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[mailto:africa-english@ocha.unon.org]On Behalf Of IRIN Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 3:22 PM U N I T E D N A T I O N S Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa Tel: +225 22-40-4440 Fax: +225 22-41-9339 e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 86, covering the period 25-31 August CONTENTS: SIERRA LEONE: Disarmament quickens in the north SIERRA LEONE: No elections until disarmament is completed SIERRA LEONE: US $1.2 million for city cleaning project SIERRA LEONE: Women need greater donor help - UN official says SIERRA LEONE: Police arrest woman with suspected "blood diamonds" SIERRA LEONE: Britain to halve its military training team NIGERIA: Floods, religious clashes claim more lives NIGERIA: More former ECOMOG peacekeepers released NIGERIA: Oil rig hostages freed NIGERIA: Drugs giant accused of rights violations LIBERIA: NGOs denounce shortwave restriction GUINEA: Medecins du Monde worried about abuses against refugees GUINEA-BISSAU: Court rules expulsion of Ahmadiyya unconstitutional CHAD: New cholera outbreak kills 16 COTE D'IVOIRE: Politicians incited ethnic conflict, HRW says BURKINA FASO: Former refugee leader arrested BENIN: US $5 million anti-poverty grant SIERRA LEONE: Disarmament quickens in north Disarmament has begun to pick up in Koinadugu, northern Sierra Leone, after a slow start due to poor roads and a lack of transport, a humanitarian source in Freetown told IRIN on Monday. The area is densely forested and combatants have to travel long distances to disarmament camps. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) has been providing transport for them to reach the camps. The peacekeeping force is made up of nationals of various countries, and new contingents have been arriving in recent days. A batch of Pakistani troops left Islamabad for Freetown on Tuesday, according to Pakistan television. Their tasks will include improving roads and tracks in the eastern mining district of Kono, where Pakistani army engineers have already repaired 90 km of road. UNAMSIL Military spokesman Major Mohammed Yerima told IRIN on Tuesday that the engineers were rebuilding a 120-km road from the north central town of Magburaka to Koidu, Kono's capital. UNAMSIL also reported that acting UNAMSIL Force Commander Maj-Gen Martin Agwai, paid a confidence-building visit to Tongo in the eastern district of Kenema, on Wednesday ahead of the deployment of a Zambian battalion (ZAMBATT 2) to the area. UNAMSIL said the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) commander in Tongo told Agwai the security situation in the diamond-mining area was calm and that his forces would allow UNAMSIL to deploy unhindered since they were committed to the peace process. Yerima said that with roughly 16,081 peacekeepers and observers, UNAMSIL was close to its approved strength of 17,500. A Nepalese battalion is expected to join UNAMSIL soon to help with the disarmament drive under which 16,822 fighters have handed in their weapons since January. Meanwhile, Sierra Leone Web, a US-based news service provider, has agreed to host a web site for UNAMSIL to make first-hand information on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone accessible from anywhere in the world, UNAMSIL reported on Tuesday. UNAMSIL launched a sensitisation drive about the proposed commission in May, when it opened its first regional human rights office in the eastern town of Kenema. Since then, UNAMSIL's Human Rights Section has organised several sensitisation workshops involving ex-fighters, traditional leaders, women's organisations and law enforcers. The TRC web site can be accessed at: http://www.sierra-leone.org/trc.html SIERRA LEONE: No elections until disarmament is completed Elections cannot be held in Sierra Leone until the disarmament of pro- and anti-government forces is completed, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah announced on 26 August. The government has also rejected a demand by the Revolutionary United Front and the opposition All People's Congress for an interim government leading up to elections, saying it would be unconstitutional, state radio reported. Although no date has been set for the elections, national electoral commissioner Walter Nicol told reporters in Freetown that preparations had begun. The Commonwealth Secretariat in London has sent a team to Sierra Leone, including legal and voter registration advisers, to help prepare the poll, the BBC reported him as saying. SIERRA LEONE: US $1.2 million for city cleaning project The World Bank had approved US $1.2 million for six cleaning and sanitation projects in Sierra Leone, the Sierra Leone News Agency reported President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah as saying in the southern town of Bo. He said four of the projects would be in Freetown, and the others in Bo and the eastern town of Kenema. SIERRA LEONE: Women need greater donor help - UN official says Sierra Leonean women, particularly the internally displaced, need more help from donors because their plight has been worsened by 10 years of civil strife, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said on Tuesday. Speaking at a news conference that capped a week-long visit to Sierra Leone, she said women had been used as sex slaves, raped, drugged, subjected to harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and forced into accepting discriminatory inheritance laws. During her visit she heard testimonies from female victims of psychological and physical atrocities perpetrated during the war, UNAMSIL reported. SIERRA LEONE: Police arrest woman with suspected "blood diamonds" Police detectives acting on a tip-off arrested a woman in Freetown on Tuesday and seized 179 stones suspected to be illegal diamonds at her home, Inspector Khrushchev Kargbo told IRIN. "The stones have been sent to the Gold and Diamond Office for investigation," he said on Wednesday. Kargbo also said that in recent weeks police had arrested two Lebanese men with stones suspected to be illegal diamonds. SIERRA LEONE: Britain to halve its military training team Britain will cut its 600-member military training force in Sierra Leone to between 300 and 400 in September, news organisations reported a defence source in London as saying on Wednesday. According to Sierra Leone Web, the source told Reuters that the British military was able to reduce its presence because the Sierra Leone government had regained control of much more rebel-held territory. After general elections tentatively scheduled for the first half of 2002, the number of trainers is to be reduced to between 100 and 150. NIGERIA: Floods, religious clashes claim more lives Floods resulting from rains on 25-26 August that caused dams to overflow in Kano State, northern Nigeria, killed more than 30 people and rendered at least 10,000 homeless, local officials said on Thursday. Newspapers said the final casualty toll was expected to be higher. Food security is likely to be affected since large swathes of farmland have been flooded. Northern Nigeria was also affected by communal strife this month, including fighting last week between Christians and Muslims in the state of Bauchi over plans by the state government to introduce Islamic law. A witness said on Wednesday that at least 15 people died in the Bauchi clashes. NIGERIA: More former ECOMOG peacekeepers released Fifteen out of 25 Nigerian soldiers convicted of mutiny in December 2000 were released last week, bringing to 17 the total number freed, AFP reported on Wednesday. The soldiers had been wounded while serving with ECOMOG, the West African peacekeeping force, in Sierra Leone and were sent to Egypt for medical treatment. However, they claimed they were not given adequate medical care and overseas allowances, staged a protest and were court-martialled. They were sentenced to life imprisonment but their terms were later reduced to between one and five years. NIGERIA: Oil rig hostages freed Militant youths in southeastern Nigeria released 99 local and foreign oil workers they had held hostage since 23 August on an offshore oil rig, news organisations reported this week. The rig, owned by Texas-based Transocean Sedco Forex, was drilling on behalf of Royal/Dutch Shell, the BBC reported. NIGERIA: Drugs giant accused of rights violations A new lawsuit filed against the US-based drugs giant Pfizer alleges that it violated international law by testing an experimental drug on children during a meningitis epidemic in northern Nigeria in 1996, news organisations reported on Thursday. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in a federal court in New York on behalf of 30 Nigerian families, alleges that the world's largest pharmaceutical company "exploited the chaos" caused by the epidemic in Kano and performed risky drug trials on children, news organisations reported. Some 200 children were subjected without their knowledge or consent to clinical trials of a Pfizer antibiotic known as Trovan, the 'Washington Post' revealed in December 2000 after an 11-month investigation. Eleven children died during the test and others suffered injuries including brain damage, paralysis and deafness. In response to the article a company spokeswoman said the trial was "sound from medical, scientific, regulatory and ethical standpoints," adding that it may have saved lives. The families are seeking an unspecified amount in punitive damages and an order barring Pfizer from conducting illegal experiments in the future. They say that Pfizer violated UN human rights standards and the Nuremberg Code of 1947, enacted in part to prevent the horrors of medical experimentation performed during the Jewish Holocaust from ever happening again. LIBERIA: NGOs denounce shortwave restriction Liberian non-governmental organisations denounced on Monday a decision by President Charles Taylor not to allow any more shortwave stations, AFP reported. Taylor announced on 23 August that he would only allow his private Liberia Communications Network (LCN), the state-owned Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) and the religious station ELWA to operate on short-wave. A humanitarian source told IRIN that LBS did not have a transmitter and ELWA has only been carrying out "test transmissions", so LCN is the only station operating frequently on shortwave. Liberia's Roman Catholic church has filed a suit against the government for not allowing its radio, Veritas, from broadcasting on shortwave, AFP reported. GUINEA: Medecins du Monde worried about abuses against refugees Medecins du Monde expressed concern on Tuesday about rights abuses in Guinea's Forest Region. "It would appear that several human rights and international humanitarian law problems are having dramatic consequences for the refugees in Guinea, particularly for women," it said in its newsletter. It said the women were victims of systematic acts of violence by Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, accused of making incursions into Guinea since late last year, and that abuses had also been committed by Guinean authorities and civilians inside refugee camps. Meanwhile, at least 120 people fleeing conflict in Liberia arrived recently in Macenta, southeastern Guinean, UNHCR reported on 24 August. They joined another 80,000 Liberian refugees, some of whom have been in Guinea for the past decade. UNHCR reported that the new refugees fled when fresh fighting broke out on 10 August in the northern Liberian county of Lofa, between government and dissident forces. Guinean authorities in Macenta detained "an unknown number" of the new arrivals, according to UNHCR. The UN agency did not know why they were held but said able-bodied males from Liberia were likely to be suspected of belonging to forces hostile to the Guinean army. There has been tension for some time between Guinea and Liberia, with each accusing the other of supporting armed groups opposed to its government. GUINEA-BISSAU: Court rules expulsion of Ahmadiyya unconstitutional A court in Bissau has suspended a 20 August presidential order giving the Ahmadiyya Islamic group 48 hours to leave Guinea-Bissau. The court upheld an appeal by the group against the measure, which it termed "unconstitutional" and a threat to religious freedom, the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, reported on 24 August. President Kumba Yala had accused the group of causing "serious misunderstandings" among Muslims and deported its foreign members. Muslims make up about half of Guinea-Bissau's population. CHAD: New cholera outbreak kills 16 A new outbreak of cholera in the Chadian town of Gitte, 112 km north of the capital, Njamena, has left 16 people dead while scores have been hospitalised, the secretary-general of the Chadian Red Cross, Andreas Koume, told IRIN on Tuesday. The deaths, which occurred from Thursday to Tuesday, were among the 150 cases registered up to then in the town. The Chadian Red Cross sent teams to chlorinate wells, and to advise the population on personal and public hygiene. Markets in the area were closed, while people suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea were told to report to hospitals. Cholera broke out in Chad in June. There were 1,954 cases registered in the country up to Tuesday, including 72 deaths. Humanitarian organisations reported that the outbreak had caused alarm in the south, where heavy rains have caused floods. An MSF-Belgium doctor in Chad, Francoise Wuillaume, told IRIN her organisation was taking precautions against the possibility of an outbreak of flood-related diseases, the most likely of which were diarrhoea and malaria. "Our problem is that we don't have enough money," she said. COTE D'IVOIRE: Politicians incited ethnic conflict, HRW says Leading government officials in Cote d'Ivoire have deliberately encouraged a culture of violent xenophobia that is threatening to destabilise the country, Human Rights Watch (HRW) of New York reported on Tuesday. In a new report titled 'The New Racism: The Political Manipulation of Ethnicity in Cote d'Ivoire,' HRW describes atrocities committed during presidential and parliamentary elections in October and December 2000 based on interviews with victims and witnesses. It reports more than 200 killings in the past year as well as incidents of torture, rape and arbitrary detentions. Most of the victims came from the largely Muslim north or were immigrants, it said. A national committee mandated to investigate the events concluded in a report submitted on Wednesday to Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo that 303 people died and 65 went missing in political upheavals between October 2000 and January 2001 while more than 1,546 were injured. HRW published its report just a few days before the opening of the World Conference against Racism in Durban on 31 August. The HRW report can be found at: http:www.hrw.org/reports/2001/ivorycoast/ BURKINA FASO: Former refugee leader arrested The chief of staff of Burkina Faso's gendarmerie, Colonel Mamadou Traore, said on Saturday in Ouagadougou that his command would not allow any group to destabilise neighbouring Mali. His statement came two days after gendarmes arrested Alassane Ould Mohamed, leader of a group of Tuareg living at a former refugee camp 200 km north of Ouagadougou. Mohamed's wife told IRIN her husband had been arrested because of an interview he gave to international media on 20 August. He had said that some 2,000 Tuareg had been abandoned by UNHCR since 1997, when the official repatriation of Tuareg refugees ended, and would "take action" unless UNHCR and Mali's government provided US $3 million for their return home. BENIN: US $5 million anti-poverty grant The West African Development Bank granted 3.8 billion francs CFA (US $5 million) to Benin on Tuesday as part of a poverty-reduction package targeting the health, education and rural development sectors, the organisation said in a statement. The money is to cover activities in 2001-2002. Abidjan, 31 August 2001; 19:15 GMT ENDS] [IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 22-40-4440; Fax (Admin): +225 22-40-4435; Fax (Editorial Desk): +225-22-41-9339; e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci]
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