Politics

Kenyan ministers condemn moves to ban Facebook over ethnic hate speech

Published

2 years ago

August 2, 2022

Two Kenyan ministers have condemned plans by the country’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) to ban social media giant, Facebook, over ethnic hate speech being spread on the platform as the nation gets into gear for general elections on August 9.

The NCIC had given Facebook one week to comply with regulations against ethnic hate speech or risk being suspended following a report by a UK-based rights group, Global Witness (GW), which said the platform approved hate speech advertisements that promoted ethnic violence ahead of the election.

The GW report noted that more than 20 adverts in English and Swahili containing hate speech submitted to Facebook as a test were approved for publication.

It added that after Facebook was notified of the findings, the social media platform issued a statement outlining steps “to help ensure a safe and secure general election.”

“Researchers then submitted two more ads to see if there had indeed been any improvement in Facebook’s detection of hate speech ads, and both were approved,” GW said in the report.

But in separate interviews with the Voice of America on Monday, Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi and Minister of Information and Technology, Joe Mucheru, said while the issues raised by GW were valid, they did not warrant blocking Facebook in the country.

While Matiangi accused the NCIC of making “a careless decision” on the matter, Mucheru said banning Facebook was not was not the “within legal mandate of the NCIC, and we have been working with Facebook and many other platforms.”

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Politics

Burkina Faso investigating reports of northern killings

Published

7 hours ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

A government spokesman has revealed that Burkina Faso is looking into reports that 223 people were killed by the Burkinabe army in two villages in the north in February.

The killing was first reported by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), causing a rift between the junta-led West African state and some foreign media that published the report. The HRW report released on Thursday said that the military had executed residents of Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children, as part of a campaign against civilians suspected of working with jihadist terrorists. The report was based on interviews with witnesses, members of civil society, and other groups.

Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, a spokesman for the government, said that HRW’s claims were “peremptory” and that the junta was not unwilling to look into the claimed crimes.

“An investigation has been launched into the killings in Nodin and Soro,” Ouedraogo said in a late-evening statement, quoting a statement from a regional prosecutor on March 1.

Since Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s militaries took over in a series of coups from 2020 to 2023, violence in the area has gotten worse. This is because of the ten-year fight with Islamist groups related to Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Attacks on Burkina Faso got much worse in 2023, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to the U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group ACLED.

Politics

S’Africa lengthens troop deployment in Mozambique, Congo DR

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech that South Africa’s military would keep sending troops to Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are both in the middle of wars.

The extension will leave 1,198 members of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in eastern Congo for an unknown amount of time. They are there as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force helping Congo fight rebel groups.

The statement also said that 1,495 members of the SANDF would keep working in Mozambique, where they have been since 2021 helping the government fight dangerous extremism in the north.

After two SANDF troops were killed and three were hurt by a mortar bomb in Congo in February, South Africa’s military operations abroad have been looked at more closely at home this year.

Meanwhile, the major opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, said that Ramaphosa sent troops into a war zone without being ready.
Under the supervision of the UN, the SANDF has taken on many dangerous and difficult peacekeeping tasks over the years to help war-torn African countries stay stable and peaceful.

In 2003, South Africa was one of the first countries to send troops to Burundi to help the peace process. During the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) peacekeeping mission in 2000, the SANDF led attempts to stabilize the country’s politics, rebuild and improve infrastructure, and train DRC troops.