A South Sudan military court Thursday sentenced 10 soldiers to prison for raping foreign aid workers and murdering a local journalist in a brutal attack at the Terrain Hotel more than two years ago in Juba.

The court also ordered the government to compensate the victims of the July 11, 2016, attack. Government forces were locked in battle for three days against forces loyal to former First Vice President Riek Machar.

Witnesses said armed men attacked the hotel for several hours while aid workers called U.N. peacekeepers stationed less than a mile away, begging for help. The peacekeepers did not arrive. Kenyan Lieutenant General Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Juba, was fired shortly afterward.

Presiding Judge Brigadier General Knight Baryano sentenced two soldiers to life in prison, two to 14 years behind bars and five other soldiers to 10 years in prison.

One soldier released

One soldier, Akol Aken, was released because of a lack of evidence against him. The military commander accused of overseeing the attack died in prison last October in what the army described as a “natural death.”

The court ordered the government to pay 51 head of cattle as blood compensation to the bereaved family of slain journalist John Gatluak, who worked for Internews Community Radio.

Baryano ordered the South Sudan government to pay each rape victim $4,000 and to pay the owner of the Terrain Hotel more than $2 million in damages.

Attorney Peter Malua, who represented the accused, told South Sudan in Focus he would appeal the verdict.

Under South Sudan law, the accused have 15 days to appeal their sentences.

Sudan People’s Liberation Army spokesman Colonel Santo Domic called the ruling an eye-opener for all SPLA soldiers, saying they should know they will be held responsible for any criminal behavior they take part in while on duty.

Other victims

Issa Muzamil Sebit, an independent lawyer who represented some of the victims in the case, said he thought justice had been served.

But he also said many South Sudanese had suffered similar abuses and were yearning for justice. He urged the SPLA to work on repairing its tarnished image. 

“This is a special case for Terrain, but there are so many victims of such assaults in South Sudan. This one is a special case because most of the victims were international community members. But what if they are South Sudanese — should we keep quiet because there is nobody to talk or to fight for them? So all these kinds of sexual assaults, whether directed on men or women, are unacceptable under the law,” Sebit told South Sudan in Focus.

The U.S. Embassy in Juba released a statement saying it welcomed Thursday’s verdicts but urging South Sudan’s leaders to bring to justice others who have perpetrated human rights abuses during the five-year conflict.

The embassy said the United States would “continue to utilize tools, including targeted sanctions, to take action against those who attempt to sow chaos, work against peace and commit serious human rights abuses in South Sudan.”
…

your ad here

Children at the Government Primary School Limani dance with joy as they meet each other in class for the first time in several years.

Cameroon has re-opened 40 schools on its northern border with Nigeria that were sealed four years ago because of threats from Boko Haram insurgents. But while students are happy returning, many of their teachers are absent and have been replaced by troops from the Multinational Joint Task Force still fighting the Islamist group.

 

The children’s school in Limani is one of the forty near northern Cameroon’s border with Nigeria that authorities reopened this week, citing improved security.

 

Cameroon closed around sixty schools in the area beginning in December 2014 because of the threat from Boko Haram.

 

The Islamist militant group, whose name roughly translates as “non-Islamic education is a sin,” had launched an all-out assault on villages near the Lake Chad area.

 

Cameroon says hundreds of Boko Haram fighters attacked and torched schools, including the Limani primary school.  

 

Ibrahim Nassourou was nine years old when the school was shut.  He and his parents fled to a neighboring village where Nassourou was unable to attend school.

 

He says when he was told that their school in Limani had been reopened he shouted with joy because he can now again persue an education.

 

Cameroon authorities are touting the absense of a major Boko Haram attack for the past year and are urging parents to return their children to the re-opened schools.  Troops are protecting the schools, they say.  

 

But parents are reluctant to trust promises of safety. Only about 20 percent of the students have come back.

 

Teachers are also noticeably absent.

 

At the Limani Primary School’s Class Five, troops from the Multinational Joint Task Force have traded their weapons for teaching manuals and chalk.

 

Cameroon-born staff corporal Blaise Fonkon says teaching is part of their social outreach program.

 

“We have [a] humanitarian line of operation. In that humanitarian line of operation, we have of course the school situation. Through their school, if they actually know what they are supposed to do here, they will be engineers, they will be teachers, they will be doctors and I am sure that they will change this country,” Fonkon said.

 

Classroom teacher Edison Abunaw says despite assurances of their safety, most of his teaching colleagues do not wish to return.

 

And between Boko Haram’s attacks and kidnappings, and villagers hiding in fear, he says, the fate of many former students is still not known.

 

“We used to have about 500 to 600 pupils, but we have about two hundred [now]. Most of the parents, they don’t tell us what happened to their children so we are confronted with situations where we cannot easily explain what happened to the child,” Abunaw said.

 

Abunaw notes classes only started September 3, so he says it is too early to say if more teachers and students will return.

 

Cameroon is giving absent teachers two weeks to come back to their jobs.

 

Mayor of Fotokol town Abouzari Mahamat says the government has promised to rebuild schools that Boko Haram damaged.

 

He says the engineering corps of the Multinational Joint Task Force, which is fighting Boko Haram, has promised to construct new classes and repair those that were destroyed. Mahamat says, thanks to the presence of the troops, peace is returning and children can now go to school.

 

But Mahamat acknowledges that reconstruction has been slow because contractors also worry that fighting could return.

 
…

your ad here

Chinese President Xi Jinping promised Monday to cancel debt for some of Africa’s least-developed countries.

Erasing debt tied to interest-free loans has long been a part of China’s policies in Africa.  But the announcement, made at Xi’s opening speech at the 2018 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, or FOCAC, comes amid growing concern over China’s lending practices, which some have deemed “debt-trap diplomacy.”

Yet Chinese loans make up just a small portion of Africa’s debt, W. Gyude Moore, a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development, told VOA. Moore is Liberia’s former minister of public works and focuses on infrastructure financing in Africa.

He put the continent’s total debt burden at about $6 trillion, most of which is owed to organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Paris Club of mostly Western creditor countries. He said Chinese loans make up just two percent of all Africa debt.

Murky details

Debt forgiveness is a small part of a much larger package announced at this year’s FOCAC, and details about affected countries aren’t known, Moore said.

“Because it is unclear what the conditions are to qualify for debt relief, we can’t say for sure what countries will benefit from it,” he said.

In his speech, Xi said the relief would help “heavily indebted and poor countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries.”

That’s consistent with how China has dealt with debt forgiveness in the past.

Deborah Bräutigam, the director at the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, wrote earlier this week that the debt-relief policies were nothing new, even if they sounded like a big change.

“These foreign aid loans are a long-standing and relatively modest part of Chinese finance in Africa,” Bräutigam wrote.

‘Net positive’

Critics worry that China wants to create debt problems with its partners to gain leverage with them.

In Sri Lanka, China took over Hambantota Port and thousands of acres of surrounding land as part of a debt forgiveness package, raising concerns about sovereignty.

But Moore thinks that case is an anomaly and points to Venezuela, a country that owes China about $50 billion without having faced similar takeovers of facilities or land, as another example of how things can play out.

More importantly, African nations turn to China to fulfill a need, Moore said.

“Currently, Africa lags every region of the world when it comes to infrastructure.  And China, it appears, is the only country with both the appetite and the resources to be able to help Africa meet its infrastructure needs,” Moore said. “I think China has been a net positive partner with most African countries.”

 

Corruption concerns

But good intentions may not be enough to keep borrowers out of trouble. Bräutigam told VOA that concerns about Chinese debt and doubts about the necessity of some infrastructure projects have merit.

“The Chinese practice has been much more deferential to local sovereignty. And so, in their view, African governments know what they’re doing when they borrow to build these projects.  And in their own history the Chinese have also borrowed to build things,” Bräutigam said.

That’s led some critics to fault China for perpetuating corruption with no-strings-attached loans and a policy of non-interference with other nations’ internal dynamics.

Moore said the Democratic Republic of Congo is one example of a country that’s indebted to China but also saddled by corruption.

“The problem with the DRC is not simply something with the Chinese loans,” Moore said. “There was an instance where almost $2 billion in rent collected on mining didn’t make it to the national budget.”

Internal & external pressure

Moore sees an extension of China’s policies in Africa for the foreseeable future, although debt cancellation or restructuring both are likely, he added.

But growing scrutiny both internationally and internally could constrain future Chinese lending, especially in the context of the high-profile Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s massive infrastructure project cast as a modern-day Silk Road.

About 100 million Chinese live in poverty, Moore said, and the country’s own debt has spiked in the past nine years from about $6 trillion to roughly $28 trillion. That’s left some in China questioning the wisdom of giving Africa what they see as development aid.

But Chinese money isn’t likely to dry up, and until African nations find other lenders willing to offer comparable terms, the continent will keep counting on China to bolster its development efforts.

“China will continue to, for at least the next decade, be a source of lending to African countries,” Moore said.
…

your ad here

The U.N. refugee agency is urging the South African authorities to get to grips with violence targeting foreigners before it gets completely out of control.

UNHCR says it is alarmed by the xenophobic fever, which is taking hold of large portions of South African society.  It says even refugees and asylum seekers, who are particularly vulnerable, have become targets of violent anti-foreigner sentiment.

Four people reportedly were killed in the Soweto area of Johannesburg by angry protesters last week, while mobs looted and destroyed property belonging to foreign nationals. The UNHCR says it is worried these tense standoffs between South Africans and foreigners is spreading to Kwazulu Natal and Western Cape Provinces.

UNHCR spokesman Charlie Yaxley told VOA similar attacks occurred in 2015, but relations between South African nationals and foreigners since then, by-in-large, have been peaceful.

“But, we do see these flare-ups every now and again.  And, we do want to underscore that those affected are people who have already fled war and persecution.  And, they have been brought to South Africa because they require protection,” Yaxley said.

South Africa currently hosts more than 280,000 refugees and asylum-seekers.  Yaxley said UNHCR staff has visited those affected by violence in Soweto in recent days.  He said it found shops owned by foreigners have been looted and destroyed, stripping their owners of their livelihoods.

He said the UNHCR is heartened by condemnation of these attacks by civil society groups and hopes this will result in the restoration of peaceful co-existence and harmony with foreign nationals.

 
…

your ad here