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A group of Kenyan Muslims on a bus attacked by Islamist gunmen protected Christian passengers by refusing to be split into groups, witnesses say.

Les membres de la coordination communale des forces cauris pour un Bénin émergent (FCBE) de Pobè, ont porté à la connaissance de leur base, ce dimanche soir, le choix de leur alliance politique pour la candidature aux élections présidentielles de 2016, à l'occasion d'une séance d'échange tenu sous la houlette de leur coordonnateur Clément Adéyemi Kouchadé assisté des membres du bureau national des jeunes leaders du Bénin.
A l'entame, le coordonnateur communal des forces cauris pour un Bénin émergent de (...)

- Politique

The Dark History of Serbia’s Security Services The quashing of the acquittal of two former security officials has again highlighted how Belgrade’s intelligence agencies have been involved in running assassins and paramilitary killers for decades. Marija Ristic BIRN Belgrade Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at their war crimes trial. Photo: BETA/AP. “Lords of life and death” was one of the descriptions of the wartime units run by former Serbian State Security Service chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, heard during their trial at the UN war crimes court in The Hague. Stanisic, the former head of the Serbian State Security Service and his right-hand man Simatovic, the former head of […]

Christopher Katongo, le capitaine de l’équipe zambienne de football, qui a permis au pays de remporter la CAN a été sélectionné CHAN.

Lors d'une série d'opérations dans le nord du Mali et le nord du Niger, entre fin octobre et début décembre dans le cadre de la mission Barkhane, deux terroristes ont été abattus par les forces françaises, a informé ce lundi l'état-major des Armées françaises. Au cours de cette série d'opérations baptisée Vignemale, "deux terroristes ont été mis hors de combat, au cours d'un accrochage et plusieurs individus ont été appréhendés par les autorités locales", c'est-à-dire maliennes et nigériennes, d'après l'état-major des Armées françaises, sans préciser toutefois l'identité des deux terroristes.

Le Burkina Faso a émis un mandat d'arrêt international contre Blaise Compaoré pour son implication présumée dans le meurtre de Thomas Sankara. Sankara : "pas de trace d'ADN" Burkina : reforme en vue de l’armée Assassinat de Sankara : Diendéré inculpé

Les cinq personnes qui ont été interpellées dimanche soir et ce lundi matin à Bruxelles dans le cadre de l'enquête sur les attentats du 13 novembre à Paris, ont toutes été relâchées, a indiqué le parquet fédéral belge. Elles ont été interpellées au cours d'une nouvelle perquisition. "Le juge d'instruction de Bruxelles spécialisé en matière de terrorisme a libéré les cinq personnes qui avaient été privées de liberté hier soir et ce matin après qu'elles ont été entendues par la police judiciaire", a précisé cet après-midi le parquet fédéral belge dans un communiqué. Selon le parquet, "l'enquête se poursuit sans désemparer", sans préciser le profil des personnes en question et sur ce qui a pu conduire les enquêteurs à vouloir les entendre. Lire aussi : Attentats de Paris : au moins cinq personnes interpellées à Bruxelles

Norwegian NM142 Anti-Tank Missile Carrier

Sepp Blatter et Michel Platini interdits de toute activité liée au football pendant huit ans. Ils vont faire appel.

Pour le congolais Constant Omari, membre du comité exécutif de la FIFA, la suspension de Platini compromet sérieusement sa candidature à la succession de Blatter.

Juarez Saw is the chief of the Sawré Muybu village on the Tapajós River between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the state of Pará, Brazil. Credit: Gonzalo H. Gaudenzi/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
SAWRÉ MUYBU, Brazil , Dec 21 2015 (IPS)

At dusk on the Tapajós River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River in northern Brazil, the Mundurukú indigenous people gather to bathe and wash clothes in these waters rich in fish, the staple of their diet. But the “evil spirit”, as they refer in their language to the Sao Luiz Tapajós dam, threatens to leave most of their territory – and their way of life – under water.

“The river is like our mother. She feeds us with her fish. Just as our mothers fed us with their milk, the river also feeds us,” said Delsiano Saw, the teacher in the village of Sawré Muybu, between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the northern Brazilian state of Pará.

“It will fill up the river, and the animals and the fish will disappear. The plants that the fish eat, the turtles, will also be gone. Everything will vanish when they flood this area because of the hydroelectric dam,” he told IPS.

The dam will flood 330 sq km of land – including the area around this village of 178 people.

According to the government’s plans, the Sao Luiz Tapajós dam will have a potential of 8,040 MW and will be the main dam in a complex of hydropower plants to be built along the Tapajós River and its tributaries by 2024.

But the 7.7 billion-dollar project has been delayed once again because of challenges to the environmental permitting process.

“The accumulative effect is immeasurable. Environmental experts have demonstrated that it will kill the river. No river can survive a complex of seven dams,” Mauricio Torres, a sociologist at the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), told IPS."No river can survive a complex of seven dams.” -- Sociologist Mauricio Torres

The Tapajós River, which flows into the Amazon River, runs 871 km through one of the best-preserved areas in the subtropical rainforest, where the government whittled away at protected areas in order to build the hydroelectric dams, which are prohibited in wildlife reserves.

The area is home to 12,000 members of the Mundurukú indigenous community and 2,500 riverbank dwellers who are opposed to the “megaproject” – a Portuguese term that the native people have incorporated in their language, to use in their frequent protests.

The Mundurukú have historically been a warlike people, and although they have adopted many Brazilian customs in their way of life, they still wear traditional face paint when they go to the big cities to demonstrate against the dam.

Village chief Juarez Saw complains that they were not consulted, as required by International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which has been ratified by Brazil.

The process of legalisation of their indigenous territory has been interrupted by the hydropower project.

“We aren’t leaving this land,” he told IPS. “There is a law that says we can’t be moved unless an illness is killing indigenous people.”

The village is located in a spot that is sacred to the Mundurukú people. And they point out that their ancestors were born here and are buried here.

“This is going to hurt, us, not only the Mundurukú people who have lived along the Tapajós River for so many years, but the jungle, the river. It hurts in our hearts,” said the village’s shaman or traditional healer, Fabiano Karo.

The interview is taking place in the ceremonial hut where the shaman heals “ailments of the body and spirit.” He fears being left without his traditional medicines when the water covers the land around the village – and his healing plants.

Academics warn that the flooding will cause significant losses in plant cover, while generating greenhouse gas emissions due to the decomposition of the trees and plants that are killed.

A little girl in Sawré Muybu, an indigenous village on the Tapajós River between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

This biodiversity-rich river basin is home to unique species of plants, birds, fish and mammals, many of which are threatened or endangered.

“The impact will be great, especially on the aquatic fauna, because many Amazon River basin fish migrate from the lower to the upper stretches of the rivers to spawn,” ecologist Ricardo Scuole, at the UFOPA university, explained to IPS.
“Large structures like dikes, dams and artificial barriers generally hinder or entirely block the spawning migration of these species,” he said.

The village of Sawré Muybu currently covers 300 hectares, and the flooding for the hydroelectric dam will reduce it to an island.

María Parawá doesn’t know how old she is, but she does know she has always lived on the river.

“I’m afraid of the flood because I don’t know where I’ll go. I have a lot of sons, daughters and grandchildren to raise and I don’t know how I’ll support them,” Parawá told IPS through an interpreter, because like many women in the village, she does not speak Portuguese.

A few hours from Sawré Muybu is Pimental, a town of around 800 inhabitants on the banks of the Tapajós River, where people depend on agriculture and small-scale fishing for a living.

This region was populated by migrants from the country’s impoverished semiarid Northeast in the late 19th century, at the height of the Amazon rubber boom.

Pimental, many of whose inhabitants were originally from the Northeast, could literally vanish from the map when the reservoir is created.

“With the impact of the dam, our entire history could disappear underwater,” lamented Ailton Nogueira, president of the association of local residents of Pimental.

The consortium that will build the hydroelectric dam, led by the Eletrobrás company, has proposed resettling the local inhabitants 20 km away.

But for people who live along the riverbanks, like the Mundurukú, the river and fishing are their way of life, sociologist Mauricio Torres explained.

“Their traditional knowledge has been built over millennia, passing from generation to generation,” he told IPS. “It is at least 10,000 years old. When a river is dammed and turned into a lake, it is transformed overnight and this traditional knowledge, which was how that region survived, is wiped away.”

The Tapajós River dams are seen by the government as strategic because they will provide energy to west-central Brazil and to the southeast – the richest and most industrialised part of the country.

“The country needs them. Otherwise we are going to have blackouts,” said José de Lima, director de of planning in the municipality of Santarém, Pará.

But the Tapajós Alive Movement (MTV), presided over by Catholic priest Edilberto Sena, questions the need for the dams.

“Why do they need so many hydropower dams on the Tapajós River? That’s the big question, because we don’t need them. It’s the large mining companies that need this energy, it’s the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro markets that need it,” he told IPS.

It’s evening in Sawré Muybu and the families gather at the “igarapé”, as they call the river. While people bathe, the women wash clothes and household utensils.

From childhood, boys learn to fish, hunt and provide the village with water. For the community, the river is the source of life.

“And no one has the right to change the course of life,” says Karo, the local shaman.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Related Articles

• Mundurukú Indians in Brazil Protest Tapajós Dams
• Brazil’s Amazon River Ports Give Rise to Dreams and Nightmares
• Q&A: Room for Negotiation in Decisive Battle over the Amazon
• Q&A: Everyone Loses in War Over Amazon Dams
• Hydropower Dam to Flood Sacred Amazon Indigenous Site

Les clameurs de l'extrême-droite allemande. Elles résonnent avec force face à l'afflux de réfugiés.

Au Burkina Faso, la justice poursuit ses investigations dans l'affaire de l'assassinat de Thomas Sankara. Et ce près de trois décennies après le meurtre de l'un des plus charismatiques leaders que le continent africain n'ai jamais connu. En effet, depuis quelques heures, une information confirmée par une source à l'Agence France Presse fait état de ce que la justice militaire du pays des hommes intègres a lancé un mandat d'arrêt international contre Blaise Compaoré.

A Bizottság szerint Moszkva rugalmatlansága miatt az utolsó esély is elillant hétfőn a háromoldalú megállapodásra az EU és Ukrajna közötti mély és átfogó szabadkereskedelmi megállapodás január 1-i hatályba lépése előtt. Oroszország már néhány nappal ezelőtt bejelentette, hogy válaszul megvonja Ukrajnától a kedvezményes kereskedelmi feltételeket.

By Lorena Di Carlo
MADRID, Dec 21 2015 (IPS)

The last week of November marked another phase of an ongoing shift in the Turkish Government´s approach to human rights issues – Two important events highlighted the ongoing attack freedom of press is suffering in Turkey. First two prominent Turkish journalists were arrested after publishing a story claiming that members of the state intelligence agency had provided weapons to Syrian rebels; second, lawyer and leading human rights defender and Tahir Elçi, President of the Diyarbakir Bar Association in south eastern Turkey, was killed in crossfire while making a press statement on Saturday 28th of November.

The Government´s reaction has fueled concerns about a sweeping media crackdown, which escalated just before the country´s national elections in November 1st. Since the Justice Development Party (AKP) was re-elected, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, conditions for media freedom have gradually deteriorated even further.

The present government has enacted laws expanding the state´s capacity to control independent media. The government has now an increased authority to block websites and the surveillance capacity of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has been strengthened. Journalists are currently facing unprecedented legal obstacles, while courts´ capacity to persecute corruption is circumscribed by references to “national security.” To regulate various media outlets, authorities are making use of the Penal Code, criminal defamation laws and an antiterrorism law.

As a direct result of mass protests in the summer of 2013, the Turkish government tightened its control over media and the internet even further. Followed by corruption allegations in December the same year, the government intensified its control over the criminal justice system and reassigned judges, prosecutors, and police in order to exercise a greater control over the country´s already politicized freedom of the press.

In 2013, during a corruption scandal revealed through leaks to social media of phone calls implicating ministers and their family members, the Turkish government reacted by shutting down Twitter and YouTube for several weeks and introducing an even more restrictive Internet Law than the one already in existence. However, the internet sites were reopened after the Constitutional Court had ruled against the Government measures.

Cumhuriyet, “The Republic”, is Turkey´s oldest up-market daily newspaper. Since AKP´s rise to power it has distinguished itself for an impartial and occasionally courageous journalism. In 2015 the newspaper was awarded the Freedom of Press Prize by the international NGO Reporters Without Borders for its stand against the Government’s mounting pressure on free speech. Shortly after that, Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, and the newspaper’s Ankara Bureau Chief Erdem Gül, were arrested and may face life imprisonment for a story claiming that Turkey´s secret services through convoys of trucks across the border were sending arms to Islamist rebels in Syria. Detailed footage depicted trucks allegedly delivering weapons and ammunition to rebels fighting the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Despite its opposition to the Assad government the Turkish government has denied assisting Syrian rebels and by extension contributing to a consolidation of IS. Cumhuriyet’s accusation created a political storm in Turkey, enraging President Erdogan, who declared that the newspaper´s editor-in chief, would “pay a high price” for his “espionage.”

Dündar defended his paper´s action by stating: “We are journalists, not civil servants. Our duty is not to hide the dirty secrets of the state but to hold it accountable on behalf of the people.”
According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, the convoys were actually carrying humanitarian aid to the Turkmen community of neighboring Syria and the Cumhuriyet articles were accordingly politically motivated defamation. Right before appearing in court Dündar declared: “We come here to defend journalism. We come here to defend the right of the public to obtain news and their right to know whether their government is feeding them lies. We come here to demonstrate and to prove that governments cannot engage in illegal activities and defend such acts.”

The Secretary General of Reporters without Borders, Christophe Deloire, stated that “if these two journalists are imprisoned, it will be further evidence that Turkish authorities are ready to use methods worthy of a bygone age in order to suppress independent journalism in Turkey.”

Reporters without Borders, ranks Turkey as the 149th nation out of 180 when it comes to freedom of press, denouncing that there is a “dangerous surge in censorship” in the country. Reporters without Borders has urged the judge hearing the case to dismiss the charges against the two journalists as a case of “political persecution.”

The arrest of the two journalists has caused distress within the European Union. Europe is currently struggling with social problems and political crises due the influx of Syrian refugees and needs Ankara´s help to solve the crisis. Nevertheless, Turkish journalists have urged the EU to avoid making any compromises and in the name of freedom of speech, and as part of the efforts to combat the threat of IS totalitarianism, EU has to react to the Turkish Government´s intentions to control and manage independent information and reporting.

In the case of the lawyer, Tahir Elçi, was speaking to the press, pleading for an end of the violence between nationalist Kurds and the Turkish security forces. His death, considered an assassination by many, has f escalated tensions in Turkey´s Kurd dominated regions, where curfews have been imposed in several communities.

While Elçi, and other lawyers in the south eastern province of Diyarbakır were denouncing the damage caused to the historical patrimony during combat between the YDG-H Militants—a group related to the armed Kurdish group PKK—and the police. The incident was confusing. Video footage shows Elçi, hiding behind a man holding a pistol, as the sound of gunfire rings out from both ends of the street, a moment later the lawyer is seen lying face down on the ground. Officially it was claimed that Kurdish militants opened fire, which was returned by security men. Elçi´s last words before the attack had been: “We do not want guns, clashes or operations here.”

The HDP (People´s Democratic Party), an opposition party with Kurdish origins, declared that Elçi´s death was a planned attack and blamed the ruling AKP party. “This planned assassination targeted law and justice through Tahir Elci. … Tahir Elci was targeted by the AKP rule and its media and a lynching campaign was launched against him.” The HDP did not hesitate to remind that on October 19th, a warrant was issued against Elçi charging him with “propaganda for a terror organization.” The reason was that he during a CNN television program had stated that “PKK is not a terrorist organization… Although some of its actions have the nature of terror, the PKK is an armed political movement.”

Turkey´s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, declared that it was unclear whether Elci was caught in a crossfire, or was assassinated, though he stated that: “The target is Turkey. It’s an attack on peace and harmony in Turkey.” On the same note Erdogan said the shooting was a clear indication that Turkey was right in “its determination to fight terrorism.”

(End)

Au moins six personnes ont été tuées dans une attaque-suicide menée par un enfant kamikaze dans le nord-est du Nigeria, imputée au groupe terroriste Boko Haram, a indiqué ce lundi l'armée nigériane. L'attaque a eu lieu hier vers 20h30 locales (19h30 GMT) à Beninsheikh, dans l'Etat de Borno, lorsque trois adolescents âgés de 10 à 15 ans ont été arrêtés par les membres d'un groupe d'auto-défense civil qui les soupçonnaient de vouloir commettre un attentat, a expliqué dans un communiqué le porte-parole de l'armée, le colonel Sani Usman. C'est alors à ce moment-là qu'un des kamikazes a actionné la ceinture d'explosifs qu'il portait sur lui, causant "la mort de neuf personnes tandis que 24 autres personnes ont été plus ou moins gravement blessées", a indiqué le colonel Usman, précisant que les trois kamikazes faisaient partie des morts.