African leaders try to obstruct international justice

Laurent Gbagbo, former president the Ivory Coast, has become the first former head of state to go on trial before the International Criminal Court at The Hague. He refused to step down after losing an election in 2010, and is accused of encouraging his militias and security forces to commit murder, rape and other crimes to keep him in power.

A very good thing that he should face trial, you might think, but that does not seem to be how other African rulers see it, and they appear to be using the African Union to try to hamstring the court.

When the ICC was set up in 2002, African leaders seemed pretty keen, but now the African Union has resolved to go on shielding President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan from facing charges of genocide in Darfur, and criticised prosecutions being brought against other African leaders such as Kenya’s deputy president, William Ruto, who is accused of orchestrating violence after an election 8 years ago.

Of course, the ICC is not perfect, and many leaders in Africa and other places who should face trial are powerful enough to escape, but surely it is surely in the interests of Africa’s people that some should face justice rather than none. If the continent’s rulers care about that.

Disaster relief funds - record for a famine

Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee has announced that it has raised a record sum to help famine victims in Somalia.     The £72 million donated is the highest ever for a food crisis, and the only disasters of any kind to have attracted a bigger response were the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

DEC’s chief executive said the money had saved many people’s lives, but that the situation produced by a devastating drought remained ‘grave’, and that help was not reaching many of those in greatest need.

Relief work has been hampered by the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda (see my blog of July 21), but now rains have revived pasture for livestock in some areas, and some crops are being harvested. 

Aid agencies had been afraid that the actions of Somali pirates might discourage people from making donations.    They have kidnapped a number of foreign tourists, including a 56 year old British woman, Judith Tebbutt, who was abducted from 25 miles inside Kenya.    The pirates murdered her husband.

Famines in Africa

The United Nations has officially declared a famine in Somalia, the first since 1992.   Half the population – 3.7 million – are said to be at risk, with another 7 million in Kenya and Ethiopia also in need of help.

As is so often the case in African famines, politics is playing a part.   The Islamist militia, al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda, controls the area where the famine is raging, and two years ago it banned foreign aid agencies.   Even now it is prepared to allow only limited access.

The stricken area had previously included the most fertile part of the country, and the UN says nearly £1 billion in aid is needed.  The USA has said it will send help so long as al-Shahab does not interfere with it, or use it to raise money.

The great Ethiopian famines of the 1970’s and 80’s were also aggravated by politics.   In the first, the Emperor Haile Selassie, responded lethargically (and was promptly deposed), while the second was exacerbated by President Mengistu’s scorched earth campaign against rebels, and his determination that the famine would not spoil a birthday celebration for his regime.

Woman gaoled for Rwanda genocide

The first woman convicted in connection with the 1994 Rwanda genocide has been sent to gaol for life.     Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, aged 65, was the minister for family and women’s development (!).    Her son, Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, and four other people were also convicted.

When Hutus began murdering Tutsis in other parts of the country, the Butare region, by the Burundi border, was for a short time a haven of peace.    Then Nyiramasuhuko, a former social worker, ordered the local governor to get killing.    When he refused, he was sacked and then killed.

The convicted woman brought in militias from the capital, Kigali, and, with the help of her son, organised mass murder and the kidnap and rape of women and girls.   She and her son often manned the roadblocks at which Tutsis were detained.

When the Rwandan Patriotic Front deposed the genocidal government in July 1994, Nyiramasuhuko fled, but was arrested in Kenya in 1997.   Altogether, 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in just 100 days.   (See also my blogs of April 9, 2009, Dec 11, 2010, May 9 and 29, 2011 etc)

Lebanon air crash - aircraft and bad weather

In the first major air crash of 2010, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 has gone into the sea soon after taking off from Beirut airport bound for Addis Ababa. There were 82 passengers on board and 8 crew. No survivors have so far been found.

The weather had been stormy, and eye witnesses spoke of seeing a ball of fire in the sky before the aircraft crashed. The Lebanese President has said it is unlikely that foul play was involved. Ethiopian Airlines is considered to have a good safety record, but a similar 737 from Kenya Airways crashed in Cameroon at the cost of 114 lives after also taking off in heavy rain and thunderstorms in 2007.

Last year’s worst air accident, the loss of an Air France Airbus A330 over the Atlantic en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, also happened in poor weather. (See my blog of June 20, 2009). It was the deadliest air crash in eight years, as all 228 people on board were killed.

The cause of the accident remains a mystery, not helped by the fact that it has proved impossible so far to find the aircraft’s flight recorders. The search will resume next month.

Polio + Europe's worst mining disaster

There are small but ominous signs of polio making a comeback in Africa, aided by the chaos prevailing in parts of the continent. Refugees fleeing Somalia have brought the disease back to Kenya for the first time in 20 years, and Uganda has just had its first case in 12 years at a refugee camp, while Togo had three cases in 2008, after being clear of polio for five years.

A worldwide campaign against the virus reduced the number of cases from about 350,000 in 1988 to just 1,310 in 2007, but Bill Gates, who has pledged £185 million to the fight against the disease, says that if it is not eradicated, the number of victims will start rising again.

On this day....103 years ago, Europe’s worst ever mining disaster happened at the Courrieres colliery in northern France. About 1,800 men and boys were underground when a fierce explosion ripped through the pit. Rescue workers toiled day and night and managed to bring more than 650 men up, but eventually so many of the galleries collapsed that the search had to be called off.

Then astonishingly, 20 days after the disaster, a group of 13 miners emerged. They had survived by eating food taken down by colleagues who had been killed, and by slaughtering a horse. In the perpetual darkness, the group had lost all sense of time and believed they had been trapped for only four or five days.

The final death toll was 1,099 – a number surpassed only by the Honkeiko mining disaster of 1942 (see my blog of February 22).

Kenyan tanker crash

At least 111 people have been killed in Kenya after a tanker overturned in the town of Molo. A fire seems to have broken out when hundreds of people rushed to the scene to try to gather the petrol that had spilt. It is not clear what caused the blaze. Some witnesses say that someone in the crowd lit a cigarette, but there are also reports that it was started deliberately to obstruct police who were trying to stop local people scooping up the fuel in their jerry cans. At the scene, the Kenyan interior minister said four of the dead were police.

There was a similar disaster in Nigeria in 2007, when a tanker overturned near the village of Katugal. Again people tried to scoop up petrol and 98 were killed when it caught fire.

One of the worst road crashes in history also happened in Nigeria in 2000. A tanker with defective brakes ploughed into stationary traffic on the motorway from Ife to Ibadan. It overturned, and petrol began leaking, then ignited. A huge fireball devastated a wide area, and according to some estimates, up to 200 people died.

An aftermath and an anniversary

January 10, 2009
Sources in the United States and Pakistan are claiming that two men America says were involved in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania have been killed. Kenyans Usama al-Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan were said to have been hit by a missile from a US drone in Pakistan’s South Waziristan, close to the Afghan border. The bombing in Nairobi killed 257 people, only 12 of them Americans, while the one in Dar es Salaam claimed a total of 11 victims. More details on the bombings are available in A Disastrous History of the World.

On this day....in 1838, London’s Royal Exchange was burned down for the second time. The weather was bitterly cold and firemen were hampered as their hoses froze. A large crowd gathered to watch, and the biggest cheer came when porters flung a bag of sovereigns out of the window and some of the onlookers helped themselves. You can find the full story in The Disastrous History of London.