Where are the Chadian opponents arrested in the aftermath of the attempted coup initiated by the rebels in early February ? The cases of Ngarlejy Yorongar and Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh are especially worrying.
Last Friday, Chadian foreign and justice ministers assured in a press conference in Paris that Yorongar reappeared “in his neighbourhood in N’Djamena’. The two officials accused him of disappearing voluntarily and playing ‘hide and seek’ with the authorities.
Monday 25th Feb., French Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner was interviewed on the parliamentary station LCP-Sénat, and declared that Yorongar was actually hiding. ‘Mr. Yorongar (…) was found. He is still hiding, but quite reliable witnesses have seen him and he is alive,’ he said.
The problem is that these ‘quite reliable witnesses’ quoted by the French FM must be Chadian governemental officials. This assertion contradicts independent sources.
Meanwhile, Chadian human rights activists and the US-based Human Right Watch denied these statements, saying that the opponents were last seen in army custody.
“The government says it doesn’t know how Yorongar and Ibni disappeared,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Our inquiry leaves little doubt that it was the government which took them, and we hold the government fully responsible for their well-being and safe return”, the organization writes in its statement.
The question is : did Bernard Kouchner know about the opponents’ whereabouts when he said they were hiding ?
It would be a major blow for the French African diplomacy if it eventually happens that these opposition leaders do not reappear alive. But the French diplomacy is too busy working for the release of Ingrid Betancourt to do something for Déby’s opponents…
I heard recently several human rights activists campaigning for the release of jailed opponents in Syria. Those who have signed the «Beirut-Damascus declaration», appealing for a renewal of the Syrian-Lebanese relationship, have been particularly targeted in the last weeks by the Syrian security services.
I had the chance to meet some of the key leaders of this Syrian opposition (namely Riyad Seif and Anwar al-Bunni) during one of my trips to Damascus some time ago. They are deeply Syrian –not traitors or spies- and they want nothing but the improvement of the political life in their country. They constitute a rich ground for a modern civil society.
But talking about political prisoners, what about Syrian Arab neighbours ?
Yesterday, I read in the news that Egypt arrested another 70 persons charged to be linked with the muslim brotherhood, a body that is officially prohibited under the Egyptian state of emergency rule, even if it is somehow tolerated. In total, up to 30,000 opponents are reported jailed for political purposes in Egypt. Landis elaborates: ‘Amnesty International claims: “Torture is systematically practised in detention centres throughout Egypt, and victims of torture and their relatives continued to report harassment by security agents. The death penalty continued to be used extensively by criminal courts”.’
Landis reviews the neighbouring countries (most of them allies to the West) – Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. All of them hold many opponents in prison. And all of them practice torture.
This said, yes, I ask the Syrian governement to release the political prisoners it keeps in the country, especially in this infamous jail in the outskirts of Palmyra. But the human rights of a Syrian are the same as the human rights of an Egyptian or an Iraqi. Human rights campaigners must not be the tools of an unbalanced international politicy.
Thanks to Alain Gresh’s blog, I read the editorial of the Lebanese Daily Star daily, dated 14th of Feb. It was published after the assassination of the Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh.
It is interesting to notice that this newspaper, being read mainly among the Sunni and Christian communities in Lebanon, is rather close to the Western position.
I’m not trying to advocate any crime or defend any violent action (and this article does not either) but one must recall the local context before issuing quick judgments.
Here is an extract :
‘Whether one chooses to condemn or praise Mughniyeh, it is worth recalling the context in which he arose to become one of the most wanted men in the world. Mughniyeh had not yet been born in 1948, when Israeli forces entered Lebanon and killed dozens of civilians in the village of Hula, and he was just a toddler when the Jewish state sent commandos to Beirut International Airport to blow up 13 passenger planes. During Mughniyeh’s childhood and early adolescence, Israel systematically destroyed dozens of Muslim, Christian and Druze villages in Lebanon, making much of the South of the country uninhabitable and forcing scores of civilians to flee from their ancestral homes to the southern suburbs of Beirut. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Mughniyeh’s response to the criminal brutality that he witnessed in his formative years, one cannot deny the role that these events played in making him the man that he eventually became: Mughniyeh, like Hizbullah itself, arose as a direct response to Israeli aggression.’
This year, there was some blood on the Valentine’s red roses coming from Kenya. In the region were many of them were produced, near the central town of Naivasha, an actual ethnic cleansing has occured.
You can watch here the report I have done from there for the Belgian (French language) RTBF television (along with my colleague Claude-Adrien de Mun).
This story was broadcast during the evening news show on the 14th of February.
And a big thanks to Benoît Schaeffer for the head pix of this page.
On these pages, you can find a selection of my work, and some of my comments on the news. I opened a new section where I review some of my recent readings.
In order to make it as international as possible, I write most of this blog in English. Sometime with a bit of my lovely French accent...
