Floods kill 1,000 in Malawi
JOHANNESBURG, 11 April (IRIN) - A World Food Programme (WFP) assessment
found over 1,000 people were left homeless after recent floods and a
landslide in northern Malawi, a spokesman said on Friday.An assessment with local government authorities found that 1,160 people
had their fields or houses destroyed, and four people died in the
landslide in the Mzuzu district, Abdelgadi Musallam of WFP told IRIN.According to Malawi agriculture ministry official, Victor Luhanga, the
floods also swept away a number of bridges and roads, and damaged mining
equipment at Mchenga coal mine, which supplies local industry and exports
to Tanzania.Malawi hopes to have an improved harvest this year after two years of
weather-related food shortages.DRC: 1,000 people killed in Ituri massacre
BUNIA, 7 Apr 2003 (IRIN) - A UN helicopter flew 200 kg of medicines and plastic sheeting on Monday to survivors of an attack on a Hema community in Drodro, in northeastern Ituri District, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as UN officials investigated a massacre there on 3 April, said to have claimed around 1,000 victims.
Local chiefs gave lists of 996 people summarily executed in Drodro, 80 km north of the principal town of Bunia, and 14 surrounding places, the UN mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, said. The investigation team saw 49 victims, suffering from machete and bullet wounds, in a local hospital. The team was shown 20 mass graves, marked with fresh traces of blood and fragments of clothing, said to contain 250 bodies.
According to witnesses, the attack began at around 05:00 local time and lasted three hours. The assailants - men, women and children, some in military uniform, others in civilian clothes - attacked from five directions. Some spoke the Lendu language, others spoke in Swahili, MONUC said. [Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=33306]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello warned on Tuesday that those behind the Ituri massacre could be charged before the International Criminal Court (ICC). "The perpetrators of these atrocities will be put under the spotlight and will have to answer for their actions," he said in a statement. [Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=33377]
Meanwhile, the New York-based aid agency, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said in a report released on Tuesday that the conflict in the DRC had cost more lives than any other since World War II. In a survey carried out between August 1998, when the war began, and November 2002, the IRC estimated that at least 3.3 million Congolese died. The agency said its study showed the mortality rate in the DRC to be higher than UN reports for any other country in the world.
George Rupp, the president of the IRC, said: "This is a humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and shocking proportions. The worst mortality projections in the event of a lengthy war in Iraq, and the death toll from all the recent wars in the Balkans, don't even come close. Yet the crisis has received scant attention from international donors and the media." [Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=33335]
DOD ANNOUNCES CHANGE IN MARINE CASUALTY STATUS
The US Department of Defense announced today it has changed the
status of Marine Sgt. Fernando Padilla-Ramirez from Duty Status
Whereabouts Unknown (DUSTWUN) to killed in action. Sgt.
Padilla-Ramirez, 26, of San Luis, Ariz., was assigned to Marine
Wing Support Squadron-371, Marine Wing Support Group-37, Marine
Corps Air Station, Yuma, Ariz. He was last seen conducting
convoy operations in the vicinity of Al Nasiriyah on 28 March.
His remains were identified on April 10.
NIGERIA: A rendez-vous with history -
ABIDJAN, 11 April (IRIN) - Only two general elections in Nigeria have been
organised by civilian governments since independence from Britain in 1960.
In each case, the elections were marred by irregularities and violence. In
each case, they were followed by military overthrows. The presidential,
legislative and state polls from 12 April to 3 May represent the third
attempt by a civilian government to organise successful elections in
Nigeria. Whatever the outcome of the the polls, Africa's most populous
nation will still have to grapple with key issues that affect the
well-being of its 120 million people. Communal and religious conflicts,
and violence sparked by competition for resources figure high among these
issues. This web special, http://www.irinnews.org/webspecials/nigeria,
looks at the elections, the main players, the issue of conflict in general
and in particular the Niger Delta question, one of the thorniest issues
Nigeria's authorities and people are likely to face in the next four
years.SWAZILAND: Concern over prison overcrowding
MBABANE, 11 April (IRIN) - Swaziland's prisons are becoming dangerously
overcrowded as one consequence of a controversial Non-Bailable Offences
Act, legal observers say."We predicted a crisis in prisons, and we were right. Not only does the
non-bailable law tie the hands of magistrates by denying them the
discretionary power to set bail, but it has led to inhuman conditions of
crowding at the prisons," a source at the Swaziland Law Society told IRIN."Prisons are overcrowded, but the situation is particularly bad at remand
centres," reported the Bureau of Democracy this week. Amnesty
International has also criticised the five-year-old non-bailable law.A paralysis in the court system brought on by a current "rule of law"
crisis has seen the postponement of many criminal cases, further worsening
overcrowding and the attendant health risks as defendants remain
incarcerated while they await postponed trials.At an extraordinary weekend meeting the Swaziland Law Society resolved not
to attend cases before new government-appointed judges, to protest the
removal or demotion of Chief Justice Stanley Sapire, Justice Thomas Masuku
and others. The demoted judges had angered palace officials with rulings
deemed counter to palace interests."Some inmates have been remanded back to our facilities a dozen times. We
are now dangerously overcrowded," Chief of the Correctional Service,
Commissioner Mnguni Simelane, told parliament.Attorney Paul Shilubane, president of the Law Society, told IRIN: "We have
been advocating for an end to the Non-Bailable Offences Act. It is a
violation of human rights. It turns the principals of justice on their
head by assuming certain criminal suspects are guilty until proven
innocent."If a person is arrested for rape, murder, armed robbery or other serious
crimes, he or she cannot be granted bail by courts. After hearings to set
trial dates, judges are instructed by law to send these suspects back to
the remand centre in the central commercial hub, Manzini.The law went into effect in 1998 in response to a crime wave that startled
the conservative Swazi nation and undermined the country's image as a
tranquil home of African traditional life.A 2001 royal decree attempted to expand the list of non-bailable crimes to
include people charged with vaguely defined anti-state activities. But
under international pressure King Mswati III rescinded the decree.
