The Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) castigated the international community June 27 for “indifference” to a media crackdown in Eritrea. “Because of the world’s indifference, we are reduced to just watching, appalled and powerless, as the authorities… Read moreEritrea: press crackdown condemned
Eritrean state radio reports that fifty-three weyane (Ethiopian) soldiers, including officers, have defected to Eritrea over the last few months. The soldiers are said to include three lieutenants, a second lieutenant, a sergeant, four corporals and 14 lance-corporals, who all… Read moreSomali, Ethiopian defections to Eritrea?
The UN has now vindicated the recent findings of a British study on the roots of the Darfur conflict. From Guardian Newspapers, June 25: LONDON — The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and environmental degradation, which… Read moreDarfur crisis linked to climate change: UN
Somali police fired on a crowd of people trying to storm a food warehouse in Mogadishu June 25, killing five civilians, witnesses reported. Hundreds of people had gathered at a police station that was serving as a food distribution center,… Read moreSomalia: police fire on food riot
Geeska Afrika reports June 22 that US warplanes based in Djbouti are overflying Somalia’s northern autonomous enclave of Puntland in preparation for air-strikes against suspected al-Qaeda fugitives. The report also states that three weeks earlier, on June 2, a US… Read moreSomalia: US preparing Puntland intervention —against Eritrea’s proxies?
The UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) has welcomed a decision by the Mauritanian government to allow some 20,000 refugees to return from neighboring Mali and Senegal, where they have spent almost two decades in exile. The Mauritanian decision was… Read moreMauritania to repatriate 20,000 refugees?
At least eight people, including three children, died in Mogadishu in clashes between insurgents and Somalian interim government and Ethiopian occupation forces June 20. One of the dead was a Somalian police officer killed in an attack on a military… Read moreSomalia: Ethiopian troops fire on civilians
International aid agency Oxfam has announced it is pulling out of Gereida, the largest camp in Darfur, where more than 130,000 have sought refuge. The agency cited inaction by local authorities from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), which controls the… Read moreOxfam pulls out of largest Darfur refugee camp, citing attacks on aid workers
The June 18 New York Times features a front-page above-the-fold story by Jeffrey Gettleman, “In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality”—the first significant account in the “newspaper of record” of the forgotten war on the Ogaden people (which… Read moreEthiopia: Ogaden struggle makes the NY Times
A suspected suicide blast in the middle of a Nairobi street June 11 has left at least one dead and dozens injured. The blast occurred during rush hour near the Ambassadeur Hotel in the city’s packed central business district. It… Read moreNairobi terror blast: Islamists or Mungiki?
The rights group Global Witness charges in a new report that cocoa profits fueled the brutal civil war in Ivory Coast just as diamonds did in Liberia, with both the government and rebels profiting from the trade. The study finds… Read moreIvory Coast: “blood chocolate” fuels civil war
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publisher of the journal Science, has teamed up with Amnesty International for a project to monitor the Darfur conflict by satellite. From Medical News Today, June 10: A pioneering AAAS program… Read moreRights groups monitor Darfur villages by satellite
