CounterVortex

Africa

Demand release of detained Chad opposition leader

Human Rights Watch announced that former Chadian prime minister and opposition leader Succès Masra was arrested at his residence in the capital N’Djamena, urging authorities to immediately release him unless they can substantiate the charges against him. Masra is the head of Chad’s main opposition party, Les Transformateurs. His arrest followed intercommunal violence in Logone Occidental province that left at least 42 people dead. According to the public prosecutor, Masra is accused of inciting the violence through social media posts. While clashes between herders and farmers are common in southern Chad, intercommunal violence has become more acute over the past several years due to aridification of the region. Les Transformateurs described Masra’s arrest as an abduction, stating that it was carried out “outside any known judicial procedures and in blatant violation of the civil and political rights guaranteed by the constitution.” (Photo: VOA/André Kodmadjingar via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa

Ghana to pay for unlawful detention of Western Togoland activists

The Court of Justice of the West African regional bloc ECOWAS ordered the government of Ghana to pay $75,000 in damages to 30 members of the Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSGF) over their prolonged unlawful detention. The court, based in Nigeria, found that Ghanaian authorities violated the applicants’ human rights by detaining them for extended periods—some for over a year—without trial or due process. The HSGF members were arrested in May 2019 under Ghana’s Prohibited Organizations Decree, which outlaws groups deemed a threat to national security. The HSGF advocates for the independence of Western Togoland, an ethnically distinct region that was separated from what became the adjoining nation of Togo at the end of the colonial era and attached to Ghana. (Photo: ISS Africa)

Africa

Cameroon: peace activist sentenced to life term

Amnesty International condemned the life sentence handed down by a military court in Cameroon against activist Abdu Karim Ali, calling it an “affront to justice” and demanding his immediate and unconditional release. According to Amnesty, Ali was arrested without a warrant and arbitrarily detained after he produced a video exposing torture carried out by the leader of a pro-government militia in Cameroon’s conflicted Southwest Region. Cameroon’s Southwest and Northwest regions have been experiencing an armed conflict since 2016 in what is known as the Anglophone crisis. Demonstrations for greater linguistic rights in the Anglophone regions were met with repression by the Francophone central authorities, leading to an initiative to secede from Cameroon as the “Federal Republic of Ambazonia.” Ali had advocated for a Swiss-led mediation process to resolve the conflict. (Map: TNH)

North Africa

Podcast: MAGA-fascism and the struggle in Libya

Since alarming reports broke that Trump is preparing deportation flights to Libya, the plan has happily been put on hold by the courts—as well as denied by both of Libya’s two rival governments. But Libya, like El Salvador, was clearly chosen because of its horrific human rights record, with a UN investigation characterizing its treatment of detained migrants as crimes against humanity. A migrant detention center was even bombed in the inter-factional fighting in Libya six years ago, killing scores of inmates. And news of US plans to send detainees there comes just as a new round of fighting has broken out in Tripoli—involving a militia headed by the warlord “Gheniwa,” who has himself been implicated in atrocities against migrants. Bill Weinberg raises the alarm in Episode 278 of the CounterVortex podcast. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Afghanistan

Afghans out; Afrikaners in

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans, saying that the “conditions in Afghanistan” no longer warrant continuing the program. Afghanistan is experiencing a dire human rights crisis under renewed Taliban rule. Human Rights Watch has reported that individuals who have links with the previous Afghan government’s security forces (or the US-led force that backed it) face violent reprisals such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and torture. Meanwhile, nearly 60 white South Africans were admitted into the US as part of Trump’s resettlement program for Afrikaners who say they fear persecution. Trump, who has otherwise virtually shut down the US asylum program, said that a “genocide” against “white farmers” is taking place in South Africa. Bill Frelick, head of the Refugee & Migrants Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, responded that Trump’s claim “is not actually supported from any of the information that we have seen.” (Photo: USMC Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/CentComPublic Affairs via Wikimedia Commons)

Greater Middle East

PKK resolves to dissolve at 12th Congress

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) held its 12th Congress in the Medya Defense Zones of northern Iraq, where delegates voted to dissolve the group’s organizational structure and end the armed struggle against the Turkish state that it has waged since 1984. The congress was convened in response to the “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society” issued in February by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999. The statement called for his followers to lay down arms and pursue a civil struggle for Kurdish rights. However, Turkey continued to carry our air-strikes on the Medya Defense Zones right up to the very eve of the congress, and even in the days after it concluded. Turkey has also continued its campaign of air-strikes on the Rojava region of northern Syria, where PKK-aligned Kurdish forces have established an autonomous zone. (Image of PKK flag: Wikipedia)

Palestine

UN experts urge humanitarian ‘intervention’ in Gaza

United Nations human rights experts urged that the international community must act immediately to end the intensifying violence in Gaza. The experts stated that since the end of the two-month ceasefire in March, Israel has launched yet harsher attacks on the population in Gaza: “Escalating atrocities in Gaza present an urgent moral crossroads and States must act now to end the violence or bear witness to the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza—an outcome with irreversible consequences for our shared humanity and multilateral order… The world is watching. Will Member States live up to their obligations and intervene to stop the slaughter, hunger, and disease, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that are perpetrated daily in complete impunity?” (WAFA via WikimediaCommons)

Africa

Burkina Faso junta accused in mass atrocities against Fulani

Human Rights Watch accused the military of Burkina Faso of orchestrating massacres of Fulani civilians under the auspices of a counter-terrorism operation against Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (JNIM)—which reportedly retaliated through the targeted killings of civilians viewed as supportive of the military. The military operation took place in Banwa and Sourou provinces, with interviewees quoted by HRW stating that women, children and the elderly were often targeted. The operation appears to have resulted in the displacement of most Fulani people from Banwa province. The Fulani have repeatedly come under attack, and are evidently being collectively blamed for violence perpetrated by JNIM and other affiliated Islamist groups. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Africa

UN experts condemn enforced disappearances in Mali

UN human rights experts condemned the enforced disappearance and apparent summary execution of some 100 members of Fulani people in Mali. The experts stated that the unlawful killings and disappearances, carried out with the participation of Russian mercenaries, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The experts found that the Malian authorities have violated the right to life by failing to conduct proper investigations. The statement urged “Malian authorities to conduct prompt, effective, thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into these killings and enforced disappearances, in accordance with international law.” (Map: PCL)

The Amazon

Israel, UAE to assist Ecuador drug war

Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa says he is seeking assistance from Israel and the United Arab Emirates to combat the drug cartels that are terrorizing the South American country. The hardline rightist who won re-election last month said Israel and the UAE have agreed to provide intelligence aid “to help” fight the narco gangs. A day after Noboa’s comments, Ecuadoran authorities announced that 11 soldiers were killed while carrying out an operation to combat illegal mining in a region near the border with Colombia. The Prosecutor General’s office said the troops were attacked by the Comandos de la Frontera, a “dissident” faction of Colombia’s FARC guerillas that controls cross-border drug trafficking and illegal gold-mining operations in the eastern province of Orellana. (Photo: Presidencia de la República del Ecuador via WikimediaCommons)

Europe

Russian activist arrested for ‘Putin Hitler’ message

A 68-year-old veteran opposition activist was arrested after displaying a sign reading “PUTIN HITLER” from a prominent bridge over the Moskva River in the center of the Russian capital. Grigory Saksonov, also known as Uncle Grisha, climbed over the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge holding the sign and clad in wetsuit before lowering himself into the water below with a rope. He was pulled out of the river by police and taken away in an ambulance. Saksonov faces charges of “taking part in an unauthorized action” and “disobeying a police officer.” Saksonov’s action came three days before Vladimir Putin presided over the 80th anniversary Victory Day parade in Red Square, a massive spectacle marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. (Photo via Novaya Gazeta)

North America

MAGA-fascism, Orwell and the cannabis stigma

Trump is pointing to Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s tattoos to justify his indefinite detention without charge in the ultra-oppressive Salvadoran prison gulag. These notoriously include a cannabis leaf, demonstrating the continued propaganda utility of the “Reefer Madness” stigma, even as a multi-million dollar legal industry emerges. But the White House actually added the characters “MS13” (name of the notorious Salvadoran gang) to the shot of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles in a crude photoshop job—despite transparent denials from Trump. Lubricating the emerging transnational mass detention program with this Orwellian post-truth stratagem, the Trump regime meanwhile moves toward actual deportation of US citizens. Bill Weinberg raises the alarm in Episode 277 of the CounterVortex podcast. (Photo: Donald Trump/Truth Social as seen, e.g., on CNN)