Somalia News Gazette

Mozambique’s parliament Thursday approved a tough new anti-terror law that imposes stiff prison sentences for convicted jihadis, but also for anyone spreading misinformation about the country’s insurgency.

The measure, which calls for up to 24 years in prison for those found guilty of “terrorism” offenses had broad support, but the opposition fears the clauses on misinformation could be used to crack down on media.

“Mozambique is experiencing cruel, direct impacts from terrorist attacks in the north,” government spokesman Nyeleti Mondlane told parliament.

“We want to strengthen the law to combat terrorism,” he said.

Some 3,900 people have been killed and 820,000 displaced from their homes since jihadi unrest erupted in northern Mozambique in October 2017.

More than 3,100 troops from several African countries moved into the troubled Cabo Delgado province in July last year and have retaken much of the territory.

The violence forced a halt to work on Mozambique’s gas fields, including a $20-billion project from TotalEnergies.

The new bill is Mozambique’s latest effort to tame the violence.

It also contains provisions calling for up to eight years behind bars for “anyone who intentionally disseminates information according to which a terrorist act was or is likely to be committed, knowing that the information is false.”

Arnaldo Chalawa, from the opposition RENAMO party, said: “The anti-terrorism law must not put at risk the right of the press or expression.”

The ruling party, FRELIMO, had enough votes to pass the law without opposition support.

President Felipe Nyusi has already indicated that he will sign it.

Source: Voice of America

Elmar Brok, the head of the EU electoral mission, told reporters Friday that as Zimbabwe prepares for next year’s elections, it must amend its electoral laws so that all parties have a fair chance of winning at the polls.

Brok and his team were assigned to Zimbabwe by Brussels to share their findings after their first visit to Zimbabwe during the July 2018 elections.

In an interview with VOA, Brok, a German national, said the mission gave Zimbabwean officials 23 recommendations for “genuine” electoral reforms.

“It has to do with even playing field, the impartiality of the [state] media, equal treatment of the parties, a proper voters’ registration, there is a multipart liaison committee, there will be proper conducting of elections, the conduct on election day – the transparency – and then counting and the collection of the counting to the final results. If that is transparently clear, no loopholes, then it’s the best way to have peace in the country, because nobody says there was something wrong with the elections, to get the credibility of elections.”

Zimbabwe officials would not comment Friday on Brok’s statement.

Earlier, though, Raphael Faranisi, the acting permanent secretary in Zimbabwe’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, said the government is looking forward to June 7, when Harare and Brussels officials meet.

“This will be yet another opportunity to candidly assess progress to date and plan for the future, based on realistic expectations. I have heard concerns expressed with respect to development in Zimbabwe. But I just want to put it on record that, in terms of the reforms that we have carried out, the challenge is: I just want you to give me three, four countries on our continent that have really done better than us. For those that have been following closely development in Zimbabwe, we are on that reform trajectory and it’s not reversable.”

For years, Zimbabwe’s elections have been marred by violence, voter intimidation and allegations of rigging, leading to disputed results.

When President Emmerson Mnangagwa succeeded Robert Mugabe in 2017, Mnangagwa promised to improve how elections are held but the opposition continues to accuse the ruling Zanu-PF party and the government of manipulating the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

Source: Voice of America

Authorities in Nigeria’s Kaduna state are raising concerns jihadist insurgents have infiltrated their region and are calling on the federal government to intervene.

State governor Nasir El-Rufai made the announcement during a quarterly security assessment.

During the meeting, El-Rufai said Ansaru and Boko Haram fighters have been detected in two local government areas and said the terror groups have been making attempts to recruit residents of those areas.

Authorities also said more than 360 people, including 45 females, were killed in the state between January and March by armed groups. They said more than 1,300 people were kidnapped.

“The first great concern is the emergency of Boko Haram enclave as well as the activities of Ansaru, particularly in Birnin Gwari and Chikun local governments,” El-Rufai said. “The terrorists were making comments like the forests in Kaduna are even better that the ones on Sambisa and so they should all relocate here.”

The Sambisa forest in Borno state has been a hideout for Boko Haram fighters for years.

Kaduna state near Nigeria’s capital has seen a wave of attacks in recent months including a March 28 train attack, during which nine people were killed and more than 60 others kidnapped.

El-Rufai said the attack was masterminded by terrorists now roving parts of the state.

Authorities also said they’re considering relocating three communities — Rijana, Kateri and Akilibu — over concerns that they may be harboring informants working for gangs.

Security analyst Patrick Agbambu says the success of Nigeria’s military operations in the northeast where Boko Haram has been active for over a decade is the reason terrorists are spreading to other regions.

“There’s a shifting of activities of the terrorist acts towards the northwest and north-central. Terrorist groups want to use places they can make statements, places where it will attract attention,” Agbambu said. “Security agencies and Nigeria must be very careful in those areas.”

Nigerian defense authorities this week said more than 53,000 Boko Haram members and their families have surrendered to the military so far this year.

Also, this week, Nigerian police announced they had arrested 31 kidnappers and criminals who took part in a school kidnapping last year.

Source: Voice of America

A cursory Google search for “rosewood furniture China” brings up plenty of sites selling the luxury item, but most buyers are likely unaware that their treasured table or chair could be the product of a rampant illegal trade in the protected tree species — one which is decimating forests in West Africa, facilitating elephant poaching, and even aiding jihadi groups.

Between May 2020 and March 2022, China imported from Mali 220,000 trees’ worth —148,000 tons — of a type of rosewood known as kosso despite a ban on its harvest and trade in the troubled West Africa nation, a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) found.

The dark wood is used to make expensive antique-style furniture. It is so popular in China, where it is known as “hongmu,” or “red wood,” that some 90% of the world’s exports end up there, according to Haibing Ma, EIA’s Asia policy specialist. Vietnam is also a key buyer of the wood.

“Rosewood is a species traditionally and culturally valued by the Chinese, so there’s almost like an insatiable demand there,” he told VOA.

From 2017-22, China imported half a million kosso trees, worth about $220 million, from Mali, the agency found, with Ma noting that the trade “has already caused tremendous negative ecological, economic and social impacts in the sourcing countries.”

Rosewood used to be sourced mainly from Southeast Asia, but with those forests now over-logged, Chinese traders have turned to West Africa, notably Mali, a chronically unstable nation that has suffered two coups since 2020 and is battling a jihadi insurgency.

Mali regulations and trade

Mali had declared a rosewood harvesting ban in 2020, but that was lifted the next year. Since then, a “log export ban” has been in effect, but exports to China have continued, EIA investigators found, estimating that more than 5,500 shipping containers of kosso were exported to China from May 2020 to March 2022

Most of the logging is occurring in protected areas such as forest reserves, in violation of Mali’s forest code.

According to the EIA report, both the illegal trade in kosso and an export monopoly granted to Générale Industrie du Bois SARL, a company run by a Malian entrepreneur, allegedly rely on “deeply entrenched corruption” that includes using invalid permits to ship the wood. EIA investigators also learned of civil servants receiving bribes to ignore logging and trafficking, the report said.

Trucks move the logs from Bamako, Mali’s capital, to the port of Dakar in Senegal. From there, they are shipped to China.

Emailed requests for comment to the Chinese Embassy in Bamako and to Mamadou Gackou, secretary-general of Mali’s Ministry of Environment, Sanitation and Sustainable Development, went unanswered.

Rosewood, ivory and jihadis

Rosewood trafficking is also a conduit for the smuggling of other goods, EIA found. Illegal ivory, including some from Mali’s nearly annihilated Gourma desert elephant, has been found inside the logs.

“It appears that the Chinese trader known locally as ‘Frank’ and his business partner, who carry out the largest rosewood trading operation in the country, have also been involved in ivory smuggling between Mali and China, starting in 2017 until at least 2020,” the report said. As of a couple of months ago, when EIA investigators spoke to Frank’s businesses partners, “they were still busy figuring out how to get a maximum of the kosso logs they had in the depot out of the country,” said Raphael Edou, Africa Program Manager at EIA.

Jihadis in Mali are using the timber trafficking issue as a means of propaganda, saying only they can stop the logging of the country’s precious forests, the EIA found.

“Supporters of the rebels have exploited the forest crisis and the frustration among the population in the Southern provinces as a way to promote their cause. They frequently allege that only the strict discipline of the jihadist can put an end to the rosewood crisis and the circles of grand corruption it has fueled,” the report said.

Responses to the logging problem

Beijing, Ma notes, has stipulated that all its foreign investment under its Belt and Road Initiative “should stick to the principle and the directions laid out in the Paris Agreement,” and that President Xi Jinping has stressed “China and Africa cooperation will never be at the cost of the interests of African people.”

The country must now walk the talk and stop the export of illegal timber from Mali, Ma said, adding, “As a responsible great power, China should make efforts to clean up these trade lines.”

China has taken action to stop logging in Gabon, where Chinese companies were linked to the illegal trafficking of timber in 2019. At that time, Beijing signed an agreement with the West African state to help fight illegal logging and develop forest management in Gabon. Since the two countries began cooperating, Gabon has seen a dramatic fall in illegal logging, according to Lee White, Gabon’s minister of water, forests, the sea and environment, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

Asked about what would happen to the loggers if the rosewood trade was shut down, EIA’s Edou said that they usually come from neighboring countries and that Malian communities resent their presence.

“According to our investigation, most of the forest communities in Mali have suffered and not benefited from the rosewood crisis. … Timber is commonly stolen from the communities’ forest area. Local leaders have raised on multiple occasions the problem: Others make money, they pay the price,” he said. Local residents end up losing their forests and receiving no money for the wood. Some communities even patrol their forests in hopes of catching the loggers themselves.

The EIA’s investigation comes as the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), described as “an international agreement between governments” that aims to protect the survival of species traded globally, is deliberating a regional trade ban. In March, in response to West African countries’ request, a CITES meeting gave states until April 27 to demonstrate their exports were legal or declare a zero-export quota. If they failed to do so, they would face a trade suspension.

“The CITES secretariat is analyzing all information received. … It’s expected this will be completed by the end of this month,” CITES spokesperson David Whitbourn told VOA in an email response.

“When the analysis is complete, a recommendation to suspend commercial trade for Pterocarpus erinaceus (Rosewood) will be set in place for those Parties that have not responded or have not provided a satisfactory justification,” he added.

Source: Voice of America

The Somali government has released $9.6 million it seized from a United Arab Emirates plane in Mogadishu four years ago, a step aimed at mending relations that have been stuck at a low point ever since.

“The money has been released and it is on its way to the Emirates,” Somali Deputy Information Minister Abdirahman Yusuf Al-Adala told VOA Somali.

Other reliable government sources said Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble, leading a delegation, flew to Dubai Wednesday to deliver the money in person.

The money was returned three days after Somali lawmakers elected a new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, replacing Roble’s political foe, Mohammed Abdullahi Mohamed. The new president has been sworn in but has not yet taken control of the government and it appears Roble acted independently.

A dramatic incident

The money was seized in April 2018, when Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency seized three suitcases at Mogadishu’s international airport from a Boeing 737/700 operated by the UAE’s Royal Jet Airline. The suitcases contained $9.6 million in cash.

Several Somali security officials told VOA at the time they seized the money because it was illegal and was intended to disrupt the country’s security.

Ambassador Mohammed Ahmed Othman Al Hammadi, UAE envoy to Mogadishu at the time, denied the accusation. “The money is for the ministry of defense. It’s for the salary of the Somali soldiers,” he told VOA.

After the incident, diplomatic relations between Somalia and the UAE plunged to their lowest point in history, prompting the UAE to immediately end a military training mission in Somalia. It also closed a military facility and the Sheikh Zayed Hospital in Mogadishu.

Before the incidents, tension between the countries was already rising. In March 2018, Somalia’s lower house of parliament banned a UAE state-owned ports operator, DP World, from the Horn of Africa country, declaring it “a threat to Somalia’s sovereignty, independence and unity.”

Since then, the two countries have frequently exchanged angry political rhetoric.

The tensions were at their highest during the drawn-out process of Somalia’s elections, which were marred by disputes at all levels of government and a controversy over the president’s legitimacy.

After President Mohamed’s four-year term in office expired on February 8, 2021, Somali lawmakers passed a motion to extend his term by another two years.

However, an Emirati Foreign Ministry statement called President Mohamed’s government as an interim administration.

The president accused the UAE of interfering in Somalia’s internal affairs, instigating political divisions and attempting to upset the nation’s stability.

PM Apologized for Seizure

In April of this year, Prime Minister Roble offered a public apology for the 2018 seizure of the UAE money, pledging that the cash, which has been in the Central Bank of Somalia, will be returned.

“We want to accept that we were wrong and seek forgiveness from our brothers [UAE]. We are two brothers and whatever has happened, let us look forward,” Roble said in a video posted on Facebook.

In a statement, Emirati the Foreign Ministry thanked Roble for his “initiative” to settle the dispute over Somalia’s seizure of Emirati aircraft and the $9.6 million in cash.

Outgoing President Mohamed ordered the central bank governor not to release the money. But it appears Mohamed’s order was ignored.

Days after Roble’s apology, the UAE, seeking a turn-around in relations with Somalia, sent tons of aid to Somalia to help the sub-Saharan country as it tries to cope with a severe drought.

Source: Voice of America

Dressed in rainbow-colored vests, members of the LGBTQ community marched in a risky demonstration in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, to protest a bill introduced by lawmakers in Nigeria’s lower house of parliament last month seeking to ban cross-dressing.

The new measure calls for a punishment of six months in jail or a fine of about $1,200 for cross-dressers.

A mob chattered as a transgender woman was beaten and stripped in Lagos weeks after the bill was introduced.

This is an outcome LGBTQ activists feared and the reason they say they’re fighting back. Kayode Ani is a chair at the Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation, or QUEST9ja.

What laws like this do is that they basically encourage people to take violence into their own hands, just as we had after the SSMPA was passed — individuals forming vigilantes and going into people’s homes because they suspect that they’re queer, beat them, murder them.”

The cross-dressing bill is an expanded version of Nigeria’s 2013 Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act that punishes gay sex with up to 14 years in prison.

The bill would allow comedians to cross-dress for entertainment purposes, but activists say it will worsen the existing violence against nonbinary or transgender people.

Nigerian transgender woman Empress Cookie says she’s been the victim of many horrible incidents. She recalls one experience with a mob in Abuja two years ago.

“They started stripping me naked, and they were, like, ‘See you’re even wearing a female’s pants.’ I was emotionally traumatized. I was drained. At a point, I was like, lifeless.”

Public displays like holding hands by sexual minority groups are outlawed in many African countries where authorities often cite religious and moral reasons.

Nigerian religious groups that support the same-sex marriage ban also now support the bill restricting cross-dressing.

“We don’t know man and man. God didn’t create Adam and Adam or Adam and Steve, God created Adam and Eve,” said Archbishop John Praise, deputy president of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria.

The cross-dressing bill will undergo several readings in parliament and be debated before it is passed and forwarded to President Muhammadu Buhari for approval.

Many LGBTQ advocates like Empress Cookie are hoping the president doesn’t sign it.

Source: Voice of America

Families of people kidnapped from a train in Nigeria’s Kaduna state two months ago are protesting a decision by authorities to resume service on the railway next week.

Officials of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) said trains would begin running between the capital, Abuja, and Kaduna city again on Monday.

Relatives of kidnapped victims met Thursday morning to protest the planned resumption of train service on the Kaduna-Abuja line.

Authorities suspended service indefinitely on March 28, the day armed men blew up tracks in Kaduna and attacked a train. Nine people were killed during the attack and scores are still missing.

During Thursday’s protest, the spokesperson of the group, Abdulfatai Jimoh, said at least 61 people were believed to be held captive, including Jimoh’s wife.

He said the government has been insensitive to the families’ plight.

“Our relatives kidnapped are still in captivity and we want them to be freed first before they can start thinking of that,” he said. “We want the NRC management and the Ministry of Transportation to put adequate security measures in place to guarantee the safety of passengers before train services can resume. These are the minimum conditions we require from them.”

Idahat Yusuf’s two sisters, both in their 50s, are also among the abducted passengers. She does not understand why the NRC would restart train service.

“It’s a national pain, it’s not only the families’ pain, so why would they choose to move on like that?” she asked.

The NRC said the decision to resume operations was not a sign of insensitivity to the situation and said efforts to have the captives released were continuing.

Security experts said negotiations have been deadlocked since the kidnappers demanded that authorities release members of their gang in exchange for the abductees.

Jimoh said the families have been given few details about the talks.

“We have information from government sources that discussions are ongoing with the abductors,” he said. “We just don’t know the extent or how far they have gone in these negotiations.”

The kidnappers have freed only three abductees, including a pregnant woman who told local news organizations that she was freed out of pity.

Northern Nigeria has seen a wave of kidnappings for ransom over the past 18 months.

This week, police arrested 31 people on charges of abducting students from a school in Kaduna state last year. Authorities also recovered 61 firearms, 376 rounds of ammunition, 22 cartridges and $5,000 cash.

Source: Voice of America