Macron recognises French ‘responsibility’ in Rwanda genocide

In a visit to Kigali, the French president says his country asks Rwanda for forgiveness over its role in the 1994 killings.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a visit to Rwanda, has said France recognised its “responsibility” in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, asking for forgiveness for his country’s role but without offering an official apology.

His comments on Thursday came during a solemn speech at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where 250,000 victims of the mass killings are buried.

Some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu militias in 100 days of bloodletting that began in April 1994. The genocide ended in July 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by current President Kagame, swept in from Uganda and seized control of the country.

Macron said France did not listen to those who warned it about the impending massacre in Rwanda and stood de facto by a “genocidal regime”.

“Standing here today, with humility and respect, by your side, I have come to recognise our responsibilities,” he said, adding, however, that France “was not an accomplice” to the genocide.

Macron said France had a duty to admit the “suffering it inflicted on the Rwandan people by too long valuing silence over the examination of the truth”.

He added that only those who had survived the horrors “can maybe forgive; give us the gift of forgiveness”.

For his part, Kagame hailed Macron’s speech.

“His words were something more valuable than an apology. They were the truth,” he told a joint press conference after the two leaders met in Kigali.

While Macron’s comments went further than his predecessors, many in Rwanda were hoping for a full apology.

Ibuka, the country’s main genocide survivor group, said it was disappointed did not “present a clear apology”. Egide Nkuranga, president of the association, said Macron did not “ask forgiveness”, but he “really tried to explain the genocide, how it happened, what they didn’t do, their responsibilities … It’s very important, it shows that he understands us.”

Macron’s visit follows the release in March of a report by a French inquiry panel that said a colonial attitude had blinded French officials and the government bore a “serious and overwhelming” responsibility for not foreseeing the slaughter. However, the report absolved France of direct complicity in the killings.

Kagame, who has previously said France participated in the genocide, said last week that the report “meant a lot” to people in his country.

Rwandans could “maybe not forget, but forgive”, France for its role, said Kagame, a Tutsi and the main power in Rwandan politics since his rebel army ended the killings by death squads loyal to the Hutu-led government.

Macron agreed in April to open the Rwanda archives of former President Francois Mitterrand, who was in charge during the genocide. Shortly afterwards, Rwanda released its own report that found France was aware a genocide was being prepared and bore responsibility for enabling it, continuing in its unwavering support for Rwanda’s then-President, Juvenal Habyarimana.

It was the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane, killing the president, that unleashed the frenzy of killings.

“French officials armed, advised, trained, equipped, and protected the Rwandan government,” the report said. France then proceeded to cover up its role for years, it added.

Al Jazeera’s Malcolm Webb, reporting from Kigali, said Macron was “between a rock and a hard place, to some extent”.

“He has to think about France’s interests in Africa generally and here in Rwanda there’s definitely a requirement to win the allegiance of Paul Kagame and the government to make the French narrative now match the narrative of RPF,” added Webb, noting that narratives around the genocide and the events of the 1990s are still controversial and contested.

“On the other hand, Macron has an election coming up in France and he has to stave off critique from the far right,” Webb said. “If he’d apologised here, that very likely would have been attacked by the far right and would not have been appreciated by powerful people in the military.”

From Rwanda, Macron will travel to South Africa, where he will meet President Cyril Ramaphosa to discuss COVID-19 and regional crises.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

………………………………………………………………

WhatsApp sues Indian gov’t on privacy concerns: Report

The case asks the Delhi High Court to declare one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights, Reuters reported.

WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in Delhi against the Indian government seeking to block regulations coming into force on Wednesday that experts say would compel the California-based Facebook unit to break privacy protections, sources said.

The case, described to Reuters by people familiar with it, asks the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights in India’s constitution since it requires social media companies to identify the “first originator of information” when authorities demand it.

While the law requires WhatsApp to unmask only people credibly accused of wrongdoing, the company says it cannot do that alone in practice. Because messages are end-to-end encrypted, to comply with the law WhatsApp says it would have break encryption for receivers, as well as “originators”, of messages.

Reuters, which first reported the story on Wednesday, could not independently confirm the complaint had been filed in court by WhatsApp, which has nearly 400 million users in India, nor when it might be reviewed by the court. Those with knowledge of the matter declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

A WhatsApp spokesman declined to comment.

A government official said WhatsApp could find a way to track originators of disinformation, a longstanding stance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, and that the company was not being asked to break encryption.

India’s technology ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Escalating tensions

The lawsuit escalates a growing struggle between Modi’s government and tech giants including Facebook, Google parent Alphabet and Twitter in one of their key global growth markets.

Tensions grew after a police visit to Twitter’s offices earlier this week. The micro-blogging service had labelled posts by a spokesman for the dominant party and others as containing “manipulated media”, saying forged content was included.

The government has also pressed the tech companies to remove not only what it has described as misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging India, but also some criticism of the government’s response to the crisis, which is claiming thousands of lives daily.

The response of the companies to the new rules has been a subject of intense speculation since they were unveiled in February, 90 days before they were slated to go into effect.

The Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, promulgated by India’s technology ministry, designates “significant social media intermediaries” as standing to lose protection from lawsuits and criminal prosecution if they fail to adhere to the code.

WhatsApp, its parent Facebook and tech rivals have all invested heavily in India. But company officials worry privately that increasingly heavy-handed regulation by the Modi government could jeopardize those prospects.

New rules

Among the new rules are requirements that big social media firms appoint Indian citizens to key compliance roles, remove content within 36 hours of a legal order, and set up a mechanism to respond to complaints. They must also use automated processes to take down pornography.

Facebook has said that it agrees with most of the provisions but is still looking to negotiate some aspects. Twitter, which has come under the most fire for failing to take down posts by government critics, declined to comment.

Some in the industry are hoping for a delay in the introduction of the new rules while such objections are heard.

The WhatsApp complaint cites a 2017 Indian Supreme Court ruling supporting privacy in a case known as the Puttaswamy judgement, people familiar with it said.

The court found then that privacy must be preserved except in cases where legality, necessity and proportionality all weighed against it. WhatsApp argues that the law fails all three of those tests, starting with the lack of explicit parliamentary backing.

Experts have backed WhatsApp’s arguments.

“The new traceability and filtering requirements may put an end to end-to-end encryption in India,” Stanford Internet Observatory scholar Riana Pfefferkorn wrote in March.

Other court challenges to the new rules are already pending in Delhi and elsewhere.

In one, journalists argue that the extension of technology regulations to digital publishers, including the imposition of decency and taste standards, is unsupported by the underlying law.

SOURCE: REUTERS

………………………………………………………………

Signs point to shift in combating sexual assault in military

WASHINGTON (AP) — Momentum in Congress for taking sexual assault prosecution powers away from military commanders, combined with a more flexible view by some military leaders, is pointing to a historic shift in the battle against what Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calls “the scourge of sexual assault.”

The leading lawmaker voice on this issue, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, has bipartisan, filibuster-proof support for a bill that would take prosecution decisions out of the chain of command for major crimes, including sexual assault, rape and murder. The legislation is caught in a procedural struggle in the Senate that supporters see as an effort to stall the bill and water down its language.

The Pentagon appears resigned to a new approach. Austin, who has emphasized the importance of the issue since his nomination was confirmed in January, is weighing military service leaders’ views, which some or all provided to him in recent days.For years, military leaders have acknowledged sexual assault is a big problem but resisted taking prosecutions out of the chain of command; they have argued that it would undermine commanders’ ability to lead and would not reduce the frequency of assaults. That concern — and others — remains, but some leaders have begun publicly emphasizing their openness to change.The Biden administration’s nominee as Air Force secretary, Frank Kendall, indicated he’s prepared for a new approach“Change is necessary, and hopefully we can move forward,” Kendall told Gillibrand at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, praising her efforts. He added that he believes the problem of sexual assault is rooted in military culture and leadership flaws, and he’s uncertain how broadly her proposed changes in prosecution authority should be applied.

“This is a generational change whose time has come,” Gillibrand said Tuesday on the Senate floor in seeking the required unanimous consent to put her bill to a vote.

Reflecting tensions on this issue among Democrats, Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blocked Gillibrand’s procedural move, arguing that her bill must be folded into the broader 2022 defense authorization bill that his committee will take up this summer and fall.

Reed has said he expects the broader defense bill to include “a robust change in the role of the commander in sexual assault cases.”

The shift in attitudes among some military leaders has emerged since President Joe Biden took office. During his campaign, Biden emphatically endorsed removing sexual assault prosecution decisions from the chain of command. He said he would set up a commission to recommend a way forward early in his term.

“We have to change the culture of abuse in this country, especially in the armed services,” Biden said on April 29, 2020.Biden’s direction, Austin, the Pentagon chief who is a former Army commander, established an Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault to study ways to attack the problem. In April, the commission recommended taking prosecution powers out of the chain of command. It said that for certain special victims crimes, designated independent judge advocates reporting to a civilian-led Office of the Chief Special Victim Prosecutor should decide two key legal questions: whether to charge someone and, ultimately, whether that charge should go to a court martial. The crimes would include sexual assault, sexual harassment and, potentially, certain hate crimes.

Austin is weighing the military service leaders’ views on this before deciding whether he will support it.

Doubts persist about whether establishing an independent prosecuting authority for sexual assault cases would help reverse a yearslong upward trend in the number of reported sexual assaults in the military.

The acting Army secretary, John E. Whitley, said in an Associated Press interview that the Army is focused more on improving the selection of commanders as a way to change attitudes and improve trust. He said data on the military’s prosecution of sexual assault cases indicates that taking it out of the chain of command would not address the crux of the problem.

“Part of my concern is we’re perhaps, we’re in a very fever pitch debate right now,” Whitley said. “And I worry that the data are not perhaps coming through to the extent they should.”

But some military leaders in recent weeks have signaled a willingness to consider new approaches to prosecution, given the failures of the current system and in light of growing pressure from Congress.

“I’m open to the conversation,” the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, said Tuesday.

Brown did not say whether he believes that taking prosecution decisions out of the chain of command would be a step in the right direction, but his comments suggest a break from the past. His predecessor and other service chiefs had been united in arguing strongly against the move, saying it would send a confusing message to service members about trust in their commander’s judgment.

That solid wall of opposition began to crack in early May when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, previously a prominent opponent, told the AP and CNN that he had changed his mind. Although he no longer opposes the idea, he has not publicly endorsed it, either. He said the time had come to try something different because “we’ve been at it for years, and we haven’t effectively moved the needle.”

Sexual assault has long plagued the military, triggering congressional condemnation and frustrating military leaders who have struggled to find effective prevention, treatment and prosecution methods. The most recent of the Defense Department’s biennial anonymous surveys, done in 2018, found that more than 20,000 service members said they experienced some type of sexual assault, but only a third of those filed a formal report.

Milley said he shifted his thinking in part because he is concerned that junior enlisted service members lack confidence in the fairness of sexual assault case outcomes. He said this amounts to an erosion of confidence in the military chain of command.

“That’s really bad for our military if that’s true, and survey and the evidence indicate it is true,” he said.

………………………………………………………………

Taiwan struggles with testing backlog amid largest outbreak

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Facing Taiwan’s largest outbreak of the pandemic and looking for rapid virus test kits, the mayor of the island’s capital did what anyone might do: He Googled it.

“If you don’t know, and you try to know something, please check Google,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je quipped.

Praised for its success at keeping the virus away for more than a year, Taiwan had until May recorded just 1,128 cases and 12 deaths. But the number of locally transmitted cases started growing this month and it soon became clear that the central government was ill prepared not only to contain the virus, but to even detect it on a large scale due to a lack of investment in rapid testing.

That left officials like Ko scrambling to catch up as the number of new infections climbed to some 300 a day. Ko’s search put him in contact with six local companies who make rapid tests and his government was soon able to set up four rapid testing sites in a district that had emerged as a virus hotspot.

ADVERTISEMENT

Rapid tests, experts say, are a critical tool in catching the virus in its early days. The alternative that Taiwan has been relying on — tests that have to be sent out to a lab for processing — has led to backlogs that may be obscuring the true extent of the outbreak.

“You want to identify those infected cases as soon as possible,” to contain the spread, said Ruby Huang, a professor in the medical college at National Taiwan University. “And then you’re basically running against time.”

With so few cases, Taiwan had been a bubble of normalcy for most of the pandemic. Schools stayed open, people went to bars and restaurants, and the island’s economy was among the few globally that saw positive growth.

Its success was built largely on strict border controls that primarily allowed in only citizens and long-term residents, who then faced mandatory two-week quarantines.

From time to time it found small clusters of infections and stamped them out through contact tracing and quarantines. Last month authorities found a cluster involving pilots from the state-owned China Airlines.

Stopping the virus this time would prove difficult, in part because under government policy pilots were only required to quarantine for three-days and did not need a negative test to get out of quarantine. Soon employees at a quarantine hotel where China Airlines flight crew stayed started getting sick — and so did their family members.

The virus had escaped quarantine and was spreading locally, mostly in Taipei and surrounding areas.

The government in Taiwan — where only about 1% of the population have been vaccinated — responded by ordering a lockdown, closing schools and switching offices to remote work or rotating shifts. Contact tracers identified 600,000 people that needed to quarantine themselves.

The biggest roadblock has been testing.

Government policy throughout the pandemic has been to rely on polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests, which are seen as the gold standard for diagnosis but must be processed using special machines in a lab. The government has not encouraged rapid tests, which are quicker and cheaper but potentially less accurate.

In and around Taipei, labs have been working overtime in recent weeks but are still struggling to process all the samples.

Tim Tsai said on just a single day last week his lab in New Taipei city received 400 samples from hospitals to test. He said his lab was only able to process about 120 samples a day.

“Our medical technicians, they were leaving work at midnight,” he said.

The government’s Central Epidemic Command Center said in a statement that all 141 government-designated labs have the capacity to process 30,000 PCR tests a day. However, it declined to provide the actual number of tests being processed.

It said it was “continuing to work with relevant labs to research ways to accelerate and expand our capacity, without impacting accuracy.”

Throughout the pandemic the government has maintained there are few benefits to mass testing, with the health minister saying last year that public funds and medical resources could better be used elsewhere.

The government instead has emphasized a strategy of contact tracing and isolation and only testing those with symptoms and direct contact with someone infected.

“This is more efficient, effective and accurate,” said Chen Chien-jen, the island’s former vice president, who led the pandemic response last year before retiring.

Experts say such a strategy may have been appropriate when case numbers were low, but needed to change as infections spread.

“You should have a two-pronged approach. You do the quarantine, but you should do massive widespread testing,” said K. Arnold Chan, an expert on drug and medical products regulation at National Taiwan University. “For whatever reason the government is completely unprepared.”

Taiwanese companies developed rapid tests for COVID-19 early last year, but the majority of their sales have been overseas.

“Back then the CDC didn’t support rapid tests, and there was no epidemic,” said Edward Ting, a spokesperson for Panion and BF Biotech, which has had its own test since March 2020. “We tried to sell, but it wasn’t possible.”

The central government finally appears to be coming around, with the health minister last week asking local governments to set up rapid testing sites. Ting said his company has since had calls from governments across the island asking about its tests.

The central government also is now offering subsidies for labs to buy new machines to process PCR tests.

Aaron Chen, whose company developed a machine that can process up to 2,000 PCR test samples every four hours, said he has diverted two machines bound for export to be used locally instead.

Ko, the mayor of Taipei, said his city has purchased 250,000 rapid test kits. Though the city is still relying on PCR tests to confirm actual cases, Ko said the rapid tests better allow him to monitor the situation on the ground.

Ko, a former surgeon, said it was important to be open to change.

“There’s a phrase in Chinese: One thrives in times of calamity and perishes in soft times. Because when you’re very successful you are not forced to improve. Only when you fail, then are you forced to improve,” said Ko. “We were too successful in the past year.”

………………………………………………………………

I love my color

3 persons dead, 40 more trapped in collapsed galamsey pit at Breman- Ghana

 

Speaking to a local FM station, the Director of Upper Denkyira West National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Isaac Gyasi said the incident happened in the wee hours of Wednesday, May 26.

The ‘galamsey’ site

He said the miners were trapped in a galamsey pit popularly known in the area as, Breman lockmu, at the outskirts of the community.

Residents at the scene of the incident

Mr Gyasi further revealed that his outfit is working earnestly to find those who have been trapped and save as many lives as possible.

The ‘galamsey’ site

Meanwhile, the bodies of the deceased have been deposited at the Dunkwa-On-Offin Government Hospital for preservation, identification, and autopsy.

………………………………………………………………

Goita strikes again in Mali – removes and replaces Bah Ndaw as transition president

 

(DNT Bamako) Officially the transition president of Mali Bah Ndaw resigned today. But every Malian know that Goita has struck again with his signature coup d’etat where he captures the existing leader, and the latter mysteriously resigns.

Colonel Assimi Goita captured transition president Bah Ndaw and his prime minister Mocktar Mouane on Monday prompting global protests for their release.

Also arrested was the defense minister who was taken along with the president and prime minister to Kati Military Camp from where the first uprising that removed President Keita began.

That initial uprising ushered in a protracted negotiations process with ECOWAS which was represented by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

At the end of that process a transition government was formed with Bah Ndaw as president, uprising leader Colonel Assimi Goita as vice president, and Mocktar Mouane as prime minister.

The ECOWAS negotiated agreement called for the transition team to feature two ministers from the military. But recently those two were removed from the transition government, and that is what angered Goita to arrest transition president Ndaw.

Insiders believe Ndaw’s resignation was not forced, but was done out of frustration. Ndaw is said to be angered about the audacity of his vice to arrest him.

Meanwhile France has refuted Goita’s claim that this was not a coup d’etat. The resemblance between the Keita and Ndaw removals are too striking.

Now the youth is reported to be preparing the grounds for a march to Kati Military camp to release their transition president.

They believe Goita is setting the stage to remain as the country’s leader well beyond the 18 months when elections would be held to choose the next president of Mali.

The ECOWAS agreement with the military which ushered in the transition government bars the president of the transition government from participating in the elections.

DNT News with correspondent reports from Bamako.

………………………………………………………………

Volcano aftershocks rock east DRC, raise fears of fresh eruption

 Death toll increases to 32 as lava lake in Mount Nyiragongo’s crater appears to have refilled, prompting fears of new fissures or another eruption.

Powerful aftershocks from the Mount Nyiragongo volcano have rocked the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as the death toll from a recent eruption that left hundreds of families displaced rose to 32.

Three days after Africa’s most active volcano roared back into life, tremors were shaking the region every 10 to 15 minutes on Tuesday morning. Cracks several centimetres (more than an inch) wide appeared in the ground and on roads in several areas, including near the main hospital in Goma, a city of some two million people which lies about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from Mount Nyiragongo.

“The situation in the city is confused. People don’t know which way to go,” a resident told AFP news agency.

“Some are coming back, some are leaving, people are still afraid.”

Tens of thousands of residents fled in panic, many of them to neighbouring Rwanda, when the volcano began erupting on Saturday evening.

Two rivers of molten rock flowed from the volcano at a height of 1,800 metres (5,900 feet). One headed towards Goma, stopping at the very outskirts of the city.

It engulfed homes in its path, smothering the surrounding area with suffocating gas and cutting off the road between Goma and Butembo, the main highway in North Kivu province.

“Thirty-two people died in incidents linked to the eruption, including seven people killed by lava and five asphyxiated by gases,” the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said in a statement, raising an earlier toll – drawn from NGOs and other sources – of 20 dead.

“The lava flow stopped on Sunday, but there have been repeated earthquakes since the eruption and the lava lake in the volcano’s crater appears to have refilled, prompting fears of new fissures opening or another eruption,” it added, noting that a significant effort was under way to reunite several hundred children who were separated from their families as they fled.

Five people died from suffocation on Monday after they tried to cross the cooling lava some 13km (eight miles) north of Goma, civil society leader Mambo Kawaya told AFP.

Several strong aftershocks were also felt in Rwanda on Monday, including a magnitude 5.1 earthquake under Lake Kivu, the Rwanda Seismic Monitor said.

A so-called stratovolcano nearly early 3,500-metres (11,500 feet) high, Nyiragongo straddles a notorious rupture called the East African Rift. Its last major eruption, in 2002, claimed dozens of lives.

DRC authorities have urged the population to be vigilant and to avoid walking on the lava.

“People who gather at the lava rocks without being certain that it is already solid, risk suddenly sinking inside,” Joseph Makundi, head of civil protection in North Kivu province, said.

Raphael Tenaud, deputy head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Goma, said lava had destroyed four large villages and damaged 12 others.

Humanitarian groups estimate that between 900 and 2,500 dwellings were destroyed, he said, adding that this meant at least 5,000 people were without a home.

On the evening of the eruption, and on Sunday, 25,000 people fled, Tenaud said.

“Many of these displaced people have started to return to Goma, some have even come back to the site of the disaster, near the lava flow,” he told AFP news agency.

“Some are still displaced as they are afraid to come back, others have been able or are able to go back to their homes, and there are others who no longer have a home.”

Damage to a reservoir has potentially affected water supplies for around half a million people, said Tenaud.

“The main problem will be a problem of access to potable water, and all the consequences that may stem from that,” he added, referring to the risk of disease.

The ICRC will start up a disused pumping station to draw water, and water will also be distributed by tanker truck, Tenaud said.

Most of the hospitals in the east of the city have been closed, although four hospitals in the west are functioning, he added.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

………………………………………………………………

Mali’s coup leader dismisses president and prime minister

 

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Mali’s former coup leader Assimi Goita took control of the country again Tuesday after firing the president and prime minister of the transitional government after they announced a cabinet reshuffle without his permission.

Global African Family Meeting

While Goita pledged to go ahead with holding new elections in 2022 as promised, his display of force casts doubt on whether the vote will go ahead without significant interference by the junta that overthrew the last democratically elected president.

The move came a day after President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane were arrested by soldiers and brought to the military headquarters in Kati, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) outside the capital. Both men remained in detention Tuesday.

Their arrests prompted an outcry by the international community, which put out a strongly worded joint statement warning Mali’s military leaders that their actions could undermine global support for the transitional government.

………………………………………………………………