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10 June 2016
News from HART
- Last week, HART attended the demonstration outside the Sudanese Embassy in London against 5 years of bombing in South Kordofan and Blue Nile in Sudan. We conducted numerous interviews on the ground, here’s what our interviewees had to say.
Burma
Credits: The Asian Correspondent
- For the first time since the new government took power, a reporter from the BBC has been sentenced to three months of hard labour. The Daily Mail has reported that, “It is believed that the police officer, standing in the middle of a moving motorcade, knocked a protester off a motorbike and leading to a scuffle between him and the reporter.”
- In Arakan State, it is reported that clashes between the Burmese Army and Arakan Army (AA) erupted on Sunday, 5th June.
- According to the Asian Correspondent, “Burma’s top Buddhist authority has vowed to monitor the activities of the hard-line Ma Ba Tha group.”
India
- The Hindustan Times have reported that, “Upper caste Rajput men allegedly mowed down a Dalit man in Rajasthan’s Nagaur district over a land dispute on Thursday, bringing the focus back on mounting cases of caste-based atrocities in India”.
- According to the BBC, the monsoons have finally arrived to India and “gradually spread across India by 15 July, bringing cheer, hope, insects, relief from the heat, better farm output, GDP growth and lower inflation.”
Nigeria
Credits: Buzz Nigeria
- The militant group of Nigeria’s oil-producing region, called the Niger Delta Avengers, “says it will not negotiate with the government and has continued to blow up oil pipelines” according to Newsweek. As a result of this, it has been claimed that foreign refineries will stop buying Nigeria’s crude oil.
- Meanwhile, attacks in the Niger Delta region continue with another blast hitting a pipeline “operated by a subsidiary of Nigeria’s state oil company” reported yesterday, Thursday 9th June, reports Reuters.
- According to the UN, “Women in displacement sites in Nigeria’s Borno state face high risk of abuse”.
- The Business Standard have recently reported on the deterioration of human rights and religious freedoms in India under the Modi government in these past two years.
Sudan
- The lack of international action against President Omer al-Bashir emboldened him to defy international justice and to travel around the world, said International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda Thursday.
- On Saturday, 13 members of the Nuba Mountains Students Associations Union in Universities were arrested while they were preparing for the commemoration, of the killing of student Mohamed Al Sadig Weiga. Weiga was shot dead in front of the Nuba House at Al Ahliya University in Omdurman on 27 April 2016.
- Sudan’s opposition National Umma Party (NUP) Friday said the African Union chief mediator Thabo Mbeki has agreed to meet the “Sudan Call” forces to discuss their reservations on the Roadmap Agreement he brokered between Sudanese parties.
South Sudan
- Human Rights Watch is calling on the African Union to go ahead and set up the hybrid court, an international criminal court, that was part of the August 2015 South Sudan peace agreement to try alleged war crimes suspects.
- This week, the New York Times published a controversial op-ed entitled ‘South Sudan needs truth, not trials’ supposedly co-authored by Kiir and Machar. Machar denies that he signed off on the content of the op-ed which went out under his name.