Egypt police kill African migrant at Israel border

Israeli border police officers stand guard over Sudanese refugees who crossed into Israel illegally north of Nitzana, near the border with Egypt, August 20, 2007.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLO92482

CAIRO, June 24 (Reuters) - Egyptian police shot dead an African migrant at the Israel border on Wednesday, as violence at the sensitive frontier resumes after a near 6-month lull, security sources said.

The migrant, who was unarmed, was shot around dawn as he tried to slip across barbed wire into the Jewish state from Egypt’s Sinai desert, the sources said. Police opened fire when the migrant ignored orders to stop and instead tried to flee. Egypt for years tolerated tens of thousands of African migrants on its territory, but its attitude hardened after it came under pressure over the past two years to halt rising numbers of Africans trying to cross the border into Israel.

Egyptian security forces shot dead at least 28 migrants at the border last year, and deported hundreds of Eritrean asylum seekers back to Asmara despite objections from the United Nations, which feared they could face torture at home.

In November, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called on Egypt to stop the shootings. There were no killings between mid-December and mid-May, although the reason for the abrupt halt was not clear.

The migrant killed on Wednesday, thought to be in his 20s, was the third killed since mid-May at the border, a main transit route for migrants and refugees seeking work or asylum in Israel.

Security sources said the man carried no identity documents but was thought to be from an African country. Many of the migrants who have attempted to cross the border have been from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Security sources said police also detained two Ethiopian women, aged 18 and 19, as they tried to cross into Israel. A third migrant from Burkina Faso was injured by barbed wire and detained in a separate attempt to cross the border. (Writing by Cynthia Johnston)

Uganda: Police Shoot Makobore High School Student Dead

http://allafrica.com/stories/200906230924.html

Rukungiri/Mbarara — A demonstration by students of Makobore High School in Rukungiri District over food rations took a tragic twist on Sunday after police shot dead 18-year-old Mark Mugyenyi, a Senior Four candidate.

Police said Mugyenyi sustained injuries in his abdomen as a result of bullets fired at him by two Special Police Constables (SPCs); Warren Butusi and Bernard Banyenzaki. Mugyenyi was rushed to the nearby Nyakibare Hospital, where he later died yesterday morning.

According to the headmaster, Mr Sephats Turyabahika, the two SPCs, had deployed at the school to guard the home of a teacher, Mr Geoffrey Mugisha, who also doubles as the Mess Master. Separate accounts indicate that Mr Mugisha’s troubles with the Senior Four students started when he caned their classmate who attempted to get double his daily lunch ration.

Refusing to take beating on the chin, the student mobilised his colleagues who ganged around their teacher, asking him to apologise to them for the humiliation and also tell the cooks to give them more food.

The Senior Four class at Makobore has 80 students.

Mr Turyabahika said Mr Mugisha declined to apologise or issue the order to the cooks, prompting the students to try and attack him. “When we realised danger, we asked for Police protection and withdrew our usual guards,” he said. But even the presence of the SPCs did not, according to Mr Turyabahika, stop the angry students from raiding their teacher’s home, saying they wanted to discipline him.

Students who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being reprimanded by the school authorities, said the Police fired several bullets, some of which caught Mugyenyi in the abdomen. Mr Turyabahika quoted the guards saying the students were trying to disarm them. He added that after the first shots, the students continued to descend on the two Policemen shouting, “their bullets are about to get finished”.

Daily Monitor was unable to get comprehensive, independent accounts from Senior Four students who participated in the riot but one of the students, who said he witnessed the fracas, said some aspects of the headmaster’s account were false.

The Police spokesperson for western region, Ms Polly Namaye, apologised for the shooting and said the two SPCs had already been arrested. She said investigations were ongoing to get the true account of what happened but warned students against acts of hooliganism.

Police shoot two in strike at Mozambique stadium

A Chinese supervisor gives instructions to workers on the construction site of Mozambique’s National stadium

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iPiBRgrMylsGd_BL0JkgEE_hGgpQ

MAPUTO (AFP) — A construction strike at Mozambique’s unfinished national stadium erupted in violence when a police officer shot and wounded two striking workers, a police spokesman said Thursday.

The two men, part of a group of about 700 working on the Chinese-run project, were shot Wednesday and were still in hospital as of Thursday morning, said Arnaldo Chefo, Maputo police spokesman.

Chefo promised a police investigation into the incident.

“We consider the use of firearms an exception, an extreme measure,” Chefo said.

“If it’s determined that there was excessive haste on the part of the officer that used the firearm, then in addition to the disciplinary process he will undergo, he could also be subjected to criminal prosecution.”

The strike is the construction workers’ second in less than three months.

According to independent newspaper O Pais, the workers are upset over low wages, no overtime pay and perceived mistreatment by the project’s Chinese management.

The workers say they were promised 105 dollars per month but in fact receive just 71 dollars, according to O Pais.

The 60 million dollar national stadium is part of Mozambique’s plans to cash in when neighbouring South Africa hosts the World Cup in 2010.

The Mozambican government is working to persuade fellow Portuguese-speaking teams, including five-time champions Brazil, to train in the new stadium.

But with the World Cup scheduled to begin in June 2010, authorities face a race against the clock, with strikes threatening to derail the 24-hour-a-day construction project.

South Africa: The Zuma Presidency - New Era or Business as Usual?

http://allafrica.com/stories/200904280632.html

Election 2009 has turned out to be a landmark event for the ANC. The party faced some of its stiffest competition and still came out tops, despite a dismal 15-year delivery record.

In an ironic twist, the people whom the ANC has failed most turned out en masse to keep it in power, while those that it’s been bending over backwards for appear to have voted for the opposition.

The actions of both groups defy belief, but in a world where perception trumps reality, perhaps one shouldn’t be surprised that it is the estimation of the ANC’s perceived worth that seems to have motivated voters’ behaviour. Despite being sold down the river by the elite politics of their party, the poor still see the ANC as their saviour. While the party’s detractors smell the “rooi gevaar” around every corner.

Zuma ascends South Africa’s presidency at an interesting time in world history.

Conservative governments have swung to hard line positions, as evidenced by the political landscape in Israel. While centrist governments like America’s Obama administration are dithering more than ever.  As one commentator put it, either Obama can’t do anything seriously wrong; or he can’t do anything seriously right. At the other end of the spectrum, progressive governments from Latin America are openly nailing their socialist colours to the mast.

What path, in the midst of all these, will Zuma and his new ANC carve out for South Africa’s future? Who will their role models be? Under Zuma’s stewardship, will the ANC finally right the wrongs of our apartheid past?

Early signs are worrying. Zuma has not said anything that indicates a break from the past, which would put South Africa firmly on the road to dealing with structural poverty. For the time being it looks pretty much as though the poor are still going to get screwed.

South Africa’s economy is still firmly rooted in the legacy of apartheid and the pressure to maintain the status quo is strong. Over the years, the economic policies of the ANC, rather than transforming the economic landscape, have divided our economy and we are led to believe that this dualism between the first and second economy is a necessary evil.

So while the ANC has always promised “a better life for all,” high-level research reveals that it is their obsession with neo-liberal economics that perpetuates the apartheid status quo in post-apartheid South Africa.

To coincide with our first decade as a democracy in 2004, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report assessing South Africa’s human development. The report stated that  “The current strategy and policies for achieving (economic) growth are objectively anti-poor as, on the one hand, the gap between economic growth and employment growth is widening and, on the other, given their capabilities, the poor are not able to integrate into the current processes of economic expansion.”

In other commentary, it has also been argued that income inequality is one of South Africa’s biggest challenges and that this inequality in income distribution is the result of a growth path that ensures high earnings for the owners of capital and employees with skills.

The main conclusion reached by the UNDP report was that “South Africa’s sustainable development prospects depend on a successful re-orientation of the economic structure and policies – such that the economy becomes inclusive (broad-based), equitable and sustainable over time.”

In the five years since this report was released, this has not happened and in the aftermath of this landslide victory for the ANC, it is still doubtful whether South Africa will finally be put on a trajectory to achieve this goal. Two problems, among others, come to mind.

Firstly, Zuma has gone on record assuring corporate South Africa that there will be no major changes to economic policy. The financial media have assured their readers that Zuma will be “business friendly.”

Secondly, what impact will the global financial crisis have on the policies of the new ANC government? Are the poor in South Africa doomed to join the estimated 53 million people around the world who will fall deeper into poverty in 2009 as a result of the global recession?

Rather than looking to the North for advice from experts that didn’t foresee the financial crisis, one hopes that Zuma will look for inspiration in other parts of the world.

If it’s jobs and decent pay that his constituency is after, then it would certainly be worth Zuma’s while to look at what’s happening in Latin America, the only region in the world where inequality has declined. Bucking global trends, nine countries in this region are experiencing declining poverty rates, notably from 2002-2007. To date, the trend is only marginally affected by the global economic meltdown.

How did they do it? They raised the wages of their poorest and reduced the earnings of their richest; we are informed by this excerpt from a briefing paper released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean:

“Changes in the structure of income distribution between 2002 and 2007 reveal three clearly distinct situations. Nine countries (Argentina, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay) have significantly narrowed the gap between the groups at the extreme ends of the spectrum, both by increasing the poorer groups’ share of total income and by lowering that of the highest income households. The most notable reductions in the two aforementioned indicators (36% and 41%, respectively) were recorded in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Significant improvements were also observed in Bolivia, Brazil and Nicaragua, where both indicators fell by about 30%.”

Just a few days ago, some of these Latin leaders vetoed a declaration that came out of the Summit of the Americas, also attended by bankers’-best-buddy Obama. Progressive Latin leaders pointed out that the role played by capitalism in bringing about the global financial crisis, was not addressed by the declaration.

These issues are important for Zuma to consider because political leaders who are genuinely interested in pro-poor development and social justice - with track records to boot - are challenging the abuses of big capital. They are taking on the rich and powerful. Something that Zuma shows no sign of doing, regardless of the fact that he was carried to victory on the shoulders of the ANC’s Alliance partners, whose thinking one assumes would be more in line with the Latin American leaders.

Many are waiting with baited breath to see how long Zuma’s honeymoon with the Alliance partners will last. His cabinet appointments will reveal his true intentions. Is he just a power hungry career politician willing to exploit any relationship to get to the top or does his proximity to the Alliance partners indicate a genuine willingness to break with the recent tradition of the ANC, which has been to consistently betray its strongest supporters.

South Africa’s poor want jobs and houses. They deserve these and more.

Nigeria: Police in Court for Shooting Eight-Year-Old Boy

http://allafrica.com/stories/200904270909.html

The shooting of an eight-year-old, Master Salihu Abdul-Aziz Iya, at the Damare ward of Yola, the capital of Adamawa State, once again brings to the fore the unending cases of “accidental discharge of bullets” by the police against members of the public. Salihu is a pupil of Darul Arqam Primary School, Yola in Adamawa State. He was shot by a police constable, Mr Ori Abubakar, resulting in parts of his skull being fractured.

The sad incident took place on November 16, 2008. The shooting occurred as the police in the state attempted to put down a protest by commercial motor-cycle operators in the state.

Eye-witness accounts said that the youngster was returning from an Islamiyya School on that fateful day when he was shot and subsequently taken to the Federal Medical Centre, FMC, Yola, for medical attention.

According to medical reports made available to Sunday Trust, Salihu received initial resuscitation, and had an x-ray which revealed a fracture of the skull segment of the bone. He was thereafter referred to the Usman Danfodio University Teaching Hospital (UDUTH) in Sokoto for surgery.

Doctors at the Usman Danfodio Teaching Hospital, successfully removed fragments of the bullet from Salihu’s skull.

But, dissatisfied by the nonchalant attitude of the police toward the plight of his child, Salihu’s father filed a suit at the Federal High Court, Yola demanding justice. The family in the suit is seeking N20million as compensation, asking that the policeman, who shot their son be dismissed from the force or that he be charged to court for attempted murder. Joined in the suit are the Nigeria police and the attorney general of the federation.

The case has been adjourned to May, 20 for further hearing. However, commenting on the incident, a public commentator, Malam Usman Garba Santuraki believes that, whereas, it is the duty of the police to protect lives and property, it’s rather the same police that had turned out to be thorns in the people’s flesh.

He decried a situation where the police shoot innocent citizens with impunity, while criminals go about unchallenged, and advised that the police authorities should curb the excesses of some of their officers.

A relative of Salihu told our correspondent that “the police claim that the gunshot was meant to disperse an unruly crowd, and not poor Salihu, but the question is, should the police shoot unarmed citizens? Is there no professional way of handling firearms in such a situation? Would the bullet have shot the young boy if really that police man knew his job?”

While the police authorities in the state claim that the bullet that struck Salihu was fired in error, efforts to extract an official comment proved abortive, as neither the police commissioner Bukar Maina, nor the police public relations officer ASP Atine Daniel were willing to comment on the matter as it is in court.

Posters with inscriptions such as “the police is your friend ” are displayed virtually on the walls of all police stations in the country, but for many Nigerians like Salihu, the police is a foe and not a friend. “Their trademarks are an automatic rifle, a horse whip and boot among others, says Malam Bello Jahun, a legal practitioner and human rights activist.

“Nigerians have given them the nick-name kill and go for their tendency to gun down innocent people and walk away”, he added, stressing that the police had a major public relations problem, even though the police authorities had announced measures to give the corps a human face.

He advised that the police hierarchy retrain anti-riot policemen in the use firearms, just as the use of rubber bullets to quell riots should be encouraged.

Cop who shot wife keeps job

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20090225110154301C877595

A Durban Metro Police officer who got drunk and shot his wife in a “premeditated” attack two years ago is back on the job and carrying a firearm after appealing against his discharge from the service.

Opposition parties and anti-abuse organisations have called for a high level investigation into the re-employment of Thandolwenkosi Mvuyana, who pleaded guilty to attempted murder in March 2008.

According to documents leaked to the Daily News, Mvuyana had more than 10 years’ service under his belt when he shot his wife in the leg during a drunken domestic fracas in February 2007. Arrested not long after, Mvuyana continued to serve on the Metro Police force for more than 20 months as he waited for the case to come to court.

He was sentenced to five years imprisonment, wholly suspended for five years, but was not declared unfit to possess a firearm. He was also ordered to pay his wife R5 000 in compensation. The municipality fired him not long after.

But Mvuyana is now back on the job, again carrying a service pistol after a controversial appeal hearing during which he was reinstated to his previous position within Metro Police, after serving a 10-day suspension without pay. The Metro Police firearm board is now expected to rule on whether Mvuyana is allowed to take his pistol home after shifts.

In deciding to reinstate Mvuyana, appeal officer VB Ngubane said that although the case involving the firearm was a “very serious” one, Mvuyana had showed remorse and had undergone voluntary treatment and counselling. Mvuyana was a victim of procedural irregularities because he had not enjoyed a speedy trial, Ngubane added.

“Since the incident took place while the member was off duty and no decision was made with regard to unfitness to possess firearms… the employer did not see the seriousness of the case which would have warranted the suspension from work,” Ngubane said.

The DA and IFP have now called for an executive committee investigation into Mvuyana, saying they were concerned with the way in which the matter was handled.

City management has also stepped in to challenge Mvuyana’s employment in the Metro Police.

“We are obtaining legal opinion on alternative charges to be laid against this employee,” said city manager Michael Sutcliffe.

Mvuyana’s lawyer this morning said he would consult with his client before issuing a statement to the media.

DA caucus leader John Steenhuisen is now poised to initiate separate legal or disciplinary action, if the firearm board allows Mvuyana to take his firearm home.

“The shooting of a woman with a firearm owned by someone in the service of the municipality is an extremely serious offence.

“I am not comfortable knowing a man who was under the influence when he shot an innocent person is back on duty and has access to firearms,” Steenhuisen said.

An angry IFP caucus leader, Theresa Thembi Nzuza, said she was concerned about the state of Metro Police.

“A criminal is a criminal. We do not need people like this in Metro Police. And as a woman activist, I feel for his wife,” she said.

Levels of domestic abuse and incidents of violence were higher in police homes, and a suspended sentence and 10-day suspension were a slap on the wrist, said Selvie Pillay of the Advice Desk for the Abused.

“In all fairness, people can be remorseful or regret what they have done, but cases like this are often not treated seriously enough. We know that police operate under stressful environments, but that is still no excuse for abuse,” she said.

We have this short article for you from the Angolan press detailing Raul Castro’s visit to the grave of a Cuban fighter that gave his life in Angola during the fight against apartheid-era South African troops.  Many people do not know about the sacrifices Cuba has made in solidarity with the independence of African people.  Although ‘only’ hundreds of Cubans died (certainly no small sacrifice), it should be noted that Cuba sent over 36,000 troops defend Angola.   All of the Cuban soldiers were volunteers. 

Angolan and Cuban soldiers at the front

Raul Castro paid hommage to late cuban internationalist

http://www.portalangop.co.ao/motix/en_us/noticias/politica/Raul-Castro-paid-hommage-late-cuban-internationalist,c87825a2-2df0-4ebe-ba4c-07c3a9cf2363.html

Luanda - Visiting cuban president Raul Castro paid hommage today to the late cuban internationalist, Jose Raul Arguelles, who passed away in 1975 in Kwanza Sul province, while helping the angolan armed forces to fight back the apartheid south african invasion.     

Army commander Raul Arguelles died when his vehicle run over aa anti-tank landmine in the municipality of Ebo on 12th december 1975. 

At the cemitery Alto das Cruzes, the cuban leader laid a wreath of flowers on the tomb of commander Arguelles and also on the tombs of the parents of angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Hundreds of cuban soldiers died in Angola soil helping to drive back the racist South Africa army from angolan soil, in a struggle which ended up with the independence of Namibia and the burial of the apartheid regime in Pretoria.  

The cuban president arrived here on wednesday on a three day official visit aimed at strenghtening cooperation and friendly relations between the two countries.