| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
Tel: +225 21-73-54 Fax: +225 21-63-35 e-mail: irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci
IRIN-WA Update 187 of Events in West Africa, (Wednesday) 15 April 1998
SIERRA LEONE: Former head of state charged with treason
Some 14 people have appeared in court in Sierra Leone, charged with treason in connection with last year's coup against civilian president Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, media reports said on Wednesday. According to the BBC, the defendants included a former president, Saidu Momoh, as well as members of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which was ousted by the Nigerian-led West African intervention force, ECOMOG, in February. The 14 are the second group to be charged with treason in connection with the coup. Earlier this month, 21 people appeared in the same court on similar charges. According to the BBC, the defendants could face the death penalty if convicted.
ECOMOG closes in on Koidu
ECOMOG troops closed in on the AFRC's main stronghold in Koidu in the east of Sierra Leone on Tuesday, prompting thousands of civilians to flee the area, Reuters reported. According to news agency sources close to the Kabbah government, ECOMOG had "all but encircled" Koidu. One aid worker in Freetown told Reuters, refugees escaping the area were in poor physical condition. On Tuesday, ECOMOG commander Major General Timothy Shelpidi told IRIN the Koidu offensive was a "final push" to clear east Sierra Leone of all major resistance.
Journalist killed
A Sierra Leonean journalist working for the BBC was killed on Tuesday in an ambush in Kono in east Sierra Leone, media reports said. Britain's High Commissioner in Sierra Leone, Peter Penfold, was quoted by AFP as saying Eddie Smith was travelling in an ECOMOG convoy when the attack occurred. One ECOMOG soldier was also killed and several other people wounded, AFP reported.
LIBERIA: Police chief defends record
Liberia's police director, Joe Tate, said a recent US government call for his removal because of his alleged poor record on human rights was "irresponsible", independent Star Radio reported on Wednesday. According to the radio, a US delegation at last week's donor conference in Paris made Tate's removal a pre-condition for US government assistance to the Liberian police department. Tate challenged critics to prove human rights allegations against him, Star Radio said.
SENEGAL: Elections body demands access to voter list
Senegal's elections watchdog, the Observatoire National des Elections (ONEL), said it had been denied access to the national voter roll since 6 April, AFP reported on Wednesday. ONEL's president, General Mamadou Niang, was quoted as saying ONEL's computer had been blocked from accessing a central register file held at the Ministry of the Interior, effectively stopping all elections monitoring work. Niang demanded the connection be re-established or ONEL would "take up the matter with the relevant authorities". Interior Minister General Lamine Cisse had not reacted to Niang's demand, AFP reported.
Diouf concerned at eastern area security
Senegal's President Abdou Diouf said on Tuesday he was concerned at the security situation in Kidira district, near Senegal's border with Mauritania, where seven people were killed in clashes at the weekend between local people and Mauritanian refugees, AFP reported. In a statement, Diouf called for greater "vigilance and firmness" in the area, which also borders Mali. Quoting reliable sources, AFP reported security reinforcements had been sent to Kidira which was reportedly calm. The environment minister, also a member of the opposition Ligue Democratique (LD), Abdoulaye Bathily, on Tuesday said the local inhabitants had been "enraged" by the local security forces and government officials' "indulgence" towards cattle rustlers.
NIGERIA: UN Human Rights report
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' special rapporteur on Nigeria, Soli Jehangir Sorbjee, said on Wednesday the Nigerian government regularly suppressed, harassed and detained critics, AFP reported. In a report described by the news agency as "damning", Sorbjee catalogued abuse of judicial rights, deaths in detention, juvenile executions, and unjustified and excessively long prison spells. Sorbjee, who was refused permission by the Nigerian authorities to carry out the study in person, was quoted as saying Nigeria had ceased to be governed by rule of law.
Nigerian foreign minister Chief Tom Ikimi rejected the report's findings, saying denunciation of human rights was now used as "an instrument of oppression in the hands of a few powerful nations", AFP reported.
Senior military officer killed
A senior Nigerian military officer was shot dead at the weekend by unknown gunmen in a village near the eastern city of Onitsha, AFP reported on Tuesday. According to the local military administrator, Air Wing Commander Rufai Garba, Colonel Laibo Mika was killed as he held a meeting with another senior officer from Abia state. Garba said security services investigating the killing had already arrested some suspects in connection with the incident. According to AFP sources, five gunmen killed the colonel. The motive for the attack was not known.
Meningitis kills 52
An outbreak of Meningitis has killed 52 people in northeastern Nigeria so far this year, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Saturday. Some 13 people died last week in one village alone, NAN said. 200,000 doses of vaccine had been distributed in the area, however the medicine would cover only 20 percent of Adamawa state's population, the agency said
GUINEA: Mutiny trial re-opens
The trial of 96 Guinean soldiers charged with plotting a February 1996 coup attempt re-opened in the capital, Conakry, on Tuesday, AFP reported. According to the news agency, no official reason was given for suspending the trial some three weeks ago. However, media reports at the time said defence lawyers had complained of insufficient access to defendants to prepare a case.
Some 50 people were killed and 300 wounded in the army pay mutiny, which turned into a coup attempt.
GHANA: Financial strains
Ghanaian foreign minister Victor Gbeho told AFP on Tuesday "financial strain" was behind Tuesday's last-minute decision to withdraw from the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic. Gbeho was quoted by the news agency as saying Ghana was unable to comply with funding arrangements set up for the 1,350-strong mission, which required up-front payments to be made.
Food shortages
Ghana's government announced it would buy five billion cedis (US$ 2.1 million) of food to avert a deficit crisis in three northern regions, PANA reported on Wednesday. Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, Johnson Asiedu-Nketsia, told the Ghana News Agency that the intervention would make food available and "stabilise prices" until next harvest season.
According to PANA, erratic rainfall in northern Ghana for the past two years has caused food crops to fail resulting in severe food shortages "with near famine conditions" in certain districts.
WFP told IRIN on Wednesday it was expanding its current special feeding programme for 6,000 malnourished children in the Upper East region of Ghana in response to the crisis. The new programme starting in May would cover 30,000 vulnerable groups including children and pregnant and lactating women.
BENIN: Government suspends private television show
Benin's broadcasting governing body, the Haute Autorite de l'Audiovisuel et de la Communication (HAAC), suspended a private local television news show on Wednesday for eight days, AFP reported. According to a HAAC statement quoted by the news agency, the show had broadcast an anonymous caller's "unparalleled obscene insults" against the head of state. HAAC said LC2 television had allowed a number of such incidents to take place. HAAC gave LC2 30 days to clean up or face a complete ban on the offending show or a suspension of its broadcasting license. LC2, which is Benin's only private television channel, started broadcasting last December.
WEST AFRICA: Child soldiers
UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said on Tuesday any proposed United Nations International Criminal Court should regard the recruitment of child soldiers as a war crime, UN Central News reported. Bellamy said the court should give a clear signal atrocities against children would not go unpunished. UNICEF estimates 250,000 children under the age of 18 are involved in armed conflict around the world on any given day. "To allow this to continue would constitute a complete violation of children's rights," Bellamy said. The proposed court's mandate will be discussed at an international conference in Rome in June.
OUA kicks off "symbolic" refugee mission
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) can only provide "symbolic" relief to the continent's refugee plight, an OAU delegation said Wednesday as it kicked off an assessment mission in Abidjan. Jean Hilaire Mbea Mbea, Cameroon's Ambassador to the OAU and head of the three-member group, told reporters the organisation was keen to show its solidarity with Africa's refugees and the countries hosting them. "25 million refugees is a sad record Africa cannot continue to hold," he said.
The cash-strapped OAU has allocated a total US$ 1.2 million to the refugee programme, he added. Every country involved would receive a maximum US$ 30,000 to be split between two or three different projects with help of UNHCR. Admittedly this would be "symbolic" given the magnitude of the problem, Mbea Mbea added. But this was the OUA's first such move and he hoped it would act as "a catalyst" for more assistance from other donors. The organisation's enlarged Committee of Twenty would meet round about June's OAU summit in Ouagadougou to review the situation.
Algeria, central Africa, the Great Lakes, Sudan and the Horn of Africa also feature on the OAU's agenda. The mission on Wednesday flew to Guinea, and from there will visit Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Abidjan, 15 April 1998, 18:00 gmt
[ends]
[The material contained in this communication comes to you via IRIN West Africa, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. UN IRIN-WA Tel: +225 21 73 66 Fax: +225 21 63 35 e-mail: irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci for more information or subscription. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this report, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. IRIN reports are archived on the Web at: http://www.reliefweb.int/emergenc or can be retrieved automatically by sending e-mail to archive@dha.unon.org . Mailing list: irin-wa-updates]
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 18:04:58 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.dha.unon.org> Subject: IRIN-West Africa Update 187, 98.11.15 Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.980415180309.1015A-100000@wa.dha.unon.org>
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
| Previous Menu | Home Page | What's New | Search | Country Specific |