UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his voice to international condemnation of a coup that toppled Niger’s president, but in the capital, Niamey, thousands celebrated the end of Mamadou Tandja’s rule.
“The secretary-general condemns the coup d’etat that took place in Niger” and “appeals for calm and for the respect of the rule of law and of the human rights of all Nigerians,” his office said in a statement issued on Friday.
Thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate the coup, however.
An opposition alliance called on people to show their support for the new junta in a rally in the capital yesterday.
Earlier on Friday, Niger’s new military rulers had lifted the curfew declared just hours after Thursday’s coup, in which at least three soldiers died.
After Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union Jean Ping condemned the takeover, the African Union (AU) on Friday announced it was suspending Niger from its ranks.
“We have condemned the coup and imposed sanctions on Niger: Niger is suspended from all activities of the AU,” AU Peace and Security Council Chairman Mull Sebujja Katende said.
The body also called for Niger to revert to the constitution in place before last August’s controversial referendum that allowed Tandja to stay in office, potentially for life.
A statement by Niger’s new rulers, who call themselves the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, has already suggested that they would do just that, a point that Ban highlighted in his statement.
He called on the junta to “proceed swiftly with these efforts through a process that is consensual and that includes all segments of Nigerian society.”
International condemnation of the coup grew on Friday with the US calling for a “speedy return to democracy” and former colonial ruler France demanding fresh elections “in the coming months.”
The EU also condemned the coup.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the