Sudan crisis forces South Sudanese refugees back to troubled home

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 08 May 2023

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By Denis Elamu

RENK, South Sudan - The last place Lina Mijok wanted to go as she fled fighting in Sudan was back to her own country, South Sudan, which she had left as civil war erupted in 2013.

But when Sudan's army started battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the streets around to her home last month, South Sudan was the only place she and her two young children could reach.

"I would not have come back to South Sudan. I would have gone anywhere, but I had no choice," the 26-year-old said.

She had managed to carve out a new life for herself as a housemaid in the city of Omdurman, across the River Nile from Sudan's capital Khartoum.

Then the shots started ringing out and her family had to pack up and leave that behind them - all of them apart from Mijok's husband.

He had to stay behind as they did not have enough money to pay for his place on the trucks and buses that carried Mijok, their son and their daughter to the border, a nerve-wracking two days on bush roads.

They are now among thousands camping out in South Sudan's Renk County, in a dilapidated university campus, its buildings pockmarked by bullets from fighting a decade ago.

The refugees have made basic shelters out of sticks and pieces of fabric. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, and other aid groups are distributing food, water, buckets, blankets and mats.

"The heat is killing us and some people have gone four days without eating, and there is no place to sleep, and the children are getting sick," Mijok said. She hopes the United Nations will help her move to another country.

'WHAT SHOULD WE DO? WE DON'T KNOW'

The fighting has turned the humanitarian situation on its head.

Up to last month, more than 800,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in Sudan, refugees from decades of conflict.

Since the fighting erupted in Khartoum, the UNHCR has registered more than 30,000 people crossing into South Sudan, more than 90% of them South Sudanese. The true number is likely much higher, it says.

Aid agencies fear the influx will worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis in South Sudan where more than 2 million people are displaced and three quarters of the 11-million-strong population need aid.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after two decades of north-south conflict. Civil war broke out there barely two years later, killing an estimated 400,000 people.

"South Sudan is one of UNHCR’s most underfunded crises already and we are now mobilising to support this new influx," agency spokesperson Charlotte Hallqvist said. "We urge the international community not to forget about South Sudan."

Like Mijok, Suzan William, 36, fled the civil war in 2013 and rebuilt her life in Sudan, working as a nurse in Khartoum. Now she is back in her homeland, camping in Renk with her four children.

"People say there is no stability in South Sudan, so we decided to build houses in Sudan. But now also there is no stability in Sudan. What should we do? We don’t know."

Kenya cult deaths hits 90 as authorities expand operation

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 25 April 2023

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By EVELYNE MUSAMBI

NAIROBI, Kenya — The death toll at a ranch in coastal Kenya that is owned by a pastor who is accused of leading a religious cult and ordering his followers to starve themselves reached 90 on Tuesday, as the country’s interior minister announced an expanded operation at the site.

The new figure came after police exhumed 17 more bodies. The total number of those rescued while starving at the ranch now stands at 34.

The Kenya Red Cross Society’s latest figure on the number of missing is 213.

Pastor Paul Makenzi, who heads the Good News International Church, is accused of luring his followers to the ranch near the town of Malindi. He allegedly told them to fast to death in order to meet Jesus before burying them in shallow graves spread across his land. He was arrested after police raided the property earlier this month, and he remains in police custody.

Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said that the security team will “upscale search and rescue missions to save as many lives as possible.”

“The entire 800-acre (320-hectare) parcel of land that is part of the Shakahola ranch is hereby declared a disturbed area and an operation zone,” Kindiki said while visiting the area.

The minister said there would be a turning point on how the country handles threats caused by religious extremism and was looking into another suspected cult in the same Kilifi county.

“We have cast the net wider to another religious organization here in Kilifi. We have opened a formal inquiry on this religious group and we are getting crucial leads that perhaps what was being done by Makenzi is a tip of the iceberg,” Kindiki said.

The teams digging at the site have been finding decomposed bodies buried in mass and single graves marked with a cross.

Those believed to be living in mudwalled houses inside the ranch have been fleeing from rescue teams, and mostly those who can’t walk or talk have been rescued so far.

The Mombasa-based Muslims for Human Rights Group called on the government “to consider the option of using aerial surveillance by use of helicopters to rescue more people and make the process quicker.”

The autopsies on the bodies are set to begin on Thursday with local media reporting that government morgues in Kilifi are filled to capacity.

These are Kenya’s worst recorded cult deaths.

The broadcast regulator, Kenya Film and Classification Board, sounded the alarm in 2017 on radicalization-like content by Makenzi on television. The board’s former chairperson, Ezekiel Mutua, told local media that the content was taken off air at the time and law enforcement agencies were notified.

The pastor had been arrested twice before — in 2019 and in March of this year — in relation to the deaths of children. Each time, he was released on bond, and both cases are still proceeding through the court system.

The interior minister likened the cult deaths to one run by U.S. preacher Jim Jones, whose 900 followers took poison in a mass suicide in 1978.

Other cult activities that ended up in mass deaths include Uganda’s Kanungu cult massacre that killed 700 followers in 2000.

How Chinese are financing terrorists to illegally access mineral resources in Nigeria – Report

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Written by alib

Category: Africa

Published: 17 April 2023

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By Theophilus Adedokun

LAGOS - A British national newspaper, The Times, has reported that Chinese nationals in the mining sector are financing terrorist groups in some parts of Nigeria to gain access to the country’s mineral resources.

The national daily revealed this in an investigation it published on Saturday, April 15.

The Times said that the Chinese nationals are fuelling insecurity and terrorism through illegal transactions, lobbying and bribes.

The newspaper reported, “Beijing could be indirectly funding terror in Africa’s largest economy.”

According to the report, some Chinese who work informally as miners in Zamfara are serving as smugglers for some militant groups in the state and other states in the north-western part of Nigeria.

It noted that Chinese firms constantly negotiate with terrorists and bandits.

“Chinese companies working in parts of Nigeria where attacks are frequent have been striking security deals with insurgents.

“Attacks on Chinese citizens, of whom there are said to be between 100,000 and 200,000 in Nigeria, have become regular occurrences in recent years amid the country’s many conflicts.”

Research shared with The Times from SBM Intelligence, a Nigeria-based analytics company, revealed videos on social media, including WhatsApp, of militant leaders boasting that they are so powerful that Chinese workers wishing to operate in their areas must pay them ‘rent’. They have taken over swathes of northwest Nigeria, turning the region into the country’s bloodiest conflict zone.

“In one pocket of Zamfara, researchers found, interaction with militants runs so deep that some serve as runners for Chinese miners who have spread throughout Nigeria, controlling digs for gold. The country has some of the largest gold reserves in the world.

“Often operating informally in small groups as contractors registered to clearing-house companies, they speak local languages and can stay for years at a time living in remote areas that western companies consider off-limits.”

The report stressed that Chinese mining contractors underpay locals working on their fields.

“Chinese mining contractors, who local communities have accused of abuses and paying pitiful wages, often smuggle minerals out of the country illegally and are sometimes arrested.”

It said that the Chinese who smuggle mineral resources out of the country through illegal routes were sometimes apprehended.

“In 2020, 27 miners, including 17 said to be Chinese, were arrested in Osun state. Last October, a Chinese citizen, Gang Deng, 29, was jailed for five years after being found with 25 tonnes of a mineral thought to be lepidolite, containing lithium, which is used in batteries.”

SBM also found Chinese workers involved in the Boko Haram conflict in Nigeria’s northeast, with a case of a Chinese smuggler being paid to help a jihadist group move metal ore out of the country.

The ICIR had published a two-part investigation on the activities of illegal gold mining in Osun and Ondo states.

The ICIR’s investigations highlighted the implications of illegal mining on the environment and the health of the natives.

The reports revealed that the traditional rulers and native authorities were in connivance with illegal miners.

The ICIR had also reported that Kogi and Osun states banned illegal mining operations in their territories.

The governors of the two states reiterated their commitment to clamping down on all forms of illegal mining in the state within the ambit of the law, while stating the adverse effects of illegal mining on the well-being of residents of the states.

The government of the two states urged legitimate miners whose activities have contributed to environmental degradation and water pollution in the states to retract immediate steps towards remedying the situation.