African leaders have chosen Equatorial Guinea’s coup plotter and dictator of 31 years to serve as their ceremonial leader this year, a move critics said on Monday could undermine the African Union’s (AU) attempt to confront other leaders who cling to power.
Human rights groups accuse Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang of violating the very rights that the AU is sworn to uphold. They say he has made himself, his family and some cronies fabulously wealthy while the majority of people in the oil-rich Central African nation struggle in deep poverty.
unlikely critic
Obiang claimed to have won 95 percent of the vote after Equatorial Guinea’s elections in 2009, making him an unlikely critic of Ivory Coast’s incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to cede power two months after the international community said he lost the vote.
“Neither the African Union nor Africans deserve a leader whose regime is notorious for abuses, corruption and a total disregard for the welfare of its people,” Alioune Tine, president of the African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights, said by phone from the summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Traditionally, the chairmanship is given to the leader of the country hosting the next summit, but an exception was made in 2005 when it was the turn of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and African leaders bowed to outside pressures in the uproar over killings in Darfur.
They passed over al-Bashir and instead kept former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo for a second year.
dismay
There was also dismay when the Africans appointed Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi as chairman in 2009. Qaddafi has ruled Libya since seizing power in a coup in 1969 and was seen as a poor example at a time when Africa’s democratic gains were being reversed, a trend that continues.
This week’s summit, which ended on Monday, was dominated by the crisis in Ivory Coast. How African leaders deal with it is important in a year when more than a dozen African countries are to hold elections.
Many polls, such as one planned for later this year in Zimbabwe, are likely to be violently contested.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled since 1980, despite 2008 elections that were violent and widely condemned as fraudulent, took part in a meeting to decide “a democratic solution” to the Ivory Coast stalemate.
Heavy rain and strong winds yesterday disrupted flights, trains and ferries, forcing the closure of roads across large parts of New Zealand’s North Island, while snapping power links to tens of thousands. Domestic media reported a few flights had resumed operating by afternoon from the airport in Wellington, the capital, although cancelations were still widespread after airport authorities said most morning flights were disrupted. Air New Zealand said it hoped to resume services when conditions ease later yesterday, after it paused operations at Wellington, Napier and Palmerston North airports. Online images showed flooded semi-rural neighborhoods, inundated homes, trees fallen on vehicles and collapsed
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In a softly lit Shanghai bar, graduate student Helen Zhao stretched out both wrists to have her pulse taken — the first step to ordering the house special, a bespoke “health” cocktail based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). “TCM bars” have popped up in several cities across China, epitomizing what the country’s stressed-out, time-poor youth refer to as “punk wellness,” or “wrecking yourself while saving yourself.” At Shanghai’s Niang Qing, a TCM doctor in a white coat diagnoses customers’ physical conditions based on the pulse readings, before a mixologist crafts custom drinks incorporating the herbs and roots prescribed for their ailments.
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
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