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IRIN-WA Update 257 of Events in West Africa, (Thursday) 23 July 1998
GUINEA BISSAU: Amnesty cites abuses
Amnesty International on Wednesday accused both sides in Guinea Bissau's six-week civil war of widespread human rights abuses, Reuters reported. It charged troops backing the elected government of President Joao Vieira, including forces from neighbouring Senegal, had tortured prisoners and carried out ``deliberate and arbitrary killings.''
Amnesty said that rebels, led by a former armed forces commander, General Ansumane Mane, had been guilty of beating prisoners captured since his army mutiny started on June 7.
In a report released in Lisbon, it said rebels were holding more than 200 civilian prisoners, most of them Senegalese, who had been subjected to severe beatings.Vieira has said that Mane, his former comrade-in-arms in the fight to end Portuguese rule, must lay down his arms as a condition for talks.
Mediation resumes
The new contact group of foreign ministers from five Portuguese-speaking countries were due in Bissau on Friday in the latest attempt to negotiate a ceasefire and end the daily exchanges of artillery fire which have damaged much of the capital of the impoverished country, news organisations reported. The rebels are entrenched in the airport on the outskirts of the capital.
Guinea-Bissau's West African neighbours in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have called for dialogue and plan to meet U.N. Security Council members in New York at the end of July, the reports said. They would then decide whether to intervene militarily and what further steps can be taken to help the 350,000 people the UN says have been forced to flee the fighting.
Heavy shelling reported
Heavy shelling during the week forced the Bishop of Bissau, Monsignor Settimio Arturo Ferrazzetta to suspend his own attempts to neogitate a ceasefire. The Missionary news agency, Misna, said on Thursday that the shelling near his had been such that had been forced to seek refuge.
In a dispatch from Bissau, Misna said: "Today, our MISNA sources reported, the troops of President Joao Bernardo Vieira opened fire, shooting seven to eight rounds every half-hour, against the rival post that has not yet returned fire. Just another day to add to the 6 long weeks of conflict as the number of dispersed people continues to increase."
Aid to neighbouring Casamance
As the international community pressed Senegal to open its border with Guinea Bissau, the ICRC said that it had distributed 140 tonnes of emergency food to people displaced in by fighting between the government and separatists in Senegal's own troubled southern province of Casamance.
An ICRC said that Senegalese Red Cross had helped distribute the food among 20,000 displaced people near the regional capital, Ziguinchor.
LIBERIA: Curfew lifted
For the first time since its imposition at the height of Liberia's civil war six years ago, the government has lifted the overnight curfew restricting free movement in the capital Monrovia, media reports said on Thursday. The curfew ended formally on Wednesday night.
Justice Minister Eddington Varmah said security conditions had improved sufficiently to warrant ending the measure. In a separate statement quoted by the BBC, President Charles Taylor said: "There is no need to maintain a curfew in Monrovia. City dwellers have the right to move around freely."
The West African peacekeeping force, ECOMOG, imposed the curfew in October 1992 as Mr Taylor, a former warlord, was attacking the capital. It was reinforced in April and May 1996 during the last serious fighting, when Taylor's forces tried to crush ethnic Krahn fighters loyal to the assassinated president, Samuel Doe. Taylor, who launched the war in 1990, won multi-party elections held in 1997 under a peace deal brokered by neighbouring countries.
Ex-Sierra Leone soldiers want to go home
Meanwhile, independent Star Radio reported on Thursday that more than 800 men claiming to be ex-junta soldiers in neighbouring Sierra Leone had asked to be repatriated. It said the men were living in two refugee camps in the northern Kolahun district.
Their spokesman, Captain Abu Bubu Turay, said they entered Liberia last March through Vahun in northern Liberia. "The pale-looking soldiers said they did not enter Liberia with arms and ammunition. Captain Turay said their appeal to be repatriated is in response to President Tejan Kabbah's call on all Sierra Leoneans to return home," Star Radio said.
News report
This update is accompanied by an IRIN news report looking at the international community's views on financial aid for Liberia. Subscribers who may not have received this report can request it by e-mail to irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci with "liberia-finance" in the subject line.
SIERRA LEONE: Junta men on trial
Thirty-eight members of the former military junta overthrown five months ago by the Niogerian-led ECOMOG intervention force were to go on trial on Thursday before a court martial. News reports said that if found guilty on charges of involvement in the military regime which ruled for nine months, they faced death by firing squad.
They include several senior officers, among them Brigadier Samuel Koroma, the brother of thejunta leader, Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Paul Koroma who is still at large. Others accused of participating in the 1997 coup against Kabbah include Brigadier Daniel Anderson, who, during an earlier military regime, presided over a 1994 court martial that resulted in the execution of 12 soldiers found guilty of collaborating with rebels; and Corporal Tamba Gborie, who first announced the military takeover on national radio.
NIGERIA: Abubakar's promise not enough
One of Nigeria's main opposition groups on Wednesday rejected military ruler General Abdulsalam Abubakar's new democracy plan as mainstream politicians scrambled to form new parties. Reuters said the United Action for Democracy group sought a national conference to decide Nigeria's fate. The main National Democratic Coalition, which supported the presidential claim of businessman Moshood Abiola until his death in detention on 7 July, said it too wanted a national conference.
The report citing politicians in the capital Abuja, said scores of new parties could emerge in coming weeks after Abubakar scrapped the discredited parties and electoral structures left behind by the death on 8 June of strongman Sani Abacha.
At least three groups said they would launch new parties. Media reports said politicians they were pressing the military to register the parties as they emerge because previous military regimes allowed only pro-military parties to emerge. This was why, they said, the army has been in power for all but 10 years since Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960.
Abubakar has pledged a return to democracy under an elected civilian government by the end of May next year.
A Nigeria television report on Wednesday quoted the country's chief of general staff, Rear Admiral Mike Akhigbe, as reaffirming the military's commitment to restore a civilian democracy. At a meeting with British High Commissioner Graham Burton, Admiral Akhigbe said the transition programme "is anchored on sincerity and transparency".
Plea for newspaper editor
The wife of detained Nigerian editor, Femi Ojudu, has appealed to the Abubakar government to release her husband from jail because she feared for his health, AFP reported on Thursday. It said Tola Ojudu had told reporters in Lagos her husband, editor of 'The News', an independent magazine, was detained by security forces in Lagos last November and was now in solitary confinement. Ojudu said her husband had written a letter to his lawyer, pro-democracy activist Olisa Agbakoba, saying he was suffering from jaundice and typhoid fever and was being held in a detention centre in Lagos.
WEST AFRICA: New gas pipeline search
Shell Nigeria Gas said on Wednesday a feasibility study for a pipeline to transport gas along the West African coast was being planned for later this year. Reuters quoted Michael Weston, managing director of Shell's local gas subsidiary, as saying Shell, Chevron, state-run Nigerian Gas Company and state oil firms of Ghana and Benin would sign a deal next week with the German firm PLE to carry out the research.
Reuters said the project, which would cost about $260 million, has been slow to take off due to funding and bureaucratic problems on the part of the countries involved. Weston said the oil firms had agreed to pay for the study.
Abidjan, 23 July 1998 1815 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: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:17:20 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.dha.unon.org> Subject: IRIN-West Africa Update 257 23.7.98 Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.980723181406.812A-100000@wa.dha.unon.org>
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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