Weekly anb08234.txt #7

[anb-bia <anb-bia@village.uunet.be>]

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WEEKLY NEWS ISSUE of: 23-08-2001      PART #4/7

* Guinée-Bissau. Groupe islamique expulsé  -  Le 20 août, le président Yala 
a donné l'ordre au groupe islamique Ahmadiyya de quitter la Guinée-Bissau 
dans les 48 heures, l'accusant de créer de "sérieux malentendus" au sein de 
la communauté musulmane, qui forme près de la moitié de la population du 
pays, a rapporté l'agence portugaise Lusa. A l'occasion d'un rassemblement 
de 500 chefs musulmans, il a indiqué que l'Amhadiyya interférait dans la 
vie politique du pays. Selon Lusa, l'Ahmadiyya, qui existe en Guinée-Bissau 
depuis 1995, est considérée comme non orthodoxe et est inacceptable pour la 
majorité musulmane.   (IRIN, Abidjan, 21 août 2001)

* Equatorial Guinea. Oil boom  -  A new gas discovery in Equatorial Guinea 
has renewed discussions about how the country's oil wealth should be shared 
out. Equatorial Guinea has become one of the world's fastest growing 
economies. Just last month, the government forecast that the economy would 
grow 72.5% this year, in a continuation of a boom spurred by the discovery 
of oil in the early 1990s. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes 
that the economy will grow 52.7% this year. But as Texan oil company CMS 
Energy discovers a significant new off-shore gas field, questions remains 
as to when the country's poor will see the benefits of a booming economy. 
Equatorial Guinea is a tiny country, nestled between Cameroon and Gabon on 
the West Coast of Africa. Since the discovery of large oil and gas deposits 
off Bioko in the mid-1990s, the country has experienced an economic boom, 
with US companies investing about $5bn over the past five years. Currently, 
Equatorial Guinea produces between 200,000 and 250,000 barrels of oil a 
day, making it the third biggest producer in Africa, following Nigeria and 
Angola.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 18 August 2001)

* Eritrea. Students die in Eritrea detention camp  -  20 August: A second 
student held in a desert detention camp in Eritrea for refusing to comply 
with the government's holiday work programme has died. The president of 
Asmara University, Woldeab Issak, said the student, Yemane Tekee, died at 
the Halibet hospital on 19 August morning where he had been receiving 
medical treatment for heat stroke. On 16 August, the French news agency AFP 
reported the death, also from sun stroke, of another student in the camp. 
The dead students were among those taken to the site at Wia, about 30 
kilometres from the port city of Massawa. Massawa is known for its 
scorching temperatures sometimes reaching as high as 49C (120F) at this 
time of year. The agency says some students, released to write their exams, 
said about 2,000 of them were being held with very little food and in poor 
accommodation. They were arrested a week ago in dormitories and at the High 
Court where they had expected to see the appearance in court of their 
student union president. The student leader, Semere Kesete, was arrested in 
July for making a speech attacking the compulsory work scheme, government's 
interference in the university's affairs and inadequate support for the 
institution. 21 August: The Eritrean government has denied reports that it 
has been holding 2,000 university students at a desert detention camp for 
the past week because they refused to take part in a compulsory summer work 
project. The government said police had detained about 400 students who had 
agitated against the work programme. They'd been sent to a project centre 
at Wia south of Massawa to start a newly-arranged project and were joined 
there voluntarily by another seventeen-hundred students. The government 
said Asmara University had made it clear that there would be penalties at 
registration when the university re-opened in September for those who 
boycotted the summer programme. They also confirmed that two students on 
the programme had died, but denied this was due to poor living 
conditions.   (BBC News, UK, 22 August 2001)

* Kenya. Chute d'un minibus: 23 morts  -  Le 15 août au soir, 23 personnes, 
dont 10 enfants, ont été tuées et 15 blessées après la chute d'un minibus 
dans une rivière, près de la ville de Machakos (sud du Kenya). Le minibus a 
heurté une pierre sur la route et a plongé dans la rivière Mwania. D'une 
capacité de 23 passagers, le véhicule transportait 58 personnes quand 
l'accident s'est produit.   (Le Soir, Belgique, 17 août 2001)

* Libéria. Appel de l'Onu  -  Le Conseil de sécurité de l'Onu, préoccupé 
par la poursuite des combats au Libéria, a demandé aux parties impliquées 
de faire preuve de modération et de chercher une solution par le dialogue. 
Le président du Conseil a dit dans un communiqué rendu public le 16 août, 
que les combats entre le gouvernement et les rebelles étaient à l'origine 
de graves problèmes humanitaires. Il a invité fermement le gouvernement du 
Libéria à permettre un accès aux agences humanitaires afin que les secours 
puissent être acheminés vers les réfugiés et personnes déplacées.   (PANA, 
Sénégal, 18 août 2001)

* Liberia. Liberia fights "ghost soldiers"  -  Liberia has discovered that 
some 2,000 soldiers out of its 14,000 strong army do not exist. All of 
these so-called "ghost soldiers" have now been removed from the payroll in 
an attempt to cut fraud. Defence Ministry spokesman Philibert Brown told 
Reuters news agency that some senior officers had been regularly receiving 
salaries on behalf of people who do not exist. Philibert Brown, Defence 
Ministry Correspondents say that there may still be thousands more "ghost 
soldiers" in Liberia. It is thought that only around half of Liberia's 
official military strength of 12,000 is still in service -- the rest were 
killed or deserted during the country's long 1990s civil war. For the past 
year, Liberia has been rocked by serious fighting in the areas which border 
Guinea and Sierra Leone. "Our exercise is intended to identify only ghost 
names and I must tell you that there will be no trouble because a ghost 
does not exist," said Mr Brown.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 18 August 2001)

* Liberia. Fighting flares  -  Fresh fighting has erupted between rebels 
and government troops in northern Liberia, the Liberian defence ministry 
says. A ministry statement said rebels had burned down the town of Kpatazu 
in Lofa County on the border with Guinea. Liberian defence ministry 
Officials said the two sides were fighting for control of the town and that 
clashes had also broken out in the town of Kolahun. The reports of renewed 
violence came as ministers from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone prepared 
to meet to discuss ways of curbing armed groups active in the region. "Our 
troops are presently engaged in a series of running battles with dissident 
forces and are thwarting any further advance into other parts of Lofa 
County," the statement said. The ministry did not say when the clashes 
broke out and there has been no independent confirmation of the 
fighting.   (BBC News, UK, 22 August 2001)

* Maroc. Ahmed Boukhari en prison  -  Ahmed Boukhari, ex-agent des services 
secrets marocains qui, depuis la fin juin, a multiplié les révélations sur 
l'affaire Ben Barka et le fonctionnement de la police politique du royaume 
durant les "années de plomb" a été envoyé en prison pour "émission de 
chèques sans provision". Il est poursuivi pour quatre chèques en bois d'un 
montant global de 125.000 FF, dont deux (portant sur les trois quarts de la 
somme) datent de 1992. Le quotidien marocain indépendant L'Economiste 
dénonce, le 15 août, "un véritable assassinat de l'Etat de droit", estimant 
que le ministère public, au lieu de poursuivre l'ex-agent, aurait dû se 
saisir de ses révélations pour ouvrir une instruction. On espère que 
l'arrestation d'Ahmed Boukhari ne sera pas un obstacle à sa déposition 
devant la justice française, qui a convoqué ce témoin capital pour le 7 
septembre. (Ndlr.: Le 22 août, un tribunal de Casablanca a décidé le 
maintien de Boukhari en prison et le renvoi du procès au 28 août. Boukhari 
a décidé d'entreprendre une grève de la faim).   (Le Monde, France, 17 août 
2001)

* Morocco. Launching a "war on slums"  -  Morocco's King Mohammed VI has 
ordered his government to tackle worsening poverty in an attempt to curb 
the growing shanty towns around the country's main cities. In a speech 
televised live to the nation, the king called for a supreme jihad or holy 
war aimed at eradicating the social conditions that had created the shanty 
towns -- and laws to stop the slums spreading. The king said some two 
million impoverished citizens are now concentrated in the coastal belt that 
takes in Casablanca and Rabat. Another two million are on the Mediterranean 
coastline near Tangiers and at Oujda near the border with Algeria. Despite 
the existence of an elected parliament and government in Morocco, it is the 
monarch and his advisers who hold the main decision-making powers. The fact 
that King Mohammed has personally highlighted this issue indicates the 
seriousness with which it is being taken. What Moroccans probably fear most 
is the kind of social and political degeneration that has taken place since 
the 1980s in neighbouring Algeria. The shanty towns are breeding-grounds 
for the cause of political Islam, which has been relatively dormant so far 
in Morocco but lies just beneath the surface. The rural Berber community is 
now also beginning to stand up for further rights, and in a previous speech 
last month the king promised to address Berber demands.   (BBC News, UK, 21 
August 2001)

* Maroc. Lutte contre l'habitat insalubre  -  Le 20 août, le roi Mohammed 
VI a appelé à l'élaboration d'un plan national pour la lutte contre 
l'habitat insalubre. Il a essentiellement mis l'accent sur les 
collectivités locales, mettant en garde contre l'octroi à des fins 
"clientélistes et électoralistes" de permis de construire illégaux 
"encourageant implicitement l'habitat insalubre". Selon les chiffres 
avancés par le roi, plus de quatre millions de Marocains vivent dans des 
bidonvilles en progression annuelle de 70%.   (AP, 21 août 2001)

* Namibia. Black farmers urge land reform  -  Black communal farmers in 
Namibia have urged the 4,000 mainly-white commercial farmers to speed up 
land reform to avoid what they called Zimbabwe-style farm invasions. The 
Namibian National Farmers' Union said the government's willing-seller, 
willing-buyer policy had failed to address the land imbalance in Namibia 
because white commercial farmers were unwilling to sell. The union's 
leader, Pintile Davids, has warned that the slow pace of land reform could 
produce another Zimbabwe, where hundreds of white-owned farms have been 
seized by self-styled liberation war veterans with the support of President 
Robert Mugabe's government. Only some 35,000 Namibians have been resettled 
on commercial farmland since independence from South Africa in 1990.   (BBC 
News, UK, 21 August 2001)

* Nigeria. Lutte contre le corruption  -  Le 15 août, le gouvernement 
nigérian a approuvé l'octroi de nouveaux pouvoirs au président Obasanjo 
pour lui permettre de limoger les hauts responsables corrompus, a informé 
le quotidien The Guardian. M. Obasanjo sera ainsi en mesure de congédier 
sommairement des fonctionnaires soupçonnés de corruption, après avoir 
consulté et reçu l'approbation du pouvoir législatif, au lieu de passer par 
l'actuelle procédure plus lente et plus longue. Cet amendement intervient 
dans un climat de critiques contre le gouvernement pour son laxisme dans la 
lutte contre la corruption.   (IRIN, Abidjan, 16 août 2001)

* Nigeria. Milices et vigiles  -  Des membres de l'Odua People's Congress 
(OPC), sous la coupe d'une interdiction, ont continué cette semaine à tuer 
des voleurs présumés dans l'Etat de Lagos. Le 16 août, l'OPC a décapité 
quatre hommes, puis mis le feu à leurs cadavres, a rapporté The Guardian. 
L'un des suspects a été cloué sur une planche en forme de crucifix. Le 
gouvernement fédéral, les forces de l'ordre et des groupes de la société 
civile s'opposent aux méthodes macabres des milices telles que l'OPC et à 
leurs pratiques de justiciers. Cependant, certaines ont l'appui des 
gouverneurs et des habitants, qui soutiennent que les groupes se sont 
révélés efficaces dans la lutte contre le crime. L'OPC fut interdit en 1999 
après avoir provoqué des émeutes ayant fait des centaines de morts. Dans 
l'Etat d'Abia, l'ONG Public and Private Rights Watch a appelé à mettre hors 
service les Bakassi Boys, un groupe de vigiles opérant à Abia et dans 
d'autres Etats du sud-est.   (IRIN, Abidjan, 17 août 2001)

WEEKLY anb0823.txt - #4/7