Starting Points: Africa

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Jul 7, 2010

Kenya's constitutional vote on sharia courts pits Muslims against Christians

Kenyans protest the proposed constitution, which goes for a vote next month. Ten percent of the country is Muslim. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Wednesday, July 7, 2010; A01

NAIROBI -- For 13 years, Judge Mudhar Ahmed has worked in relative obscurity, issuing Muslim marriage certificates, divorcing Muslim couples and weighing in on Muslim inheritance disputes. Now, he's facing an issue unlike any he has seen. He has one word to describe it: "Islamophobia."

Ahmed is the head of Nairobi's Kadhis Court, one of 17 judicial bodies that administer sharia, or Islamic law, to Kenya's Muslim minority. The courts were enshrined in the nation's constitution decades ago, but Christian leaders are seeking to remove them from a proposed new constitution, scheduled for a referendum Aug. 4. They argue that Kenya is a secular state and that Muslims should not receive special privileges.

Muslim leaders say the maneuvers are part of an agenda to deny their community rights and undermine their beliefs. "They are creating hatred between Muslims and Christians," said Ahmed, his soft voice hardening.

The tussle portends a larger collision between Islam and Christianity in Kenya, a vital U.S. ally in a region where Washington is quietly fighting the growth of Islamic radicalism. Many Kenyans are concerned that the tensions, if not contained, could deepen political fissures and spawn the sort of communal upheaval that left more than 1,000 people dead in 2008 after elections.

In this predominantly Christian nation, Christians are worried about a Muslim community that is growing in numbers and influence, and they have been vocally backed by U.S.-based Christian groups. Muslims are wary of the rising power of fundamentalist Christian organizations backed by American Christians.

The 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania frayed relations between Christians and Muslims. Those links have further eroded in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as concerns about Islamic radicalization and terrorism grew in this East African country.

Many Kenyans today fear that the civil war in neighboring Somalia, where the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militia is seeking to overthrow the U.S.-backed government, could spread into Kenya. A massive influx of Somali refugees, almost all Muslim, has spawned xenophobia and extended misconceptions of Islam.

"The kadhis courts issue is a red herring," said Rashid Abdi, a Nairobi-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. "They feed into historical prejudices on both sides and misperceptions which has increased in the last 10 years."

Centuries of tradition

The kadhis courts have existed in Kenya for centuries. Under Kenya's constitution, their jurisdiction is limited to matters concerning personal law, such as marriages, divorces and inheritances for Muslims, who form 10 percent of Kenya's population. The courts do not hear criminal matters and have far less power than Kenya's higher courts.

For decades, the courts operated without controversy, under the radar of most Kenyans.

But after the Sept. 11 attacks, church leaders grew concerned that the courts could breed extremism. In 2004, a group of churches filed a court case to remove the kadhis courts from the current constitution, but it languished for years in the judicial system. Some Christian leaders worry that the courts could be used to justify an expansion of sharia law in Kenya.

The proposed constitution is part of an effort to create a fairer balance of power among Kenya's ethnic groups. It was that perceived imbalance that led to much of the 2008 violence. While religion did not play a significant role in the violence, it is now dominating the debate on the upcoming vote.

The U.S. ambassador to Kenya has publicly urged Kenyans to vote in favor of the proposed constitution, including the kadhis courts, arguing that passage is key to keeping Kenya stable. But on Web sites and in opinion pieces, conservative U.S. Christian groups have denounced the proposed constitution. They are opposed to the kadhis courts provision, and they see other aspects of the constitution as being pro-abortion. Some have organized petition drives against the courts.

The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by evangelical Pat Robertson, opened an office in Nairobi this year to oppose the new constitution. On its Web site, the group says that the "high number of Muslims in the slums and a significant increase in the number of Somalis" have brought the kadhis courts issue into "sharp focus."

"There are those who believe there is an overall Islamic agenda geared towards the Islamisation of the country," the group says.

Last month, Kenya's high court ruled that the kadhis courts provision should be removed from the draft constitution. That decision is being appealed. Some senior politicians have railed against removing the courts from the draft constitution, partly because Muslims have become a powerful voting bloc.

'We want unity'

On June 13, explosions ripped through a park in Nairobi during a demonstration against the constitution, killing five people and injuring dozens. No one asserted responsibility, but the assault deepened the suspicion among Christian groups.

"We want unity in Kenya, but not a unity that will compromise us," said Bishop Joseph Methu, a senior evangelical Christian leader. Christian leaders say they fear that if the courts are enshrined in the constitution, "sooner or later, you will find an enclave where they will say we are predominantly Muslim and Islamic laws rule here," said Oliver Kisaka, deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya. "You have created space for the creation of a nation within a nation."

As evidence, the Christian leaders point to an incident in April in which a group of Muslim clerics in the northeastern town of Mandera, near the Somalia border, imposed a ban on public broadcasts of films and soccer ahead of the World Cup.

Muslim leaders say the kadhis courts protect their community's rights and cultural values.

"A good constitution is gauged by the extent to which it protects minorities," said Abdalla Murshid, a Muslim lawyer and community leader.

Other Muslim leaders said the courts would stem Islamic radicalism in Kenya. Judges, not mosque imams, would regulate the uses of sharia law. Muslims would feel a deeper sense of national identity.

Kadhis courts are an entity that binds "Muslims to the Kenyan state," said Hassan Ole Naado, head of the Kenyan Muslim Youth Alliance. "It is for the best interests of Kenya to have such courts."

A recent public debate about the courts at a hotel in Nairobi quickly degenerated into a Muslim-vs.-Christian fight.

A Muslim woman named Fatima said that removing the courts from the constitution would make it too easy for Christian members of parliament to get rid of them altogether.

"That's what we want," muttered a man in the audience.

Then a Christian said: "Who are the Muslims? Are they Kenyan or non-Kenyan? If they are Kenyan, they should be satisfied with only one court."

"The Christian clergy have a problem with Islam," said Hussein Mahad, a sheik from the northeastern town of Garissa. "But we are here to stay. We are not going anywhere."

Afterward, he declared: "This is a Christian agenda to keep Islam contained. They think we are all terrorists."

Apr 17, 2010

For Somalis caught between Islamists and weak government, fleeing is only option

Image via Wikipedia

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 17, 2010; A01

IFO, KENYA -- Two Islamist militants delivered an ultimatum to Zahra Allawi's daughters: marry them or die. The men were from al-Shabab, a militia linked to al-Qaeda that is fighting Somalia's U.S.-backed government. The two girls were 14 and 16.

Allawi said her neighbor in southeastern Somalia received the same command. But he swiftly married off his daughter to someone else. The next day, the fighters returned with a butcher's knife.

"They slaughtered him like a goat," she recalled.

Three hours later, she and her 10 children fled. After handing their life savings of $300 to a smuggler, they crossed into northeastern Kenya last month, joining tens of thousands of Somalis in this sprawling refugee settlement. They are the human fallout from Africa's most notorious failed state, haunted by unending conflict and a quiet U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

About 2 million Somalis, roughly one-fifth of the population, have sought refuge in other parts of their country or in neighboring countries, most of them since 2007, when the fighting intensified. Nearly 170,000 have fled this year alone, according to U.N. officials, arriving in desolate camps inside and outside Somalia with barely anything except the clothes on their backs.

Many are running from al-Shabab's radical dictates and increasing savagery, as well as fears of a major government offensive.

This article is based on more than 60 interviews conducted in Somali refugee communities in Kenya and Yemen. The refugees' stories of life under al-Shabab could not be independently verified, but community leaders, refugee officials and human rights groups as well as al-Shabab spokesmen gave similar accounts of recent events in Somalia.

Allawi had plenty of reasons to flee. Al-Shabab fighters, she said, once whipped her for not attending midday prayers at the mosque. Last month, she was forced to prove that the man she was walking with was her husband.

An al-Shabab commander also sought to recruit two of Allawi's sons, ages 10 and 13. Allawi begged him not to take them. In exchange, he forced her to buy three weapons for his force.

"If they could all afford to come, not a single person would remain in Somalia," said Allawi, 37, seated with her children on the reddish, sunbaked earth a day after they arrived. "There is no freedom in Somalia, only death."

Instability since 1991

War has gripped Somalia since 1991, when the collapse of President Mohamed Siad Barre's regime plunged the country into lawlessness and clan fighting. Two years later, mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. soldiers through Mogadishu, the capital, during a U.N. peacekeeping mission, an event later depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

The country has vexed U.S. policymakers, who fear that Somalia could become the next Afghanistan. In December 2006, the George W. Bush administration indirectly backed an Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Islamists, who had risen up against Somalia's secular warlords.

But within two years, the Islamists returned, more radicalized and led by al-Shabab, which in Arabic means "The Youth." The Obama administration and European nations are backing the Somali government with arms, training, logistics and intelligence.

Yet al-Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization, now controls large swaths of Somalia. It has imposed Taliban-like Islamic codes in a region where moderate Islam was once widely practiced. Urged on by Osama bin Laden, the group has steadily pushed into Mogadishu, importing foreign fighters and triggering U.S. concerns that the movement could spread to Yemen, across East Africa and beyond. Somalia's government controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu and has little legitimacy elsewhere.

Many Somalis say they believe the United States is guiding the war.

"We expect American helicopters to strike Mogadishu at any moment," said Aslia Hassan, 40, who arrived at this refugee settlement three days ago with two small plastic bags of possessions. "This is why we are running."

Al-Shabab's dictates

The refugees say they are also escaping al-Shabab's puritanical dictates. Western and Somali music is outlawed in the areas the group controls in southern and central Somalia. Movie theaters have been shuttered, and the watching of films on DVDs is prohibited. In some areas, the refugees say, playing soccer -- and even watching it on television -- is banned. So is storing pictures on cellphones and using Western-sounding ringtones. Only Koranic music is allowed.

Al-Shabab's religious police, often led by children, order people to put out cigarettes and give haircuts at gunpoint to anyone with modern hairstyles or longish hair, the refugees say. As a warning to those who defy their dictates, al-Shabab fighters have displayed severed heads on steel poles.

Women must sheath themselves from head to toe in abayas made of thick cloth and are not allowed to wear bras. In Mogadishu, buses are segregated, with women sitting in the back.

"Even if a pregnant woman asks to sit in the front of the bus, where it is less bumpy, she will be refused," said Dahaba Duko Ali, 35.

She arrived here last month with her seven children, evading al-Shabab checkpoints. Fearing the police -- Kenya has closed its border with Somalia -- the smugglers drove along back roads and dropped the family just over the border. Under cover of night, Ali and her children walked 30 miles to Ifo.

Ali Mohamud Raghe, an al-Shabab spokesman, said that "our Islamic religion tells us" to separate men from women and for women to wear thick abayas. The militia forbids all "the evil things that infidels aim to spread" among young Muslim Somalis.

"So music is among the evil actions," he said in a telephone interview.

Even donkeys are not beyond al-Shabab's dictates. The militia has decreed that donkeys cannot wear harnesses, nor can they carry more than six sacks. They are also segregated: Women can use only female donkeys; men must use male ones. "How can I feed my children?" lamented Hassan Ali Ibrahim, 40, a gaunt donkey-cart driver who arrived in Yemen with his eight children.

Savage methods

On a Friday in October, the Ibrahim brothers -- Sayeed and Osman -- were taken from their prison cell in the coastal Somali town of Kismaayo. An al-Shabab court had convicted them of robbery, they said, adding that their imprisonment was politically motivated.

The brothers and a third inmate were driven in a minibus to a field in front of a police station. A crowd of 4,000 had gathered. Ten masked men stood in the field; one held a microphone and another clutched a knife, the brothers recalled.

The third inmate, in his early 20s, was taken out of the van. Several of the masked men held him down and his foot was chopped off above the ankle, the brothers recalled.

It took five minutes.

"God is great," chanted the fighters, drowning out the screams.

Minutes later, the brothers were taken out of the van. Sayeed looked away as his brother's leg was sliced off.

"I felt powerless," Sayeed said. "I wanted a miracle to happen."

A voice over the loudspeaker announced that Sayeed's right hand and left leg were to be amputated. By the time his limbs were hacked off, he had passed out. He woke up in a hospital. After 10 days, the brothers fled Kismaayo. In February, relatives hid them inside a crowded minibus and smuggled them into Kenya.

"What they did to us has nothing to do with Islam," said Osman, as he struggled to get up from a chair with his crutches.

But Mohammed Muse Gouled, 70, said al-Shabab had helped bring stability. For years, he said, warlords contested for power and territory, and chaos and insecurity grew. "No one can harm you under the Shabab," said Gouled, adding that he fled shelling by the regional African Union peacekeeping force.

One woman's journey

Habiba Abdi, 19, was five months pregnant and unmarried. Under the dictates of al-Shabab, she would have faced death by stoning. Fighters entered her neighborhood in Kismaayo, searching for the woman with the "illegal child."

She hid with relatives. Four days later, she begged a smuggler to take her to Kenya. A few months later, she had a baby girl. She named her Sabreen, which means "tolerance."

They live here with a cousin. Other refugees taunt her as the "one who broke the law of Islam." Some call her dhilo, or whore.

But she is more worried about al-Shabab. Last year, fighters from the militia crossed into Kenya and abducted three aid workers and a Somali cleric; last week, the group raided a Kenyan border town.

"Sometimes, I prefer to die," said Abdi, as she cradled Sabreen in her arms.

Mar 30, 2010

Southern Sudan prepares for freedom – and puts dream of skyscrapers on hold - The Guardian

Image by Water For Sudan via Flickr

Southern Sudan prepares for freedom – and puts dream of skyscrapers on hold - The Guardian

Mar 8, 2010

Death Toll From Nigeria Violence Hits 500

Image by missbax via Flickr

By ADAM NOSSITER

DAKAR, Senegal — Officials and human rights groups in Nigeria sharply increased the count of the dead after a weekend of savage ethnic violence, saying Monday that as many as 500 people — many of them women and children — may have been killed near the central city of Jos, long a flashpoint for tensions between Christians and Muslims.

The dead were Christians and members of an ethnic group that has been feuding with the Hausa Fulani, Muslim herders who witnesses and police officials identified as the attackers. Officials said the attack was a reprisal for violence in January, when dozens of Muslims were slaughtered in and around Jos, including more than 150 in a single village.

Early Sunday, the attackers set upon the villagers with machetes, killing women and children in their homes and ensnaring the men who tried to flee in fishnets and animal traps, then massacring them, according to a Nigerian rights group whose investigators went to the area. Some homes were set on fire.

The latest attacks were “a sort of vengeance from the Hausa Fulani,” said the Rev. Emmanuel Joel, of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Jos.

After the January attacks, “the military watched over the city, and neglected the villages,” he said. The attackers, said Mr. Joel, “began to massacre as early as 4 a.m. They began to slaughter the people like animals.”

The police said Monday that they had made 95 arrests, including a number of Hausa Fulani. The clothes of many of the suspects were blood-stained, said Mohammed Larema, a police spokesman in Plateau State.

Image by MikeBlyth via Flickr

The mood in Jos was tense Monday, as troops were deployed in the streets, shops closed early, and residents remained indoor. A few miles south of the city nearly 400 of the victims were buried in a mass grave in Dogon Na Hauwa, the village that was the site of the worst violence. Some of the bodies had been mutilated.

There, women cried unconsolably amid crowds of mourners, and the thick smell of burnt and decomposing flesh hung in the air. Officials meanwhile combed a large area around the village, continuing to find bodies of victims during the day.

Shehu Sani of the Nigerian Civil Rights Congress said in a telephone interview on Monday that members of his organization had counted 492 bodies, mainly in Dogon Na Hauwa. He said that security forces had not been much in evidence in the “vulnerable areas” south of Jos. Mr. Sani said that the attackers were motivated at least in part by a large-scale theft of cattle by members of the same Christian ethnic group as the victims.

“We were at the scene of the violence,” Mr. Sani said, suggesting that the local government figure of 500 was not an exaggeration. “We have counted as many bodies as that,” he said. “There are not enough functional mortuaries to take them. It’s possibly even more than that because many were buried without documentation.”

Mr. Sani said the latest violence strongly resembled the killings in January. One predominantly Muslim village of several hundred, Kuru Karama, was virtually wiped out, and bodies were thrown into pits and latrines.

Mr. Sani said he was not optimistic about an early end to the deadly cycle of violence. “Most likely there will be continuous acts of reprisal,” he said.

Jude Owuamanam contributed reporting from Dogon Na Hauwa and Jos, Nigeria.

Jan 26, 2010

Google Entices Africans to Contribute to Swahili Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

By NOAM COHEN

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.

“THE farmer and the cowman should be friends” is the hopeful refrain of Oklahomans in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma.” After all, their activities rhyme: “one likes to push a plow; one likes to chase a cow.”

Alas, the cultivators and the grazers seem destined for conflict. The largest online grazer of them all, Google, has repeatedly come upon fences as it roams the Internet seeking new material for search results.

There is China’s corner of the Internet, for example. The government there allowed Google to enter but insisted that its computers ignore writing and photographs about the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, say, or the status of Tibet or political dissent in general.

Google agreed to those conditions — that material simply doesn’t show up when someone looks for it at google.cn — though it says it is now refusing to abide by those rules in light of a hacking attempt emanating from China.

Another barrier Google recently ran up against involves authors and publishers concerned by the company’s effort to digitize books in university libraries. Many of these are so-called orphan works, for which copyright holders could not be found, and so without securing permission, Google unleashed its page scanners. Only recently has it tried to settle with the authors and publishers so it can put the works online.

Image via Wikipedia

Then there are the gaps in the Internet, barren because large populations in the Arabic world, Africa and much of India lack the means or education to create Web sites and other online content.

But Google can do something that cowboys can’t: create more real estate. The company is sponsoring a contest to encourage students in Tanzania and Kenya to create articles for the Swahili version of Wikipedia, mainly by translating them from the English Wikipedia. The winners are to be announced Friday, with prizes including a laptop, a wireless modem, cellphones and Google gear.

So far the contest, Google says, has added more than 900 articles from more than 800 contributors.

“Our algorithms are primed and ready to give you the answer you are looking for, but the pipeline of information just isn’t there,” said Gabriel Stricker, Google’s spokesman on search issues. “The challenge for searches in many languages for us no longer is search quality. Our ability to get the right answer is hindered by the lack of quality and lack of quantity of material on the Internet.”

Sitting in a Google cafeteria, Mr. Stricker outlined all the ways information eludes the search engine — wrong language, not digitized, too recent, doesn’t exist but should. Feeding the maw is clearly an obsession of Google’s. After all, the search engine’s comprehensiveness is an edge against a new, well-financed competitor, Bing from Microsoft.

In e-mail interviews, two of the finalists in the Swahili contest said the arrival of Google on their campuses changed them from passive users of Wikipedia to active contributors. Still, they expressed mixed feelings about receiving material rewards for sharing knowledge.

One of the finalists, Jacob Kipkoech, a 21-year-old from the Rift Valley of Kenya who is studying software engineering at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, has created 17 articles so far that were given points. Among the topics were water conservation, Al Qaeda and afforestation, the process of creating forests.

“Wikipedia has been a good online research base for me,” he wrote, “and this was a way I could make it possible for people who can’t use English to benefit from it as well.”

Another finalist, Daniel Kimani, also 21, is studying for a degree in business information technology at Strathmore University in Kenya. He said that contests were an effective way to attract contributors but that “bribing,” or paying per article, “is not good at all because it will be very unfair to pay some people and others are not paid.”

“I believe in Wikipedia,” he said, “since it is the only free source of information in this world.”

Swahili, because it is a second language for as many as 100 million people in East Africa, is thought to be one of the only ways to reach a mass audience of readers and contributors in the region. The Swahili Wikipedia still has a long way to go, however, with only 16,000 articles and nearly 5,000 users. (Even a relatively obscure language like Albanian has 25,000 articles and more than 17,000 contributors.)

Mr. Kimani and Mr. Kipkoech represent one of the challenges for creating material in African languages. The people best equipped to write in Swahili, or Kiswahili as it is sometimes known, are multilingual university students. And yet Mr. Kimani wrote that he used “the English version more than Kiswahili since most of my school work is in English.”

Translation could be the key to bringing more material to non-English speakers. It is the local knowledge that is vital from these Kenyan contributors, the thinking goes, assuming that Swahili-English translation tools improve.

Mr. Kimani wrote one entry in English and Swahili about drug use in Mombasa, the second-largest city in Kenya. It says that the “youth in this area strongly believe that use of bhang or any other narcotic drug could prevent one from suffering from ghosts attacks.”

Now the article lives in English and Swahili, although the English Wikipedia editors have asked for citations and threatened to remove it.

It is yet another obstacle as Google the cowboy becomes Google the farmer.

Jan 13, 2010

Looking Past the Facade of Italian City After Riots

Image by antonello_mangano via Flickr

By RACHEL DONADIO

ROSARNO, Italy — The official figures show there are 1,600 agricultural workers in this town, all but 36 of them Italians. The reality, exposed by the raw and violent riots here last week, was far different: Some 1,200 foreigners, most of them Africans, earned about $30 a day under the table picking oranges and clementines. Now that the town is largely cleared of foreign labor, the fruit remains on the trees.

In other places, $30 is not a living wage. But this is one of the poorest parts of Italy, and many local people do not earn much more, even if most will not pick fruit.

“Who is taking care of us?” asked Maria Amato, 39, a homemaker. “Until days ago, we didn’t exist.”

In a broad sense, the worst immigrant rioting ever seen in Italy — shocking here not only because of the anger of migrants, some of whom clashed with local residents, but also for the attacks on them by townspeople — cuts to the heart of the nation’s difficult evolution from a place of emigrants to one of immigrants.

But it is also a story fixed to this place. The economy is so weak here that locals and immigrants are competitors. In a town where people are reluctant to reveal their last names and often their first, a mysterious element complicates any full understanding of the riots: the ongoing strength of the Calabrian Mafia, or ’Ndrangheta, which has deep roots in agriculture. The son of a local organized crime boss was arrested and accused of wounding a policeman in the riots, suggesting that the mafia may have orchestrated the locals’ response to the immigrants’ violence.

“It’s a very, very complicated situation,” said Francesco Campolo, a police prefect who is one of three interim commissioners appointed by the region to govern Rosarno since the arrest last year of the mayor, who was charged with having organized crime ties.

This week, the absence of the immigrants, 1,200 of whom were whisked by bus and train to detention centers over the weekend, was clear. On Tuesday, firefighters demolished a former factory that served as seasonal housing for many migrants. It stood, just barely, a long roofless space of tin shacks, dirty mattresses, hand-me-down clothes, mud and garbage.

Image via Wikipedia

Authorities are investigating these central questions: How did the protests become so violent? Who, if anyone, orchestrated the citizens’ retaliation? And who benefits from the immigrants’ temporary or perhaps permanent disappearance from the area?

Alberto Cisterna, who oversees Calabria at Italy’s National Anti-Mafia Commission in Rome, called Rosarno the Corleone of Calabria, where clans of the ’Ndrangheta exert “extraordinary control.”

Official estimates indicate that the ’Ndrangheta did 44 billion euros, or more than $60 billion, in 2008, in international drug and arms trafficking, public works fraud, usury and prostitution.

Many authorities say that in a town where the ’Ndrangheta is strong, the presence of the immigrant workers must have been welcome, or at least convenient.

They note that agriculture is not profitable if transportation and labor costs are high and producers pay about 75 cents for a carton of fruit.

In any case, most agricultural outfits may have Italians on the official rolls, but they pay migrant workers under the table to harvest the fruit — if it is harvested. For years state authorities have not cracked down on the arrangement.

Calabria, like other southern Italian regions rich in agriculture, has long benefited from hefty European Union agricultural subsidies. To prevent fraud in which small acreage yielded puzzlingly large harvests, in 2007 the European Union changed its rules to base subsidies on the number of hectares planted rather than the tons produced.

The result, some authorities hypothesize, is that it may be more lucrative for some Calabrian landowners to let their harvests rot on the tree and collect the subsidies than to pay pickers. In theory, the migrants may have become less useful and, possibly, less tolerated.

Still, over nearly two decades, their presence had become part of the fabric of Rosarno, whose 16,000 residents included an estimated 2,500 immigrants. This week some local shops were hurting for the migrants’ business.

Image by scottmontreal via Flickr

“Before Christmas I baked a whole batch of sandwich rolls just for them,” said Letizia Condulucci as she worked the counter at her family’s bakery.

Like many Rosarno residents, she vehemently defended what the townspeople had done over the years to help the migrant workers and was outraged that they had wounded residents. “Ninety-nine percent of us helped them,” she said. And in the riots, she said, “they destroyed the town.”

On Monday evening, Rosarno residents held a peaceful protest, marching through the city’s flat concrete grid with a sign that read: “Abandoned by the state, criminalized by the media. Twenty years of cohabitation isn’t racism.”

But conversations with residents revealed a more complex reality. Many used an oft-heard phrase in Italy: “We’re not racist, but ....” Ultimately, they tended to say that maybe things were better without the immigrants, since it was hard enough for the Italians to make a living.

The city commissioners say that the riots were fueled by wild rumors on both sides. The immigrants had heard that local residents killed an immigrant, while local residents had heard that immigrants had wounded a pregnant woman so badly that she lost her baby. Both rumors were false, the commissioners say.

Still, the violence was dramatic. After immigrants struck residents and shops with sticks and burned and smashed cars, residents began responding with violence. By late Saturday night, most immigrants feared for their safety and voluntarily boarded buses and trains that took them to immigrant detention centers elsewhere in southern Italy, Rosarno authorities said.

Those with residency permits, which Doctors Without Borders says could be as many as half, were free to leave. Alessandra Tramontano, the director of Doctors Without Borders’ seasonal workers program in Italy, said the group was “worried” about where the immigrants would go and “how they will manage the winter, which historically had been spent in Rosarno.”

Meanwhile, early Tuesday morning, a special team of Italian firefighters was using demolition equipment to take down the factory where many had been squatting in conditions widely denounced as inhumane.

Mr. Campolo, one of Rosarno’s commissioners, said that even before the riots, the city had received state money to remove the immigrant encampment, which sits next to a middle school, and build a playground and sports fields.

It also plans to build a meeting center, with some health care facilities and dormitories, for the migrant workers. Mr. Campolo said the city planned to go ahead with the project. “Of course,” he said, “for the immigrants, when they come back.”

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.

Jan 11, 2010

Sex Trafficking in South Africa: World Cup Slavery Fear

A teenage girl waits near a hotel in Bloemfontein

Melanie Hamman

By E. Benjamin Skinner

For a South African victim of human trafficking, this was the endgame. On a freezing night last July, Sindiswa, 17, lay curled in a fetal position in bed No. 7 of a state-run hospice in central Bloemfontein. Well-used fly strips hung between fluorescent lights, pale blue paint flaked off the walls, and fresh blood stained her sheets, the rusty bedpost and the linoleum floor. Sindiswa had full-blown AIDS and tuberculosis, and she was three months pregnant. Sweat poured from her forehead as she whispered her story through parched lips covered with sores. A few blocks away, the roars of rugby fans erupted from Free State Stadium. In June the roars will be from fans of the World Cup. (See pictures of South Africa.)

Sindiswa's family was one of the poorest families in Indwe, the poorest district in Eastern Cape, one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. Ninety-five percent of the residents of her township fall below the poverty line, more than a quarter have HIV, and most survive by clinging to government grants. Orphaned at 16, she had to leave school to support herself. Last February, a woman from a neighboring town offered to find work for her and her 15-year-old best friend, Elizabeth, who, like Sindiswa, was poor but was also desperate to escape her violent older sister. (I have changed Elizabeth's name to protect her identity.)

After driving them eight hours north to Bloemfontein, the recruiter sold them to a Nigerian drug and human-trafficking syndicate in exchange for $120 and crack cocaine. "[The recruiter] said we could find a job," Sindiswa recalled, "but as soon as we got here, she told us, 'No. You have to go into the streets and sell yourselves.' " The buyer, Jude, forced them into prostitution on the streets of central Bloemfontein for 12 straight hours every night. Each morning, he collected their earnings — Sindiswa averaged $40 per night; Elizabeth, $65. Elizabeth tried to escape three times, once absconding for several weeks. Jude always found her or used Sindiswa as a hostage to lure her back, then enlisted an enforcer named Rasta to beat her. (See pictures of violence in South Africa.)

It is unclear if Sindiswa contracted HIV before or after she was sold, but some of her clients didn't use condoms. She was diagnosed with the virus only a week before I met her. When she was too sick to stand and thus useless as a slave, Jude had thrown her onto the street. Nurses expected her to die within days.

Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence. While most are held in debt bondage in the poorest regions of South Asia, some are trafficked in the midst of thriving development. Such is the case here in Africa's wealthiest country, the host of this year's World Cup. While South Africa invests billions to prepare its infrastructure for the half-million visitors expected to attend, tens of thousands of children have become ensnared in sexual slavery, and those who profit from their abuse are also preparing for the tournament. During a three-week investigation into human-trafficking syndicates operating near two stadiums, I found a lucrative trade in child sex. The children, sold for as little as $45, can earn more than $600 per night for their captors. "I'm really looking forward to doing more business during the World Cup," said a trafficker. We were speaking at his base overlooking Port Elizabeth's new Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium. Already, he had done brisk business among the stadium's construction workers.

Although its 1996 constitution expressly forbids slavery, South Africa has no stand-alone law against human trafficking in all its forms. Aid groups estimate that some 38,000 children are trapped in the sex trade there. More than 500 mostly small-scale trafficking syndicates — Nigerian, Chinese, Indian and Russian, among others — collude with South African partners, including recruiters and corrupt police officials, to enslave local victims. The country's estimated 1.4 million AIDS orphans are especially vulnerable. South Africa has more HIV cases than any other nation, and a child sold into its sex industry will often face an early grave.

As Sindiswa told me her story, her voice trailed off, and the man who brought me to her — Andre Lombard, 39, a pastor of the Christian Revival Church — laid his hands on her. Lombard had a penetrating gaze and a simmering rage toward men who abuse women. His father, a brutal drunkard, had beaten his mother regularly. Lombard became a born-again Christian at age 17, then served in South Africa's élite special forces for 11 years. (See 25 people who mattered in 2009.)

He began a street ministry in April 2006 and recruited some 60 volunteers to distribute food, blankets and Bibles to the dozens of women and girls selling sex within a 10-block radius of the stadium. They also preached to clients and traffickers. Fights were commonplace. Lombard allowed his volunteers to carry firearms, and several wound up in the intensive-care unit of the local hospital. Lombard acknowledges that most of the prostitutes were not enslaved. Still, in a controversial move, he purchased bus tickets home for more than two dozen women as a way to "escape the streets." With no comprehensive rehabilitation, however, several wound up back in prostitution. Mainstream antitrafficking organizations often decry such tactics as reckless. In response, Lombard says, "I'm a goer. If you drive by and just talk about it and don't do anything, you're actually justifying it."

After we left the hospice, Lombard drove eight blocks east of the stadium to the notorious Maitland Hotel. Police had identified the Maitland as a base of drug- and human-trafficking operations. HIV-positive survivors described how traffickers used gang rape, drug provision, sleep deprivation and torture to "break" new children on the fifth floor; the fourth floor featured an illegal abortion clinic. On other floors, as many as four girls slept on a single mattress. Police raided the Maitland in 2008 and shut the place down last January. Traffickers had been tipped off about the final raid, yet officials still rescued dozens of underage girls and seized weapons and thousands of dollars' worth of drugs. Though still officially closed, the Maitland was active. Next door, a club blasted music by Tupac, and several girls worked the front of the hotel, where a makeshift concierge took rents. (See TIME's tribute to people who passed away in 2009.)

A shivering girl in a red sweatshirt and flip-flops stood alone at the corner of the hotel. She said she was 15 and desperately needed help. I asked Lombard's volunteer to translate from Xhosa. Shockingly, this was Elizabeth — Sindiswa's best friend — still controlled by Jude. Having researched modern-day slavery for eight years, I knew how difficult it was for survivors to heal after emancipation. In this case, mere emancipation would be a dangerous procedure.

Earlier that day, I spoke with Luis CdeBaca, who was visiting South Africa on his first foreign visit as President Obama's ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat human trafficking. "Dedicated cops, prosecutors and victim advocates are fighting the traffickers in several host cities, but they're largely doing it on their own," he said. Obama has pledged to make the fight to abolish modern-day slavery a top foreign policy priority, but the U.S. currently spends more in a single day fighting drug trafficking than it does in an entire year fighting human trafficking. So CdeBaca, whose office evaluates every country based on its efforts to fight human bondage, must rely largely on diplomatic pressure. "An exploitation-free World Cup will require resources and political will from the South African government and the international community alike," said CdeBaca.

Such political will is not evident. At best, the South African government's response to child sex trafficking has been superficial or piecemeal; at worst, some officials have actually colluded with the traffickers. American and South African law-enforcement sources described how police at all levels have solicited underage prostitutes in Bloemfontein, Durban and other World Cup cities. South African officials claim that Parliament will pass a comprehensive law against human trafficking in early 2010. For now, enterprising police officers who take on human traffickers do so with few legal tools at their disposal. Convictions for trafficking-related offenses typically bring little or no jail time. And those vigilante humanitarians like Lombard face an emboldened and violent adversary, as I saw that evening. (See TIME's South Africa covers.)

Elizabeth insisted that we recover her scant possessions: a handful of clothes and a Bible. Jude had convinced her that he would perform witchcraft on those items, to track and punish her if she again attempted escape. We drove to Jude's fortified crack den five minutes away. Lombard and I followed Elizabeth into the darkness behind the compound. We were joined by Shadrack, a kung-fu-trained church volunteer who worked as a financial adviser by day. Elizabeth tapped a secret knock, and after Jude ushered her in, Shadrack wedged his foot in the door. We pushed into the dingy flat, which bore the medicinal odor of crack. As the churchmen escorted Elizabeth to retrieve her clothes, I smiled and feigned ignorance of their intent. While Lombard and Elizabeth retrieved her possessions, I spoke to Jude alone. Short and muscular, with dark, patchy skin, Jude wore slim, brown corduroys and white Crocs with green dollar signs. Jude explained that he lured girls from Johannesburg, where many survive by "picking through garbage." Our conversation turned to soccer. I asked him if he was looking forward to the World Cup. "Yeah, this is good! Us people are going to make a lot of money then if you know what you're doing." (See pictures of Johannesburg preparing for the World Cup.)

As I prepared to leave, a woman began screaming from a sealed-off room in the compound. Lombard burst back into the room and forced his way to the darkened recesses of the compound. He kicked in a door to find Rasta, the syndicate's enforcer, half naked with the screaming woman, who ran behind Lombard. "Did you beat her? Because if you beat her, you must beat me," Lombard said, inches from the flaring eyes of the muscular Rasta. Rasta launched a haymaker at Lombard, who ducked. Rasta threatened to call in his "brothers." "I'll break their legs too," Lombard retorted as we retreated to our car, where the photographer traveling with us, Melanie Hamman, was bent in prayer with Elizabeth. With Jude chasing us on foot, we drove off.

Newly elected South African President Jacob Zuma addressed fears about sex trafficking in a speech last August. "We have noted the concern amongst women's groups that the 2010 FIFA World Cup may have the unintended consequence of creating opportunities for human trafficking," the President said. "We are putting systems in place to prevent this, as part of general security measures that we should take when hosting an event of this magnitude."

Zuma's pledge was too little, too late for Sindiswa, who died on July 22. Immediately after we took Elizabeth off the streets, Hamman and I drove her eight hours to her home in Eastern Cape. Wary of the failure rate of Lombard's unmonitored returns, we worked with a dedicated social worker in Indwe to ensure that the conditions under which she was originally trafficked did not reappear. A suburban-Chicago couple has given her a full scholarship, enabling the otherwise impossible goal of finishing school. She is HIV-negative. It is a stretch to call her lucky. But she has another chance at life.

Skinner is the author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery (Free Press, 2008), which was awarded the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction. This investigation was supported by a grant from Humanity United.

See pictures of child soldiers in Africa.

See the best pictures of 2009.

Dec 18, 2009

Lord's Resistance Army and the Threat against Civilians in Southern Sudan

Author:

Ledio Cakaj

Dec 18, 2009

LRAThreatSouthernSudan.pdf

Enough experts expose the ongoing violence and turmoil caused by the Lord's Resistance Army in central Africa.

Conflict Minerals, Congo

^{Source: Enough / Ledio Cakaj}

Arrow Boys are local militia that have organized to defend communities against the LRA.

The cross-border nature of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA—currently active in northeastern Congo, the Central African Republic, and southern Sudan—is a clear threat to international peace and security, but the United Nations Security Council has yet to take seriously its responsibility to protect civilians from the LRA and marshal the will and the resources to put in place an effective counterinsurgency strategy.

In Western Equatoria State in Southern Sudan, where LRA attacks in recent months have killed at least 135 people and driven 67,000 from their homes, the Government of Southern Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA, have been unable and in some cases unwilling to protect southern Sudanese civilians. Unfortunately, U.N. peacekeepers deployed to support implementation of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement have not risen to the direct challenge to peace posed by the LRA. The Government of Southern Sudan and the United Nations must do better, but improved civilian protection is only one element of a comprehensive strategy to address the LRA threat. Civilians in the affected region will not be safe so long as the LRA continues to operate as a transnational terrorist group.

The U.N. Security Council must authorize and member states must resource a comprehensive strategy to protect civilians in LRA-affected areas, identify and sever external lines of support, increase opportunities for rank-and-file fighters to defect, and end the insurgency once and for all through more effective military pressure on LRA leader Joseph Kony and his high command.

_______________________________________

John Prendergast speaks to activists about the LRA at the How It Ends lobby days event, organized by the Enough Project, Invisible Children, and Resolve Uganda.

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Nov 12, 2009

BBC - African slavery apology 'needed'

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Traditional African rulers should apologise for the role they played in the slave trade, a Nigerian rights group has said in a letter to chiefs.

"We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless," said the Civil Rights Congress.

The letter said some collaborated or actively sold off their subjects.

The group said it was time for African leaders to copy the US and the UK who have already said they were sorry.

It urged Nigeria's traditional rulers to apologise on behalf of their forefathers and "put a final seal to the history of slave trade", AFP news agency reports.

Civil Rights Congress president Shehu Sani says they are calling for this apology because traditional rulers are seeking inclusion in the forthcoming constitutional amendment in Nigeria.

"We felt that for them to have the moral standing to be part of our constitutional arrangement there are some historical issues for them to address," he told the BBC World Service.

"One part of which is the involvement of their institutions in the slave trade."

He said that on behalf of the buyers of slaves, the ancestors of these traditional rulers "raided communities and kidnapped people, shipping them away across the Sahara or across the Atlantic".

Millions of Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas over a period of about 450 years from the middle of the 15th Century.

More than a million people are thought to have died while in transit across the so-called "middle passage" of the Atlantic, due to the inhuman conditions aboard the slave ships and brutal suppression of any resistance.

Many slaves captured from the African interior died on the long journey to the coast.

Do you think traditional leaders should apologise for the slave trade? How complicit do you think African rulers were at the time? Send us your views using the postform below.

Even though the children aren't really responsible for the crimes of their fathers, there is a healing aspect in repentance and forgiveness. For even the crimes of our fathers affects the lives of their children's children. Those who repent of wrongs done and those who forgive those wrongs find renewal and health which may change the course of a life or of a nation. Njinja, Yaounde, Cameroun

I think even if they apologize what they have done at the past, it doesn't have meaning, it doesn't change things. If the slavery stopped now we faced another one "the mental slavery" and the worst thing is that our leaders don't take lesson from the past and still provoke civil wars. We are tired of wars. as my above friend said lets move forward and forget about the past, I hope one day hearing "the united states of Africa" even if not me my children or my little children will hear this. Moktar, Djibouti

well it true i agree with you traditional ruler should apologise to African also but lets not forget the Arab who came first they have not yet apologise to Africa for their slavery the did with caravan through the Sahara desert. let me ask one question are these African politicians not enslaving their children again in the name of corruption. i think we should examine what is going on in our society today because for people like us who come to Europe through the Mediterranean sea and we live in no document the people should examine this fact because our so call government is enslaving us again thanks oghogho elvis smith robson, lyon france

If our traditional leaders should apologise for selling their subjects into slavery, we should also ask the question whether people living in the west coast of Africa are freemen in their respective countries. Sometimes I wish our fore fathers were all sold into slavery not that i am condoling the menace of the slave trade but rather in my opinion i see the 500 years old inhumane act perpetuated by the then rulers and their colonial counterpart as a blessing in disguise and the truth be said millions of us are still under the captivity of bad government, corrupt and irresponsible leaders that are still destroying many aspiration in Africa who is saying sorry to us. Gabriel Okodoa, Greater Manchester

The era of slavery is over and no amount of apologies and what a view will salvage African the worst that has been done, and the so called traditional ruler that collided with the slave masters were no more. Why cant we have a group that will talk and demand apologies from our past and present leaders that has change the dream of Nigeria and African continent as whole, they have collided with some unknown elements to underdeveloped our continent, lead us to wrong path. The damage that was done during the era of slavery is less to what our corrupt leader have done. no African leader will leave office without been prosecution for corruption and mismanagement. i don't need apologies from the dead, i demand from our present for governing us badly. fatai yussuff, belfast

there is no present without a past. the corruption of the 15th century on the african continent still lives with us. apology comes with an attitude change. if not, there is absolutely no need. we want a positive change in africa and starts with the traditional leaders. they must voice out the truth to these corrupt leaders all over africa. vincent bodam, lagos, nigeria

True, they were culprits to this human tragedy, but the human right group better user their energy to free Nigerians from political corruptions that has plunged the nation back to 1000 years of less development. Nigeria need EMERGENCY surgery, no kidding M Imarhiagbe, ZH/Switzerland

There apologies at this time of an age is irrelevant, rather more emphasis should be focused on how meaningful development can be achieved in Africa. I think the organisation should focus on ills ravaging the continent such as corruption, famine, HIV/AIDS, poor management of resources and the likes. The apologies from US and UK has done us no good; what has been done has been done..lets move forward Adewole M., Coventry, United Kingdom

This is certainly, YES in capital letters. African traditional leaders "rulers" should all stand before their very common poor affected African people to confess and religiously apologise for the cruel act of trans-Sahara slave trade which led to the traumatic and bad leadership portrait on their ruled masses which brought about a present day fail African Nation. Suleiman - Isa, Adamu, Abuja, Nigeria

I think it is proper for everyone involved to tender an apology. There was a national repentance prayer in Abuja on the eve of Nigeria's 49th anniversary on the 30th of September 2009. The prayers started from repentance about slave trade to today's misgovernance. The vice president was in attendance and there were representatives of the kings. The representatives of the traditional rulers from the coastal areas tendered an apology for their role in slave trade just as General Gowon did on the same night for the actions of the nation during the civil war. I don't think the traditional rulers are against this and I think it is the right way to go but it should not excuse the western nations from what they did as well. There are more than enough guilty parties. Debola Ajagunna, Houston USA

It's an interesting call, and the issue has been addressed in West Africa by reputable historians such as Adu Boahene, and documented in the UNESCO History of Africa series. What happened was a form of complicity between slavers and traditional rulers who traded defeated war captives for guns and powder so they could continue to expand their states at the expense of their neighbours. But there is another class of people whose complicity is often overlooked, and that is the cynical gun manufacturers -- like Samuel Galton Jnr of Birmingham who made cheap unproved muskets specially for this trade. Conrad Taylor, London, UK

I think this is a positive stance to take. Especially the part about putting a final seal on it. These people have to be able to say that they are at peace with the past. It is the only way to look positively to the future. Finally it should be kept in mind that commercial interests (like getting the cheapest labour possibly) has been a thorn in civilizations side whenever it has not been held up to proper moral standards. Of course this includes the current issue of sustainability. I think there is a lesson to learn here from history. On some matters humanity simply cannot turn a blind eye. The Trutherizer

Should traditional leaders apologise for the slave trade? Absolutely! Let's put this in perspective here. According to historic accounts, the Europeans slave Traders did not actually forcibly round up the merchandise. Africans delivered Africans into slavery. The Europeans just like with colonial rule, where able to persuade the traditional rulers to part with their fellow Africans with smiles on their faces and monies in their pockets. In the defence of Traditional Rulers, they had no idea of the brutal inhuman treatment to befall their fellowmen. They probably did not fathom that millions will perish even before the whips started cracking on the shores of the American continent. But I feel it is important that we as Africans do not absolve ourselves completely of blame in what can only be described as one of the worse atrocities that that the world has ever seen. O. Ayeni, Edgware, Middlesex , UK

African leaders were the biggest culprits of the crime. In fact, I estimate that up to 80% of slaves were procure and sold by other Africans for things like whisky and rum. Denying this fact only means it will and is happening again albeit with a different face. How many times have we heard demagogues blame colonialism and foreign powers for what is wrong when it is our own people causing suffering. Its sad that some of these criminals are lionised in history books as great kings when in fact their wealth was based on the blood of many. Unless we are honest to ourselves nothing will change. mustafa, glasgow scotlannd

I don't agree. Most of African leaders who participated in the act were either covertly or overtly forced by the white slave maters....the case of Oba of Benin is a good example. When he refused to trade his kinsmen for mirrors and hats....he was dethroned and beheaded to serve as deterrent to others. How could you blindfold someone and yet accuse him of not being able to see? Malcolm, Ibadan Nigeria

Indeed African traditional Leaders should apologise, and even build a monument honouring the victims of Slave Trade at each region where the slaves were put on board. The evil that many traditional leaders perpetuated in those days continues today. There are still tragic collusion of local leaders with rapacious multinational companies in the devastation and exploitation of African natural resources. A practical example of this is the imbroglio in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The evil in some of the traditional leaders has been transferred to the modern Nigerian leaders, ad that is why many of them are into corruption. The traditional leaders still wield enormous enormous power, and as a result are are granted series of contracts in various fields in which they are not competent, leaving their responsibilities to pursue other forms of wealth. The traditional larders are indeed insatiable. While there is still the need to have them in the society, they should be more productive, rather than being parasites. John OYEWOLE, Milan, Italy

The was a debate In my Final year BA degree at the University of the Gambia. This is doubt The African Rulers at the time of slavery and Slave bore a lot of responsibility to their fellow Africans for Betraying them and selling them as slaves. The great grand children of those rulers should apologized for the bad deeds of their parents. They should even pay reparation to their victims' children if it can be arranged. Thank you for bringing this topic. Alhagie Bah, The Gambia

Marking the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade