Tag Archives: rights

Banjul, Gambia | AFP | Gambian police arrested a university lecturer and kept him in overnight detention for questioning the president’s ability to maintain national security in a newspaper interview, he told AFP on Thursday. Campaigners said the arrest was a worrying echo of restrictions on freedom of speech under the …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Kenya’s interior minister said Wednesday that opposition leader Raila Odinga’s mock inauguration as “people’s president” was an effort to overthrow the government, with media outlets shut down for their complicity in the event. Odinga, 73, held a swearing-in ceremony in Nairobi on Tuesday with the …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Rights groups on Wednesday criticised the Kenya government’s move to block live coverage of a mock inauguration by the opposition as a “violation” of the public’s right to information. Three of the country’s main private television channels had their live feeds cut or blocked, while …

Abuja, Nigeria | AFP | Nigerian air raids aimed at stopping herdsmen-farmer clashes killed at least 35 people in December, Amnesty International said Tuesday, describing the government’s response as “unlawful”. In a new report, the rights monitor said that on December 4, Nigerian air force planes fired “warning” rockets on villages …

Palestinian Territories | AFP | Police blocked dozens of women from attending a football match Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in what activists said they hoped would have been the first such permission under Hamas’s rule. Authorities in the Palestinian enclave run by Islamist movement Hamas told the women they …

Jerusalem, Undefined | AFP |  Israeli Holocaust survivors are pleading with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel his plan to forcefully expel tens of thousands of African migrants, citing their own experiences as outcasts. “We, who know precisely what it’s like to be refugees, to be homeless and bereft of …

Manila, Philippines | AFP | Philippine journalists took to the streets Friday in support of a news website facing state-enforced closure, accusing President Rodrigo Duterte of trampling on press freedom. The government withdrew the corporate registration of the Rappler website this week and has summoned its chief executive to answer …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | The European Union late Wednesday suspended a large-scale water conservation project in Kenya after evictions of local indigenous people turned fatally violent this week. The indefinite suspension of the $38 million (31 million euro) project follows the reported killing of a member of the local Sengwer …

Libreville, Gabon | AFP | Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has rejected opposition claims that one of its activists died in custody after being tortured, and that some 200 of their number are under arrest. In an interview late Tuesday with French radio station RFI and France 24 television, …

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia | AFP | Saudi Arabia allowed women to enter a football stadium for the first time to watch a match Friday, as the ultra-conservative kingdom eases strict decades-old rules separating the sexes. The new measure comes after Riyadh, long known for imposing harsh restrictions on women, announced …