police brutality - The African Mirror

Apr

2023

Police arrest 11 Ugandan MPs

POLICE in Uganda detained 11 female members of parliament who they accused of staging of an unlawful protest, with some of the lawmakers sustaining injuries during their arrest. The lawmakers were detained just outside the parliament buildings in the capital Kampala as they prepared to march to the Ministry of Internal Affairs where they intended to hand over a protest note to the minister. They were protesting what they said was police brutality and the use of excessive force to disperse various functions organised by female lawmakers in their local constituencies in recent weeks. "I strongly condemn the manner in…

Sep

2021

By The African Mirror

Afghan journalists beaten in Taliban detention, editor says

MEDIA FREEDOM

TWO Afghan journalists were beaten in police custody this week after covering a protest by women in Kabul where they were detained by the Taliban, their editor said. Zaki Daryabi, founder and editor-in-chief of the Etilaat Roz newspaper, shared images on social media of two male reporters, one with large, red welts across his lower back and legs and the other with similar marks on his shoulder and arm. Both men's faces were also bruised and cut in the pictures, which were verified by Reuters. When asked about the incident, an acting Taliban minister, who was named in his post…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Anger over slow progress, size of rewards at Nigeria’s police brutality hearings

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

ALEXIS AKWAGYIRAM NDUKWE Ekekwe was furious when he heard how much compensation a judicial panel had awarded him after finding that members of an elite Nigerian police unit tortured him in custody following a raid on his phone accessories shop: 7,500,000 naira ($18,000). The night after his arrest, he said, officers took him back to the store and pushed him from a second floor balcony, leaving him paralysed from the waist down and struggling to make ends meet. "I sold my land, all my property, my goods!" he shouted. During the hearings, the officer who led the operation disputed Ekekwe's…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

South African man shot dead in Hawaii

NEWS

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER A South African man has been shot and killed by police in Hawaii.. Lindani Myeni, a rugby player, who was living in Hawaii with his wife Lindsay and two children, was shot several times after a scuffle at his home in Nuuanu. According to the Honolulu Police Department (HPD), Myeni was allegedly shot after a scuffle with three police officers. HPD chief Susan Ballard told local media that Myeni punched an officer after he was ordered to lie down. “The second officer tried to intervene and the third officer used a taser. The first officer then fired…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

Minneapolis to pay $27 million for George Floyd’s death

WORLD

JONATHAN ALLEN THE US city of Minneapolis will pay $27 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of George Floyd over his death in police custody, a case that stirred national protests over racial injustice and police brutality. Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died in May as Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Floyd's dying pleas for help were captured on widely seen bystander's video, which helped spark one of the largest protest movements ever seen in the United States. The trial of Chauvin, who was fired by the police…

Feb

2021

By The African Mirror

Tunisian police accused of abuse

NEWS

TAREK AMARA TUNISIAN police took Ahmed Gam from the shop where he worked, accused him of looting during recent protests, and beat him so badly during his detention last month that he lost a testicle, he said. Lying in bed in his parents' home in Bennane, near the coastal city of Monastir, Gam, 21, could not stand without help and cried as he described police beating and burning his genitals. His account was supported, in part, by a hospital report viewed by Reuters. Tunisia is widely seen as the sole relative success story of the 2011 "Arab spring" revolts for…

Feb

2021

By The African Mirror

Nigerian police beat, arrest protesters

NEWS

ANGELA UKOMADU and SEUN SANNI NIGERIAN police beat and arrested demonstrators yesterday as a small group protested over the reopening of the site where activists denouncing police brutality were shot last year in the commercial capital, Lagos, Reuters witnesses said. Rights group Amnesty International and witnesses have said soldiers opened fire on protesters on Oct. 20, killing at least 12 people at a toll gate in the city's affluent Lekki district and another area. The military has denied shooting live rounds and the police have denied involvement. There was a heavy presence of armed police officers on Saturday at the…

Feb

2021

By The African Mirror

Nigeria issues warning on planned protest

NEWS

NIGERIA’S information minister called on activists to drop plans for a protest in the commercial capital Lagos over the reopening of the site where demonstrators against police brutality were shot last year, saying it risked being "hijacked by hoodlums". Protesters were shot on October 20 by people witnesses said were soldiers at the toll gate in the affluent Lekki district of Lagos. Rights group Amnesty International said soldiers and police killed at least 12 protesters in Lekki and another district. The military and police have denied involvement. Nationwide protests against police brutality were largely peaceful until the October 20 shooting, which…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

Nigerians got their abusive SARS police force abolished – but elation soon turned to frustration

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

FOR a brief moment in October, it seemed that youthful protesters calling to “abolish” a police force had succeeded. After weeks of mass demonstrations against police brutality, the government agreed to disband a widely hated police unit. SAMUEL FURY CHILDS DALY, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies, Duke University This was in Nigeria, not the United States. But the lessons from Nigeria have broad relevance for protesters elsewhere calling for major reforms to policing. In Nigeria, it took just three weeks of mass demonstrations for President Muhammadu Buhari to announce he would eliminate the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or…

Nov

2020

By The African Mirror

Threats, detentions and frozen assets: Nigeria’s protesters depict pattern of intimidation

NEWS

LIBBY GEORGE and PAUL CARSTEN AT 7 a.m. on a recent Saturday, Onomene Adene received a call from a man whose voice she did not recognise. The man said he knew her from church and asked for help getting a package to their pastor. She agreed to meet him at a bank near her home in the Nigerian city of Lagos. But shortly after she arrived, according to Adene, three trucks pulled up filled with police armed with rifles and tear gas demanding that she take them to her brother. Terrified, she complied. "It was like they were coming for…