Sudan: Christians under attack

...Sudanese Christians, while only comprising 5.4 percent of the country’s population, have been largely based in and around Khartoum. As the capital city has been at the epicenter of the war, the Christian community has been heavily impacted. They have been sought out and attacked for their faith, and many have had to flee the country and settle in refugee camps.  

Many churches have been destroyed. Earlier this month, Rapid Support Forces fighters attacked a Coptic Christian Monastery in Gezira State and started using it as a military base. Last month, a Presbyterian Evangelical Church in Omdurman and a Roman Catholic building in the Al-Shajara area were attacked amid Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces fighting. These are just the most recent examples of the ongoing spate of attacks on churches and Christian buildings since the fighting broke out.  

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Some good news you may have missed

Africa has been certified as free of wild Polio-virus.

Details.

Kenya legalises polygamy without wife's consent

Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya's parliament has passed a bill allowing men to marry as many women as they want, prompting a furious backlash from female lawmakers who stormed out, reports said Friday.

The bill, which amended existing marriage legislation, was passed late on Thursday to formalise customary law about marrying more than one person.

The proposed bill had initially given a wife the right to veto the husband's choice, but male members of parliament overcame party divisions to push through a text that dropped this clause.

"When you marry an African woman, she must know the second one is on the way, and a third wife... this is Africa," MP Junet Mohammed told the house, according to Nairobi's Capital FM.

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Charles Taylor, former Liberian leader, found guilty of war crimes

THE HAGUE — Charles Taylor, the U.S.-educated guerrilla leader who fought his way to the presidency of Liberia, was convicted Thursday of war crimes and crimes against humanity — including murder, rape and slavery — for his role in assisting a bloody rebel movement in neighboring Sierra Leone.

The conviction, in the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone, was hailed by chief prosecutor Brenda J. Hollis as a triumph for the idea that political leaders should be held accountable for their deeds in “the new reality” of an international justice system composed of a half-dozen U.N. courts headquartered in this verdant Dutch city.

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US troops now in 4 African countries to fight LRA

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- U.S. troops helping in the fight against a brutal rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army are now deployed in four Central African countries, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa said Wednesday.

The U.S. announced in October it was sending about 100 U.S. troops - mostly special operations forces - to Central

Africa to advise in the fight against the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony, a bush fighter wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa, said the U.S. troops are now stationed in bases in Uganda, Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic.

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HT: Bill (aka The Godfather)

Obama sends troops to Africa to help fight Lord’s Resistance Army guerrilla group

The latest chapter in the history of the American Empire...

President Obama said Friday he is sending a small number of U.S. combat troops to central Africa to assist in a regional effort to neutralize the Lord’s Resistance Army, a guerrilla force originally from northern Uganda that has been accused of terrorizing civilians in several countries.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama announced the deployment of “approximately 100” combat-equipped personnel to act as “advisers to partner forces” that are targeting the leadership of the insurgent group.

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Libyan regime teetering

Multiple news sources report that the 40 year dictatorship of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi is fighting for its survival tonight. Large parts of the country and at least some elements of the armed forces are in open revolt. There are unconfirmed reports that some members of the air force may have flown their planes and defected in Malta. Also today the Libyan diplomatic delegation at the UN broke with the regime. The Libyan ambassador to the UN called Qaddafi a war criminal and called on the international community to intervene to end what appears to be an effort to violently suppress the revolt. There are widespread bu as yet unconfirmed reports of massacres by troops loyal to the dictatorship. Few persons who are knowledgeable about Libya expect that Qaddafi will go quietly like the dictators of Egypt and Tunisia. Many believe he will have to be killed to end his grip on power.

A full scale civil war is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Revolt spreads in Libya

TRIPOLI — Protests against the 40-plus-year reign of dictator Moammar Gadhafi have broken out in Tripoli, the capital, for the first time, according to news reports, as protesters in other cities count the dead from clashes with troops over days of protest.

A doctor told Al Jazeera that forces had fired on protesters in Tripoli, killing four, and Al Jazeera reported a resident saying she could hear gunfire in the city from her upscale suburb. Other sources told Al Jazeera that clashes between pro- and anti-Gadhafi sources in central Tripoli involved thousands of people.

Gadhafi's son, Seif el islam Gadhafi, will make a televised address Sunday night, Libya TV said, according to Al jazeera.

A doctor in the eastern city of Benghazi told Reuters that at least 50 people were killed and 100 others seriously wounded in Benghazi Sunday afternoon and evening. There were unconfirmed claims that the opposition had taken control of the city, with Gadhafi's forces holed up in a walled compound.

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Popular protests topple an Arab dictator

TUNIS — President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia has left the country amid growing chaos in the streets, French diplomats say, and the prime minister went on state television Friday night to say he is temporarily in charge.

A French Foreign Ministry official said authorities did not know where the president had gone, and representatives of the president were not immediately available to confirm the report.

There were also unconfirmed reports that the country’s airspace had been closed.

In his speech to the country, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi said that “as the president of the republic is unable to exercise his functions for the time being, I have assumed, starting now, the powers of the president.”

“I call on all sons and daughters of Tunisia,” the prime minister said, “to show the spirit of patriotism and unity in order to enable our country, which is dear to all of us, to overcome this difficult phase and restore its security and stability.”

The apparent fall of Mr. Ben Ali would mark the first time that widespread demonstrations had overthrown an Arab leader.

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Gay Couple Convicted in Malawi

A gay couple in Malawi were found guilty on Tuesday of unnatural acts and gross indecency, the consequence of their holding an engagement ceremony in an insular nation where homosexuality is largely seen as nonexistent or something that must be suppressed.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 33, and Steven Monjeza, 26, face up to 14 years in prison. A magistrate said he would sentence the men on Thursday.

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Is their conduct worthy of condemnation from the pulpit? Yes. Is this the legitimate business of the government? No.

Henry Louis Gates discusses the role of black Africans in the slave trade

Ending the Slavery Blame Game

THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.

There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.

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