Politics

Cape Verde: President Neves insists on discussions over colonial reparations

Published

7 months ago

June 6, 2024

The President of Cape Verde, Jose Maria Neves, acknowledged that the emergence of right-wing populism has complicated the serious discussion surrounding colonial reparations, but maintained that this should not prevent countries from holding these discussions behind closed doors.

In a Wednesday online interview with the news site Brasil Já, Neves stated that discussing reparations in the “public arena” might exacerbate political polarization in nations like Portugal, the previous colonizer of Cape Verde, where the far-right is becoming more and more popular.

“We see extremist, xenophobic, anti-immigration groups growing in former colonising powers,” Neves said. “There are no political conditions to publicly discuss these questions at the moment.

“But among governments, it is necessary to discuss these matters.”

He added that there were “diplomatic corridors” that could be utilized in place of encouraging the formation of these kinds of organizations, saying it was feasible to “build solutions” for talks to occur.

When questioned by Reuters in April, Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stated that his nation was accountable for crimes during the colonial era and transatlantic slavery and implied that reparations were necessary. His remarks provoked heated criticism from right-wing parties and a national conversation.

For more than 400 years, Portuguese ships abducted around six million Africans, forced them across the Atlantic, and sold them into chattel slavery, mostly in Brazil. Before sending police officers to Haiti, President William Ruto of Kenya conferred with foreign leaders, security experts, and political advisors.

During the Portuguese colonial era, Portugal ruled over nations including Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, East Timor, and certain Asian provinces. Among other reasons, reparations opponents contend that modern states and institutions shouldn’t be held accountable for their history.

Opponents of reparations argue, among other things, that contemporary governments and institutions shouldn’t be held responsible for historical slavery. Proponents contend that action is required to address the legacy of slavery on disadvantaged groups because states are still profiting today from the wealth accumulated by hundreds of years of labour without pay.

The concept of paying reparations or further atonement for transatlantic slavery has gained support worldwide, despite ongoing heated discussion.

Related Topics:Cape Verde Featured Reparation

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Politics

Egyptian court upholds ex-presidential candidate Ahmed Tantawy’s sentence

Published

16 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Former presidential candidate, Ahmed Tantawy, and his campaign manager, Mohamed Abou El-Diar, were found guilty of faking election paperwork, and given a one-year jail term with labour by an Egyptian court, Tantawy’s legal team announced Tuesday.

Last year, Tantawy was the most well-known candidate to run against Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for a third term, winning 89.6% of the vote.

To avoid receiving the necessary number of public endorsements to be on the ballot, he halted his campaign before to the election, alleging harassment and arrests directed at hundreds of his family members and associates.

Egyptian authorities criticised Tantawy’s tactic of distributing unapproved copies of endorsement forms to garner popular support, but they denied any misconduct.

Egypt’s Misdemeanour Appeals Court upheld the May court ruling on Monday, which prohibits Tantawy from seeking public office for five years and mandates that he pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($395).

Tantawy’s defence team member and well-known human rights attorney Khaled Ali said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the appeals procedure was riddled with anomalies.

Ali said lawyers struggled for months to confirm court dates, with hearings appearing absent from official schedules and case files missing from court registries.

The public prosecution was not immediately available to comment on the ruling or on Ali’s allegations over the process.

Politics

Court orders Uganda to compensate LRA war crimes victims

Published

16 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Uganda’s tribunal has ordered the government to pay up to 10 million Ugandan shillings ($2,740) to each victim of Lord’s Resistance Army commander, Thomas Kwoyelo, the first senior rebel leader to be convicted.

Kwoyelo, a mid-level LRA leader, was sentenced to 40 years in jail in October for war crimes like murder, rape, slavery, torture, and kidnapping.

Kwoyelo’s “indigent” status prevented him from compensating the victims, thus the court ordered the government to compensate.

Kwoyelo’s crimes were “a manifestation of failure on the part of the government that triggers a responsibility on the state to pay reparations to the victims,” the verdict added.

The court also ordered various financial compensation to Kwoyelo’s property destruction and theft victims.

From strongholds in northern Uganda, the LRA brutalised Ugandans under Joseph Kony for over 20 years while it fought the military to destroy the government.

The militants raped, abducted, cut off victims’ limbs and mouths, and bludgeoned them to death using crude implements.

Under military pressure, the LRA withdrew to lawless forests in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic in 2005 and perpetrated civilian atrocities.

Although assaults are rare, Kony and splintered groups are reported to dwell there.

Kwoyelo was taken by the Ugandan military in 2009 in the northeastern Congo, and his case made its way through Ugandan courts until he was found guilty in August.