International News
Mali Locks Up Five Over 'Insulting' School Essay
NNPA
(GIN) - Five Malian journalists have been convicted of insulting President
Amadou Toumani Touri when they wrote about a local high school essay assignment.
The teacher was also convicted.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said the incident stemmed from a classroom
exercise about an imaginary presidential sex scandal. They called for the
convictions to be reversed on appeal.
“These spurious charges … spoil Mali’s record of upholding democracy and press
freedom,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon.
Literature teacher Bassirou Kassim Minta told journalist Seydine Oumar Diarra he
assigned the essay to help his students explore moral issues. Diarra was
sentenced to the 13 days in prison. Publisher Sambi Toure received an
eight-month suspended sentence and was fined $400. The teacher was sentenced to
a two-month prison term and fined $200.
After Diarra was arrested, three publications reprinted the story as a
protest—prompting authorities to arrest the director of each publication – and
on Monday, most newspapers refused to print in protest of the case.
Ruling Party and Opposition Pledge to Share Power
NNPA
(GIN) - Nigeria's main opposition party, the ANPP, has said it will join the new
government of President Umaru Yar'Adua.
Both parties have agreed to work on issues, including the electoral process and
the constitution.
Until this week, the All Nigeria People's Party, the Action Congress and
Progressive Peoples Alliance had all refused to recognize Mr. Yar'Adua's
election victory in April because of alleged vote-rigging. At least two of these
political parties are challenging the results in court.
Meanwhile, oil workers are still fuming over the sale of two refineries, just
prior to elections, to private Nigerian hands. The oil workers’ unions,
PENGASSAN and NUPENG, say their concerns center on the loss of 4,000 jobs, with
no plan on how to meet the pension commitments of laid off workers.
“We are saying, yes you can privatise, but let us sit down and thrash out the
labor issues,” Williams Ibiba Inko, NNPC’s union chair told the Nigerian This
Day newspaper.
Justice for Genocide Victims, Demands Hotel Rwanda Ex-manager
Special to the NNPA from GIN
(GIN) - Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, says
unless the term of the UN tribunal on the genocide is extended, it will be a
failure.
The mandate of the UN-backed war crimes court to try genocide ringleaders ends
in December.
“I'm trying to be the voice of millions of Rwandese who have no-one to speak out
for them,” said Rusesabagina.
In 1994, Rusesabagina - a middle-class Hutu married to a Tutsi with whom he
shared four children - sheltered some 1,200 refugees at a hotel in the capital,
Kigali, where he was the manager.
The film Hotel Rwanda told the story of how he used his influence to bribe
military officials to secure a safe escape for refugees.
Some 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered during the country's
100-day genocide.
Since 1997 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has convicted 28
people and acquitted five.
Mbeki Defends ANC Leadership, Policies
Special to the NNPA from GIN
(GIN) – The embattled African National Conference is fending off charges that
the party has done little to close a widening gap between rich and poor.
At an ANC conference this week, the last before the party chooses a new leader
in December, South African President Thabo Mbeki insisted his government was
committed to fighting the nation’s economic and social ills.
But 13 years after the end of apartheid, the poverty gap in South Africa remains
among the largest in the world - second to Brazil. More than one third of the
working-age population is unemployed.
But it is the evident wealth of others, mostly White but including a small newly
enriched Black elite, that has contributed to bitter divisions within the ANC.
Mbeki must step down when his current stint runs out in 2009. Rivals,
particularly former Deputy President Jacob Zuma, and business tycoon Tokyo
Sexwale, are angling for the top job.
Meanwhile, a demand for higher wages has lead tens of thousands of teachers,
nurses and other public servants to join a nationwide strike called on June 1.
A settlement is said to be close.