Day: May 1, 2022

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called Sunday for the military juntas in Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali to hand power back to civilians as soon as possible and reminded the world to deliver on “climate emergency” promises.

Speaking after meeting Senegalese President Macky Sall in Dakar, he said they had agreed on the need to keep talking to the de facto authorities in all three countries so as to get a swift return to “constitutional order.”

All three countries, struggling with a jihadist insurgency in the Sahel region, have recently experienced military coups: Mali in August 2020 and May 2021; Guinea in September 2021; and Burkina Faso in January 2022.

Sall is the current chair of the Economic Community of West African States, also known as ECOWAS, which has suspended all three countries from its membership.

ECOWAS imposed heavy sanctions against Mali in January after the regime there rejected a rapid return to civilian rule.

It has threatened similar sanctions against Guinea and Burkina Faso if they fail to enable a swift transition to civilian rule within a “reasonable” timeframe.

But the military regimes in both countries rejected the timetable set out by ECOWAS.

Last Monday, Ouagadougou said they had no plans to shorten the three-year transition period they had already announced.

And on Saturday evening, Guinea’s junta leader Colonel Mamady Doumbouya said he had opted for a 39-month transition period to civilian rule.

The decision was roundly condemned Sunday by opposition leaders in Guinea, including both the party of the ousted president Alpha Conde and opposition groups that had opposed him.

The regime in Mali is also continuing to defy ECOWAS pressure.

On April 21 it announced the launch of a two-year transition “process” before elections are held.

ECOWAS had called for elections within 16 months at the most.

Turning to the issue of global warming, Guterres said “the climate emergency… increases the security risk.”

African countries, he said, were “often the first victims” of global warming for which they are “not responsible.”

Developed countries had pledged to help the countries of the south to finance their “transition towards renewable energies and green jobs,” he noted.

“It’s time to take action. It’s time to keep the promise of 100 billion dollars a year made in Paris,” he said, referring to national pledges under the 2015 Paris Agreement aimed at capping global warming below two degrees Celsius.

In Dakar, Guterres visited the site of the future headquarters of the UN’s regional operations as well as a manufacturing unit soon to produce COVID-19 vaccines and also experimental anti-malaria and tuberculosis vaccines.

Guterres also addressed the consequences of the war in Ukraine on Africa, where he said the conflict “aggravates a triple crisis: food, energy and financial.”

To enable the countries of the continent to cope, Guterres urged once again international financial institutions to put in place “urgently…debt relief measures…so that governments can avoid default and invest in social safety nets and sustainable development for their people.”

Source: Voice of America

When amputee athlete Jacky Hunt-Broersma says her mantra is, “I can do hard things,” she’s not kidding — the amputee athlete has run 104 marathons in as many days, all using a carbon-fiber prosthesis.

Hunt-Broersma, 46, completed that epic quest Saturday near her home in suburban Phoenix, setting an unofficial world record along the way.

“What a journey,” she tweeted.

The South Africa native, who lost her left leg below the knee to a rare cancer, gained worldwide attention and a huge social media following after beginning her record attempt on Jan. 17.

Brick Runners, an organization that supports athletes who raise money for charities, even designed a Jacky-inspired Lego-style character complete with one of her favorite T-shirts, which reads: “Strong Has Many Forms.”

Hunt-Broersma also raised more than $67,000 to help fellow amputee blade runners get the expensive prostheses they need. Health insurance typically doesn’t cover the cost, which can exceed $10,000.

Every day since mid-January, she covered the classic 26.2-mile (42.2-kilometer) marathon distance either on a loop course laid out near her home in Gilbert, Arizona, or on a treadmill indoors.

Her original goal was to run 100 marathons in 100 days so she’d beat a record of 95 set in 2020 by Alyssa Amos Clark, a nondisabled runner from Bennington, Vermont, who did it as a pandemic coping strategy. But last month, after nondisabled British runner Kate Jayden unofficially broke Clark’s record with 101 marathons in 101 days, Hunt-Broersma realized she’d need to run at least 102.

In an interview with The Associated Press, she said she hoped her quest would inspire people everywhere to push themselves regardless of their physical limitations.

Guinness World Records spokesperson Amanda Marcus said the Britain-based organization was aware of Hunt-Broersma’s attempt, and that it would take 12 to 15 weeks to review the evidence before the record can be confirmed.

Guinness lists the men’s record for consecutive daily marathons as 59, set in 2019 by Enzo Caporaso of Italy.

Source: Voice of America

As a combatant for the Islamic State group who left his native Morocco to join what he felt was a holy fight in Syria, Mohsin says he saw all the horrors of war. “A terrifying experience,” he says.

Now a prisoner, the 38-year-old claims he is no longer the fanatic he was then, enraged with a murderous hatred for non-Muslims. Captured in Turkey and extradited to Morocco, he is serving a 10-year prison term on terrorism charges.

Now the former fighter has graduated with 14 other prisoners convicted of terror offenses from a Morocco de-radicalization program that might make them more eligible for an early release.

The Associated Press and other media were invited to observe their graduation ceremony Thursday in a prison in Sale near the Moroccan capital, Rabat, and to interview some prisoners under monitored and controlled conditions. Prison administration officials picked out three men they said were willing to be interviewed.

Officials stipulated that the inmates shouldn’t be identified by their full names and that their faces mustn’t be shown, citing privacy reasons.

But prison officials didn’t listen to the interviews or intervene to shut down media lines of questioning or inmates’ answers.

The 15 inmates in crisp shirts and trousers stood solemnly for Morocco’s national anthem and were handed certificates. Prison officials said the de-radicalization program consisted of three months of classes in prison on religion, law and economics, and that inmates also received training on how to start a business. These most recent graduates were the ninth batch since the program started in 2017.

Moulay Idriss Agoulmam, the director of social-cultural action and prisoner reintegration at Morocco’s prison administration, said the program is entirely voluntary and works with inmates “to change their behavior and improve their life path.”

“It enables prisoners to form an awareness of the gravity of their mistakes,” he said.

Graduating from the program doesn’t make inmates automatically eligible for early release, but does increase their chances of getting a royal pardon or a reduced sentence. That’s been the case for just over half the program’s 222 graduates so far, the prison administration says. Since 2019, the training has also been offered to women convicted under Morocco’s Anti-Terrorism Act. Ten women have graduated so far — all of them since released, including eight with pardons.

Called “Moussalaha,” meaning “reconciliation” in Arabic, the program is offered to prisoners who have demonstrated a readiness to disavow extremism.

Mohsin said he left to fight in Syria in 2012. A school dropout as a teen, he said he “was virtually illiterate and couldn’t discern good from bad.” He said he was radicalized by people who showed him extremist videos “about the divine obligation to battle those who don’t follow Islamic principles and to murder non-Muslims.”

In Syria, “I saw massacres, rapes, and thefts,” he said. “I concluded after a time that the fight being conducted in the name of Islam had nothing to do with our religion.”

He escaped to Turkey in 2018 and was detained for a year there before being extradited to Morocco.

He says he has now disavowed extremism.

“That period of my life has passed,” he said.

Numerous Moroccans have traveled to Syria, Iraq and elsewhere to join extremist groups. Morocco has also experienced multiple attacks itself. Five suicide attacks in Casablanca in 2003 killed 33 people. In 2011, an explosion destroyed a cafe in Marrakech, killing 17 people, most of them foreign tourists.

Al Mustapaha Razrazi, a clinical psychologist and member of the program’s scientific committee, said among 156 people who have been released after attending the courses, just one has been caught committing a crime again.

That person was convicted of a non-terrorism-related offense, he said.

Source: Voice of America