News Round Up 15/09/2017

Burma

• Military Torches Homes Near Border – Satellite data from Human Rights Watch shows that at least 62 Rohingya villages have been destroyed. The UN estimates that almost 400,000 refugees have now crossed into Bangladesh in the last month.
• Burma Ambassador Rejects Allegations of Ethnic Cleansing – Burma is the victim of terrorists and “false media” reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine state, the country’s ambassador to the United States told VOA.  “if people are innocent, innocent villagers, they have no reason to flee away from their villages,” he said.
• Al Qaeda Warns Burma of ‘Punishment’ – Al Qaeda militants have called for support for Myanmar’s self-identifying Rohingya Muslims, who are facing a security crackdown that has sent about 400,000 of them fleeing to Bangladesh, warning that Myanmar would face “punishment” for its “crimes.”
• John McCain to punish Myanmar in defense bill – The US senator said Tuesday he will strip language from a bill authorizing defense spending that would have expanded U.S. military cooperation with Myanmar. His criticism is one of the strongest amongst a notably weak response from western politicians.
• Dublin City Councillors to debate stripping Freedom of City from Aung San Suu Kyi – “If it turns out the reports (are correct) and are happening under the eye Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, I think our fellow members may agree to a rescinding of the Freedom of the City.”

Nagorno-karabakh

• Blogger Lapshin departs from Azerbaijan to Israel – The blogger was arrested in Belarus for making ‘anti-state’ criticisms against Azerbaijan, and for illegal crossing. The extradition and persecution against Lapshin was widely slammed by international community as a gross violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of speech and movement.
• OSCE Conducts Border Monitoring in the Direction of Hadrut –  the OSCE Mission conducted a planned monitoring of the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Artsakh and Azerbaijan, in the eastern direction of the Hadrut region.

Nigeria

• With more than 1000 suspected and confirmed cases of cholera including 30 deaths in Borno state as of 07 Sept 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) has intensified its response efforts to contain the outbreak in Muna internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp in Maiduguri, Jere, Monguno and Dikwa local government areas (LGAs).
• 19 persons were killed and five others injured in an attack on Ancha village, Bassa Local Government, on Friday. Initial investigations has indicated that the attack was carried out by Fulani gunman but these claims have been disputed and the situation remains unclear.
• In its bid to solve a growing regional crisis, Nigeria’s government may have made it worse. For months, the revival of fifty year-old secessionist rhetoric for the creation of a “Biafra” nation for the Igbo ethnic group has grown in popularity across Nigeria’s southeast led by Nnamdi Kanu, the self-declared leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). This week as, in a show of force, the Nigerian government deployed army troops to Abia, Kanu’s home state.
• More than 100 “Chibok girls” freed from Nigeria’s Boko Haram have been reunited with their families and will soon return to school. The young women have spent months undergoing rehabilitation therapy. Women Affairs Minister Aisha Alhassan says they are now “fully recovered”. They were handed over to their parents at a party in the capital Abuja.

Sudan

• SPLM-N Agar says Sudanese army moving towards their position in Blue Nile – The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North led by Malik Agar Thursday accused the Sudanese government army of breaching a unilateral cessation of hostilities saying its troops advancing towards their positions in the Blue Nile.
• As the death toll climbs in Sudan, officials shy away from the ‘cholera’ label – As of July 7, health actors had recorded more than 23,200 cases of acute watery diarrhea (AWD) since August 2016, according to the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) and the Government of Sudan (GoS) Ministry of Health (MoH).
• Editor-in-chief beaten by Sudan security service – The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) released Hanadi El Siddig after three hours of detention that evening, during which she was subjected to “beating and verbal abuse”. “The personnel was forced to use violence against me by the operations police.”
• Red Cross suspends work in vast region of South Sudan – The International Committee of the Red Cross says it suspended work in the Equatorias region after a driver was killed on Friday by unknown attackers in western Equatoria. The UN says at least 84 aid workers have been killed since 2013, including at least 17 this year.
• Sudan urges EU countries to work for permanent lifting of US sanctions – The Sudanese government on Sunday urged European Union (EU) countries to work for the permanent lifting of US sanctions on Sudan as scheduled in October.

South Sudan

• The return of displaced people to their homes in Wau in north-western South Sudan could provide a “model” for other parts of the country, the Head of the UN Peacekeeping Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has said. The number of displaced people living in the UNMISS Protection of Civilians (POC) site has fallen from 38,000 to 32,500 over the last two months. Many of those people have returned home to cultivate their land.
• Floods caused by rain have displaced more than 100,000 people in South Sudan, an official said, raising fears about the devastating impact this could have on food security in the war-torn nation. Over 70,000 individuals and 1,590 households affected in Awiel and 40,000 others in Maban county. Other regions like Jonglei and Lol have also reported high figures.
• The women of South Sudan are tackling the famine crisis themselves. Many of the country’s women farmers are learning new skills to keep their families fed amid increasing hunger and lack of security and access to food.
• South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir on Thursday issued a directive for the removal of Wau state governor Andrea Mayar Achor who was replaced by Angelo Taban. The order, announced on the state-owned SSBC, gave no reasons for Mayar’s sacking.

Uganda

• More than 300 families in Lusabe village, Bufupa Parish, Masaba Sub-county in Sironko District that were recently hit by mudslides have asked for faster response from government due to the dire conditions they are living in. Although government opened a camp for the families at Bufupa Primary School, it lacks social amenities such as pit-latrines and clean water. The camp is about 200 metres from the mudslide site.
• There are concerns over Uganda’s compensate for landowners affected by a pipeline that will transport oil to an Indian Ocean port after accusations that some people reimbursed for earlier public projects were left worse-off. There are worries that “community participation, livelihoods and land rights could be overlooked in a quest to meet the schedule for land acquisition” for the 1,445-kilometer (898-mile) conduit that will link Uganda’s western oilfields with Tanga in Tanzania.
• Two travellers were killed and four critically injured in an ambush on Uganda on Tuesday, according to government officials. The travellers’ passenger vehicle was heading for the northeastern town of Soroti when it was ambushed by attackers suspected of being members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel movement.
• Ugandan farmers adopt new techniques to deal with climate change and increased drought periods. Across Uganda, agriculture is mainly rain-fed, which means most small-scale farmers do not have irrigation systems that help them survive periods of drought. A new form of smart farming, defined by cutting-edge techniques, water-saving methods, and not as vulnerable as traditional farming to the vagaries of weather and will improve the economic situation of smaller family run farms.