Human Rights Watch - The African Mirror

Apr

07

2026

Blood on all hands: Burkina Faso’s junta, Al-Qaeda indicted for crimes against humanity

NEWS

THEY called it Operation Tchéfari 2 — Warriors' Honey in Fulfulde —, but for the Fulani families of 16 villages near the northern Burkinabè town of Djibo, December 2023 delivered only death. In a single military sweep, soldiers and allied militiamen killed more than 400 civilians. A 35-year-old woman who survived described watching her two daughters being shot dead. She herself was wounded, along with her nine-month-old son. Before the militia withdrew, she heard a command: "Make sure no one is breathing before heading out." That massacre is one of 57 documented incidents at the heart of a devastating new…

Apr

02

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Blood on the lakeshore: M23’s terror reign in Uvira exposed

NEWS

THE blood had dried on the walls of two houses on the same street. In the first, a father stood in the room where his 16- and 18-year-old sons were executed. M23 fighters and Rwandan soldiers had broken down the door, found them sheltering inside, and shot them dead. Metres away, four more young men - aged 16 to 23 - were killed trying to hide behind a curtain. Their younger brother survived, badly wounded. A neighbour confirmed what everyone on that street already knew: none of these men were fighters. They were civilians. Their blood still marks the walls.…

Mar

31

2026

By The African Mirror

HRW demands Ghana scrap bill that would jail people for who they are

NEWS

HUMAN Rights Watch has issued a sweeping indictment of Ghana's Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025, warning the country's parliament that the legislation represents one of the most expansive assaults on individual rights ever to come before a Ghanaian legislature - and demanding that it be killed before it reaches a second reading. In a formal written memorandum submitted Monday to the Parliament's Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, the global rights body warned that the bill does not merely regulate conduct - it criminalises identity, mandates citizen surveillance, destroys civil society, and threatens to land journalists, doctors, lawyers,…

Mar

20

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

How Tanzanian security forces killed hundreds of bystanders in the October 2025 post-election crackdown

NEWS

TANZANIAN security forces killed and injured scores of people who had no part in post-election protests during and after the country's disputed October 2025 general elections, Human Rights Watch has found - with the organisation warning that at least hundreds may have been killed across the country in what it describes as a brazen security crackdown on dissent. In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch said it had documented the deaths of 31 people not participating in protests and received credible information of a further 19 such deaths. The victims included market vendors, motorcycle taxi drivers, a pregnant…

Mar

13

2026

By The African Mirror

No kiss left unpunished

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

ON the morning of 18 February, two women in their early twenties - Wendy Faith, 22, a dancer who performs under the name Torrero Bae, and Alesi Diana Denise, 21 - were arrested in Arua City, a provincial capital in Uganda's northwestern West Nile region. The charge: kissing. Their neighbours had been watching. Someone had a camera. The police were called. That simple, intimate act - a kiss between two young women - now carries the weight of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023, a law that prescribes life imprisonment for consensual same-sex conduct and reserves the death penalty for what…

Feb

28

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Rwanda’s gleaming facade masks a darker reality for government critics

NEWS

TO the outside world, Rwanda is a marvel. Kigali's skyline rises clean and orderly against the Virunga hills. The country hosts world-class cycling races, football tournaments, and has aggressively courted NBA partnerships and Premier League sponsorships. President Paul Kagame presents his nation as proof that post-genocide Africa can leapfrog the West - a tech-forward, corruption-free democracy rising from the ashes of one of history's worst atrocities. But for citizens who dare to question that narrative, Rwanda can look like something else entirely. According to a report published this week by Human Rights Watch, blogger and commentator Aimable Karasira - detained…

Feb

24

2026

By The African Mirror

U.S.-Cameroon deportation deal leaves migrants detained, abused, with nowhere to turn

NEWS

THE United States has quietly deported 17 non-Cameroonian nationals to Cameroon under a covert bilateral agreement, where authorities immediately detained them without legal basis, and journalists who attempted to interview them were themselves arrested and abused, according to Human Rights Watch. The deportees - nationals of Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe - were transferred to Cameroon in January and February in what amounts to a third-country deportation scheme that experts say circumvents both U.S. court orders and binding international law. Among those deported were asylum seekers and at least one…

Feb

20

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

From hiding, Bobi Wine takes Uganda’s crisis to the world – and indicts the West

NEWS

HE spoke from an undisclosed location, hunted by his own country's military. Yet when Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi - known globally as Bobi Wine - addressed the 18th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy this week, his message reached far beyond the hall of delegates. It was a dual indictment: of Yoweri Museveni's regime, and of the Western governments that have, in Wine's telling, long furnished it with political cover and financial oxygen. The address, delivered via live video broadcast, was both a political intervention and a stark demonstration of Uganda's crisis. That one of Africa's most prominent…

Jan

30

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Uganda opposition leaders vanished as military besieges rival’s home

NEWS

TWO senior Ugandan opposition leaders have been forcibly disappeared, and the main challenger to President Yoweri Museveni remains in hiding after soldiers stormed his home and assaulted his wife, Human Rights Watch has reported. The dramatic escalation comes less than two weeks after Museveni claimed victory in presidential elections on January 15, extending his 40-year grip on power to a seventh term. Military forces have effectively besieged the residence of opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, known as Bobi Wine, who finished as Museveni's closest rival. Armed soldiers raided the compound twice, cutting electricity, disabling security cameras, and on January 23, allegedly…

Jan

19

2026

By The African Mirror

Mass killings in Iran: Security forces open fire on protesters as death toll reaches thousands

WORLD

IRANIAN security forces have massacred thousands of protesters across the country in a coordinated crackdown following nationwide demonstrations that erupted earlier this month, according to a new investigation by Human Rights Watch. Videos verified by the human rights organisation show at least 400 bodies piled in and around a morgue south of Tehran, with witnesses describing scenes of families desperately searching through body bags for missing loved ones. The footage, along with testimony from survivors and medical personnel, points to what researchers are calling an unprecedented wave of state violence. "The mass killings by Iranian security forces since January 8…