Author: ANG

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has sacked his army chief, head of intelligence and foreign minister, as the military continues a five-day operation in the northern Tigray region with a new round of air raids.
Abiy’s office made the announcement on its Twitter feed on Sunday, giving no reasons for the changes, as the reported number of soldiers wounded in the conflict continued to rise.

It said Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen had been appointed foreign minister and Birhanu Jula was promoted to army chief of staff, from deputy army chief.
Abiy also named Temesgen Tiruneh, who was president of the Amhara region, as the new intelligence chief.
The prime minister is pursuing a military campaign he announced in the early hours of Wednesday, despite international pleas for dialogue with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in order to avoid civil war.
In a report on Saturday, the United Nations said nine million people were at risk of displacement from the escalating conflict, warning that the government’s declaration on Wednesday of a state of emergency in Tigray was blocking food and other aid.

Tigrayans dominated Ethiopian politics for decades until Abiy took office in 2018. They are fighting his efforts to reduce their influence.
Meanwhile, a medical official reported that 98 government soldiers had been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the neighbouring Amhara region, the latest indication that fighting has been intense.
Abiy and military leaders have touted Ethiopian soldiers’ successes against forces loyal to the TPLF, but a communications blackout in the region has made their accounts difficult to verify.
An Ethiopian military plane bombed a missile and artillery site next to the airport in the Tigray region’s capital Mekelle on Sunday, one military and two diplomatic sources reported, which noted that it was not immediately clear what was destroyed in the bombing. The sources said the plane left a military base in the city of Bahir Dar in Amhara.
New army chief Birhanu told a state-run newspaper on Sunday that the army was in control of several towns near the border with Eritrea, including Dansha and Shire, but he did not say when the army had seized those areas.
It was impossible to verify the report because of the communications blackout in the region. Reports of dead and wounded soldiers have mounted in recent days in Amhara, where a humanitarian aid worker said three died and 35 were treated on Saturday and on Friday, 105 were reported injured and five killed in the region.

Abiy spoke on Saturday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who offered his good offices.
According to the UN spokesman, Guterres also spoke with African Union chief Moussa Faki Mahamat and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in his capacity as chair of the regional Africa group IGAD.
Experts have voiced concerns the conflict could not only break Ethiopia apart but also reverberate across the region and draw in outside forces.
This could be the start of a civil war, but that is not certain, said Martin Plaut, a longtime observer of politics in the Horn of Africa. The situation in Tigray is one of many crises in the country, but could intensify, drawing in other Ethiopian regions, while also threatening neighbouring Sudan and Eritrea. Africanewsguru update.

Seventeen bodies have been unearthed in newly found mass graves in western Libya’s Tarhuna region, taking the total exhumed in recent months to 112, the missing persons authority said.
Lotfi Tawfiq, who heads a committee tasked by the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) to search for missing people, said on Saturday that five new mass graves containing 17 bodies had been discovered since Thursday.

The graves are located in Tarhuna, from where eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar’s forces launched an aborted assault last year on the capital Tripoli, seat of the GNA.
The area, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Tripoli, served as the main staging point for Haftar’s failed offensive.
The presence of mass graves in Tarhuna was first reported after the withdrawal of Haftar’s forces from western Libya in June.
Libya’s GNA Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha said the graves represented “atrocious acts” that cannot go unpunished.

Bashagha said one of the bodies exhumed was Mabrouk Khalaf, a general and former director of information.
The graves found this week are the latest in a string of grim discoveries in Tarhuna, and excavations continue.
A major oil producer, Libya has been wracked by violence since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 overthrew and killed veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Since then, the North African country has been dominated by armed groups, riven by local conflicts and divided between two bitterly opposed administrations: The GNA in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east affiliated with Haftar.
The two warring sides signed a permanent ceasefire last month after UN-sponsored talks in Geneva.
After the deal, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it welcomed the move towards peace, but warned that the agreement failed to provide “a clear commitment and a pathway to accountability for the serious crimes and other abuses perpetuated”.
Failure to see justice done will only hamper aspirations for a durable peace, warned the rights group’s senior Libya researcher, Hanan Salah, at the time. Africanewsguru update.

Award-winning Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono was charged on Friday with obstructing justice and ordered held in a maximum-security prison.
Chin’ono is accused of breaching his bail conditions by tweeting about the court outcome of a gold smuggling scandal despite a ban on him posting on Twitter.
He had initially been arrested in July on charges of inciting public violence before planned anti-government protests but was freed in September on bail.

The 49-year-old, who was arrested again on Tuesday, arrived at the Harare magistrate’s court in leg irons and handcuffs, where he was charged with obstructing justice and contempt of court for the tweet.
His latest detention is linked to the arrest of Zimbabwe Miners Federation head Henrietta Rushwaya at Harare Airport on October 26 as she was about to board a flight to Dubai with six kilos (13 pounds) of gold in her hand luggage.
In a tweet, Chin’ono said he had talked to prosecutors about Rushwaya, an act which the state said had jeopardised “the integrity of the case against himself and that of Rushwaya”.

Harare magistrate Marehwanazvo Gofa ordered that Chin’ono be detained at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, which houses convicted criminals on death row or serving life terms.
His legal team said his case should not be heard by a Special Anti-Corruption Court as it did not involve graft, and said the new detention conditions threatened their client’s welfare.
Why is he being kept together with most- dangerous criminals in D Section when he is not a dangerous criminal? lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa asked.
Why is he being brought to court in leg irons and handcuffs, yet he should be at remand prison
Chin’ono had initially been detained for 45 days for inciting public violence before planned demonstrations against corruption and deteriorating living standards that were thwarted by a heavy deployment of police and soldiers.
Praised for his investigative journalism, he helped expose a multimillion-dollar scandal involving the procurement of coronavirus supplies in May.
He is scheduled to be back in court on Monday, when he is expected to apply for bail. Africanewsguru update.

Dozens of protesters took to the streets of Nigeria’s capital Abuja calling out police abuse, activists said, two weeks after the unrest over the issue rocked the country.
Activists reported that four protesters were arrested on Friday.

Footage on social media showed a small crowd taking to the streets to try to keep up pressure on the authorities after a bloody crackdown helped stamp out demonstrations last month.
Four of our members were arrested this morning in front of the National Assembly,” rights activist Deji Adeyanju gave the report while addressing the newsmen.
Youth-led protests against police brutality erupted early last month after a video that purportedly showed a federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) operative killing a man was shared online.

After days of demonstrations, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government agreed to disband SARS, but the protests persisted with demands of sweeping reforms of police forces and action against corruption.
Amnesty International estimated that 56 people died across the country, including a dozen peaceful protesters gunned down by security forces in the heart of Nigeria’s biggest city Lagos.
Authorities denied any responsibility for the killing of demonstrators.
That bloodshed unleashed days of chaos and looting in a string of cities.
Demonstrations have since stopped. But activist Deji Adeyanju insisted the “#EndSARS” protests will continue until demands for an overhaul are met.
Government opponent Omoyele Sowore said Friday’s arrests showed the police will never learn. Africanewsguru update.

In the early hours of Wednesday a Facebook post by the Office of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed seemed to indicate that several months of growing tension between the federal government and the country’s northern Tigray regional state had reached a tipping point.

The Facebook post accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of an unprovoked attack on the Ethiopian army’s northern command of trying to loot its weapons. In response, the prime minister said he had ordered military operations against what it called “a treacherous” group.
The TPLF, meanwhile, has accused Abiy’s administration of trying to destroy Tigray’s right to self-determination and conspiring with Ethiopia’s northern neighbour Eritrea to stage a military attack.
On Thursday, Tigray regional president Debretsion Gebremichael said the region has gained control of all the heavy weaponry of the northern command and that the division’s leadership and rank and file had decided to side with Tigray, an allegation denied by the federal government.
Martin Plaut, a former BBC Africa editor and a longtime observer of politics in the Horn of Africa said despite long-standing tensions between the two sides, there were two main reasons why a conflict broke out this week.

PM Abiy gradually eroded the system of ethnic federalism that the TPLF had built under PM Meles (who died in 2012),” Plaut reported. “This threatened their hold over the Tigray region. The TPLF resisted, holding elections on 9 September this year, despite PM Abiy banning this show of regional autonomy.
Secondly, PM Abiy mended fences with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s northern neighbour which borders directly on Tigray. Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki has a long-standing animosity towards the TPLF. The Tigrayans were threatened with a pincer movement from south and north and have effectively seized control of their region.”
Although the TPLF governs Tigray it acts as an opposition party at the federal level, with Abiy’s Prosperity Party (PP), which was formed late in 2019 controlling the central government and the country’s nine remaining regional states.
With telephone and internet communications lines cut in Tigray, many Ethiopians and analysts are relying on media outlets owned by the federal government and the Tigray regional government as well as social media posts of partisan bloggers for information.
Tsedale Lemma, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Addis Standard, an English publication that reports on domestic and foreign current affairs, agrees politics is behind the escalation between the federal government and Tigray regional state but says the flare-up was precipitated by differences over military appointments.
Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjorknes College in Norway and a keen observer of Ethiopian politics for 30 years, says the establishment of PP from the ashes of the ruling coalition Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and TPLF’s refusal to enter a centralised party system had fed mutual animosity, on top of tensions that had been festering since Abiy came to power in April 2018.
This mutual animosity deepened when the PP-dominated federal legislature postponed national elections slated for last August citing the risks from COVID-19, while the Tigray regional administration, which opposed the move, held its own election in defiance of federal government warnings.
Although the scant information coming out of the front lines around Tigray suggest the military skirmishes have been limited, many Ethiopians are worried the country could be entering into a phase of destructive civil war reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s.
Plaut, while not discounting this possibility, says a full-fledged civil war is not inevitable.
“This could be the start of a civil war, but that is not certain,” he said. “The situation in Tigray is one of many crises in the country, but could intensify, drawing in other Ethiopian regions, while also threatening neighbouring Sudan and Eritrea.”
While Lemma agrees a full-fledged civil war is not inevitable, she says it is a “real possibility” and one that could endanger the very territorial integrity of Ethiopia.
To assert it could be the beginning of a civil war depends on whether or not both parties heed the growing international calls to de-escalate the current standoff and tension,” she said. “But I can say both have passed the phase of mutual brinkmanship and that should worry us all.
The possibility of Ethiopia breaking apart is real, but the final verdict depends on two critical outcomes of the current standoff. First, if the parties opt for a conventional war; and second, absent that, if they refused to conduct a serious dialogue and power bargain as a peaceful way out and continue maintaining a tense status quo.
Tronvoll notes the crisis would be difficult to solve through military means.
“I don’t think any side can militarily annihilate the other side, it’s likely instead it could turn into an unnecessary protracted conflict which in the end would need to find a political solution,” he said.
While the federal government and TPLF seem to be inching towards war, with the world distracted by other events including the US presidential election, there are calls domestically and internationally for both sides to show restraint.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on the Ethiopian federal government to restore communications in Tigray, while there are reports of behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the conflict.
For now, many Ethiopians regardless of their political motivation are looking on helplessly, fearful their country is drifting inexorably towards civil war. Africanewsguru update.

Tanzania’s populist President John Magufuli has been sworn into office for a second five-year term amid tight security by the police and the army.
The swearing-in on Thursday came despite the opposition calling for a fresh election, the disbandment of the electoral commission and an “endless peaceful demonstration” over the October 28 vote.
Magufuli over the weekend said he would not pursue another term amid concerns that the governing party, which won nearly all parliament seats, might try to extend the presidency’s two-term limit.

Ahead of the swearing-in, leaders of Tanzania’s two main opposition parties, ACT Wazalendo and CHADEMA, were charged with organising unlawful assembly and demonstration.
The opposition alleges the October 28 election was riddled with irregularities.
Magufuli received 12.5 million – or 85 percent – of the total votes polled, while his main challenger, CHADEMA’S Tundu Lissu, got 1.9 million or 13 percent, the electoral commission said.

After the landslide results were announced, CHADEMA and fellow opposition party ACT Wazalendo called for new elections and mass protests.
But police swiftly arrested the parties’ leaders, while a heavy security presence deterred potential protesters and the demonstrations never took place.
CHADEMA’s Tundu Lissu, ACT Wazalendo’s leader Zitto Kabwe, and several other opposition leaders were arrested this week.
Kabwe had called for a panel of African leaders to investigate “large-scale irregularities” during the polls.
Several nations, including the United States, noted credible allegations that call the vote’s results – and the country’s democratic ideals – into question. Few international observers were allowed to watch the vote.
Magufuli’s CCM party, a version of which has held power in Tanzania since independence from Britain in 1961, has also retained power in the semi-autonomous Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar with 76 percent of the vote. Africanewsguru update.

Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have once again failed to agree on a new negotiating approach to resolve their years-long dispute over the controversial dam that Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile River.
In late October, the three African nations resumed virtual talks over the filling and operation of the $4bn Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) project, which broke ground in 2011.

The renewed talks followed US President Donald Trump’s comments in which he said downstream Egypt could end up “blowing up” the project, which Cairo has called an existential threat. The remarks angered Ethiopia.
Foreign and irrigation ministers of the three nations met last week and delegated experts from their countries to discuss and agree on an approach so the talks could be fruitful.
But differences remained and Wednesday’s meeting failed to bridge the gaps, said Mohammed el-Sebaei, Egypt’s Irrigation Ministry spokesman.
Sudan’s water ministry said in a statement: “Water ministers of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia agreed to end this round of negotiations over Ethiopia’s Nile dam.”

“This round failed to make any tangible progress,” the statement read.
Sudan’s Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas said the talks did not achieve concrete progress and that Egypt opposed a Sudanese proposal supported by Ethiopia to maximise the role of the African Union (AU) experts.
Ethiopia said the countries “were unable to reach a complete agreement” on items such as the “basis for the upcoming negotiation and the time frame”.
It said they would turn to the chair of the AU Executive Council and South Africa’s foreign minister “to consult on the next steps”.
Multiple rounds of talks have over the years failed to produce an agreement on the filling and operation of the vast reservoir behind the 145-metre (475-foot) tall hydropower barrage.
Ethiopia rejects binding arbitration at the final stage of the project.
El-Sebaei, the Egyptian spokesman, said the three countries would separately report their positions to South Africa, which heads the AU.

Ethiopia is building the dam on the Blue Nile, which joins the White Nile in Sudan to become the Nile river – the world’s longest and a lifeline supplying water and electricity to the 10 countries it traverses.
About 85 percent of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia, whose officials hope the dam, now more than three-quarters complete, will reach full power-generating capacity in 2023.
Ethiopia views the project as essential for its electrification and development and insists that the flow of water downstream will not be affected.
In July, Addis Ababa declared that it reached its first-year target for filling the reservoir of the mega-dam, which can hold 74 billion cubic metres (2,600 billion cubic feet) of water.
But Egypt and Sudan have expressed concerns the dam will reduce the flow of the Nile waters to their countries.
Egypt relies heavily on the Nile to supply water for its agriculture and to its more than 100 million people, while Sudan warned that millions of lives would be at “great risk” if Ethiopia unilaterally fills the dam.
On Wednesday, Sudan said it “cannot keep negotiating without an end and must guarantee the safety of its water installations”.
Sudan and Egypt have long called for a political solution to the dispute, rejecting any unilateral action by Ethiopia. Africanewsguru update.

Several teachers have been kidnapped from a school in a western Cameroon region gripped by years of armed uprising by anglophone separatists, a local teachers’ union reported.
Armed men raided the local presbyterian primary and secondary school in Kumbo, taking away 11 teachers, said Reverend Samuel Fonki, head of the Presbyterian Church of Cameroon, and Stephen Afuh, head of a presbyterian teachers’ union called PEATTU.

A local official, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported that six teachers had been kidnapped.
There was no immediate response from the armed forces or government on the latest incident.
The abduction came on the heels of the killing of eight schoolchildren in Kumba in the neighbouring Southwest Region last month, which the government blamed on the separatists.
In that attack, the government in Yaounde described the armed men as separatists scaring off parents from sending their children to school. No group has claimed responsibility for the killings so far.
In October 2017, anglophone fighters declared an independent state in the Northwest Region and Southwest Region, home to the most of the anglophone minority in the majority French-speaking country.
The declaration, which has not been recognised internationally, sparked a brutal conflict with the country’s security forces.
More than 3,000 people have been killed and 700,000 fled their homes. Rights groups say crimes and abuses have been committed by both sides.
Schools and other institutions representing the Cameroonian state have been repeatedly targeted for attacks and kidnappings, often for ransom.
In November 2019, the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, estimated that 855,000 children were without schooling in the two anglophone regions.
About 90 percent of the country’s primary schools and 77 percent of secondary schools were either closed or non-operational at that time.
Anglophones account for about four million of Cameroon’s 23 million population. Their presence is explained by the decolonisation process in West Africa some 60 years ago.
In 1961, the Southern Cameroons, a British-ruled territory, voted to join the newly independent former French colony of Cameroon. The Northern Cameroons joined Nigeria.
There have been decades-long resentment among anglophones in Cameroon at perceived discrimination in education, economy and law.
Demands by moderates for reform and greater autonomy were rejected by the central government, leading to the declaration of independence by the hardline separatists. Africanewsguru update.

Security forces in Ivory Coast have surrounded the homes of opposition leaders after they rejected President Alassane Ouattara’s re-election and pledged to set up a “transitional government.
Ouattara, 78, won by a landslide in Saturday’s vote, which was boycotted by the opposition who said the incumbent’s bid for a third term was unconstitutional. While Ivory Coast has a limit of two presidential terms, Ouattara has insisted the new constitution approved in 2016 allowed him to run again.

On Tuesday, hours after Ouattara was declared the winner of the presidential election, with more than 94 percent of the vote, Justice Minister Sansan Kambile accused the opposition of acts of assault and plotting against the authority of the state.
The public prosecutor has been asked to investigate, Kambile said, warning that all options are on the table.
Opposition leader Pascal Affi N’Guessan had told reporters late on Monday that opposition parties and groups were forming a “council of national transition”.
“This council’s mission will be to create a transitional government within the next few hours to prepare the framework for a fair, transparent and inclusive presidential election,” N’Guessan said.
He added that the “transitional council” would be led by Henri Konan Bedie, 86, a former president and long-term adversary of Ouattara.

He warned that keeping Mr Ouattara as head of state could lead to civil war.
In Abidjan, the economic capital, security forces on Tuesday blocked off roads close to Bedie’s home, said by a journalist reporter.
The forces fired tear gas to disperse small groups of supporters and journalists outside, preventing the staging of a news conference. Then, they entered Bedie’s home.
Bedie’s deputy Maurice Kakou Guikahue was taken away by police, according to several journalists at the scene.
But sources close to the government said that Guikahue was not arrested, instead he was taken back to his home.
Two other opposition figures reported that their homes were being guarded by police.
I am at home, there are 12 officers in the street in front of my house and a police van around the back,” said Assoa Adou, secretary-general of the opposition Ivorian Popular Front.

“I’m fine, but it’s the blockade. We cannot leave my home,” said Albert Abdallah Mabri Toikeusse of the small UDPCI party.
Police were also outside N’Guessan’s home, his spokesman Issiaka Sangare said.

In Daoukro, an opposition stronghold 235km (146 miles) north of Abidjan, anti-Ouattara protesters were manning barricades.
“These results are a farce,” said one, who gave his name as Firmin. “We are going to carry on with civil disobedience until Ouattara steps down.”
At least 30 people were killed in the weeks leading to the vote, bringing back fears of a crisis a decade ago that tore the country apart and dealt it a devastating economic blow. Some 3,000 people died in the 2010-2011 post-election violence after then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept defeat by Ouattara.
“Ouattara’s supporters are ecstatic. For the opposition supporters, this is not what they wanted and they say they are going to resist it. And for the rest of Ivory Coast, this result means more tension. There are concerns things could deteriorate in the coming days,” Idris said.
In a joint statement, the UN, African Union and Economic Community of West African States regional bloc called on Ivory Coast’s opposition to “respect constitutional order” and seek dialogue, while urging all sides to show “restraint to preserve human lives”.
European Union diplomacy chief Josep Borrell, meanwhile, expressed “deep concern over tensions, provocations and incitements to hatred” and called for violence to be “independently investigated”.
A mission from the US watchdog Carter Center said that “the overall context and process did not allow for a genuinely competitive election,” but an African Union observer team said the vote was “generally satisfactory”.
Ouattara had said after his second term he planned to make way for a new generation. But the sudden death of his chosen successor in July prompted him to seek a third term. Africanewsguru update.