HUMAN RIGHTS - The African Mirror

Jul

13

2020

Kenyan museum, Mau Mau fighter shed light on British colonial abuses

HUMAN RIGHTS

KATHERINE HOURELD NEARING 100, Gitu Wa Kahengeri clearly remembers the day when, as a prisoner of Kenya's colonial occupier Britain, he wanted to die. "I was beaten the whole day until I did not feel pain any longer," he said, of one episode of abuse during the seven years he spent in the camps that the British ran in the decade before Kenyan independence in 1963. The camps, where tens of thousands are thought to have died, are a traumatic but largely forgotten part of Kenya's past. They were set up to jail activists and sympathisers during the Mau Mau…

Jul

09

2020

By The African Mirror

The battle for Nile River water and the impact on humans

HUMAN RIGHTS

ZOHRA BENSEMRA and AIDAN LEWIS AT an open-air, riverbank factory where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet in Sudan, Mohamed Ahmed al Ameen and his colleagues mould thousands of bricks every day from mud deposited by summer floods. "I consider the Nile something I have not parted with since I was born," Ameen said, as workers around him shaped bricks with blistered hands and laid them out to dry in the sun. "I eat from it, I farm with it. And I extract these bricks from it." But the laborers on Tuti Island in Sudan's capital Khartoum fear a…

Jul

31

2020

By The African Mirror

COVID-19 pandemic derails Germany’s push for migrant integration

HUMAN RIGHTS

JOSEPH NASR NIGERIAN Iyke Anakua had been working for 14 months as a welder, a job he got through a recruitment agency in Berlin, when he received news in mid-March that he would be made redundant. "I waited so long for a job and now I have to start all over again," he said, wearing a black cap and a broad smile in Berlin's poor district of Neukoelln. "It's tough but I'm trying to stay positive." Anakua, who is 46 and has three children, considered himself fortunate because his wife's job as a security guard at a supermarket was not…

Jul

23

2020

By The African Mirror

Land rights battle inches Kenyan rice farmers closer to title deeds

HUMAN RIGHTS

KAGONDU NJAGI WHEN Wilson Kariuki's three younger children finish high school, the Kenyan rice farmer will not have to worry about paying to send them to a university far from home, as he did with his two eldest. Instead, they can attend a new university being built in their home village of Ngurubani, central Kenya, on 100 acres (40 hectares) that the farmers on the Mwea Irrigation Scheme now own after winning a case against the county government in April. The rice farmers' victory is a sign of the rising awareness of land rights that is driving small-scale farmers around…

Aug

01

2020

By The African Mirror

Video games seen becoming a new frontier in digital rights

HUMAN RIGHTS

AVI ASHER-SCHAPIRO CRITICAL digital rights battles over privacy, free speech and anonymity are increasingly being fought in video games, a growing market that is becoming a "new political arena," experts and insiders said on Thursday. With the industry set to more than double annual revenues to $300 billion by 2025, questions about how video game operators, designers and governments handle sensitive issues take on added urgency, said participants at RightsCon, a virtual digital rights conference. In recent months, a Hong Kong activist staged a protest against Beijing's rule inside a popular social simulator game called Animal Crossing, and a member…

Aug

07

2020

By The African Mirror

People‌ ‌smugglers‌ ‌left‌ ‌empty-handed‌

HUMAN RIGHTS

EDWARD McALLISTER ANDRE Chani said he once earned thousands of dollars a month driving Europe-bound migrants from Niger's desert trading hub of Agadez to Libya. But in 2016, he said, police in Niger impounded his two white pick-up trucks as part of an effort to stem the flow of Africans onto European shores. So Chani, 44, applied for 2.5 million CFA francs ($4,511) in aid from a European Union (EU)-funded program to start trucking agricultural produce to neighbouring Algeria. He never heard back, he said, so briefly turned to drug smuggling to support his family. Now he scrapes by growing…

Aug

06

2020

By The African Mirror

African activists fight violence against women one law at a time

HUMAN RIGHTS

KIM HARRISBERG AS a young girl growing up in northern Zimbabwe's mining community of Mashonaland, Beatrice Savadye watched as her friends were forced into child marriages and early motherhood while many became sick with HIV. Wanting a different life for herself and other girls, Savadye started the Zimbabwean women's movement Roots Africa seven years ago fighting for, among many things, legislation change to better protect women's rights in her region. Under the lockdown, Savadye is one of a band of female activists in Africa pushing for stronger laws to protect women trapped indoors with abusers from a surge in violence,…

Aug

13

2020

By The African Mirror

Congo massacre survivors tell of canoe escapes and being left for dead

HUMAN RIGHTS

ALEXIS HUGUET Second in two-part series on the 16 and 17 December massacre in Yumbi. The accompanying briefing looks in more detail at humanitarian needs. YUMBI, Democratic Republic of Congo For 48 hours in mid-December, the remote fishing and farming region of Yumbi some 400 kilometres north of Kinshasa on the banks of the Congo River became the scene of a massacre. According to the UN Human Rights Office in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at least 535 people were killed in the town of Yumbi and surrounding villages when members of the Batende community attacked the Banunu, a different…

Aug

23

2020

By The African Mirror

Kenya woman’s ordeal highlights newly identified sex trafficking route

HUMAN RIGHTS

AYENAT MERSIE J's cousin promised her a well-paid job in India as a housekeeper. Instead, she found herself in a brothel until the United Nations brought her home to Kenya when it was alerted to the human trafficking route. "When I heard there were job vacancies in India, I was so happy," said J, asking that only her initial be used to protect her privacy. When she got there, her passport was confiscated and she was forced into sex work to pay off $9,000 her traffickers, fellow East Africans, told her she owed them for her travel and lodging, she…

Aug

21

2020

By The African Mirror

Libya’s humanitarian crisis deepens, talks needed – Red Cross says

HUMAN RIGHTS

STEPHANIE NEBEHAY LIBYA’S' humanitarian crisis is worsening, compounded by the halt of oil operations, blockade of ports, and spread of COVID-19, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday. ICRC President Peter Maurer voiced hope that a flurry of diplomatic activity, including a visit earlier this week by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, would restart a political peace process. Maurer spoke on return from the divided North African country where he held separate talks with Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the internationally-recognised government, and General Khalifa Haftar, whose eastern-based forces launched an assault…