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La fin du Ramadan approche et avec elle, la frénésie de l’Aïd. Toutes les populations musulmanes se préparent à accueillir cette période sacrée comme il […]

L’article Aïd el-Fitr 2023 : vendredi ou samedi ? Le Centre international d’astronomie répond est apparu en premier sur .

The European Union on Monday (17 April) condemned Russia's sentencing of opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years in jail on "politically motivated charges".

Dans un communiqué publié sur sa page officiel, l’ambassade du Japon en Algérie a fait savoir qu’un film d’animation algérien s’est distingué au Niigata International […]

L’article Japon : un film d’animation algérien primé au NIAFF 2023 est apparu en premier sur .

The French Greens in the European Parliament are expected to reject the proposed extension of the EU's carbon market to transport and heating fuels when the matter comes to a vote in Strasbourg on Tuesday (18 April).

Trois personnes ont comparu devant les juges de la Cour de répression des infractions économiques et du terrorisme (CRIET) la semaine écoulée. Poursuivis dans une affaire d'enlèvement de mineur, ils risquent une peine de 05 ans d'emprisonnement chacun.

Un homme et deux femmes poursuivis pour enlèvement et extorsion de fonds à la CRIET. Les mis en cause auraient planifié l'enlèvement d'un mineur à Houègbo, dans la commune de Toffo. En détention provisoire depuis le 02 avril dernier, ils ont été présentés à la CRIET mardi 11 avril 2023.
Le ministère public requiert la peine de 05 ans d'emprisonnement ferme et une amande de 01 million de francs CFA contre chacun des mis en cause. Le délibéré est renvoyé au 16 mai prochain.

F. A. A.

28 cybercriminels présumés de diverses nationalités seront présentés au Procureur spécila près la Cour de Répression des Infractions Economiques et du Terrorisme (Criet) ce lundi 17 avril 2023.

Arrêtés dans les les communes d'Avrankou, de Porto Novo et d'Akpro-Missérété pa l'Office Central de Répression de la Cybercriminalité (OCRC) le vendredi 14 avril dernier, 28 cybercriminels présumés de diverses nationalités seront présentés au Procureur spécila près la Cour de Répression des Infractions Economiques et du Terrorisme (Criet) ce lundi 17 avril 2023.
Lors de leur interpellation, des smartphones, ordinateurs, outils de connexion et plusieurs autres objets ont été saisis par la Police.
M. M.

Les artistes musiciens béninois Johnny Sourou et Gbessi Zolawadji en seront sur scène le samedi 13 mai 2023 au Palais de l'Epi d'Or, dans la ville de Villejuif (Val-de-Marne) en région Île-de-France.

Prestation des artistes béninois Johnny Sourou et Gbessi Zolawadji en Île-de-France. C'est une soirée de Gala ‘'Diamantéro'', organisée par Maths Prod et Corsair. L'évènement aura lieu dans le cadre d'un projet visant à promouvoir les artistes Béninois en Europe. La soirée de Gala est fixée au samedi 13 mai 2023 au Palais de l'Epi d'Or. Johny Sourou, est un chanteur gospel béninois. Gbessi Zolawadji est un artiste de la musique traditionnelle. Il est l'un des artistes béninois qui popularisent le rythme Agbadja. Les tickets sont à 30 euros en pré-vente, à 40 euros VIP, Ultra VIP à 50 euros et les repas, à 20 Euros.

Akpédjé Ayosso

Un chauffeur a été jugé, vendredi 14 avril 2023, pour avoir soutiré près de 30 millions FCFA à son patron.

Le tribunal de Cotonou a condamné à un (01) an de prison avec sursis un chauffeur d'environ 50 ans pour des faits de « vol et d'abus de confiance ».
Le chauffeur a soutiré près de trois (03) millions de FCFA à son patron.
M. M.

A Monsey, une localité de la commune de Karimama, département de l'Alibori, deux personnes ont été abattues dans la matinée de ce lundi 17 avril 2023.

L'insécurité devient de plus en plus grandissante à Karimama. Deux personnes ont été abattues à Monsey dans la matinée de ce lundi 17 avril. Le frère du chef de l'arrondissement de Monsey d'après nos sources, serait l'une des victimes.
Plus de détail à venir.

Le parquet spécial de la Cour de répression des infractions économiques et du terrorisme (CRIET) a auditionné un policier jeudi 13 avril 2023. De complicité avec son frère, conducteur de taxi-moto, il a saisi la moto d'un présumé cybercriminel, et lui a soutiré la somme de 80.000F CFA.

Un policier et un conducteur de taxi-moto poursuivis par la CRIET pour abus de fonction, et complicité d'abus de fonction. Les mis en cause selon les déclarations à la barre, se sont rendus au domicile du présumé ‘'gayman'' à Aïtchédji, un quartier d'Abomey-Calavi. Et ce, après les informations fournies par une femme sur les activités de cybercriminalité de son ex, le présumé cybercriminel.
A la barre, le policier rejette les accusations portées sur sa personne et justifie sa présence dans le domicile de la victime par ses obligations professionnelles. A l'en croire, c'est le jeune homme même qui, de peur d'être arrêté, a abandonné la moto et la somme de 80.000F CFA avant de prendre la fuite. Le ministère public requiert une peine de 05 ans de prison dont un an ferme contre l'homme en uniforme, et la relaxe au bénéfice de doute pour son frère.
Le délibéré est renvoyé au 04 mai prochain.

F. A. A.

Selon l’Organisation européenne pour la sécurité de la navigation aérienne (Eurocontrol), il sera probablement impossible de survoler l’Ukraine jusqu’en 2029.

541467 Munira Shoinbekova, OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe Farhod Nabiyulloev

The OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe in joint efforts with Tajikistan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) conducted a series of one-day meetings with heads of MIA departments and members of Public Councils on Police Reform (PC) to discuss the implementation progress of police reform and community policing. The event took place from 28 March to 12 April 2023 across the Khatlon region of Tajikistan.  

The meetings aimed to discuss approaches being undertaken in the framework of police reform, especially deepening community and police co-operation. The meetings helped to exchange views and increase knowledge of police and members of PCs on community policing. Effective approaches to improving police-community relations, and countering radicalization and extremism among youth were also discussed.  

Some 2,100 participants, including heads of MIA departments, members of regional and district PCs, and representatives of civil society, of which 377 were female participants, took part in the meetings.

“The police reform aims at strengthening police interaction with local communities, increasing the effectiveness of police work in the regions, accessibility of law enforcement’s assistance for the population, preventing crime, and building trust between the public and the police,” said Colonel Hamdamzoda Valikhon Hamdam, the National Coordinator for Police Reform. “The OSCE significantly contributes its best efforts to support the Interior Ministry in the implementation of the Police Reform Strategy,” added Hamdamzoda.  

The OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe will continue supporting the Ministry of Internal Affairs in implementing the Police Reform Strategy and promoting the concept of community policing in Tajikistan.  

L’ex-international français, Samir Nasri, lance un coup de gueule à propos du jeûne des footballeurs de confession musulmane en Europe, en France en particulier. Il […]

L’article Ramadan pour les joueurs en France : Samir Nasri pousse un coup de gueule est apparu en premier sur .

The European Parliament could accelerate the interinstitutional negotiation process over the €500 million fund for joint procurement of defence equipment (EDIRPA), several people involved in the talks told EURACTIV.

Die Slowakei hat inzwischen alle 13 von ihr versprochenen Kampfflugzeuge des sowjetischen Typs MiG-29 an die Ukraine übergeben. Das gab Verteidigungsminister Jaroslav Nad am Montag bekannt.

Kochen als Team-Event: Dieser Trend ist gerade heiss begehrt bei Unternehmen. Was steckt dahinter? Und bringts wirklich was?

DRAFT OPINION on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Salima Yenbou

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Faces of the dead. Myanmar's non-profit Assistance Association for Political Prisoners has a museum in the Thai border town of Mae Sot documenting the identities of over 3,000 civilians killed by the military since it seized power in 2021, as well as those killed since the first post-independence coup in 1962. Credit: Guy Dinmore/IPS

By Guy Dinmore
KAYIN STATE, Myanmar, Apr 17 2023 (IPS)

Food is passed around a campfire, and a guitar strums as cool night air tumbles down mountain cliffs, relieving the jungle of its heat.

A dozen or so young Myanmar activists – some having just travelled long distances evading military checkpoints, others already living in exile – have come together in a jungle camp for a training course with a difference. Instead of armed combat, their chosen role is enabling the overthrow of the military junta through non-violent means.

Conversations are animated, with talk of federal democracy and creating a country that would also give political space and freedom to ethnic minorities. They are joined by soldiers of the rebel Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) protecting the camp deep in southeastern Kayin State.

The peaceful setting of the camp belies the horrors of the civil war beyond the mountains that is breaking Myanmar apart. The generals who overthrew a democratically elected government and seized power in 2021 are increasingly responding to a national uprising by waging terror on civilians it calls “terrorists” in an attempt to break their support for armed insurgents.

The aftermath of Myanmar military air strikes on a crowd gathered in Pa Zi Gyi village in Sagaing Region on April 11, in which the anti-junta resistance says over 150 people were killed, including children, performing dances. Credit: Local People’s Defence Force

On April 11, the military carried out what is believed to be the deadliest attack of the civil war so far, using air strikes and a helicopter gunship on a village ceremony organised by the parallel and underground National Unity Government (NUG) in Sagaing Region.

At least 165 people, including 27 women and 19 children, some performing dances, were killed, according to the NUG. The regime says it was attacking the NUG’s People’s Defence Forces.

Over the past two years, artillery and bombing raids using aircraft supplied by China and Russia have targeted schools, IDP camps, hospitals, mosques, Buddhist temples and Christian churches across the country. Tens of thousands of houses have been torched, and more than 1.3 million people displaced since the 2021 coup, according to UN estimates.

The barbarity defies belief. In February, a unit of some 150 soldiers known as the Ogre Column were dropped by helicopter in Sagaing and went on a marauding killing spree that lasted weeks. Scores of villagers were killed. Women were raped and shot. Men and boys were beheaded, disembowelled and dismembered.

Truth about massacres in wars gone by took months or even years to fully emerge, but in this modern era of mobile phones and social media, the grim evidence is transmitted by survivors within a day or so.

Kyaw Soe Win, a veteran activist with the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which carefully documents civilian deaths, arrests and extra-judicial killings, shows IPS a picture he has just received on his phone of a man in Sagaing, disembowelled and his organs taken out.

Why do they do this? “It is to spread fear and terror,” he says.

AAPP, now based in the border town of Mae Sot just inside Thailand, has an exhibition dedicated to victims of successive uprisings against military rule since protests against the first post-independence coup in 1962. Rows of faces and names stare out from the walls, including pictures of some 30 civilians – among them two Save the Children charity workers – who were tortured and burned alive in what is now known as the 2021 Christmas Eve Massacre in Kayah State.

“This chapter is different,” Kyaw Soe Win, a former political prisoner, says of the present conflict. “The situation is getting worse and worse. The numbers of political prisoners and fatalities and houses torched are far higher. The junta is oppressing the people and is even more brutal than before.”

Sky, a resistance fighter and writer, who uses a nom de guerre, explains in a Mae Sot bar how the insurgency is also very different this time.

“After the 1988 student uprising, it took me three years to get an AK-47 and 300 bullets. Now it is much quicker. Now we are getting modified AK-47s through the Wa. They call it a Wa-AK,” he laughs, referring to an autonomous border area run by the heavily armed United Wa State Party. Their one-party narco-state on the border with China stays out of the war but makes money from both sides.

“China systematically eroded history after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, but after the 1988 protests in Myanmar, we still have the whispered stories. This generation knows what is right and wrong,” said Sky.

Despite what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently called its “scorched earth policy”, the regime is steadily losing this war in terms of territory and military casualties.

“The military is in a very, very difficult situation which is only getting worse,” says Matthew Arnold, an independent policy analyst on Myanmar with previous conflict experience in Afghanistan and Sudan. He says the regime’s forces are “atomised” and “bleeding out in a war of attrition”. In some towns, they are pinned down in police stations and barracks and cannot be reinforced or resupplied for months on end.

Because it cannot move freely on the ground over the vast distances to maintain its outposts and impose its authority, the junta is resorting increasingly to air strikes and artillery against civilian populations.

Sagaing and the neighbouring region of Magwe are crucial conflict areas.  Covering an area bigger than England, they are known as the heartland of the Bamar majority and had been, for decades, a fertile recruiting ground for the Bamar-dominated military. But no more.

“There are very few areas of Sagaing where they are not fighting on a regular basis. The junta was hit all over the place in February in Sagaing and Magwe,” says Arnold, who credits resistance forces moving rapidly “from muskets to drones and IEDS” (improvised explosive devices) in inflicting heavy losses.

Vulnerable in more remote areas in Chin State in the west and areas of the southeast, the military’s pullback is expected to accelerate as the monsoons come.

Thantlang in Chin State, near the border with India, was the first large town to fall to the rebels, although the junta’s bombing raids and artillery made sure that little was left standing. With no air defences, the resistance knows well that if it takes full control of more urban areas, then they are inviting disaster upon the civilian population.

Myanmar is, in effect, fragmenting.

The regime has a firm grip on the big cities of Yangon, Mandalay and the capital Naypyitaw – where residents say life is bustling and returning to some kind of ‘normal’ with even the makings of a property boom. But beyond, its real control is tenuous and weakening.

Fighting a war on many fronts, the regime is trying to follow its practised divide-and-rule tactics of cutting deals and ceasefire pacts with various ethnic armed groups, aided to some extent by China’s influence in border areas.

But major ethnic groups in most of the frontier states, such as the KNLA, which has been fighting the world’s longest civil war since 1949, are successfully resisting. A ceasefire with the mostly Buddhist Arakan Army also looks fragile in the western state of Rakhine, where in 2017, the military forced over 700,000 Muslim Rohingya into Bangladesh in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing that has brought charges of genocide against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice.

“Sadly, a prolonged fragmentation is a possibility, but we must accept that has been a possibility in Myanmar since before the coup of 1962,” David Gum Awng, deputy minister for international cooperation for the NUG shadow administration, tells IPS.

“It is natural and unsurprising that EAOs (ethnic armed organisations) are consolidating gains, but the question is what these EAOs plan to do with their territory if and when the democratic forces win,” he adds.

The NUG, he says, aims to rid Myanmar of the “abusive and criminal military dictatorship and along with it the military’s obsession with centralised Bamar-Buddhist nationalist rule”, to be replaced by a democratic federal system offering “ethnic minorities genuine self-determination” through negotiations.

This significant shift in policy also extends to recognising and reaching out to the Rohingya, with the NUG promising justice and accountability for crimes committed against them by the military, a path towards citizenship, and peaceful repatriation for refugees.

Although the NUG is built around remnants of the old guard of the National League for Democracy government ousted in the 2021 coup, its stated intentions have set it apart from the Bamar nationalist leanings of Aung San Suu Kyi, its 77-year-old former leader now held by the junta in solitary confinement.

Strengthening but still, difficult ties between the self-proclaimed NUG and the ethnic armed groups are particularly worrying for China. Myanmar’s giant neighbour sees a threat to its long-term strategy of dominating the ethnic groups along its border while keeping Western powers out of a pliant Myanmar with the goal of developing massive infrastructure projects and a secure gateway to the Indian Ocean.

Even though it enjoyed favourable relations with Aung San Suu Kyi, China is keeping the NUG at a cold arm’s length while propping up the junta with weaponry and diplomatic protection at the UN. India’s tacit backing for the regime has facilitated its own strategic investments.

Much of the rest of Asia, including democracies like Japan and South Korea, are also working to protect their own interests in Myanmar while hoping that engagement with the regime will lead to a negotiated settlement of the war. UN agencies and the INGO aid industry also maintain a presence, mostly ineffectual, in junta-controlled Yangon.

This perceived complicity angers the Burmese diaspora, which is busily raising money for aid and weapons for the resistance. Notions of a negotiated settlement with General Min Aung Hlaing’s State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself, are far from the minds of those waging their “forgotten war”.

“Thai generals are brothers with the Myanmar military. Singapore banks hold their money. The Burmese feel forgotten,” said one US-based doctor, speaking in Bangkok after taking medical aid to the border.

While recognising that the West’s attention and resources are focused on the overriding goal of defeating Russia in Ukraine, the resistance did receive a significant boost last December with the US Burma Act passed by Congress.

The act authorises the Biden administration to extend non-lethal aid to “support the people of Burma in their struggle for democracy, freedom, human rights, and justice.” It explicitly mentions the NUG, although not ethnic armed groups.

Some Washington-based analysts argue that the legislation does not mark a major US policy shift, but diplomats and experts in the region see it as a highly significant step towards endorsing the NUG and the wider resistance movement.

“The US is now saying it wants the resistance to win and has fundamentally shifted the narrative. This is why China is getting worried. Beijing is focused on the discourse of talks and the peace process,” commented one expert in Bangkok who asked not to be named.

“There won’t be lethal assistance. The US doesn’t want to be involved in another war now. But there will be more public and diplomatic support of the resistance and pushing other actors not to engage with the junta,” he added.

David Gum Aung of the NUG is more cautious, calling the Burma Act “a significant piece of legislation” which makes funds available and opens the door to more sanctions against the regime while “recognising” the NUG.

“We can view the Burma Act as a very important document symbolically but less potent practically. Its symbolic value stems largely from the fact that it outlines that the US views the SAC and their caretaker government as illegitimate and does not recognize their authority, their right to represent Myanmar or their justification for the coup.”

“We are still sorely in need of all manner of aid, from humanitarian to strategic… but we cannot fall into the trap of assuming that everything the Act makes possible will eventuate,” he said.

Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a democracy and youth activist who led anti-coup protests in Yangon and is now in exile, stresses that the broad-based and non-violent Civil Disobedience Movement remains the “backbone of the revolution”.

Success, she says, will mean the surrender of the junta, with the people defining what happens to the perpetrators of crimes, whether to be put on trial in domestic courts or through international mechanisms. For her, it also means a social revolution that will tackle “patriarchy, hegemony, racism etc”.

Kyaw Soe Win of the AAPP, whose grisly routine is to scroll through fresh images of the dead, says war criminals must be prosecuted to achieve national reconciliation.

“We need justice for the survivors and victims,” he says. “Without justice, there can be no reconciliation.  There was never any justice before, only impunity through the decades. No action was ever taken.”

AAPP has so far documented over 17,000 political prisoners still in detention and the deaths of over 3,100 civilians since the coup, although it knows the actual toll is much higher.

Nicholas Koumjian, head of the UN-authorised Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar which is working with AAPP, says credible evidence had been collected of an “array of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, torture, unlawful imprisonment, and deportation or forcible transfer”.

Back in the jungle resistance camp, the young activists gather near caves that act as air raid shelters and talk of a future without military rule that will necessitate total reform of the armed forces. Among the group, one was severely tortured in prison, one shot in the leg during street protests and a mother who had to leave her child behind.

The annual New Year festival of Thingyan is approaching, and they sing popular songs of love and separation and a homecoming they know may be years away.

AAPP is working with the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar to collect and preserve evidence of crimes against international law committed since 2011 to expedite future criminal proceedings. Nicholas Koumjian, head of the IIMM, said on the second anniversary of the coup that credible evidence had been collected of an “array of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, torture, unlawful imprisonment, and deportation or forcible transfer.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Mit der richtigen Technik kann die Lesegeschwindigkeit gesteigert werden. Das Textverständnis soll dabei nicht auf der Strecke bleiben, sagt die Schweizer Speed-Reading-Expertin Madlaina Hartmann (35).

Georges Bregy und Andreas Böni hinterfragen im «Blick Kick» die in Deutschland laute Kritik an Bayern-Keeper Yann Sommer.