Armed men seized two foreign civilians working for Darfur’s peacekeeping force on Saturday, the first time the joint UN-African Union (UNAMID) mission has been targeted by kidnappers.
The Nigerian man and the Tanzanian woman were taken by raiders from their residence in the politically charged town of Zalingei in west Darfur early in the morning, peacekeeping and government officials said.
Armed groups have kidnapped three groups of foreign aid workers in Darfur since March, piling pressure on the strife-torn region’s relief effort, already reeling from bandit attacks, carjackings and government expulsions.
But this was the first time they have taken staff from UNAMID, a largely African mission of soldiers and police which is supposed to keep the peace in a region the size of Spain.
UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni said the kidnapping of UNAMID staff was a worrying development.
“We are appealing to them to release the captives. We are here to help the people of Darfur,” he said, adding the kidnappers had phoned the force soon after the abduction saying they were ready to talk.
Mezni declined to give details of the kidnappers’ demands, but Sudanese State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Abdel Baqi al-Jailani said they were bandits.
“They have asked for a ransom. They never claimed to be some sort of rebels,” Jailani said.
The kidnapping happened two days after UNAMID’s departing commander, Martin Luther Agwai, told reporters that Darfur suffered from banditry, but was no longer in a state of war.
Aid workers say they have experienced increased hostility in the region since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war crimes charges in March.
Khartoum expelled 13 foreign groups and shut down three local ones after the ICC issued its warrant, accusing them of passing information to the court — which the groups deny doing.
Two women from Irish charity GOAL remain in captivity after being snatched early last month.
Zalingei, around 100km from the Chadian border, is the birthplace of some of Darfur’s best-known rebels, including Sudan Liberation Army founder Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur, and is a hotbed of anti-government sentiment.
Al-Nur, now based in Paris, denied that any of his rebel fighters were responsible for the kidnap, and pointed the finger at government-allied militias.
“This is the continuation of the government’s campaign to terrorize people on the ground. They want to complicate the mission of anyone helping the people of Darfur,” he said.
Jailani denied government-backed militias were involved.
Al-Nur said the kidnap showed the weakness of UNAMID’s mandate.
“UNAMID’s first job is to protect civilians but they are not able to protect themselves ... We need a mandate for peacemakers, not peacekeepers,” he said.
Al-Nur was among rebels who took up arms in Darfur in 2003, accusing the government of neglecting the development of the region and demanding better representation.
Khartoum mobilized troops and mostly Arab militias to crush the uprising, unleashing a wave of violence that Washington and some activists have described as genocide.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS