Category: Judicial

Malawi has discovered a mass grave in the north of the country containing the remains of 25 people suspected to be migrants from Ethiopia, police said Wednesday.

“The grave was discovered late on Tuesday, but we cordoned it off and started exhuming today. So far, we have discovered 25 bodies,” police spokesman Peter Kalaya told AFP.

Police were alerted by villagers in the Mzimba area, about 250 kilometers north of the capital, Lilongwe, who stumbled onto the grave while collecting wild honey in a forest.

“We suspect that they were illegal migrants who were being transported to South Africa via Malawi,” he said.

He added that evidence gathered from the site indicated the victims were Ethiopian males ages 25 to 40 years.

The decomposing bodies were exhumed and taken to a morgue for autopsies.

The bodies appear to have been buried “probably not more than a month” ago, he said.

Malawi is a popular route for illegal immigrants from East Africa being smuggled to South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized country and a magnet for poor migrants from elsewhere on the continent.

Kalaya said that between January and September this year, authorities intercepted 221 illegal immigrants, 186 of whom were Ethiopians.

Source: Voice of America

In Malawi, hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers held protests Tuesday over delays for promised cash assistance to buy food. Protesters told VOA they have waited almost four months for promised handouts and are struggling to feed their families.

During their protests, the refugees marched to the U.N. offices inside the Dzaleka refugee camp in Dowa district, north of the capital Lilongwe, where they burned tires to draw attention to their concerns and anger.

Muhamad Bashiri, who was among the protesters, said “we were complaining about the delay in receiving cash handouts we use to buy food. We received our last handouts four months ago.”

He said the lack of assistance has sometimes made his family of three children go days without food.

The U.N. World Food Program is responsible for providing cash for food assistance to over 50,000 refugees at the Dzaleka camp.

But recently the organization said it lacked the funds to meet the needs of all the refugees.

In February, the WFP halted food rations to nearly 700 “self-sustaining” refugee families, citing funding limitations.

Kenyi Emmanuel Lukajo, the associate external relations and reporting officer for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR in Malawi, told VOA Tuesday that the UNHCR is aware of the food shortage problems in Dzaleka, and that efforts have been made to update refugees on the situation.

“UNHCR works closely with WFP and camp management and also the refugee leaders. We always conduct meetings to inform the refugees about the challenges, and update them on when they are able to get their cash assistance.”

Paul Turnbull, country director for the WFP in Malawi, said the organization last made a cash handout in August and that the delay is because of financial constraints the organization has faced in recent years.

“Since May 2019 we have been doing a reduced food assistance ration between about 25% and 50% lower than the ideal ration,” he said. “Now we face risks of pipeline breaks for food assistance on several occasions and so this year we have encountered that.”

Turnbull said the refugees will resume getting cash handouts on October 10.

“We have now secured sufficient funding for the remaining months of the year,” he said. “So, for the remainder of 2022, we will be able to do the monthly distributions to the refugees.”

However, Turnbull said more financial assistance is still needed to ensure the refugees get regular cash for food payments next year.

Source: Voice of America

Eighteen people died Monday after police in Madagascar opened fire on what they called a lynch mob angered at the kidnapping of an albino child, a senior doctor told AFP.

Dozens were wounded, some of them seriously.

“At the moment, 18 people have died in all, nine on the spot and nine in hospital,” said doctor Tango Oscar Toky, chief physician at a hospital in southeastern Madagascar.

“Of the 34 injured, nine are between life and death,” said the doctor giving graphic details of the injuries. “We are waiting for a government helicopter to evacuate them to the capital.”

Around 500 protesters armed with blades and machetes “tried to force their way” into the station, a police officer involved in the shooting said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“There were negotiations, [but] the villagers insisted,” the officer told AFP over the phone from the town of Ikongo, 90 kilometers (56 miles) southeast of the capital Antananarivo.

Police first fired tear gas and then rounds in the air to try to disperse the crowd, he said.

“They continued to force their way through. We had no choice but to defend ourselves,” the officer added.

The national police in the capital confirmed the “very sad event,” but only gave a toll of 11, with 18 injured.

Andry Rakotondrazaka, the national police chief, told a news conference that what happened was a “very sad event. It could have been avoided but it happened.”

He said the police “did everything to avoid confrontation,” including negotiating with the crowd, “but there were provocations”… (and) there were people with “long-bladed knives and sticks,” he said, adding others hurled stones towards the police.

“The gendarmes used tear gas. But that was not enough to stop the crowd from advancing. There was shooting in the air.”

But in the end the gendarmes had “no choice but to resort to self-defense … and limit the damage by shooting.”

The kidnapping took place last week, according to Jean-Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa, a member of parliament for Ikongo district.

Revenge attacks

Revenge attacks are common in Madagascar.

In February 2017, a mob of 800 people barged into Ikongo prison in search of a murder suspect they intended to kill.

They overpowered guards and 120 prisoners broke out of jail.

In 2013, a Frenchman, a Franco-Italian and a local man accused of killing a child on the tourist island of Nosy Be were burned alive by a crowd.

Some sub-Saharan African countries have suffered a wave of assaults against people with albinism, whose body parts are sought for witchcraft practices in the mistaken belief that they bring luck and wealth.

Albinism, caused by a lack of melanin, the pigment that colors skin, hair and eyes, is a genetic condition that affects hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, particularly in Africa.

Under The Same Sun, a Canada-based charity working to combat discrimination, has been logging cases of similar violence across Africa.

It ranks Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania as the countries where such attacks are most prevalent.

Madagascar, a large Indian Ocean island country, is ranked among the poorest in the world.

Source: Voice of America

Malawi’s government has closed three television stations and six radio stations for failing to pay annual license fees. The country’s media authority is expected to revoke the licenses of up to 30 broadcasting outlets by the end of the year. A local media advocacy group says the action is ill-advised and unfair.

Mandy Pondani, vice chairperson of the Media Institute for Southern Africa in Malawi (MISA-Malawi) told VOA the shutdowns are shrinking the media space and washing away freedoms and democratic gains attained over the last thirty years.

She said Malawi’s Communication Regulatory Authority, or MACRA, should consider the economic impact of the closures.

“We are looking at an economy that is not doing well,” Pondani said. “You can agree with me that in Malawi now almost every business has been affected. And obviously media institutions have been making a lot of money. And we are also coming from the pandemic which almost shut down the institutions. So, we thought maybe MACRA would have been considerate enough in issues like those.”

The affected media houses are Rainbow Television, Angaliba Television, Ufulu Television, Angaliba FM, Capital Radio, Sapitwa FM, Joy Radio, Ufulu FM and Galaxy FM.

Recent notices from MACRA show that in total, licenses for 23 radio stations and six television stations may be revoked by the end of the year.

Some stations paid their fees but are still being shut down.

Aubrey Kusakala, station manager for Rainbow Television, said his station was closed despite settling its $10,000 bill.

He feels the matter is politically motivated.

“Because we are looking at how we have been treated,” he said. “We made a payment on the 20th of June. They withdrew that payment almost two months later, meaning to us that they were not interested in the money. They were interested in our closure. Some of the information we have gathered clearly shows that the government through MACRA did not want us to exist on the market.”

“What is happening now is unprecedented,” said Pondani. “In the 50 year-plus of independence for Malawi, we have never seen a regime shut down media houses as this regime is doing. And it is denting and not reflecting well on the administration. If truth is to be told everybody knows the role the media played for this administration to be in power. And then to be going through this treatment it really doesn’t feel well, it doesn’t feel nice.”

MISA-Malawi said the shutdowns have eliminated 250 jobs held by media professionals and support staff and that another 500 people are expected to lose their jobs by the end of the year.

Zadziko Mankhambo, communications manager for MACRA, said the shutdowns have nothing to do with press freedom or politics, and there are conditions attached to the broadcast licenses, which must be followed.

Among them, he says, is adherence to the timetable for payments.

“Moreover, MACRA is one of the agents that have advocated for media freedom,” he said. “At the moment, MACRA is ensuring that there are more media houses. And as we are talking there are so many licensees who are waiting to have frequencies to start operating according to the law.”

Mankhambo said MACRA has no plans to reverse its action unless there are changes to the law the authority is enforcing.

However, MACRA has said the closed media houses can apply for new licenses once they settle their outstanding payments.

Source: Voice of America