Deployment of Solo TV News Crews to Foreign Conflict Zones Problematic (REPORT)

TV news crews are frequently finding themselves as targets: news crew near Tahrir Square in Feb 2011. M Bociurkiw/HUMN(HN, April 16, 2011) - With foreign journalists under siege in many parts of the world, especially in ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, news agencies may need to think twice before deploying solo video journalists to conflict zones.

The issue of precautions for so-called all-platform journalists or multi-media journalists came up a a panel at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) this week in Las Vegas.

Also called 'backpack journalism' (BPJ), the trend of downsizing news teams is emerging in more TV markets, both big and small. Smaller cameras and ubiquitous connectivity - as well as budget slashing at news operations - are making media proprietors far more keen on the all-platform journalist model.

While the trend has worked fairly well in developed economies, such as the US and Canada, it is still too early to tell whether conditions allow for mass deployment of one-man videographer teams in danger zones overseas.

"When it comes to folks working by themselves you don't have someone watching your back," said Kevin Benz, a broadcast journalism veteran and award-winning news photographer. "When you are staring down that lens you are in complete tunnel vision and you don't have anyone watching for you."

Benz said that in conflict zones, larger crews may be more conspicuous but they allow for more protection.

"If you go off to dangerous places - whether it's in our cities or in other countries - by yourself there should be significant ethical consideration in our newsrooms that we make sure that we are keeping our journalists safe. If we know that we are sending them into something that is dangerous that we are sending them with support. That's being smart about being safe," said Benz.

On the other hand, there are benefits to a lean deployment to the field. The "intimidation factor" of interviewing subjects drops dramatically with smaller equipment, said Stacey Woelfel, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and the news director for KOMU-TV, the University of Missouri-owned NBC affiliate for central Missouri.

"Smaller equipment does lend some stealth to the operation that we didn't have before," said Woelfel. "There is a trade-off there as our journalists will be able to work more secretly."

The issue of the safety and security of journalists has become more prominent in recent weeks as protests have rocked numerous countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Earlier this month a team from The New York Times was detained for several days by pro-Gadaffi elements in Libya. And in February, CBS News '60 Minutes' correspondent Lara Logan was assaulted in Cairo while covering the uprising in and around Tahrir Square.

CNN correspondents Anderson Cooper and Hala Gorani, and CBS News anchor Katie Couric were shown on-air being pushed around while covering the uprisings in Tahrir Square. All were accompanied by at least one crew member when they became the target of unruly crowds.

As news gathering drifts into a task done by many - including freelancers and citizen journalists - sufficient vetting of user-generated content streaming into newsrooms needs to be a major consideration. One panelist said that with more new sources sending stories and tweets into newsrooms from far-off locations, fact verification has to be part of the news work flow. "You want to be sure these people are legitimate."

Benz cited the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) as an institution that has pioneered fact verification in often difficult circumstances. The service uses contributors in country where freedom of information is severly restricted. "They have developed very, very strong systems to verify information."

Benz said whether at home or abroad, leaner news operations means that "fewer people are working faster" to gather the news. "Give journalists time to verify the facts," he said.

- Reporting by Michael Bociurkiw in Las Vegas

Amid Intimidation, Growing Numbers of Sub-Saharan Africans Escaping Libya (REPORT)

(HN, March 10, 2011) - As attention focuses on the widening and increasingly-viscious civil war raging in Libya, growing numbers of Sub-Saharan African migrants are still managing to escape and reach border crossings - to the relief of aid officials and governments.

The good news comes amid reports that Libyan troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are rounding up black African migrants to force them to fight opposition forces. Western news agencies are quoting young African men who managed to flee to Tunisia.

They said they were raided in their homes by soldiers, beaten and robbed of their savings and identity papers, then detained and finally offered money to take up arms for Gaddafi. Those who refused were told they would never leave, said Fergo Fevomoye, a 23-year-old who crossed the border on Sunday.

"They will give you a gun and train you like a soldier. Then you fight the war of Libya. As I am talking to you now there is many blacks in training who say they are going to fight this war. They have prized (paid) them with lots of money," he told Reuters.

Said UNHCR  spokesperson Sybella Wilkes: “African refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea have told us that just being a Black face in Libya is very dangerous at the moment."

There are more than 20,000 migrants still stranded in Tunisia and Egypt, awaiting evacuation assistance with an average of 6,000 still arriving at the two borders alone on a daily basis. 

According to relief officials there are few countries in the region that are not represented within the steady stream of those fleeing: although the majority of those being evacuated today are Bangladeshis -who still represent the largest group of migrants stranded at both the Egyptian and Tunisian borders - 349 Nigerians, Ghanaians, Malians, Mauritanians, Guineans, Nigeriens, Senegalese, Togolese, Sierra Leonian, Beninese and Cameroonians, are also on flights home.

In the past three weeks, more than 252,000 people have crossed into Tunisia, Egypt, Niger and Algeria.

"Although the numbers of Africans fleeing to the borders still remain comparatively small, they are mounting. This is an encouraging sign given our strong concerns over the targeting of Sub-Saharan Africans inside Libya," says Mohamed Abdiker, Director of Operations for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The UN agency is today evacuating 1,052 Bangladeshi, Sub-Saharan Africans and Filipino migrants from Tunisia, Egypt and Malta. Among the 1,713 migrants evacuated by IOM on Wednesday were a group of 295 Ghanaians as well as a Sudanese.

As the UN and other agencies work to ensure that all the migrants stranded are helped as quickly as possible with particular focus having been given to first the Egyptians and then the Bangladeshis, with large numbers of the latter still awaiting assistance, charter and commercial flights are being used simultaneously to assist African migrants home as fast as possible. 

Donor governments include the British, Belgian, French, Italian, Austrians, Irish, Swiss, Swedish and the US as well as UNHCR, IOM will have helped nearly 21,000 migrants from many countries to return safely home to their countries by today. Recent efforts have focused on securing support for long-haul charter flights to enable the return home of thousands of Bangladeshis in particular.

- HUMNEWS staff, UN

Women and Children Showing Up on African Relief Flights From Libya Crisis (Exclusive Report)

A Nigerian migrant worker who fled the unrest in Libya waits at the Libyan and Tunisian border crossing of Ras Jdir. CREDIT: AlertNet(HN, March 6, 2011) - Officials in African countries receiving repatriated migrants from Libya have expressed surprise at the high proportion of women and children among the masses of fit young men exiting the chaotic country.

In one relief flight late this week to the Nigerian capital of Abuja, as many as 30 percent were women and children - among them infants, said an official at from the Nigeria Emergency Management Authority (NEMA), who was greeting a new batch of arrivals at Abuja International Airport.

"I even saw a few women breastfeeding their babies," said the official who asked not to be identified.

He added: "We have even seen some women arriving on their own. They were in Libya  doing artisan work or the like."

Last week, a senior official from Ghana  said that most of the returnees arriving from Libya to Accra were "undocumented and illegal immigrants."

Asked if some of the migrants were asylum-seekers, the official shrugged his shoulders.

NEMA officials awaiting the next batch of Nigerian migrants this weekend at Abuja International Airport CREDIT: HUMNEWSThe NEMA officials echoed comments of authorities in other Sub-Saharan countries that many are arriving without passports or any sort of documentation. Exiting migrants say their documents and back pay have been retained by their employers or taken as they fled the chaos.

With travel rebounding after a prolonged recession, there are few assets available for deployment for the massive repatriation efforts. NEMA has been chartering Egypt Air aircraft but using commercial jets from as far away as Kabul, the official said.

Asked what the arriving women and children need most, the NEMA official said basic items such as milk and blankets. Upon arrival in Abuja the migrants are immediately transported to their places of origin. "As much as possible we try not to keep them here in Abuja," the official said. Those who must stay are accommodated in a UN camp near the airport.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) is flying in emergencies supplies to countries bordering Libya. Initial supplies include hygiene kits, nutrition items and recreation and psycho-social relief items.

UNICEF said that while numbers of families crossing the border into Tunisia are reported as relatively low to date, it is concerned that within Libya, children and women have been severely affected by the unrest.

As HUMNEWS reported yesterday, the massive influx of migrant workers to struggling African nations is creating new strains. Nigeria, Niger, Tunisia and Egypt  - among others - are either recovering from prolonged economic downturns or from revolutions that have disrupted normal economic recovery such as tourism.

For Egypt, which had an estimated 1.5 million migrant workers in Libya, the sudden halt in remittances will place a huge strain on already vulnerable families. Even if each migrant sent $100-a--month back to their Egyptian families, that adds up to about $150m a month or $1.8bn-a-year.

The NEMA official said the country still had some ways to go before it could suspend the relief operation as there were stranded Nigerians in Tunisia as well as Egypt.

According to one published report, late last week concerned families of Nigerians still stranded in Libya, stormed the Corporate Headquarters of NEMA to express their fears over the fate of their beloved ones not yet evacuated from Tripoli.

According to a report today in Al Masry Al Youm ( الرئيسية) of Egypt, human rights advocates warn that poor, Sub-Saharan African countries may be unable to provide sufficient support to their expatriate populations and are leaning on European countries to help evacuate vulnerable migrants to safety. The newspaper says the African Union has come in for criticism for its silence on the plight of African migrant workers in Libya.

- HUMNEWS Staff

Horror Stories Emerge as Migrants Fleeing Libya Reach Safety (Report)

(HN, March 5, 2011) - UPDATED 0930GMT - As migrants attempt to flee an increasingly dangerous Libya, horror stories are beginning to filter out about desperate measures taken to escape the carnage.

It was previously believed that most of the exodus of more than 100,000 people in the last 10 days consisted of fit young men - but there are also many vulnerable women and children, it has emerged.

On Thursday, 40 particularly vulnerable West African migrants - fearing for their lives given the targeting of Sub-Saharan Africans and desperate to leave Libya - said they had paid a human smuggler to take them to Egypt in a sealed and refrigerated truck.

For African migrants - many from poor, small countries that lack the ability or desire to repatriate their nationals - there are countless bitter tales of targeted treatment in Libya.

Some Eritreans said that in the 160 kms from Tripoli to the Tunisian border, they had been stopped 20 times and totally dispossessed of all their money and belongings.

A Chadian migrant recounted the increasing violence at night-time in Tripoli that had led to great terror among him and others.

Many arrive at border crossing with just a blanket and few belongings. Aid agencies say that as the migrants flee, employers refuse to pay them weeks or months of owed back wages.

"The problem is that there are a number of them arriving at the border without proper documents and without a visa to enter Egypt," said UN  official Roberto Piteo.

But the most horrifying account is that of Ike Emanuel, a 35-year-old Nigerian migrant, who interrupted his journey to bury his 6-month-old baby girl in the desert last week after she died of exposure on a desperate trek to escape Libya.

"I lost my baby. She died and we buried her in the desert," Emanuel told Reuters. "We spent three days in the desert and she was a little baby of six months and she could not endure the cold," he said. "I am going home with nothing, going home again without my baby which can be my future."

Reports also quote many Bangladeshi migrant workers complaining harshly about the lack of any response from their government. In an appeal written on a bed sheet, they urged Tunisia and the world to "save the lives of 30,000 Bangladeshis".

Some returnees have been quoted in the Bangladeshi media as saying that they faced starvation due to the lack of consular assistance.

Shaheed Uddin, a Bangladeshi migrant worker from a camp in Tripoli, said Libyans set fire to a labour camp and looted valuables Thursday night. The camp housed around 1,000 Bangladeshi workers. One Bangladeshi was killed and some others got injured, he claimed.

"Those Bangladeshis then fled wherever they could," he told The Daily Star of Dhaka, adding that such incidents have become regular and his camp housing 300 workers could be next.

In response to an official request from the Government of Bangladesh, the UN has had to step in to fill the lack of responsiveness from Dhaka. There were at least 60,000 Bangladeshis in Libya prior to the uprising.

More than 640 Bangladeshi migrants were evacuated from the Libyan port city of Benghazi Thursday via a road convoy by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and escorted by the Libyan Red Crescent to the Egyptian border crossing at Salum. IOM will then organize for their return home to Bangladesh in the days to come.

Sadly, some African migrants have no hope of assistance from their governments. Giovanni Martinelli—a Catholic bishop and the vicar of Tripoli—says hundreds of Eritreans showed up at St. Francis Catholic Church in Tripoli last Sunday seeking help, according to one published report. Many of the Eritreans are Christians that fled persecution in their home country.

Even for Egypt, which had an estimated 1.5 million of its nationals working in Libya, the sudden burden of hosting the returnees is not an easy task for the interim military governments. What is more, the flow of remittances from these migrants will come to a sudden halt - creating a knock-on effect for vulnerable families back home.

In the past few days, IOM staff had located several thousand migrant workers from many nationalities in the port at Benghazi and the surrounding warehouses with the largest groups comprising Bangladeshi, Indian and Sudanese migrants. This morning, another 500 Bangladeshi migrants arrived at the port compound in a two-hour period.

IOM staff in Ras Ajdir report that an estimated 6,000 Bangladeshis already on the Tunisian side of the border, decided to walk the 8km distance to a UNHCR camp today. In a five kms long column, the migrants carried their luggage as best they they can. Some of them, all young men, say they had walked from Tripoli to the Tunisian border.

In Egypt, where IOM is also providing registration and humanitarian assistance to migrants at the Salum border crossing, has so far evacuated 1,079 migrants, mostly Bangladeshi but also including

Ghanaian, Malians and Filipinos.

IOM staff in Ras Ajdir report that an estimated 6,000 Bangladeshis already on the Tunisian side of the border, decided to walk the 8km distance to a UNHCR camp today. In a five kms long column, the migrants carried their luggage as best they they can. Some of them, all young men, say they had walked from Tripoli to the Tunisian border.

- HUMNEWS staff, IOM

African Asylum-Seekers Among 1000s Stranded in North Africa (Report)

Source: ReliefWeb(HN, March 3 2011) - As distressed migrants, most of them from developing Middle Eastern and Sub-Saharan African countries, flee to Libya's border crossings, the numbers entering neighbouring countries is reaching close to 200,000.

However some African officials admit that many of those they have been forced to repatriate are nationals who entered Libya illegally and are undocumented - in effect, a vulnerable sub-class of migrants who are at extreme risk.

Officials and evacuees interviewed by the regional media say that they were in Libya in the process of seeking passage to Europe.

Some quoted in Nigerian newspapers said they have variously spent between four and 17 years in Libya.

The Ghana News Agency said many of the 10,000 or so Ghanians stranded in Libya were "illegal immigrants and undocumented."

Indicative of the diversity of those fleeing Libya is that one of the people evacuated was professional boxer Bash Ali, who said he was in Tripoli for medical treatment.

Upon returning to Nigeria he was quoted by the Daily Trust Newspaper as saying: “I am proud to be a Nigerian… I am proud of this encouraging exercise. Home is home… and home is sweet. Nothing is more comforting than to be among your people at home."

Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said yesterday that over 1,000  Nigerians are still stranded in Libya, with the same figure already evacuated.

The rescued Nigerians hinted at some surprise of having their government step up to the plate in this crisis.

A spokesman for the repatriated Nigerians, Chief Festus Koiki said: "For the first time in the history of Nigeria, the Federal Government has demonstrated its ability and capability to address the plights of distressed Nigerians in the Diaspora, which is unprecedented.”

Nigeria has had strained relations with Libya for the past decade.

Aid agencies say they are worried for thousands of refugees, asylum-seekers, and irregular migrants still inside Libya and in circumstances of considerable danger of reprisal attacks.

According to a report from the Ghana Embassy in Libya, a number of Nigerian nationals suffered such reprisal attacks, the Ghana News Agency reported.

At least two sub-Saharan Africans are already reported to have been lynched in Benghazi on suspicion of being mercenaries for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, others fear being hunted down by insurgents, a report by UN OCHA released today said.

Actress and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie"With these new waves of uprising and conflict, there is and will continue to be massive new displacement. The world needs to address this moment. We have to give people safe passage, evacuation if needed, and ensure they have asylum. We don't want to look back and find their deaths are on our hands," UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie said.

Meanwhile, transit camps operated by relief agencies are said to be bursting at the seams as an endless stream of migrants heads towards border crossings in the East with Egypt, in the West with Tunisia, in the South with Niger and towards the port in Benghazi.

The UN said today about 100,000 Africans may try to cross from Libya into poverty-stricken Niger in coming weeks, placing a huge strain on the land-locked country.

Reports indicate more than 50 flights, using commercial and military aircraft from a handful of countries, will be operated today to evacuate the migrants.

Separately, The Eldershave called on the international community to maintain pressure on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to step down as the only way to end the bloodshed in Libya.

Welcoming the strong resolution adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council to try to halt the violent repression in Libya, they urged the rapid implementation of agreed measures including an arms embargo, targeted financial sanctions and travel bans.

The Elders also underlined the need for swift humanitarian assistance to those in need, including people fleeing the violence.

Ultimately, the Elders say, it is Gaddafi's departure from power, along with that of key members of his regime, that will forestall further bloodshed.

The Chair of The Elders, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said: “This is a moral universe – the Libyan people have right on their side and I am confident that they will succeed in their quest for freedom. I admire their courage in facing up to a leader who has in effect declared a brutal war on his own people to cling onto power. Gaddafi must recognise the truth – that the people of Libya are demanding change and he cannot stand in their way.”

- HUMNEWS staff, files

Displacement of Migrants From Libya Now Full-Blown Humanitarian Crisis (Report)

(HN, March 2, 2011) - UPDATED 1440 GMT - The situation at the Libya-Tunisia border is at a crisis point, with as many as 15,000 people crossing a day from Libya.

"We can see acres of people waiting to cross the border. Many have been waiting for three to four days in the freezing cold, with no shelter or food," said Ayman Gharaibeh, head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) emergency response team at the border. "Usually the first three days of the crisis are the worst. This seems to be getting worse by the day," he added.

More than 75,000 people have crossed the Tunisian border since 19 February, the vast majority Egyptian nationals. An estimated 40,000 more are waiting to enter from the Libyan side of the border. The majority are from developing countries such as Niger, Chad, Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, and Vietnam.

There are also sizeable populations of migrant workers stuck in Tripoli, which is becoming increasingly tense and dangerous.

Some 2,500 Somali migrants are holed up in the violence-affected city and unsure what to do, say Somali migrants there.

“We have not left our house in the last 12 days. If we go out we are liable to be attacked," one of the Somalis, Mohamed Aweys, told IRIN by phone from Tripoli. "A friend who went out on 1 March to get some supplies has not returned. We have not seen or heard of him since; his mobile is switched off."

Humanitarian presence in Libya as well as numbers of people crossing into neighbouring countries. CREDIT: ReliefWebThere are also another 500 Somali migrants in the rebel-held city of Benghazi, Aweys said, had been targeted as suspected pro-Gaddafi mercenaries. "We spoke to some of them on the phone in Benghazi and they are hiding in their homes."

Another Somali in Tripoli, Mahamud Ahmed, told IRIN: "We have nothing to do with their [Libyans'] problems. Most of us came here to escape our own problems and look for a better life and now we are caught up in a life-and-death situation."

In a sign of the increasing scope of the humanitarian crisis on the borders, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR are urgently appealing to governments for a massive humanitarian evacuation of tens of thousands of Egyptians and other third country nationals who have fled Libya. They want a supply of massive financial and logistical assets to a joint humanitarian programme they established today - including planes, boats and expert personnel.

With tens of thousands of them stuck at the border, and more expected, UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told journalists in Geneva that it was "becoming critically important that onwards transport becomes quickly available to avoid a humanitarian crisis."

Many of the people fleeing Libya are vulnerable women and children according to UNICEFBy last night, shelter with tents was expected to have been given to a total of about 12,000 people. Two airlifts are planned for Thursday with tents and supplies for up to 10,000 people.

The water and hygiene situation at the border remains precarious. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has been asked to help with improving these facilities - providing relief to over-stretched Tunisian civilians, the Tunisian Red Crescent and the military.

There are huge numbers of migrants stranded on the Libyan side. Fleming in Geneva said the refugee agency was particularly concerned "that a large number of sub-Saharan Africans are not being allowed entry into Tunisia at this point. UNHCR is in negotiations with self-appointed volunteers from the local community who are guarding the border."

The emergency response leader Gharaibeh said most of those crossing the border were fit young men. "This is the only reason why the situation has not degenerated into a huge crisis so far."

Migrants from sub-Sahara Africa are seen as particularly vulnerable, as they may be targeted as suspected mercenaries. "We have heard several accounts from refugees who tell us their compatriots have been targeted and killed. Others tell us about forced evictions and attacks on their homes," Fleming said in Geneva.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Libya, the Egyptian government reported that some 69,000 people had crossed into Egypt from Libya since February 19.Lack of public facilities are border crossing makes the transit excruciating

"The majority of those who have crossed are Egyptians, most of whom have already been transported to other towns and cities. Around 3,000 people remain in the arrival/departure area awaiting onward transportation," Fleming said.

Today, the Egyptian Red Crescent was due to transport a consignment of UNHCR medical supplies and food into eastern Libya. The food and medicine is being sent in response to requests from tribal leaders who UNHCR met over the weekend, and is expected to arrive tomorrow. Further convoys are being prepared.

On Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called for immediate and safe access to western Libya.

It has an emergency team that includes surgeons and nurses, as well as medical supplies, on the Tunisian border waiting to enter western Libya as soon as security conditions permit.

Another emergency team, which also includes medical staff, is already at work in hospitals in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

"This crisis has been going on for 14 days. It's high time, and absolutely vital, that the needs of people affected are met. We call on everyone taking part in the violence to respect the right of the wounded and sick to seek medical care, and to ensure that humanitarian assistance is able to reach those in need," said the ICRC's director general, Yves Daccord.

"Right now, the situation is far too unstable and insecure to enable much-needed help to enter western parts of the country," he added. "Health and aid workers must be allowed to do their jobs safely. Patients must not be attacked, and ambulances and hospitals must not be misused. It's a matter of life and death."

- HUMNEWS staff, UN

LIBYA: Mass Evacuation of Nationals From Developing Countries Underway (REPORT)

As Libya falls further into chaos, a mass evacuation of migrant workers is underway(HN, March 1, 2011) - UPDATED 1145GMT - In one of the largest humanitarian exercises of its kind in recent memory, tens of thousands of migrants are streaming towards Libya's borders and ports as humanitarian agencies and governments scramble  to evacuate them from an increasingly chaotic and dangerous environment.

More than 100,000 migrants from many nationalities have escaped into Tunisia and Egypt, with a growing number now stranded at Libya's borders with Egypt and Tunisia. There are reports that thousands are still stranded inside Libya - among them several hundred Nigerians without money or the ability to move.

The trafiic flow is so heavy that aid agencies are finding it extremely difficult to cope.

Said one field worker from the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): "Just as we stabilize thousands of new arrivals - providing food, shelter and blankets - thousands more arrive. Usually the first three days of the crisis are the worst. This seems to be getting worse by the day."

Reports coming in say thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans are holed up inside their homes in Libya without any assistance at various places including Moursouk, Sabah, Misrata, Tripoli and Benghazi, desperately searching for vehicles to escape the targeted violence they feel is coming their way.

The Philippines alone has 13,000 migrant workers stranded in Libya, of which only 2,000 have been evacuated. But, Egypt, by far, has the largest contingent at about 1.5 million.

On Sunday, Nigeria managed to fly two planes into Tripoli to evacuate stranded nationals.

There are reports of chaotic scenes at the border. CNN correspondent Ivan Watson said thousands of refugees are caught in the "no-man's land" between Tunisia and Libya. "The scene on the Libyan border is getting ugly," he Tweeted at 1141GMT.

Field staff from the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) managed to identify other Third Country Nationals (TCNs) in urgent need of assistance, at the borders - including Nepalese, Ghanaians and Nigerians who were sleeping rough in freezing temperatures.

About 12,000 non-Tunisian migrants alone crossed the Tunisian border at Ras Adjir on Sunday. The BBC reports the flow of migrants into Tunisia at an astonishing 1,000 per hour.

Yesterday, the IOM managed to evacuate 900 Egyptian migrants from Tunisia to Egypt through five charter flights. Earlier today, a group of 1,450 Egyptians left overcrowded facilities at Ras Adjir on their way to the sea port of Sfax, where they will board an IOM-chartered vessel that will take them to Alexandria in Egypt.

The Organization is also evacuating a group of 361 Bangladeshi migrants and 174 Malians from Tunisia with more planned for today.

IOM is working with the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare for the arrival of a group of some 2,000 Bangladeshi nationals who remain stranded on the Libyan side of the border. Reports say the Bangladeshis are exhausted and are in urgent need of food, water and shelter.

"With thousands of migrants still awaiting authorization to enter Tunisia, there is an urgent need to decongest the border area which lacks adequate facilities to host large numbers of people," says Marc Petzold, IOM's Chief of Mission in Tunisia. 

Tunisian citizens who had been living in Libya returned to Tunisia at the Ras Jedir border crossing on Wednesday. Other foreigners were heading for Egypt (NYT)A sea evacuation of about 2,000 Egyptian migrants from the port at Djerba has also been planned but bad weather has so far hampered efforts. IOM expects this operation to get underway in the coming days as the weather improves.

In addition, IOM is looking to evacuate thousands of Egyptians stranded in the Libyan port city of Benghazi by sea to Alexandria in Egypt.

"IOM urgently needs donors to fund its initial appeal for US$11 million launched last week as soon as possible. We are using our reserves to provide immediate assistance, so desperately needed by the many tens of thousands of migrants who have already fled and many, many more still inside Libya desperately calling us for help," says IOM Director General William Lacy Swing.

"We urge all parties in Libya to refrain from targeting migrants who have for decades contributed to the growth and well-being of Libyan economy and to let those who wish to leave, to do so safely and in dignity."

With the large outflows putting enormous strain on the local infrastructure, in Tunisia in particular, it is imperative to be able to evacuate the migrants as soon as possible, IOM says.

IOM is establishing two transit centres for 800 migrants at Ras Adjir to help ease the pressure on another centre currently being managed by the Tunisian Red Crescent.

With very low temperatures at night and strong desert winds, shelter as well as water and sanitation assistance is critical, aid agencies say.

An IOM team found a group of about 600 Vietnamese migrants without papers at the border point trying to find some element of shelter from the elements but in the end forced to sleep in the open. The Organization is making arrangements to evacuate this group of migrants shortly. Although the Vietnamese migrants told IOM another 1,000 of their compatriots were on their way, at least 5,000 Vietnamese of an estimated 10,500 in Libya are still stuck inside the country.

In Egypt, where close to 22,000 Egyptian migrants alone are at a reception and processing centre at the border at Salum and another 7,000 migrants stranded in a compound in no-man's land between the two countries without papers or food or water, the situation is also difficult.
 
IOM, with teams working on the border at Salum and at Marsa Matroh further inland, has begun registration of the non-Egyptian migrants in no-mans land in order to organize their evacuation.

The majority of the migrants there are Bangladeshi nationals with a first group of over 450 due to depart in the next few days.

In coordination with the Egyptian authorities, IOM is also providing the migrants with humanitarian assistance including blankets, food and water.

Meanwhile, nearly 800 Nigerien migrants have been taken to Agadez in northern Niger from IOM's reception and transit centre in Dirkou. Another 432 Nigeriens have arrived today and will be transferred to Agadez as soon as possible.

With the capacity of the centre fully stretched, IOM is currently working with local authorities and the Nigerien Red Cross to increase it in order to accommodate the new arrivals. Tents will be set up on an adjacent plot of land. However, there is an urgent need for food, water and sanitation assistance.

This will become even more essential as Nigerian authorities in this northern part of the country have told IOM that there are more than 30 trucks carrying more than 2,000 Nigeriens and other Africans on board on Niger's border with Libya. They are expected in Dirkou within the next 24 hours.

The migrants being taken to Agadez have told IOM that they have escaped from Tripoli, Misrata and Sabah.

IOM is regularly receiving calls and messages from migrants and refugees inside Libya in a desperate situation.

The Organization is calling for migrants and refugees in Libya not to be targeted and for the safe passage for all those seeking to leave the country.

"We would urge migrants still in Libya fearing violence against them to stay put for the moment if they are in a safe place and out of sight," says IOM's Director of Operations, Mohammed Abdiker.

--- HUMNEWS staff, IOM

Are 'European Values' Being Eroded in Dealings With Libya? (PERSPECTIVE)

By Richard Pithouse

(HN, February 24, 2011) - As the first unconfirmed reports of airborne attacks on protestors in Tripoli and Benghazi reached Al Jazeera the station crossed to a spokesperson for the European Union.Colonel Qaddafi in 2009 on “visit of reconciliation” with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The two countries have significant bilateral investments.

There was talk of the need to affirm ‘European values’. Moments later the programme cut away to the story of the two Libyan fighter pilots who had landed in Malta and sought political asylum rather than obey orders to attack protestors in Benghazi.

Those pilots are not the first people to have arrived in Malta after crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. But most people who make that journey don’t arrive in Mirage F1s. Migrants take many routes into Europe. Some people cross into Greece from Turkey, others from Algeria into Spain. For many, the way into Europe is through the Sahara into Libya, across the ocean and into Malta and Italy. The migrants come from Somalia, from Chad, from Senegal, from Nigeria and from all over North and West Africa.

The journey across the Mediterranean in small and usually over crowded boats is perilous and many have sunk. If they are intercepted by the Italian navy the migrants are forced off the boats, often with clubs and batons that dispense electric shocks, and taken to prisons in Tripoli. In crass violation of international law no attempt is made to ascertain whether or not the migrants are political refugees or to enquire into their health or where the parents of children may be.

From Tripoli they are taken to European funded migrant detention centres in places like the tiny village of Al Qatran out in the dessert near the border with Chad and Niger. Al Qatran is a thousand kilometres from Tripoli and it may take three days for captured migrants to be moved across that distance in trucks. In the detention centres there may be more than fifty people in a room. They sleep on the floor. The routine sadism that always occurs in any situation in which some people are given absolute power over others is endemic. There are beatings, rapes and extortion. Suicides are a common response as are mass jailbreaks in which many migrants have been killed by the Libyan police. But some have escaped out into the vastness of the Sahara to make what they can of sudden freedom without papers or money in a desert.

Protesters in Europe call for the ouster of GaddafiIt was in the early days of the 2003 Iraq war that Tony Blair first proposed the idea that migrants trying to enter Europe should be sent to ‘transit processing centres’ outside of Europe. There is a similar logic here to the way in which the United States has outsourced torture to countries like Egypt.

Muammar Gaddafi’s early attempts to show that he would be able to take on the policing of Europe’s borders were not a huge success. In August 2004 a plane was chartered to deport 75 captured Eritrean migrants from Tripoli but the passengers seized control of the plane in mid flight and diverted it to Khartoum where the UNHCR recognised 60 of them as legitimate political refugees.

But on the same day that the European union lifted its economic sanctions and arms embargo on Libya in October 2004 it was agreed to engage with Libya on ‘immigration matters’ and a technical team was sent to Libya the following month. The United Kingdom and France both moved quickly to sell weapons to Libya and in 2008 Italy and Libya signed The Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between the Italian Republic and Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in which Italy agreed to invest five billion dollars in Libya in exchange for, amongst other things, a Libyan agreement to undertake to police migration into Europe via Libya. Silvio Berlusconi declared that closer relations with Libya are about “fewer illegal immigrants and more oil.” Since then Berlusconi and Gaddafi have, through the investment arms of their respective family trusts, become co-owners of a major communications company.

This sort of personal connection between an elected politician in the West and a despot elsewhere is hardly unique. The French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie spent her Christmas holiday in Tunisia as a guest of a businessman with close ties to Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali as the protests against Ben Ali were gathering strength. The first response of the French state to the protests in Tunisia was to send arms to Ben Ali. The French Prime Minister Francois Fillon spent his Christmas holiday on the Nile as a guest of the Egyptian state.  In March 2009 US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, commented, in a discussion about severe and routine human rights violations by the Mubarak regime, that “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.”

In recent years all sorts of European institutions beyond oil companies and security agencies made their own deals with the dictatorship in Tripoli. The London School of Economics accepted a £1.5m grant from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation for a ‘virtual democracy centre’. The Foundation is headed by the same Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who recently went on to Libyan television to tell protestors that his father’s government would ‘fight to the last minute, until the last bullet’.

The Europe of colonialism, slavery and genocide has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that backed the Mubarak dictatorship for thirty years and the Ben Ali dictatorship for twenty-three years has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that helped to smash Iraq in the invasion of 2003 has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that refused to allow the Haitian people to elect a leadership of its choosing by supporting a coup against that leadership in 2004 has no claim to moral leadership in this world. The Europe that has been directly responsible for the documented deaths of almost 14,000 migrants since 1993 has no claim to moral leadership in this world.

It is true enough that the modern form of democracy began in Europe with the French Revolution of 1789. But when African slaves in Haiti took the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity seriously and won their own revolution in 1804 it immediately became clear that the French did not intend democracy to be for everyone. That has been the European position ever since.A woman and her family cross from Libya to Tunisia at the Ras Jdir border crossing today. They were among thousands of people fleeing the violence in Libya. Credit: UNHCR

To choose democracy is not to choose Europe and it is certainly not to choose the United States of America, which has overthrown democratically elected governments around the world when electorates have had the temerity to elect the ‘wrong’ leaders. In fact, any serious commitment to democracy has to reject the moral and political authority of Europe and the United States of America. Any commitment to democracy has to assert, very clearly, that all people everywhere have the right to govern themselves according to their own will.

We cannot know the trajectories of the uprisings that have swept North Africa and the Middle East. But one thing is for sure. Whatever pompous claims to the contrary come out of Washington and Brussels, these are not revolts for American or European values. On the contrary they are a direct challenge to those values. They are revolts against a global power structure that is formed by an international alliance of elites with one of its key principles being the idea, the racist idea, that Arabs are ‘not yet ready’ for democracy. This, of course, is an echo of one of the common justifications for apartheid. But the plain fact of the matter is that anyone who says that anyone else isn’t yet ready for democracy is no democrat.

Ben Ali and Mubarak were little more than co-opted Bantustan leaders in a system of global apartheid. Gadaffi’s oil funded cruelty, megalomania and opportunism has taken him in many directions in his 42-year reign but have, in recent years, been leading him in the same direction. Democratising a Bantustan is progress. But democratising a Bantustan is not enough. The whole global system needs to be democratised.

Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University. This article first appeared on the website of the South Africa Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS).

Pulling the Revolutionary Trigger - Via Facebook (PERSPECTIVE)

by Alina Vrejoiu

“Whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is certain — this new revolution in human thought will never go backward.” --- Fredrick Douglas

(HN, February 21, 2011) -- As Libyan cities continue to fall into the hands of anti-Gaddafi supporters, many people are once again speculating on the root cause of the upheavals in the Middle East and Northern Africa.Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was so terrified of social media he ordered the Internet shut for several days. CREDIT: Al-Ahram

As an educator, and having lived through the revolution in Eastern Europe, I can tell you that if you peel away all the layers one thing becomes clear: the lack of an educational foundation is at the top of the list for revolutionary triggers.

It’s no accident that in this information age, social networking is leading the North African and Middle Eastern leap to modernity. This - combined with a high population of youth and a poor economy - makes a very potent recipe for revolution.

Who would have imagined that social networking sites - such as Twitter, Facebook and others like them - once thought to be playful diversions, are now helping to thread together the fabrics of the revolution? And who would have thought that the technology embraced by so many millions could pose a threat to strongmen like Muammar al-Gadaffi, one of the nastiest in the region, Hosni Mubarak and long-standing regimes in Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria and elsewhere?

Protesters in Benghazi demonstrate against Colonel Gaddafi Photo: FLICKRYoung men and women of these long-closed societies - such as Google marketing executive Wael Ghonim in Egypt - have formed online communities of like-minded individuals who have been disenfranchised by their governments of economic dignity and freedom for so many decades.

Something had to give and the timing is no accident: food prices are sky-rocketing, joblessness is at an all-time high and promises of reform from long-serving strongmen in the region have produced nothing more than hollow results.

In this information age everyone is connected but no one is in charge - this is what is leading to a breakdown in the dictatorships.
The rotted out governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East are a clear example of how being out of touch with technology and the huge generational gap have become huge liabilities.

These are the two main propellant forces that will fuel more and more protests in countries all over region.

In the region, about 60% of people are under the age of thirty and they all want to be free and have economic stability like all human beings do.  

As a presidential contender, Barack Obama knew how to reach America’s youth like no other politician running for office. His hypnotic “Yes We Can” campaign slogan resonated not only with the youth in this country, but all over the world. He had the savvy to connect with and engage college students for the first time in the United States through the Internet.

Overthrowing a regime and making a change will require massive investment in infrastructure and social programs in order for change to be successful and sustainable.

According to the United Nations the countries in this region have not only avoided badly-needed investment in their people but they have also kept them in the dark - through tactics ranging from limiting access to Internet sites to keeping tight reigns on state-owned media outlets.

Expect this astonishing wave of change to wash across virgin territory. Iran’s regime is vulnerable to the same break down as the countries in Northern Africa are faced with. The Mullahs and the Islamic element are minor in comparison to the population of youth they must face. The regime will put up a lot of resistance but its chances of surviving are slim. I am making the bold prediction that the Iranian regime will collapse within a year’s time, at the latest, and will change the geopolitics in the Middle East.

People all across the Middle East and North Africa are willing to sacrifice their lives for a common cause. The reality is promising and - these days - the trigger seems just a click away.

---Alina Vrejoiu is a faculty member of Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York and has taught international students for the last four years.

Social Media Huge Challenge to Authoritarian Governments (UPDATED FEB 21 1740GMT)

Protesters in Cairo demanding a return of Internet access(HN, February 21, 2011) - Across the Middle East and North Africa, social media channels are being used widely to mobilize protesters, feed news to media agencies and to broadcast thoughts that were once a ticket for imprisonment.

The use of such social media channels as Facebook, Skype and Twitter - and more recently Speak2Tweet - in Tunisia and Egypt has highlighted their importance as tools for circumventing government dominance of the media sector and restrictive freedom of association laws.

As major cities in Libya appeared to fall today into opposition hands, supporters overseas Tweeted ISP phone numbers in Europe which could be used by Libyans with dial-up modems to continue broadcasting updates. (The same tactic was used by overseas supporters of protesters in Tahrir Square: an ISP dial-in number in France was passed around - complete with user names and passwords).

The ability of protesters to communicate and mobilise via social media raises questions as to whether such tools have brought about a permanent shift in the balance of power away from authoritarian governments. Activists in Tunisia and Egypt used social media to good effect as part of their efforts to challenge the reign of authoritarian throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Further protests are being organised via social media, including in Bahrain, Yemen and - most recently - Libya and Morocco.

The region has one of the most youthful populations in the world, with people under 25 making up between 35-45% of the population in each country. They make up the majority of social media users, though users over 40 are the fastest growing segment on Facebook.

Internet penetration hovers around 20-30% outside the Gulf region, whereas mobile penetration is approaching nearly 100% in many countries. Many young people are accessing the Internet and social media channels via their mobile phones and smart phones. Falling handset prices and the widespread available of prepaid credit has allowed even those from lower wealth quintiles to access mobile phone services.

In the region there are about 17 million Facebook users, 25,000 Twitter accounts and 40,000 active blogs, according to the Arab Advisors Group. However exact figures are almost impossible to calculate.

YouTube is extremely popular, with an average of 24 hours of video uploaded from the region every minute, including accounts devoted to tracking human rights abuses.

In Saudi Arabia, Internet use is spreading like wildfire, although sites deemed a threat to the regime are routinely blocked. Saudi Arabia’s Internet users spent around US$ 3 billion in 2010 on buying products and services through e-commerce, according to the Arab Advisors Group.

Egypt's shutdown of all access to the internet and pressure on mobile phone operators to block SMS services was unprecedented. The country has among the highest Internet penetration on the continent.

Although Burma and Iran attempted to do the same, the widespread nature of Egypt's blockages in such an economically important country were a wake-up call to experts and officials who thought such a possibility was off the table.

Just yesterday, a HUMNEWS correspondent in the capital of Yemen, Sana'a, reported that access to Skype had been cut again.

In Bahrain social media also played a big role in mobilizing protesters. (Kuwait Times)However, on another level, the digital blackout was a powerful reminder of the power of older technologies, and innovative solutions emerged to merge the best of both. Landlines continued to be available, people in Egypt were encouraged to leave their wireless connections unlocked, and wireless internet relays to neighbouring countries were created by stringing together access points. Protesters also shared mobile phone credit amongst each other.

In Bahrain, makeshift charging stations for mobile phones have been established in Pearl Square - underlining the importance of these devices.

Social media are not purely of benefit to activists. They also enable government surveillance. Semi-public fora such as Facebook are relatively easy for government operatives to infiltrate.

In Sudan, which has also seen some protests in the capital, activists claim that authorities have used faux protests publicised on social media to entrap and arrest them; Blackberry's maker, Research in Motion, in recent months has caved to demands by the United Arab Emirates, followed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India and others, to make its data streams accessible to host governments (although the data likely remains encrypted).

The UAE's request came just days after youth attempted to organise a peaceful protest against rising oil prices using Blackberry's messenger service, known as BBM.

Social media put powerful information and communication tools into the hands of individuals, but also facilitate state surveillance.

Sensing the power of social media in the region, the US State Department has opened Twitter accounts in Farsi and Arabic.

However, for the moment the scales are tipped in favour of activists because publicity and popularity can provide a level of protection to many of the more well-know digital activists, and protesters so far appear to be a step ahead of governments in terms of utilising social media and circumventing censorship.

- HUMNEWS staff, Oxford Analytica

Authorities in Bahrain, Elsewhere Intensify Crackdown on Foreign Journalists (UPDATED FEB 19 1255GMT)

(HN, February 19, 2011) --- Across the Middle East and North Africa - journalists continue to find themselves in the line of fire.

Just yesterday in the Bahraini capital, Manama, Michael Slackman and Sean Patrick Farrell of The New York Times were recording video when a helicopter began firing in their direction. The two were amoing the few foreign journalists allowed into the tiny Gulf kingdom -  more than a dozen were detained for hours upon arrival at Bahrain International Airport.

Commenting on the targeting of his colleagues in Bahrain, Times colunist Nicholas Kristof said: "It was another example of Bahrain targeting journalists, as King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa attempts to intimidate or keep out witnesses to his repression."

Nancy Yousseff, a journalist with McClatchy news agency has been held at least 15 hours at Bahrain's airport. Other detained journalists are said to be from Reuters, Time, BBC, France 24 and several Japanese news outlets.

The crackdown on journalists in recent weeks in countries in the Middle East and North Africa ranging from Egypt to Lybia to Syria underscores a growing risk being faced by working journalists covering widening street protests in the region, says the New York-based watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists (see report below).

In Yemen, where protests are also gaining momentum - according to a HUMNEWS correspondent on the scene - the CPJ says at least four photojournalists were attacked, beaten, and had their cameras confiscated.

A CBS News crew arrived in Bahrain on Friday morning but some members were held at the airport by security officials, along with as many as 15 other foreign journalists, according to the Associated Press and other sources.

(The HUMNEWS correspondent reported at 1130GMT today that snipers have been stationed in the centre of Sana'a and that Skype has been blocked).

Also this afternoon, as Bahrani authorities were moving for a second time against protesters with live fire, Al Jazeera reported a journalist for the Daily Telegraph has also been shot.

In Iraq, Hemin Latif, a journalist working for the Sulaimaniya-based Destur news website (بینیتز ) was shot and injured yesterday while covering anti-government protests against unemployment and corruption, the CPJ says.

"Governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa cannot deny their citizens coverage of these momentous events across the region," Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator said today. "Local and international media must be allowed to cover the news."

In the CPJ report released yesterday, Attacks on the Press 2010, street protests were identified as a growing risk for journalists.

"Deaths in combat-related crossfire and in dangerous assignments such as street protests constituted a larger portion of the 2010 toll than usual," the report said.

In the street protests in Cairo, Egypt this month at least one journalist was killed and several injured and detained.

The CPJ report cites Bahrain as a country where "authorities have used harassment, threats, and restrictions on movement to limit independent coverage on sensitive issues."

It added: "The effect has been to conceal controversial activities and flawed policies, suppress political opposition, and settle scored with critics."

The CPJ says authorities in Bahrain have used the excuse of anti-terrorism to arrest hundreds of people - including at least two journalistic bloggers "who has been critical of government policies that marginalize the country's Shiite majority."

---HUMNEWS staff

Pakistan Deadliest Country for Journalists in 2010 - CPJ (Report)

(HN, February 16, 2011) -- Amid a rash of suicide attacks, Pakistan became the world’s deadliest country for the press in 2010. Journalists covering street protests are increasingly becoming targets. Credit: M Bociurkiw/HUMNEWS

According to the annual report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Attacks on the Press 2010, at least eight journalists killed in connection with their work in Pakistan last year - constituting a significant portion of the worldwide death toll of 44.

The CPJ says Iraq, Mexico, Honduras, and Indonesia also ranked high for journalism-related fatalities. And for the first time, broadcast journalists accounted for the highest proportion of fatalities, overtaking their colleagues in print.

The worldwide toll reflected a notable drop from 2009, when a massacre in the Philippine province of Maguindanao drove the number of work-related deaths to a record 72. The CPJ is investigating 31 other deaths in 2010 to determine whether they were work-related.

Not surprisingly, Internet-based journalists constitute an increasing portion of CPJ’s death toll. At least six journalists who worked primarily online were killed in 2010, a CPJ analysis found.

Murder was the leading cause of work-related deaths in 2010, as it has been in past years. But murders composed about 60 percent of deaths in 2010, lower than the rate of 72 percent seen over the past two decades, the CPJ found.

Deaths in combat-related crossfire and in dangerous assignments such as street protests constituted a larger portion of the 2010 toll than usual, says the CPJ.

(With the ongoing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, street protests are likely to account for a higher proportion of deaths and injuries among journalists in 2011. Earlier this month, Egyptian journalist Ahmed Mahmoud, 36, of Al-Taawun newspaper died of his wounds, inflicted from gunfire while taking photographs of protests from his balcony. And only yesterday, the media community was shaken when CBS News reported that one of its star correspondents - Lara Logan of 60 Minutes - was beaten and sexually assaulted while covering protests in Cairo recently. Several other Egyptian and foreign journalists have been injured, detained and harassed in the past weeks of unrest in Egypt).

One of the most dangerous professions in the world

Suicide bombings and crossfire in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, and Somalia accounted for the unusually high proportion, the CPJ report says.

The only journalist to die in prison in 2010 was Cameroonian editor Germain Cyrille Ngota Ngota - who was jailed after he and other journalists asked a presidential aide about alleged misuse of state oil company funds. Cameroon will hold Presidential elections later this year in a race which is expected to be turbulent.

"There's a price to pay for speaking out," Al Jazeera anchor Riz Khan says in the forward to the report.

The CPJ reports that at least five journalists were reported missing during the year, three in Mexico and one apiece in Sri Lanka and Ukraine.

In the report, the CPJ also took aim at international institutions for failing to defend press freedom. It chides UNESCO for wanting to present a prize honoring one of Africa’s most notorious press freedom abusers - President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. It also cited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for awarding Kazakhstan, one of the region’s worst press freedom violators, chairmanship of the organization.

- HUMNEWS staff

Revolution Comes Like a Thief in the Night (Perspective)

By Richard Pithouse

(HN, February 15, 2011) - Life, ordinary life, is meant to follow certain rhythms. We grow, seasons change and we assume new positions in the world. When you have finished being a child you put away childish things and move on to the next stage of life.A protester in Cairo walks by an ad for Business Class seats. Pithouse says the widening gulf between rich and poor is a powder keg waiting to explode. Credit: M Bociurkiw/HUMNEWS

But there is a multitude of people in this world who cannot build a home, marry and care for their children and aging parents. There is a multitude of people who are growing older as they remain stuck in an exhausting limbo, perhaps just managing to scrape together the rent for a backyard shack by selling tomatoes or cell phone chargers on some street.

Mohamed Bouazizi was one person amongst that multitude. He was born in 1984 in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid. His father died on a Libyan construction site when Mohamed was three. He went to a one roomed village school but had to start working from the age of ten and abandoned school altogether in his late teens.

In a city with an unemployment rate of 30% he couldn’t find work and began, like so many others, selling fruit and vegetables in the street. With the thousand rand that he made each month he looked after his mother, his uncle and his younger siblings. He was, incredibly, managing to pay for his sister, Samia, to study at university.

Since he was a child he had been harassed by the police who regularly confiscated his wheelbarrow and his wares. On the 17th of December last year he had just laid out one thousand and five hundred Rand to buy stock when a municipal official asked him for a bribe to keep his place on the street. He couldn’t pay it and so they turned his cart over, confiscated his scales, spat at him and slapped him. He went to the municipal offices to complain but no one would see him.  He went outside, bought some petrol, poured it all over his body and set himself alight outside the municipal offices. Mohammed’s mother told a journalist that he didn’t kill himself because he was poor but because he had been humiliated. "It got to him deep inside, it hurt his pride."

In 1961 Frantz Fanon wrote, from Tunisia, “The colonial world is a world cut into two....The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not how or where.”

Fifty years later cities are still divided into separate zones for those who count and those who don't count. These days what distinguishes those who count from those who don’t is usually the possession of wealth. But the people spurned by society continue to be taken as a threat to society. Jacques Depelchin, the Congolese historian, writes, “the poor in Africa have replaced the Dark Continent as the symbolic conceptual definition of the obstacle to civilization.”

But of course Mohamed Bouzazi didn’t die the invisible death of the average poor person. When he set his own body alight he ignited the uprising that drove Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power in Tunisia, toppled Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and then spread like a prairie fire to Algeria, Yemen, Iran and beyond. Revolt is leaping across the borders that are supposed to contain people while money is moved, dissidents rendered and intelligence exchanged.

These revolts may, like the European Revolutions of 1848 or the revolts against Stalinism in 1989, remake the world order in ways that we cannot yet predict.

Popular anger can be mobilised against innocent scapegoats like gay people in Uganda, Muslims in parts of India or migrants in South Africa. Revolutions are often rolled back, co-opted or even used to strengthen oppression by modernising it.  The future of Tunisia, Egypt and all the other countries where people are now taking to the streets against the police and party thugs has yet to be written. Local elites and imperialism will certainly aim to do more of that writing than the ordinary people that have already brought down two dictatorships.

But whatever the eventual fate of the struggles in North Africa and the Middle East something has been done that cannot be undone. That something is the fact that the refusal of a street vendor to continue to tolerate indignity and the sheer sadism of so much bureaucratic power was heard and acted on in a way that eventually brought down a brutal dictator and ally of imperialism and, for a moment at least, seized the initiative from the dictators, the officials, the experts, the police and the NGOs and put it, firmly and gloriously, in the hands of the people.

This is not the first time that the agency of people that don’t count has, like the proverbial thief in the night, suddenly appeared at the centre of the world stage without warning.

The Christian story is just one of many in which a poor man from some village in the provinces assumes a tremendous historical consequence that far outweighs that of his tormentors. And from the Haitian Revolution of 1804 to the Paris Commune of 1871 to the anti-colonial movements of the 50s and 60s that ignited a global rebellion in 1968 the modern world has periodically been remade by the intelligence and courage of the women and men it has most denigrated.

There are many lessons to be drawn from the drama unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East. One of them is that we should not assume that South Africans will continue to trudge through life without work, without homes and without dignity forever.

If we carry on as we are, the day will come when a fire will be lit in Grahamstown or Harrismith or Ermelo, or on some farm or in some school or shack settlement whose name we don’t yet know, and neither the rubber bullets, party thugs, offers of jobs and money to leaders or senior politicians arriving in helicopters with smiles and big promises will put it out.

Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University. This first appeared on the website of The South African Civil Society Information Service - SACSIS

Could The Spirit of Tahrir Square Infect Cameroon, West Africa? (Report)

(HN, February 12, 2011) - Cameroonian Presidential candidate and women's rights activist Kah Walla has warned incumbent President Paul Biya that the wave of passion for democratic change that has swept through Tunisia and Egypt could travel as far as West Africa - especially Cameroon, where presidential elections are due in October.

Cameroonian presidential candidate Kah Walla

In a letter to Biya sent to HUMNEWS, Kah Walla writes: "Mr. President, I am certain you are observing with great interest along with the rest of us Cameroonians, the wind of change that is gaining incredible momentum throughout Africa and in the Middle East. It is an incredible season for people who have been oppressed for decades and who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands. They are not only winning battles, but are actually coming out victorious in the struggles for independence, freedom and human dignity which they have been waging against their leaders.

"It is a very bad season for presidents who have been in power for over 20 years, maintaining their power through dubious, ritualistic elections, which have credibility neither with their own people nor with the global community."

In Cameroon the president is elected by plurality vote to serve a seven-year term. However opposition leaders say the election commission has "colossal weaknesses" and lacks the credibility to manage free and fair elections in Cameroon."

Biya came to power in the oil-producing nation in 1982. Like Nigeria, Cameroon's prospects for development were initially promising, with oil and pipeline projects generating revenue. But Biya changed the constitution in 2008, allowing him to run for president for a third time this year. Protests erupted and the opposition termed the change "a constitutional coup".

The parallels between Egypt and Cameroon are striking: both have had a president in power for about three decades, enjoy significant oil wealth, have huge populations of young people, suffer from massive unemployment and widespread corruption. Like the ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Biya is in is close to 80-years-old (he turns 78 tomorrow). It therefore comes as little surprise that Kah Walla is putting Biya on notice in the sternly-worded letter.

She says it is impossible for Cameroonians not to take notice of the popular stand against rigged elections in Egypt.

"Cameroonians are not only sitting on the edges of their seats observing this, but we are communing with these people in mind and spirit. We understand them in our very core, we admire the steps they have taken to control their own destinies, we are humbled by the courage they are showing in daring to invent their own futures, we are collecting information, analyzing it and drawing lessons from their victories."

Citing the tumultuous events in Tunisia, Kah Walla said: "We have learned from the Tunisians, that unlike us in 1992, it is necessary to maintain the pressure until the ultimate goal is attained. We have learned from the Tunisians, that unlike us in 1992, it is necessary to maintain the pressure until the ultimate goal is attained."

There are more than 15 elections across Africa this year. Many of these countries share similar traits with other countries in North Africa that have witnessed unrest - a high percentage of under 30-year-olds, high joblessness, sky-rocketing food prices and rampant corruption. In April, Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, will see Presidential elections that have already been tainted by a troublesome voter registration process.

Richard Moncrieff, West Africa Project Director for International Crisis Group, has said Cameroon's future is blighted by the threat of conflict. "The threat really comes from the frustration of the population, both for economic reasons – high unemployment, widespread poverty – and also for political reasons."

He added: "The very poor governance, the widespread corruption, the politicization of the justice system, the politicization of the electoral system is in fact a danger for the country and could eventually lead to conflict."

In her letter, Kah Walla, emboldened by what she has seen in North Africa, appeared to be issuing an ultimatum: "A world is collapsing, the world of dictators. The wind of change which is blowing, will only gather steam and momentum as the months go by and as we hurtle towards September/October 2011. Cameroonians are determined in this year to take their destiny into their own hands...We will willingly do this through a structured transition, through an election...on condition. On condition that the minimum requirements for a free and fair election are met. On condition that the political will for a democratic transition is unambiguously demonstrated. On condition that no one, absolutely no one, stops us in any way shape or form, impedes us from exercising our free will and our voters’ rights as Cameroonian citizens."

At 45, Kah Walla is an internationally management consultant and entrepreneur. She was recognized in 2008 by the World Bank as one of seven women entrepreneurs in Africa. In 2009 she spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative summit in New York.

- HUMNEWS staff

Over 6,000 Communities Across Africa Abandon Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (Report)

(HN, February 7, 2011) - Over 6,000 communities have chosen to abandon the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), according to a joint United Nations programme designed to eliminate this practice, and the number is growing.Youth Federation representative Asiya Oumer speaks at a declaration ceremony on abandonment of FGM/C in northern Ethiopia's Awash-Fentale District. UNICEF
  
“We are working in 12 out of 17 priority African countries and have seen real results - the years of hard work are paying off with FGM/C prevalence rates decreasing,” said Nafissatou Diop, Coordinator of the joint programme run by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
 
“In Ethiopia, the prevalence rate has fallen from 80 per cent to 74 per cent, in Kenya from 32 per cent to 27 per cent, and in Egypt from 97 per cent to 91 per cent. There is still a lot of work to do.”
 
Three million girls face FGM/C every year in Africa and worldwide, and up to 140 million women and girls have already undergone the practice. Research indicates that mothers and grandmothers of women have enormous influence over their decisions on whether to put their daughters through the dangerous procedure. In countries such as Egypt, the procedure is often administered by women with no medical credentials.

It is little wonder then that experts have concluded that FGM/C is a practice with serious immediate and long-term health effects.

In some countries, the influence of religious and clan leaders, local government officials and former circumcisers has brought a remarkable reduction in female cutting. Some Muslim scholars have called for banning FGM and for legislation criminalizing the practice.

Last year, a 13-year-old girl died after undergoing FGM in a public hospital in Egypt - even though the procedure had been made illegal since 2008.

“We must break the wall of silence that surrounds this issue and step up our national campaign to prevent the practice being passed on to the next generation”, Egyptian Minister of Family and Population Mushira Khattab said last year. “Our target is to make it clear that the practice will not be tolerated in Egypt.”

The UNFPA-UNICEF joint programme, set up in 2008, encourages communities to collectively abandon FGM/C - it is also known as positive deviance. It uses a culturally sensitive approach, including dialogue and social networking, leading to abandonment within one generation. The programme is anchored in human rights and involves all groups within a community, including religious leaders and young girls themselves. Rather than condemn FGM/C, it encourages collective abandonment to avoid alienating those that practice it and instead bring about their voluntary renunciation.
 
To mark the International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, UNFPA and UNICEF are renewing their commitment to put an end to the practice, and call on the global community to join in this critical effort. They also believe that FGM/C can be abandoned in one generation, which would help millions of girls and women to live healthier, fuller lives.
 
“Three years into the programme, more than 6,000 communities in Ethiopia, Egypt, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Gambia, Guinea and Somalia have already abandoned FGM/C,” according to a joint statement.

“Social norms and cultural practices are changing, and women and men in communities are uniting to protect the rights of girls. UNFPA and UNICEF are working with partners to end this harmful practice in one generation and we believe that reaching this goal is possible.”

FGM/C refers to the removal of all or part of the female genitalia. Despite global efforts to promote abandonment of the practice, FGM/C remains widespread in many developing countries, and has spread to other parts of the world, such as Europe and North America, where some immigrant families have now settled. The majority of girls who have undergone the practice live in 28 countries in Africa and Western Asia. 

- UN, HUMNEWS staff