COVID-19 push children out of school. Children are facing severe hardships in Angola, they are forced to sell food and other goods on the street in order to feed their families.
Families already struggling to put food on the table were forced into difficult choices, like reducing their exposure to coronavirus by staying at home and going hungry, or going out to find work.
Our today's guest is Manuel, he will share with us his challenges in this time of Covid-19 pandemic.
Hello, My name is Manuel Nelson, I'm here to talk about how the pandemic has affected me.
When the pandemic started, I stopped studying, and at home things got really hard. Now I'm here selling chicken.
I'm asking for help to get my school reopened. Since this pandemic emerged, life has become very difficult, I really wanted to study but life forces me to sell chicken on the streets. Life is very hard, this crisis.
COVID-19 has deepened a food, education and healthcare crisis affecting the poorest and most vulnerable communities in Angola. Thousands of children need help to survive and stay in school. This crisis increased since the coronavirus pandemic swept the world.
Access to healthy and nutritious food is becoming increasingly difficult across the country, the amount of support required for a typical family to meet their basic needs has more than quadrupled.
Millions of families are being forced to make difficult decisions about buying food or paying for healthcare or education, as they can no longer afford them all. COVID-19 is squeezing an already vulnerable population. It’s vital we don’t forget them.
This is the first and the only Coronavirus show in Angola where the most ordinary citizens show their brilliant talents.
The heroes of the program are the most ordinary citizens - they share with the audience their songs, poems and real stories of how the Coronavirus pandemic affected their lives.
As the red sun sets over a remote part of Zambia’s Central Province, the sky suddenly fills with the sound of fluttering wings and then turns black.
An estimated 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats fill the evening air.
The enormous colony – the largest mammal migration in the world, according to experts at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology – is made up of Africa’s second-largest fruit bats.
During the day, the bats roost in the thick swamp along the Musola River, part of Kasanka National Park, which is home to more than 470 bird species and 100 mammals. As sunset comes, they set off to look for wild berries and fruits, covering about 50km (32 miles) and returning back to their swamp roost at dawn.
The spectacle only takes place twice a year, between October and December. But experts say the near-threatened bats, crucial for restoring Africa’s forests, are in danger.
Straw-coloured fruit bats, dubbed “the gardeners of Africa”, are important for the regeneration of woodland forest and Indigenous fruit trees.
They travel thousands of kilometres as a migratory species, but much is still unknown about their migratory routes or why they congregate in such large numbers at Kasanka.
But as pristine areas and national parks become threatened, their habitats are disappearing.
Protecting the park
James Mwanza, community outreach manager at Kasanka Trust, which manages the park, says commercial agriculture is the main threat to natural resources which the bats and communities surrounding the park depend on.
Already, 10,000 hectares (24,711 acres) of pristine forest inside a 5km (3.2-mile) buffer zone around the park prohibited for development within the Kafinda game management area, has been cleared for commercial farming, according to Mwanza.
“In the game management area, humans and animals co-exist, but we ensure a buffer zone,” he said, where there is supposed to be, “no farms, no settlements, no activity”.
This is to prevent illnesses such as foot and mouth disease from spreading from wild animals and to protect the forest from illegal deforestation or poaching.
“But that’s not the way things are being done,” Mwanza said.
To prevent illegal deforestation and encroachment, Kasanka Trust has been working with the local community to enable them to legally own 60,000 hectares (148,263 acres) of forest surrounding the park.
Churchill Musungwa is a voluntary community forest guard, as well as a farmer. After seeing the forest around his home destroyed, his community was supported by Kasanka Trust to legally own the land.
“If we don’t have any trees, no forest, it’s not only us the people but even the birds, the animals – we are suffering at the same time,” he said.
Nyambe Kalaluka, environmental education officer at the trust, said other threats include poaching, illegal fishing, deforestation and unsustainable farming.
“We tried to mitigate that through community forests and other initiatives,” he said. “Around Kasanka National Park … people mostly get their livelihood out of the forest.
“So if they protect their community forest, then it is easier for them to be stewards to their children. The first step is to engage the community, we talk to [them] on the importance of having an area which is to their name, and an area where they can use as a community. They can be responsible because they can have the sense of ownership towards the forest.”
‘Alarming’ deforestation
Deforestation is a major issue across Zambia. The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Lusaka estimates that the country loses an “alarming” 250,000 to 300,000 hectares (617,763 to 741,316 acres) of forest per year to fuel wood and charcoal production, and clearing for agriculture.
As Zambia largely relies on hydroelectric power, a recent drought has exacerbated demand for fuel, with an estimated 90 percent of the population depending on wood for energy.
Combined with population increase and overuse of agricultural land in some areas, human migration in search of virgin forest areas such as Kasanka is a natural consequence, explained CIFOR’s Davion Gumbo.
“The [deforestation] trend is upward,” he said. “It’s not only deforestation alone, but degradation … related to the qualitative loss of the forest. The loss of those materials has got an effect in terms of biodiversity,” added Gumbo, citing agricultural expansion and people opening up the forest to plant crops as the main causes.
“We would like to see communities get involved and obtain benefits from their participation. Communities … need to be educated … to see the attributes that are in these resources beyond just seeing firewood and charcoal.”
Lack of government funding for law enforcement to protect natural resources, from commercial interests as well as poverty-based activities such as illegal charcoal production, is a key challenge, said Gumbo.
“When it comes to the dollar or kwacha to support those activities on the ground, that’s where there has been reluctance.”
The 79-year-old Nigerian activist and founding member of the UK’s Black Panther Movement, Sam Sagay, looks back on a life of Black Power in Britain and Nigeria.
In March 1968, the streets surrounding Trafalgar Square in central London were crowded with an estimated 10,000 people demonstrating against the Vietnam War.
It was during these protests that Sam Arugha Sagay, a Nigerian student, and other anti-war activists stormed into the South African embassy to confront “the white power structure” of the Apartheid regime, which they saw as facilitating racism and war around the world.
Back on the streets, headlining activist and actress Vanessa Redgrave was leading the march to the police-blockaded American embassy in Grosvenor Square, where she famously delivered an anti-war petition addressed to the ambassador.
Despite the protests being mostly remembered for the violent clashes which ensued, they also embodied an era where the student, counterculture and Black Power movements united in opposition to the establishment. This was one of the many occasions on which Sagay, a founding member of the Black Panther movement in the United Kingdom, would take direct action against authority.
Coming to Britain in 1964, Sagay, who was born in Nigeria in 1941, could not have foreseen the political education and experience he would gain in the years to come. From his involvement in student politics to standing up at Speakers’ Corner at London’s Hyde Park Corner, and his role in establishing the British Black Panther movement, Sagay promoted Black Power ideology and argued for the need for revolutionary pan-Africanism.
Sagay was born to a family of seven children in Sapele, Delta State, where his father worked as a teacher and his mother tended to the family home. His primary and secondary school education was spent in his childhood town but, a year after finishing school, he moved to Ibadan in Oyo State where he was hired by the Federal Ministry of Labour to work in its western region headquarters in 1960.
Two years later, Sagay was sent to the Nigerian capital, Lagos, before eventually being transferred to work in London in 1964 when he was 23 years old.
Sam Sagay in London [Photo courtesy of Sam Sagay]
There, Sagay first moved in with his friend, Tony Izelien, in Brixton, south London. He later rented a property in Victoria, central London, from a gentleman who, he says, “took a liking” to him, because the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt had been named after the landlord’s relative, Colonial Secretary Viscount Lewis Harcourt.He attended Wandsworth College and the University of Westminster. While there, he became the office manager for the London Organisation for Student Community Action, before assuming the role of manager at the University of London Union on Malet Street near Tottenham Court Road.
Reflecting on his time at university in London, Sagay says he recalls feeling like an outsider and “living the life of a Black student in a white society”. Racism, as he remembers, was prevalent in all aspects of British society, although within the university space it was “more subtle” and harder to articulate.
Sagay says he found the nature of British racism to be somewhat insidious. “You know the British people [can be] very subtle. They operate in a very subtle manner so you would not even know the evils in their mind,” he says.
From 1965, Sagay began attending Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner where he was introduced to a host of rebels such as Nigerian playwright, Obi Egbuna, Dominican activist Eddie LeCointe, Guyanese orator Roy Sawh and the infamous Trinidadian revolutionary, Michael X.
Speaker’s Corner quickly became a platform for Sagay’s political beliefs as he joined his comrades in speaking about Black nationalism and pan-Africanism. His newfound friends were an eclectic mix of radical figures who fought against racism with differing approaches and skill-sets.
Sam Sagay speaking to an audience in London in the 1960s [Photo courtesy of Sam Sagay]
For someone who witnessed and participated in some of history’s biggest social movements for change, Sagay is today a remarkably humble and unassuming man. Speaking at his home in Benin City in Nigeria’s Edo State, his eyes light up as he recounts stories about his old friends. He recalls Sawh as being a “good speaker” with Trotskyite politics. X, on the other hand, was a well-established activist “but not of high intellectual abilities”.During the late 1960s, X had become a controversial figure within Black circles due to his pimping of prostituted women and other “hustling” activities. These ranged from conning local residents to financially exploiting white liberals, like John Lennon, to secure funding for community projects.
X was also shamed for his working relationship with exploitative landlord Peter Rachman. Notorious for renting dilapidated properties to West London’s Black community, the “slum landlord” charged extortionate rents and used Black rent collectors, such as X, to intimidate tenants.
Despite the controversy surrounding X’s position in Black society, Sagay says, “He had some die-hard supporters in Notting Hill. Michael was more or less a doyen in the area. There’s no doubting that he was conscious and believed in Black liberation.” However, when it came to “intellectual grasp”, Sagay says X fell short.
Activist, revolutionary and Black Power leader Michael de Freitas aka Michael X (1933-1975) on August 31, 1967 [Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Black Power
In July 1967, with the political turmoil of the Vietnam War raging in the background, a radical congress was convened at the Camden Roundhouse in north London, a popular haunt at the time during the 1960s countercultural scene. The event, titled the “Dialectics of Liberation”, was a meeting of radical academics and activists such as Herbert Marcuse, Allen Ginsberg and Joseph Berke. The headlining speaker of this congress was the African American activist, Stokely Carmichael.
There, Carmichael urged Black Britons to take anti-racist action and called for the creation of militant Black Power in the UK which could serve as an effective opposition to the racist politics of the white British establishment. Sagay recalls Carmichael “articulating our feelings, [both] in Britain [and] in America”. The message was that “Black people were suffering the same thing” and Black Power was the only way forward.
Stokely Carmichael speaks in support of Black Power at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse in London on June 25, 1967 [Serena Wadham/Keystone/Getty Images]
Sagay and his activist comrades escorted Carmichael around London, entranced and energised by the American activist’s words. It was following this visit, Sagay says, that the British Black Power movement was truly crystallised. Anti-racist organisations such as the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) and the Universal Coloured People’s Association (UCPA) had preceded the congress, but neither group had yet adopted Black Power ideology.Black Power organisations, which emerged following the congress, adopted militant stances against capitalism, racism and colonialism. Unlike the groups which preceded them, Black Power organisations refused merely to act as parliamentary lobbyists, which they viewed as ineffective and, instead, formed grassroots movements with much more radical demands. These groups included the Black Liberation Front, Black Unity and Freedom Party, and the Racial Adjustment Action Society.
Just days after Stokely’s visit in the summer of 1967, Sagay’s friend, the Nigerian playwright, Obi Egbuna, was invited to the annual general meeting of the UCPA and elected chairman. It took just two months for the organisation to get on board with the new ideology and publish a manifesto titled “Black Power in Britain”, which stylistically matched the philosophies of Black radical groups in the US.
A special edition of Black Power Speaks featuring a message from Kwame Nkrumah (July 1968) [Photo courtesy of George Padmore Institute]
‘They were afraid of us’
In April 1968, following a networking visit to the US, Egbuna turned down the chairmanship after being re-elected, and announced that he would be forming the Black Panther Movement (BPM). Sagay, who was still studying at university, became the secretary of the organisation and undertook duties such as managing its monthly magazine, Black Power Speaks.
The BPM organised demonstrations, produced Black Power literature and canvassed door-to-door in London’s Black communities such as Ladbroke Grove and Brixton. A major preoccupation, however, was police brutality in Britain, which largely resulted in Black men being racially profiled and targeted, beaten up or having drugs planted on them.
Sagay recalls police abuses as having been particularly bad for his Black peers living in West London’s Notting Hill. This abuse included racialised uses of stop-and-search, the framing of Black people for crimes and persistent harassment of Black establishments such as the Mangrove Restaurant, which served Caribbean food on All Saints Road. For many in the Black community, police racism was a daily occurrence.
Edward Heath, leader of the Conservative Party, listens as Enoch Powell, right, addresses delegates during the session of the annual Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, England on October 19, 1967 [AP Photo/ Harris]
One figure that Sagay and his comrades protested against was MP Enoch Powell, who courted controversy in April 1968 at the general meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre. His speech at the meeting became known as the “Rivers of Blood” speech, during which he strongly criticised rates of immigration to the UK, especially from New Commonwealth countries. Powell also stood against the proposed anti-discrimination legislation, the Race Relations Bill, which was passed that year and made it illegal to refuse housing, jobs or public services to anyone on the basis of colour, race or origins.In its foundational years, the BPM was a male-dominated group, largely consisting of West Indians, Black Africans and South Asians who coalesced under the notion of “political blackness” – an umbrella term which united all Black people through their shared experience of racism.
“We fought the common problem of racism, [which was] especially incited by Enoch Powell – the devil,” Sagay says now. “We reacted to those kinds of things with our formation of the BPM, in line with what was happening in America.”
Special edition of Black Power Speaks featuring a message from Kwame Nkrumah (July 1968} [Photo courtesy of George Padmore Institute]
In July 1968, Egbuna, at that time still the chair of the recently formed BPM, was arrested for allegedly inciting murder of policemen in his pamphlet entitled “What to Do If Cops Lay Their Hands On A Black Man At The Speaker’s Corner”. Encouraging collective self-defence, the leaflet stated: “The moment the cops lay their hands on a Black brother, it is the duty of [the] Black crowd [to] surge forward like one big Black steam roller to catch up with the cop … till the brother is rescued, freed and made to flee at once.”The document was alleged to have been handed over to the police by a printer-turned-informer. Following Egbuna’s arrest, there was an increase in incidents of police stop-and-search of Black activists at Speakers’ Corner which resulted in Sagay being accosted on two occasions. “On my way to Hyde Park Corner I was arrested [and] searched unnecessarily. They found nothing on me [but] that’s post-Egbuna’s provocative statement,” he says. He believes it was an impulsive response to the Black Panther Movement by the police: “They were afraid of us.”
The Mangrove was a Caribbean restaurant on All Saints Road in Ladbroke Grove, London, that was repeatedly raided by police, prompting a protest march by locals [Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty images]
Black Panthers are born
The BPM had branches in north, south and west London. While the exact numbers of those who joined remain unknown, former Panther and dub-poet Linton Kwesi Johnson has estimated that each branch was unlikely to have exceeded 100 members at their height. Referencing the BPM’s links to other Black groups in cities such as Nottingham, Bristol, and Manchester, Johnson remarks that “our presence was greater than our membership”.
While the mainstream media tended to portray the BPM as violent extremists, white countercultural magazines such as OZ, International Times and INK supported the Panthers’ anti-authoritarian commitments. Despite this, the BPM largely avoided external media, preferring to produce organisational newsletters such as the Black People’s News Service and later Freedom News.
The pinnacle of the Panthers’ strength was during the 1970 Mangrove Nine trial, which included prominent members of the BPM, such as Altheia Jones-Lecointe, Darcus Howe and Barbara Beese. Following a community demonstration against police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant in Ladbroke Grove, nine defendants were falsely charged with riot and affray.
The owners of the Mangrove restaurant after their court appearance at Kensington Petty Sessions on August 15, 1970. (From left to right) Roy Hemmings, Jean Cabussel and Frank Crichlow. The restaurant was at the centre of a Black Power demonstration after being subjected to numerous police raids [Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
During this trial, the nine captured public attention due to their appeal for an all-Black jury and their decision for three members to self-represent in court. Their strong defence strategy, the support of countercultural publications and the solidarity shown by the wider BPM network, resulted in the acquittal of their most serious charges and an unprecedented finding of racism within the Metropolitan police by the judge.Reflecting on the alliances made between different radical movements during the 1960s and 70s, Sagay says that the Vietnam War was “the spark that brought everybody together”. He recalls three issues being most prevalent among his circle of activists: the war, struggles for student representation and racism. Despite being focused on his studies, Sagay says: “I wasn’t a dormant student, I was an activist.”
Sagay remembers there being a distinction between Africans within the Black Power movement and West Indians. He says that the former had come to Britain to study, with a clear goal to return to their home countries, while the West Indian community had largely settled in Britain. Consequently, he views this distinction as having led West Indians to take up the racial struggle in the UK with greater vehemence.
“Our political orientation was towards our countries, especially Nigeria, one of the biggest Black nations,” he says. “We were ready to change things there.”
Black Panther Movement at the Mangrove demonstration in 1970 [Photo courtesy of National Archives UK]
A mission to ‘bring down capitalism’
Reflecting on his youthful radicalism, Sagay laughs as he reminisces about his early mission to “bring down capitalism” and eliminate racism. “That was our mental attitude at the time, but actually our political orientation moved towards our [home] country.” Ultimately, Black students like him became more concerned with the politics of the African continent.
A protest in solidarity with Anguilla against the British invasion of the island, supported by the Black Panther Movement, at Piccadilly Circus in London on March 24, 1969 [Daily Express/Pictorial Parade/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Sagay, along with a group of youths sponsored by Nkrumah, was sent around Europe and the USSR for “political training”, a subject which Sagay is reluctant to speak in detail about today. The alleged goal: to reinstate Nkrumah to power in Ghana and enforce pan-Africanism on the African continent. They were considered the “field soldiers for Nkrumah”, but in 1972, Sagay notes: “The old man died before realising his dream.”
Homecoming
The pressures of being a student and engaging in political activism took its toll on Sagay and some of his colleagues.
“We were all students, so we had to [ensure we could] continue with our studies,” he says. “It’s no use wasting our time in Britain, its better go back home and deal with our own problems.”
Sagay withdrew from the BPM in 1970 to focus on his studies, and two years later he moved back to Nigeria, feeling that it was “better to go back home and deal with the problem [there than stay] in Britain”.
Sam Sagay as a young man in London and in his later years in Nigeria [Photos courtesy of Sam Sagay]
On his return to Nigeria in 1972, Sagay’s political engagement continued when he joined Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), which he deemed the most progressive party at the time.UPN was a far cry from the Black Panther politics Sagay had engaged with in Britain, but he recognises the complexities involved in trying to instil Black Power ideologies in his home country. The country was just “too big and too diverse”.
“You see, [UPN had] a situation where we were trying to position ourselves into realising our dreams as it were – the dreams of the Black ideology – but with Nigeria being a very big and diverse country our efforts never materialised,” he says. “Within the states we controlled – Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Ondo and Bendel – we did our best to make sure that the Black identity was properly established.”
Despite UPN losing out on a federal seat, it won the Bendel State governorship election in 1979 with Ambrose Ali as the party candidate. Sagay subsequently served as Ali’s campaign manager and chief of staff for three years until February 1982, when, Sagay says, he was “sacked for opposing the government on several issues of tribalism and corruption”. This followed Ali appointing his inexperienced uncle as a secretary, unfairly awarding government contracts and “dishonouring promises made during [the] campaign”.
“We fought against Ali’s second term as governorship candidate for the party, but he bought his way to victory,” says Sagay. Reflecting on his own move to the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Sagay recalls that some members of UPN “moved to the opposition party”, led at the time by the progressive candidate, Samuel Ogbemudia, who succeeded Ali as Bendel State governor in October 1983.
‘A pale reflection of the white man’
When it comes to African politics today, Sagay argues that at the root of the continent’s problems is the “cultural deviation from traditional African culture” because of colonialism. He points out that the West “de-culturalised” Africans and left Black “surrogates” in charge of the continent. “The Africans need to rediscover their own culture,” Sagay says. But he also says that once this traditional culture is embraced – it has yet to be so – it must be revolutionised to suit the context of today.
“Africans have a very serious problem arising from the fact that they have been de-culturalised. Today the African [leader] is a pale reflection of the white man,” he says. “That has been our problem and that’s the problem in all the African countries today. [Africans] have not rediscovered themselves. No matter what kind of leader we have, the fact that he has lost his cultural background means that he has to be a surrogate.”
This cultural restoration is what will enable the African nations to prosper, according to Sagay. “In as much as Western culture is dominant in [Nigeria], we can only progress [not] develop,” he says. “Because the foundations on which we are supposed to develop is [the] white man’s structure. All our orientation is to catch up with the white man – and we cannot because by the time we move two steps, the white man will have moved 10 steps ahead. So, we are in a position of [constantly] wanting to catch up.”
Using linguistics as an analogy for Africa’s structural problems, Sagay argues that Africans are “talking to the white man in his own language and you can never speak the language better than him, because you are a student. He who is a master is always the leader [and] he can always change the rules when he wants. By the time he feels you are getting too close to him, he changes the rules.”
Sagay would like to see a return to pre-colonial belief systems in Africa. He says: “Asian countries kept their language [and] religion. These two principal factors are absent in Africa. And if you look at the world map anywhere there is Christianity outside Europe there is poverty.”
For Sagay, Walter Rodney’s 1972 classic, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, remains a relevant and vital text. It argued that European governments strategically exploited Africa, during the 19th and 20th centuries, in order to develop the global north, to the detriment of Africa.
‘Mandela and Mbeki are not my heroes’
Sagay remains critical of the consecutive African leaders who have assumed office across the continent and complicitly worked within Western structures. He is particularly scathing about those African heroes who have been lauded by Westerners.
Speaking with a tone of anger and disappointment, Sagay says: “People glamorise [Nelson] Mandela, people glamorise [Thambo] Mbeki. Those to me are stooges. If they had allowed African revolutionaries from the jungle to take over government in South Africa [things would be different], but of course white people package [them] as great Africans. They use that publicity and sell them to us as heroes. They are not my heroes.”
“Without a revolution, we cannot move forward,” Sagay says. His vision for Africa is one based on the premise of pan-Africanism. In his assessment, Western colonialism facilitated and exacerbated notions of tribalism to prevent African unity and revolutionary action. The working class, Sagay states, must be the ones leading the charge, as opposed to the bourgeoisie or military.
At the time of our interview, Nigeria’s EndSARS movement had gained significant momentum, with the country’s youth taking to the streets to protest against police brutality and the government’s repression of citizens.
“End Sars”, referring to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad police unit, reads on a demonstrator’s t-shirt sitting on a vehicle during a protest over alleged police brutality in Lagos, Nigeria October 15, 2020 [Seun Sanni/Reuters]
Sagay expresses his profound happiness and pride at the action being taken by Nigerian activists. “We should hail them, we should honour them,” he says. According to him, “This struggle is not going to end no matter what the establishment does. Consciousness [has] spread, and if you can sustain it for some time, you will see a change. It is my prayer that there will be a change.”The non-hierarchical nature of the EndSARS movement feels more promising for Sagay. “Leadership at this stage is not best, [as governments] will compromise the leader,” he states. He explains how poverty among Nigerian youths makes them vulnerable to state manipulation or bribery. Leaders, he argues, “will in due course emerge” but at the moment “nobody wants an armchair leader”.
Despite being a dual citizen, Sagay has not been back to Britain since 1972 and states that “he has never thought” of returning. Instead, he has chosen to settle in Benin City, where he and his ex-wife raised their daughter, Gbone. Today, Sagay says that he mostly just enjoys spending time with his family and watching his three grandchildren grow up.
Now in his 80th year, Sagay remains hopeful that he will live to see true change for Black people in Africa and around the world. “I’m on my way out. I’ve done my bit, but I still want to see the results of my efforts.” Referencing the numerous books, he has written, Sagay contends that “even if people don’t accept it now, time will come. They will see the sensibility in what I have been saying.
France will not condition weapons sales to Egypt on human rights concerns, French President Emmanuel Macron said after meeting with his Egyptian counterpart in Paris on Monday.
Macron told a joint press conference with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that he had brought up the issue of human rights during their discussions and said he remained “a constant advocate of democratic and social openness”.
But he ruled out conditioning France’s deepening defence and trade ties with Egypt on the issue of rights.
“I won’t make our defence and economic cooperation conditional upon these [human rights] disagreements,” he said. “I think it is more effective to have a policy of dialogue than a policy of boycott, which would reduce the effectiveness of one of our partners in the fight against terrorism and for regional stability.”
Amnesty International’s Egypt and Libya researcher Hussein Baoumi accused Macron of failing to hold el-Sisi to account.
“Macron’s message sends a very dangerous message to Egypt, because it’s basically reiterating that actual cooperation between the two countries won’t be impacted by the human rights situation in Egypt,” Baoumi told Al Jazeera from the Tunisian capital, Tunis.
“It’s also a very dangerous message because from the Egyptian government’s point of view, ‘counterterrorism’ means arresting peaceful human rights defenders, it means arresting peaceful protesters, it means subjecting them to very dire conditions, it means enforcing disappearances and it means torture in order to extract confessions.”
Activists had been calling on Macron to press el-Sisi on his handling of human rights, but the French leader claimed he did not want to weaken Cairo’s ability to counter armed groups in the region amid concerns over Libya, domestic security and instability across the Sahel.
France views its partnership with Egypt as critical to containing armed groups operating in the Sinai peninsula and Libya.
Macron hosted el-Sisi, whom he referred to as his “friend”, for talks on the second day of the Egyptian’s three-day state visit to France.
Dozens of political detainees are on death row in Egypt, and thousands are believed to be imprisoned.
Prior to el-Sisi’s visit, more than a dozen human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urged Macron to end his “unconditional support for the Egyptian government”.
French officials dismissed the criticism, saying the government had a policy of avoiding public declarations about other countries’ rights records and instead raising concerns in private.
El-Sisi has overseen the largest crackdown on civil society in Egypt in living memory, jailing thousands of pro-democracy activists, reversing freedoms won in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, silencing critics and placing draconian rules on rights groups.
Weapons supplier
Between 2013 and 2017, France was the main weapons supplier to Egypt.
Those contracts have dried up, including deals for more Rafale fighter jets and warships that had been at an advanced stage.
Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said el-Sisi’s visit to France was aimed at “reviving” the Egyptian-French relationship.
“Macron said that human rights were extremely important and that Egypt as a democracy should respect civil liberties and have a strong civil society,” Butler said, “but that Egypt remained a very important partner for France on many other issues, including what they call counterterrorism in the region.”
She added that campaigners were very worried about the so-called red carpet treatment el-Sisi enjoyed, “because they say … the strategic partnership between Paris and Cairo is a betrayal of French values because Egypt’s human rights record is so poor.”
France and Egypt have cultivated closer economic and military ties during el-Sisi’s rise to power. The 66-year-old president seized office after leading the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.
One person has died and more than 400 have been taken to hospital in southern India due to an unidentified infection that caused many to fall unconscious following seizures and nausea, according to a senior health department official.
The illness was detected on Saturday evening in Eluru, an ancient city in Andhra Pradesh state famous for its hand-woven products.
Since then, patients have experienced symptoms ranging from nausea and anxiety to loss of consciousness, doctors said.
Government and medical authorities in Andhra Pradesh said more than 200 people were discharged at the weekend and that tests had ruled out COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Further serological tests are under way.
Separately, India’s federal health ministry said on Monday it would send a team of three medical experts to investigate the outbreak, which it said has infected more than 300 children.
“The children reportedly suffered from dizziness, fainting spells, headache and vomiting,” the ministry said, adding that a door-to-door survey was also under way.
A 45-year-old man who was hospitalised with symptoms similar to epilepsy and nausea died on Sunday evening, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
So far, water samples from affected areas have not shown any signs of contamination, and the chief minister’s office said people not linked to the municipal water supply have also fallen ill.
State Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy visited a government hospital and met patients.
Opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu demanded on Twitter an “impartial, full-fledged inquiry into the incident”.
Andhra Pradesh is among the states hit worst by COVID-19, with more than 800,000 detected cases. The health system in the state, like the rest of India, has been frayed by the coronavirus.
Seven officials at a Pakistan hospital in the northwestern city of Peshawar have been suspended a day after at least seven COVID-19 patients died due to a shortage of oxygen supply.
Farhad Khan, spokesman at Khyber Teaching Hospital, said on Sunday that the patients died on Saturday night when the vendor who supplies the hospital with medical oxygen failed to arrive on time.
Khan told AFP that a disruption in oxygen supplies affected some 200 people, including nearly 100 with coronavirus.
The chronic oxygen deficiency “went unnoticed, unsupervised and unchecked,” a preliminary report said late on Sunday, adding that no backup oxygen supply had been put in place.
The hospital director was among those suspended with immediate effect.
Taimur Saleem Jhagra, a provincial health minister, told AFP that authorities will hold a second detailed inquiry over the next five days.
Health officials move the body of a victim who reportedly died of COVID-19, at a hospital in Abbottabad [File: Sultan Dogar/EPA]
“The hospital was low on oxygen from around 8pm in the evening, how come they couldn’t manage to solve the issue until after 12pm?” Jhagra said.“Some of the staff were off, some were absent and there wasn’t any alternate arrangements, even the emergency squad was not available,” he added.
Pakistan has reported more than 400,000 cases of coronavirus – including more than 8,000 deaths – since it arrived in late February.
Intensive care units in hospitals across the country are now almost full, with provincial governments struggling to deal with the soaring caseload.
An international cocaine drug trafficking group has been dismantled, the Criminal Investigation Department (SIC) said Monday.
The seven-member gang, including one Portuguese citizen, who operated from Luanda’s Palanca urban district, Kilamba Kiaxi municipality, was detained last Thursday.
An alleged Lieutenant of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), along with a police officer, was described as the leader of the group.
The drugs were transported from the Guarulhos Airport, São Paulo (Brazil), by passengers (called as mule), in commercial flights belonging to the Angola Airlines (TAAG), bound for Luanda’s “4 de Fevereiro” International Airport.
Speaking to the press, the official of the Institutional and Press Office of SIC, superintend Manuel Halaiwa, said that the gang had links in Angola, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Portugal.
SIC seized last November six kilograms of cocaine at the 4 de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda.
Sam Sagay in London [Photo courtesy of Sam Sagay]
Sam Sagay speaking to an audience in London in the 1960s [Photo courtesy of Sam Sagay]
Activist, revolutionary and Black Power leader Michael de Freitas aka Michael X (1933-1975) on August 31, 1967 [Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Stokely Carmichael speaks in support of Black Power at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse in London on June 25, 1967 [Serena Wadham/Keystone/Getty Images]
A special edition of Black Power Speaks featuring a message from Kwame Nkrumah (July 1968) [Photo courtesy of George Padmore Institute]
Edward Heath, leader of the Conservative Party, listens as Enoch Powell, right, addresses delegates during the session of the annual Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, England on October 19, 1967 [AP Photo/ Harris]
Special edition of Black Power Speaks featuring a message from Kwame Nkrumah (July 1968} [Photo courtesy of George Padmore Institute]
The Mangrove was a Caribbean restaurant on All Saints Road in Ladbroke Grove, London, that was repeatedly raided by police, prompting a protest march by locals [Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty images]
The owners of the Mangrove restaurant after their court appearance at Kensington Petty Sessions on August 15, 1970. (From left to right) Roy Hemmings, Jean Cabussel and Frank Crichlow. The restaurant was at the centre of a Black Power demonstration after being subjected to numerous police raids [Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Black Panther Movement at the Mangrove demonstration in 1970 [Photo courtesy of National Archives UK]
A protest in solidarity with Anguilla against the British invasion of the island, supported by the Black Panther Movement, at Piccadilly Circus in London on March 24, 1969 [Daily Express/Pictorial Parade/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Sam Sagay as a young man in London and in his later years in Nigeria [Photos courtesy of Sam Sagay]
“End Sars”, referring to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad police unit, reads on a demonstrator’s t-shirt sitting on a vehicle during a protest over alleged police brutality in Lagos, Nigeria October 15, 2020 [Seun Sanni/Reuters]
Health officials move the body of a victim who reportedly died of COVID-19, at a hospital in Abbottabad [File: Sultan Dogar/EPA]
