The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has called on European countries to come together to create a working strategy to deal with the massive influx of refugees making their way to Europe. The agency said that all European countries and the EU must act together to provide support to countries such as Greece, Macedonia and Serbia whose capacities were overstretched and called for the equitable redistribution of refugees across the EU. “It’s vital that these people are treated humanely, also that essential assistance is provided, not just by responding to their basic needs but respecting also their dignity, their…
Author: AMA
Eight South African police officers have been found guilty of murdering a Mozambican man who died after being dragged behind a moving police van two years ago. Mido Macia, a 27-year-old taxi driver, died in police custody in February, 2013 after being arrested for parking his car on the wrong side of the road. Bystanders filmed Macia being manhandled, handcuffed to the back of a police van and dragged hundreds of metres in Daveyton, east of Johannesburg. Just over two hours later he was found dead in his cell in a pool of blood. In Pretoria’s high court on Tuesday,…
Sicily, Italy – “Hey Rasta!” a man calls across the street, the latest passer-by to greet their young neighbour outside his house. With long dreadlocks falling over his blue pyjamas, Italian flag flip-flops under his feet, Rasta reflected on his popularity. “It’s very nice to be a cool man,” said the 25-year-old from Sierra Leone. Despite appearing at home in his surroundings, Rasta is about as far from his former life in the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown, as anyone could imagine. Until recently, a professional footballer by his own account and that of those around him, Rasta now finds himself…
By Al Jazeera The number of Ethiopians who will need food aid by the end of this year has surged by more than 1.5 million from earlier estimates due to failed rains, UN agencies have said. Ethiopia needs an extra $230m from donors to secure aid for a total of 4.5 million people now projected to require assistance this year, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN children’s agency UNICEF said in a statement on Monday. The country of 96 million people is one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, but failed…
By Al Jazeera At least 19 people have been killed in car bomb attacks in two cities in Somalia, police and military sources have said. A car exploded in the capital Mogadishu at a busy junction on Saturday evening, killing at least five people. “So far we know five civilians died in this evening’s blast and seven others were injured,” Mohamed Yusuf, the spokesman for the interior security ministry told reporters at the scene. The explosion was close to the Internal Security Ministry and a large hotel, Witnesses told Al Jazeera that said they also heard gunfire during the incident.…
http://bc05.ajnm.me/665003303001/201508/2618/665003303001_4431575048001_20150819-fight-mad-somalia-nostraps.mp4 The Somali army is training new recruits in the port city of Kismayo, one of the last remaining strongholds of al-Shabab. Until they finish their training, fighters from the regional administration have the task of defending the territory under government control. Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow reports from the frontline. Source:: Al Jazeera
By Al Jazeera A Mauritanian court has upheld a two-year prison sentence against three anti-slavery activists who were arrested during a protest against bondage in the west African nation. In an open letter from prison published on Wednesday, one of the accused, Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, vowed to continue his fight against slavery and appealed for the United States and European Union to put pressure on Mauritania to act against the practice, including stopping financial aid. “From my dark cell I urge them to mobilise all legal and diplomatic means, including the suspension of all financial aid, to push…
By Al Jazeera Assailants have reportedly shot dead a reporter for the New Nation newspaper in South Sudan in an apparently targeted attack, days after President Salva Kiir allegedly made a thinly veiled threat to target journalists who reported “against the country”. Colleagues, who gathered at the hospital in the capital Juba where Moi Peter Julius’ body was taken on Thursday, said the reporter’s money and his telephone were reportedly not taken by the gunman after the killing. Julius is the seventh journalist killed this year, in a country devastated by a prolonged conflict between government forces and armed groups.…
Five years ago, 40 percent of Reunion, a French territory east of Madagascar, was named a UNESCO world heritage site and turned into a national park. The territory’s special status attracts tourists, but farmers who live in the park are being forced to change their way of life due to new limitations. http://bc05.ajnm.me/665003303001/201508/897/665003303001_4434238765001_20150820-reunion-heritage-tpa-nostraps.mp4 Al Jazeera’s Tania Page reports from Reunion. Source:: Al Jazeera The post UNESCO status forces change on Reunion’s island farmers appeared first on African Media Agency.
By Al Jazeera For one tribe in Kenya, it has been their home for centuries. But now a forest on the border with Somalia has become a main hideout for fighters from al-Shabab, the Somalia-based armed group that says it is at war with the Kenyan government. Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow reports from the Boni National Reserve, on how the conflict is uprooting tribal communities. Source:: Al Jazeera http://bc05.ajnm.me/665003303001/201508/3529/665003303001_4434006942001_20150820-kenya-boni-forest-mad-nostraps.mp4?videoId=4433962562001 The post Kenya tribe uprooted by al-Shabab conflict appeared first on African Media Agency.