prisoners who have demonstrated a readiness to disavow extremism.

Numerous Moroccans have traveled to Syria, Iraq and elsewhere to join extremist groups. Morocco has also experienced multiple attacks itself. Five suicide attacks in Casablanca in 2003 killed 33 people. In 2011, an explosion destroyed a cafe in Marrakech, killing 17 people, most of them foreign tourists.

Al Mustapaha Razrazi, a clinical psychologist and member of the program’s scientific committee, said among 156 people who have been released after attending the courses, just one has been caught committing a crime again.

That person was convicted of a non-terrorism-related offense, he said.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

China has enlisted some fresh faces in its pushback against charges it is committing genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang: young foreign social media influencers who produce short videos showing happy minorities in the far-western region.

Travel videos recorded by video bloggers known as vloggers are carried on platforms such as Twitter that are banned in China and spread by state media and affiliated sites. The echo and amplify Beijing’s massive propaganda effort to depict Uyghurs as content with and grateful for Chinese rule.

The videos show “foreign travelers” interviewing people in factories in Xinjiang, with captions such as “Friends, it’s a lie that there is a genocide of the Uyghurs.” “Everything is normal here,” and “Is there a single piece of evidence that there are more than 1 million people in concentration camps?”

State-owned media outlets and local governments organize the pro-China campaign, paying vloggers to take trips, according to documents posted online and video producers familiar with the system.

“What happens is you’ll have a state media like CGTN or CRI or iChongqing or any number of organizations which are run by the Chinese government — which are the Chinese government — and what they will do is they will pay for the flights, pay for the accommodation, organize the trip, and liaise with the content creator and invite them to go on these trips,” said YouTuber Winston Sterzel, who lived in Xinjiang.

Minders working as translators or fixers are always present to make sure the content creators follow the script, he said.

Vloggers, who post short videos on their personal websites or social media account on platforms like YouTube, say that local government officials arrange their travel and logging during trips they are hired for to make videos that put China in a good light.

“They arrange our travel, and they pay for our lodging and food,” said YouTuber Lee Barrett in a video he recorded.

Business Insider reported in January that China’s consulate general in New York signed a U.S. $300 million contract with U.S.-based Vippi Media in New Jersey to create a social media campaign promoting positive messaging about China TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch as a lead-up to the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Social media influencers were asked to produce content for their target audiences on Chinese culture, positive diplomatic relations between China and the U.S., and consulate general news.

‘Living happily and joyfully’

On the YouTube channel “Two Brothers,” Netherlands-based Tarekk Habib and Anas Habib, both of Egyptian descent, published a video on Dec. 31, 2021, in which they say a Chinese company agreed to pay them U.S. $1,000 to produce and share a video extoling the government’s measures to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus at the Olympics and to ensure the safety of athletes.

They said they turned down the request and instead produced a video discussing China’s oppression of Uyghur Muslims.

China’s struggle to shape world opinion about Xinjiang will come into sharp focus this month, when U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet makes a long-awaited visit to China, including Xinjiang.

Since 2017, about 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples are believed to have been incarcerated a vast network of internment camps in Xinjiang.

The U.S. and a handful of European countries have labelled these practices genocide, while China has angrily rejected criticism and maintains the camps are vocational training centers designed to combat religious extremism and terrorism.

In fall 2021, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government began an initiative to mobilize foreign students in China to praise “Xinjiang policy.” The effort was part of the central government’s larger plan to portray ethnic minorities in Xinjiang as happy and content, according to an article in Xinjiang Daily.

Under the title “The people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are living happily and joyfully,” the report cited a series of letters written by Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping in which he called on foreign students in July 2021 to increase their understanding of the “real China,” so that their knowledge would inspire others to understand the country as well.

The XUAR government in October 2021 sponsored a trip to Xinjiang for students from 16 countries, including Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Burundi, Uganda, Russia, Pakistan, Korea, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, the U.S. and the U.K.

Chinese state media said the students visited Kashgar (Kashi), Hotan (Hetian), and other places, and saw Xinjiang’s economic development, social stability, quality of life, culture, ethnic unity and religious harmony.

“They are not only able to look after the young and old people in their homes, they can also earn a salary. Their work environment is very good, and they are truly happy,” an Armenian student was quoted as saying.

Such accounts are meant to counter a growing tide of well-researched reports by researchers and foreign media about conditions in Xinjiang.

Government minders

Since the start of 2018, authorities have prevented most international journalists from entering Xinjiang and forced foreigners living in the region to leave.

YouTubers from the U.S. and South Africa who lived in the Xinjiang or in mainland China for a decade or more said that while recent vlogs by foreigners “traveling” to Xinjiang appear to be simple and normal, government fixers are always on the other side of the camera, controlling what is said and recorded.

“You’re gonna be approached by your agent or your middleman … who is a communicator between you and the management company, or as they call themselves, talent agencies,” said LeLe Farley, an American comedian and rap artist who lived in China for years and worked as an announcer for Chinese-language programs.

“Those talent agencies get word directly from the government, like ‘we need foreign bloggers for white-washing Xinjiang; we need them to go there, and here’s the trip that we’ve prepared for them to go on. We’ll pay for the whole trip,’” he said.

Josh Summers, who ran a popular blog known as “Far West China” as well as a YouTube channel, moved to Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi (Wulumuqi) in 2006 and lived both there and in Karamay (Kelamayi) until 2018. While in Urumqi (Wulumuqi), he wrote about and produced videos on Uyghur weddings, cuisine and Eid prayers at the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar.

“A lot of these travelers that you’re talking about, these people that are doing videos, the reality is they know nothing on Xinjiang,” he said. “They pretend to, but they know nothing, whereas I lived there.”

As authorities stepped up their surveillance and monitoring of Uyghurs in 2015, the Chinese government looked increasingly into the work of foreigners living in the region, Summers said.

Summers said he was detained and questioned by authorities. While they eventually let him go, they also told him and his family that they could no longer stay in China.

In 2018, representatives of the Chinese government deported him and forbade him from returning to Urumqi. He chose not to publish any videos about Xinjiang because he did not want to cause problems for Uyghur contacts.

‘Look at all the Uyghurs dancing’

American Matthew Tye and South African Winston Sterzel were also forced to leave China over videos they published after having lived in the country for more than 10 years.

The pair, who became well known in China under the handles laowhy86 and Serpentza, told RFA that vloggers’ videos, may appear to have been made freely, but they are fake and have another purpose altogether.

“The place might seem great to a tourist who knows no Chinese language or culture, but this is very dangerous,” said Tye.

“By going there and smiling and saying, ‘Look at all the Uyghurs dancing,’ you are helping one of the most disgusting governments in the world,” Sterzel said.

Tye and Sterzel, who are now both back in their home countries, have continued to post videos about China on their YouTube channels.

They said that a Chinese government agent contacted them over email and offered to pay U.S. $2,000 if posted a propaganda video on their channel claiming that the COVID-19 virus was being spread by white-tailed deer in the U.S., Tye said

“Really, what the video is insinuating was that COVID-19 was found in America before China,” he said.

“We strung them along to try to get as much information as possible, but they eventually found out who we were and they cut ties with us,” he added. “This has happened previously, and they’ve tried to get us to do that with tourism, propaganda and all kinds of stuff.”

Jerry Goode, a South African living in China, is one of a number of foreigners who have been taken on the government-organized trips to Xinjiang to make vlogs.

Goode recorded a YouTube a video of himself walking around the streets, stalls and night market of the Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, a main tourist attraction. The video, post online on Jan. 24, has been viewed more than 60,000 times. At the end of the video, Goode declares that it is “untrue” that genocide is occurring in the region.”

Goode initially agreed to an interview with RFA about his trip to Xinjiang but never replied to further attempts to talk to him.

Not close to normal

Tye and Sterzel dismissed the video as state-sponsored propaganda.

“Xinjiang is massive, and there’s no way that some idiot YouTuber who cannot speak Chinese, who cannot speak the Uyghur language, who knows nothing about the culture of China can walk around in this tiny little area and claim that there is no genocide or any bad things happening in China,” Sterzel said.

“As for the tourism videos, if you watch any promotional videos that any other YouTubers made about any specific region of China, it won’t just be about tourism,” Sterzel said. “There will be some government-angle incentives, there will be something about how the government has improved the lives of the people there or how the government has built this infrastructure.”

LeLe Farley, an American comedian and rap artist who lived in China, said middlemen working for Chinese officials approached him in 2019 to create videos promoting China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Xi Jinping’s signature trade and transport infrastructure program.

Farley said he was not interested because he has hosted events in Los Angeles for Chinese government entities, which he found to be “soul crushing if you’re not able to completely numb yourself out to them, or if you’re not willfully ignorant.’

Gene Bunin, the founder the Xinjiang Victims Database, is a Russian-American dual citizen and researcher who first visited Xinjiang in 2008, and lived in Urumqi and Kasghar from 2014 to 2018.

He told RFA that Uyghurs were living anything but a normal life, saying that from 2018 onward the number of people given prison sentences of 10 years or more has increased steadily.

He also estimated that some 300,000 Uyghurs, mostly men, have been moved from internment camps to prisons. According to Bunin, a large number of them have been made to perform forced labor under the guise of “poverty alleviation.”

About the “happy Uyghurs” featured on Chinese social media accounts, Bunin said: “My friends there disappeared. What the YouTubers are saying in the counterpropaganda videos they make about Uyghurs are lies.”

Not all vloggers read from the Chinese government hymn sheet when they make videos about Xinjiang.

A 20-year-old calling himself “Guanguan” used a GPS map compiled by BuzzFeed News in 2020 to locate various internment camps believed to hold Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang.

That same year, Guanguan traveled to several places in the XUAR, including Urumqi (Wulumuqi), Changji (Sanji), Qomul (Hami), and Korla (Kuerle), and secretly videoed different detention facilities. In October 2021, he posted a 20-minute documentary on YouTube, depicting apparent detention facilities in and around the cities with footage from his trip on his YouTube channel.

“People like Guanguan have an incredible amount of courage,” Sterzel said. “As a Chinese citizen, the amount of trouble he could get into by doing this is incredible, but he still did it anyway.”

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