AFRICAN SCENE
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DAILY CHALLENGE THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2011
AFRICAN SCENE
US group: 8 mass graves now seen in Sudan region By JASON STRAZIUSO
Burkina Faso sentences 3 cops for student’s death OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso - A Burkina Faso judge has sentenced three policemen to prison over a student’s death that sparked months of protests that left at least six dead. Two policemen on Tuesday were sentenced to 10 years in prison and the other to eight years over the February death of Justin Zongo. Zongo’s family said they agreed with the verdict. Uprisings began in the impoverished West African nation in late February when students protested over accusations that Zongo was mistreated while in custody. The government said he had meningitis. The unrest spread across Burkina Faso. Soldiers started a mutiny that threatened President Blaise Compaore’s 24-year rule. Compaore tried to stem the unrest by dissolving the government and removing the country’s security chiefs.
5 more people die in north Nigerian floods MAIDUGURI, Nigeria - Local authorities say floods have killed five people in the country’s north bringing the flood-related death toll to 15 over the past week. Local official Muhammad Baba said yesterday that a river in the town of Numan overflowed during a five-hour rainstorm Tuesday. Baba said two children drowned in the floods and an 85-year-old man died after his mud house caved in. Authorities say 10 other people died in floods that ravaged other parts of Nigeria’s north over the last week. Nigeria’s emergency agency has warned that rains will be heavier this year than last year when some 500,000 people were displaced nationwide. Nigeria’s rainy season lasts roughly from June to September.
Zimbabwe VP questions husband’s death HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe’s vice president is questioning how her power-brokering husband died - fueling suspicions the former army chief may have been killed. The state-run Herald newspaper yesterday quotes Vice President Joice Mujuru as saying she wants “satisfactory answers” from an investigation into last week’s death of Gen. Solomon Mujuru in a house fire. She asks why he was unable to escape through bedroom windows so large and low “you don’t have to jump out, you just lift your leg.” Newsday newspaper said she found the death “unbelievable” and that it “raised a lot of questions.” The death has intensified infighting in the party of ailing President Robert Mugabe, where the general was a powerful figure who used his military, political and business connections to promote his wife’s battle for supremacy. Gen. Mujuru, 66, a former guerrilla leader and military chief after independence in 1980, was burned beyond recognition in the fire at his farm 60 kilometers (35 miles) southwest of Harare. Police say they have questioned 23 witnesses who saw the general on the day of the fire, including patrons of a bar he visited on his way to the farm and the three police officers detailed to guard the property.
NAIROBI, Kenya - A U.S. monitoring group said yesterday that satellite imagery had revealed the existence of two more mass graves in a contested region of Sudan, bringing the total number of mass graves sited there to eight. The Satellite Sentinel Project, a group backed by actor and Sudan activist George Clooney, said that witnesses told the group that a backhoe was used to dig some of the graves at sites in Kadugli, South Kordofan. Workers with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society were present during some of the burials, the group said. The U.S. group has not made any estimates of the number of bodies it believes have been buried in the graves, saying that onsite research would need to be carried out. South Kordofan lies just across the border from newly independent South Sudan and has been the site of clashes between government troops from Sudan’s Arab north and black tribesmen aligned with the south’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Many
inhabitants of South Kordofan fought for the south during the country’s two decades-plus civil war against the north and are ethnically linked to the south. A report released this month by the U.N. human rights office in Geneva said Sudanese security forces allegedly carried out indiscriminate aerial bombardments in South Kordofan that killed civilians in the weeks before South Sudan became independent on July 9. It also alleged that Sudanese forces executed prisoners accused of belonging to the south’s Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement before burying them in mass graves. “The evidence against the Sudanese government continues to compound and has now become impossible to dismiss. It is time for the international community to take serious action and execute its responsibility to protect innocent lives in Sudan,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of the activist group the Enough Project. The Sudanese Red Crescent Society has said that it buried 59 bodies in marked burial sites in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan state, between midJune and mid-July. The International Committee
of the Red Cross says it supplied body bags, rubber boots and cameras to SRCS teams tasked with the management of dead bodies, according to spokeswoman Anna Schaaf. The ICRC is not on the ground in South Kordofan. The satellite group in July reported the first three mass graves as excavated areas measuring about 26 meters (yards) by 5 meters (yards) visible near a school in the town of Kadugli. The group said that an eyewitness reported seeing 100 bodies or more put into one of the pits on June 8. Sudan said last week that it will allow six U.N. agencies to take part in a governmentorganized mission to South Kordofan, where the U.N. human rights office has called for a probe into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Khartoum’s U.N. Ambassador Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman said the joint mission will be sent to South Kordofan “to assess the situation of human rights there and the humanitarian needs.” Sudan President Omar alBashir on Tuesday announced a two-week cease-fire in South Kordofan.
Shell warns on Nigerian exports after damage to pipelines Oil giant Shell on Tuesday warned it may not meet contractual obligations on certain exports from Nigeria after sabotage caused damage to two pipelines in the country’s main oilproducing region. Shell’s Nigerian joint venture “has declared force majeure on Bonny Light exports for the remainder of August as well as September and October,” the company said in a statement. Force majeure is a legal term releasing a company from contractual obligations due to circumstances beyond their control. Bonny Light is a type of crude. Shell has reported six oil spills this month on the OkordiaRumuekpe trunk line
at Ikarama in Bayelsa state in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, “all from hacksaw cuts by unknown persons.” “On August 21, another three hacksaw cuts were reported on the nearby Adibawa delivery line,” the Anglo-Dutch firm said. “Some production is shut in while (Shell’s joint venture) repairs the line.” Nigeria is Africa’s
largest oil producer and the continent’s most populous nation. Pipeline damage and associated spills are common in the Niger Delta region as a result of oil theft to feed the lucrative black market. Militants claiming to be fighting for a fairer distribution of oil revenue have also regularly blown up pipelines, though such attacks have decreased since a
2009 amnesty deal. Shell has said that more than 75 percent of all oil spills and more than 70 percent of oil spilled from its Nigerian joint venture facilities in the Niger Delta from 2006-2010 were caused by sabotage and crude theft. Activists say oil firms such as Shell have not done enough to prevent such incidents.
Anzhi seal marquee signing of Eto’o By ALEXANDER FEDORETS Anzhi Makhachkala confirmed on Tuesday that they have agreed to terms for the transfer of four-time African player of the year Samuel Eto’o
from Inter Milan in the highest-profile signing ever by a Russian side. “Today Anzhi and Inter reached agreement on the transfer of Samuel Eto’o,” read a statement on Anzhi’s official site. “The transfer sum suited
both sides,” it added, without giving financial details. It said that Cameroon star Eto’o underwent a medical yesterday and will then sign a three-year contract before starting training with the squad on Thursday.