BIAFRA: President Charles De Gaulle Press Conference

President Charles de Gaulle Press Conference September 9, 1968 i  Paris. Image: Reporters Associe/Gamma-Rapho

Comments made by the President of France in Paris on September 9, 1968, at a press conference answering a reporter's question on Africa's most blood soaked event, The Pogrom:

What is his view of the situation in Biafra?
What does he think should happen there?
What action does he refuse to take with regard to Biafra? Why?

President De Gaulle's exchange with a reporter:

Question:

The drama taking place in Biafra seems to grow more tragic every day. You have alluded several times to the Biafran problem. Mr. President, could you give us your point of view on this problem ?

De Gaulle:

I am not sure that the system of federation, which sometimes, in certain parts and from a certain angle replaces that of colonization, is always a very good and very practical system, particularly in Africa. But not only in Africa, for in fact it consists in arbitrarily joining together peoples who are sometimes very different or even opposed to each other and who, therefore, have no desire whatever to be joined. We see this in Canada, in Rhodesia, in Malaysia, in Cyprus, and we see it in Nigeria. Indeed, why should the Ibos, who are generally Christians, who live in the south in a certain way, who have their own language, why should they depend on another ethnic fraction of the Federation ? Since this is what one ends up with once the colonizer has withdrawn his authority. In an artificial federation, one ethnic element imposes its authority on the others.

Even before the present drama in Biafra, one could wonder how Nigeria would be able to live, in view of all the crises the Federation was experiencing. And now that this appalling, enormous drama has occurred, now that Biafra has proclaimed its independence and that, to subdue it, the Federation is resorting to war, blockade, extermination and famine, how can it be imagined that the peoples of the Federation, Igbos included, can resume life together?

France, in this affair, has done what was possible to help Biafra. She has not performed the act which, to her, would be decisive, of recognizing the Biafran Republic, because she regards the gestation of Africa as a matter for the Africans first and foremost. Already, in fact, some States of Eastern and Western Africa have recognized Biafra. Others appear to be moving in that direction. This means that, where France is concerned, the decision which has not been taken is not ruled out for the future. And indeed, one can imagine that the Federation itself, recognizing the impossibility of keeping on its present organization, may turn itself into some kind of union or confederation that would reconcile Biafra's right to self-determination with continuing ties between it and the whole of Nigeria.

Text courtesy of French Embassy in London via Kirk Green

House Freshmen Balance National Crises, Issues Back Home

In this Nov. 14, 2018 file photo, from l-r., Rep.-elect Angie Craig, D-Minn., Rep.-elect Kim Schrier, D-WA., Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY., Rep.-elect Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., Rep.-elect Abby Finkenauer, D-Iowa, and Rep.-elect Sharice Davids, D-KS., line up as they join other members of the freshman class of Congress for a group photo on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

BY LISA MASCARO, KALI ROBINSON

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iowa Rep. Abby Finkenauer spent her time back home meeting with small-business owners and veterans, marching in a parade and delivering gifts to fire stations. In their upstate New York districts, Rep. Antonio Delgado visited farms, including one that’s part of a pilot program for hiring veterans, and Rep. Andy Brindisi kicked off a summer lunch program for kids.

As the class of freshmen House lawmakers returned to their states for the Independence Day break, six months into their first terms, many were determined to push beyond President Donald Trump’s latest pronouncements from the White House — over the border crisis or the impeachment calls against him — to focus on local issues they say matter in their districts.

But the balance can be challenging, with wrenching national stories never far from view. For these new lawmakers, their ability to master attention to both could prove crucial as they gear up for what may be their toughest campaign yet, winning a second term in Congress.

“The folks I’m talking to just want a Washington that is working together to move things forward,” Finkenauer said by telephone in between stops in her sprawling district where many farmers are hard hit by Trump’s tariff war with China.

She is using her position as head of the House Small Business subcommittee on Rural Development, Agriculture, Trade and Entrepreneurship to shore up federal money for programs to help her constituents. It’s a role she said she would play regardless who was president. “Having a trade war over Twitter doesn’t work when people are struggling,” Finkenauer said.

Even as the first-term lawmakers fill their days closer to home, they’re never removed from the throughlines that dominate Washington. In recent days, protests over the dismal conditions of migrants being held at U.S.-Mexico border facilities erupted in several congressional districts as part of a campaign organized by MoveOn and other activist groups.

As Delgado visiting veterans’ health care facilities and family farms, protesters outraged over the border crisis gathered at his district office. Congress approved a $4.5 billion package last week that many liberal lawmakers said fell short of ensuring protections and standards of care for the migrants.

“I applaud the impassioned civic engagement, including those exercising their right to protest outside our Kingston office, in response to what’s happening to migrant families within our own borders,” Delgado said on Twitter. He welcomed as an “important first step” the upcoming congressional hearing to investigation a Customs and Border Patrol officers’ Facebook page that included derogatory comments about migrants.

“Congress must increase oversight & accountability of CBP in order to end this inhumane treatment of migrants & make sure our fellow human beings are never forced to endure such horrible conditions,” he wrote.

Democrats seized the House in 2018 after flipping 40 Republican-held seats, many of them in districts that Trump won in 2016 and will be contested again when the freshmen seek re-election in 2020. Trump will be on the ballot, and Republicans are trying to recruit strong challengers .

Private polling conducted for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee showed voters remain open to Democrats, but view them as too focused on impeachment . Instead, voters want to see lawmakers work across political lines to solve problems. Health care, a key issue that many Democrats focused on during the 2018 campaigns, remains a top priority.

But those goals often collide with the party’s left flank, which is pushing Congress to stand up to the White House by starting impeachment proceedings and improving the situation at the border. They argue that voters want lawmakers to be bold and fight for Democratic values.

It’s a disconnection that Republicans are eager to exploit as they try to portray the House Democrats as aligned with their liberal colleagues, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other newcomers.

“When they’re back home the socialist Democrats want to talk about anything except their real agenda of open borders, banning private health insurance and baselessly impeaching the president,” said Bob Salera, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Folks back home won’t be fooled.”

Brindisi said in an interview that he was driving to as many counties in upstate New York as possible to meet constituents. He had stopped at Boys and Girls Club to launch a summer lunch program and visited first responders in support of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. He and his wife also delivered books from the Library of Congress to libraries as part of an initiative he calls Brindisi Bookworms.

In his district, constituents worry about rising prescription drug costs, the opioid crisis, and damage from the flooding Lake Ontario, but aren’t as vocal about issues major national issues such as immigration or impeachment, Brindisi said.

“It’s really issues people wake up every morning worrying about,” Brindisi said. “My constituents are concerned about people working together in Washington.”

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Follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lisamascaro and https://twitter.com/kalidrobinson

Jackie Kay On Dual Identity And The Funny Side Of Life

Jackie Kay. Image via Daily Nation

BY GLORIA NWANIGA
Fairway Hotel in Kampala is silent on the rainy May evening that Jackie Kay, Scottish poet and novelist, stands to read her poetry.

The Uganda International Writers Conference has just ended, but most of the delegates are still here.

In fact, the crowd seems larger than it was during the day as Kay churns out anecdote after anecdote, explaining the inspiration behind each poem she reads.

There is the funny tale of the stranger on a train who stared at her then shouted, “Igbo nose”, way before Kay set out to seek her birth father, and another tale of how shrapnel was found in her grandfather’s arm long after the world war had ended.

POETRY COLLECTIONS
The verses Kay reads are derived from her numerous poetry collections like Bantam, Other Lovers and Life Mask.

The poems are sad, funny and warm, rich in metaphors and overflowing with love, laughter, identity questions and (not) belonging.

She transports the crowd as she switches accents sounding, now Nigerian, now Scottish, and then British.

Yet Kay’s warm and friendly demeanour camouflages something important, that she is a woman of many accolades: Scots Makar — Scottish poet laureate, acclaimed writer with more than 10 titles to her name, professor of creative writing and university chancellor.

Born in a mother-and-baby home in Edinburgh to a Nigerian father and a Scottish mother, Kay was immediately adopted by a couple in Glasgow, who loved her so much that she didn’t bother to find out her biological parents until many years later.

As a kid, she wanted to be an actress as she enjoyed acting, telling stories and making things up.

AUDITIONS

“I used to go to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama twice a week for children’s classes, they were free at the time. I’d then go for auditions but I never seemed to get a part. One day this woman said to me, 'You’re really good, dear. You’re just the wrong colour,' and I realised I wouldn’t get any part at all because they didn’t have parts then for kids of my colour.

I decided from then on that I had to write parts for kids of my colour. That was one of my first impulses to write.’’

This incident and other racist encounters contributed immensely to Kay’s decision to become a writer.

In a harsh world, Kay’s imagination became a sanctuary and survival tool. “I was beaten up a lot and so I would go home and write poems of revenge. I soon realised that inside my imagination, I was quite strong. My imagination was rich and it could transport me somewhere else. Suddenly, I didn’t have to be this kid that was beaten up and had mud shoved in their eyes.”

The unpleasant encounters also influenced the subject matter of her poems and Kay admits that even as a child, she used to tackle heavy subjects like racism, apartheid and poverty. Her first poem was published in a paper when she was only 12, and it was about poverty in Glasgow.

Clearly, growing up in a very political household that went on anti-apartheid matches and wrote Christmas cards to Mandela made her develop interest in the outside world. Inevitably, her first book of poetry, The Adoption Papers, deals with issues of identity, race, gender and sexuality.

WOMEN'S GOLF

In 2016, Kay was selected as the Scots Makar, an appointment that she terms a great honour and one that sees her write poems on all sorts of subjects, ranging from homelessness to refugees and even women’s golf.

This position also makes Kay travel around the country and the world in an effort to introduce more people to poetry and to create more opportunities for younger poets.

By the time she is done with her five-year term as Makar, Kay is expected to have created a new poetic map of Scotland — The Makar’s Map. This project is already underway and she is working on a very large anthology involving old, young, professional and even unprofessional poets to put together 500 different voices that give readers a sense of what Scotland is like.

How, then, does Kay ensure that her poetry speaks to everybody and maintains generational interest across all age groups? “If the word feels alive and authentic to me, if they surprise me and I don’t know what is going to happen next, then I have to trust it will surprise my readers too. If, however, my prose feels dead and dull and I feel like it hasn’t got that spark, it goes into the bin. I only publish what I’m happy with.”

HUMOUR

The reader of Kay’s work cannot miss to notice the humour interwoven into her verses. Even as mood, subject and settings shift to dark ones full of sombre moments, she still manages to effortlessly lace the experiences with humour. This, she says, is due to her belief that tragedy and comedy live very closely together.

“I think that often, when people are challenged like when suffering bereavement, sudden changes or heartbreaks, they need to step outside themselves in order to survive. One of the ways of stepping outside is to see the humour.

If they can find humour in a situation they’ll survive it better because humour is a survival tool that can be profound and deep. Interestingly, we require just as much depth to laugh and in our thinking processes as we do to cry.”

True to her word, the 57-year-old writer employs a great deal of humour in her 2010 memoir Red Dust Road. In the first chapter, she narrates about the first meeting with her Nigerian biological father in Abuja.

“I was invited to go to Nigeria as a writer by the British Council and I thought that once in Nigeria I should find him. Years earlier when I was pregnant with my son, I found my birth mother but it was a difficult experience that put me off trying to find my father. So while in Nigeria, I tried to find him. At first he denied he was my father and then when he realised I knew too much, he agreed to meet.”

PLASTIC BAG
Kay then goes on to describe how upon setting eyes on her, her father plucked his Bible from a plastic bag and started twirling, dancing and clapping his hands above his head singing, “Oh God almighty, Oh God almighty”. At that point, it occurred to her that her father was a religious fanatic who saw her as his past sin. Narrating the event to her adoptive mother made her see the humour in an experience she describes as traumatic, upsetting and emotional.

“Mother started laughing and kicking her legs, then I realised how funny it was. Later, when I actually started to write it, I too realised it was funny. Making that encounter funny allows my readers to feel more than if I employ a sort of self-pitying tone. I find it really important as a writer to leave enough space for my readers to come in with their emotions, worries, thoughts, concerns, memories, similar experiences and tragedies. Humour is the door that allows them to do that.”

If she was to have dinner with four dead writers, Kay says she would choose Audrey Lorde, the African-American poet who was a friend of hers and a great influence on her; and 19th century novelist George Eliot, because of Elliot’s philosophy and because Middlemarch is one of her favourite books. Lastly, she would pick the witty and wonderful Oscar Wilde and Robert Burns, who was also Scotland’s national poet.

Currently chancellor of the University of Salford and professor of creative writing at Newcastle University, Kay is not convinced that a degree in creative writing is necessary for one to write. Instead, she believes that what writers should do is to read a lot.

ROUTINE

“Creative writing classes can’t teach talent, they can teach you to be better, to develop writing practice and routine, editing and structure. They can also give you a lot of feedback, and that’s very important for a writer, but really, the basic business of writing is solitary and even if you’re going for creative writing classes, you still have to do the work on your own.”

On the writing life, Kay believes that every author ought to embrace the fact that writing is a very solitary profession with two sides — the public self and a private self. She believes that once writers becomes well known, they have to learn to deal with the public self that involves taking selfies and signing books, after which they must turn down the noise, go away to find themselves, focus and go back to the work.

In her parting shot on the importance of keeping old languages alive through poetry, Kay had this to say: “It’s very important that we keep our old languages alive through poetry because poetry is a button passed down through the ages and centuries, from one tongue to another tongue, from one time to another time.”

OLD TONGUES

Tongues change, idioms change and languages change, so it’s important as well to remember the old tongues.

I write some of my poems in old Scotts, some in current Glaswegian dialect, some in Standard English and some using Igbo expressions and Nigerian accents. I like to try and write multi-voiced poetry that give a range of voices that go into making me who I am but also to keep some of these languages alive.

I think small languages all over the world have been oppressed, stamped upon and sometimes wiped out altogether and then big languages come and take over, just like when an army occupies a country but if we allow our languages to be taken over then who are we?

How do we remember ourselves if we can’t remember our language?’’

SOURCE: DAILY NATION

From Libya To Texas, Tragedies Illustrate Plight Of Migrants

In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016 file photo, migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the water from a crowded wooden boat as they are helped by members of an NGO during a rescue operation at the Mediterranean sea, about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya. On Friday, July 5, 2019, Libya's interior minister, Fathi Bashagha, pleaded Friday for Europe "to address the problem in a radical way _ not to prevent migrants, but to provide jobs and investment in the migrants' places of origin, as well as in southern Libya ... so as to absorb these huge numbers willing and eager to migrate to Europe." (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

BY LORI HINNANT, JAMEY KEATEN

GENEVA (AP) — They are trapped in squalid detention centers on Libya’s front lines. They wash up on the banks of the Rio Grande. They sink without a trace — in the Mediterranean, in the Pacific or in waterways they can’t even name. A handful fall out of airplanes’ landing gear.

As their choices narrow on land and at sea, migrants are often seen as a political headache in the countries they hope to reach and ignored in the countries they flee. Most live in limbo, but recent tragedies have focused attention on the risks they face and the political constraints at the root of them.

A record 71 million people were forcibly displaced around the world in 2018, according to a report last month by the U.N. refugee agency, in places as diverse as Turkey, Uganda, Bangladesh and Peru. Many are still on the move in 2019, or trapped like thousands in detention in Libya, where an airstrike on Tuesday killed at least 44 migrants and refugees locked away in the Tripoli suburb of Tajoura.

Most of those in Tajoura and other Libyan detention centers have been intercepted by the Libyan coast guard, which has become the go-to border force for the European Union, which can’t get 28 governments to agree about migration. Despite the rhetoric about migration crises in Europe and the U.S., the top three countries taking in refugees are Turkey, Pakistan and Uganda. Germany comes in a distant fifth.

A 20-year-old who fled war in his homeland in sub-Saharan Africa two years ago survived the airstrikes, gunfire from militia members trying to keep migrants inside the compound, torture for ransom by traffickers and a sinking boat in the Mediterranean. He is now sleeping outside the Tajoura detention center along with hundreds of other migrants and awaiting a second chance to go to sea.

“I faced death in Libya many times before. I am ready to die again. I already lost my brothers in the war in my country,” he told The Associated Press. He didn’t want his name used because the militia fighters who shot at him are still guarding the compound.

Libya’s interior minister, Fathi Bashagha, pleaded Friday for Europe “to address the problem in a radical way — not to prevent migrants, but to provide jobs and investment in the migrants’ places of origin, as well as in southern Libya ... so as to absorb these huge numbers willing and eager to migrate to Europe.”

Within days of the airstrike, at least two boats filled with migrants sank off Libya’s coast, leaving around 140 people missing. Another group was picked up by a rescue ship and then barred from docking on the Italian island of Lampedusa, touching off the 21st standoff between Italy’s populist government and humanitarian groups. A pregnant woman watching a shipboard ultrasound of her baby smiled broadly, seemingly oblivious to the political furor on land and at sea.

A similar disconnect played out recently when the body of a stowaway on an inbound flight from Nairobi crashed to earth next to a man sunbathing on a Sunday afternoon in his London garden. The next day, mourners held a lavish burial in El Salvador for a man and his young daughter who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande into Texas.

Like during a 2015 wave of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanis pouring into Europe, daily reminders of migrants’ plights are back on front pages.

The U.S.-Mexico border has become a flashpoint amid President Donald Trump’s ambitions to build a wall to keep out migrants. Many children caught crossing are stuck in squalid, unsanitary detention centers. Children have also been separated from parents in custody. Critics call such policies inhumane, heartless and “un-American.”

More broadly, advocates for the huddled masses on the move say not enough is being done in the migrants’ home, transit or destination countries. Only international cooperation can help resolve the agonies, they say — a tough sell at a time of rising go-it-alone, populist and nationalist sentiment in many places.

Filippo Grandi, head of U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said his office has a “dialogue” going with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and “if there is any help that we can provide to the U.S. administration in dealing with this matter, we’re ready to do it.”

But he called for a regional discussion among countries like the United States — the destination for many — as well as transit country Mexico, and the troubled home countries for migrants and refugees such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where gang killings and lawlessness are rife.

“I have been to Honduras, to Guatemala, to El Salvador,” he told reporters recently in Geneva. “The violence perpetrated by gangs, the inability of these governments to protect their own citizenship, cause part of these flows. So this needs to be addressed in the proper manner — without stigmatizing these people.”

___

Lori Hinnant reported from Paris. Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.

OPEC Output Hits New Low On Trump's Sanctions, Supply Pact: Reuters Survey

Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Khalid Al-Falih talks to journalists at the beginning of an OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria, July 1, 2019. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo

BY ALEX LAWLER

LONDON (REUTERS) - OPEC oil output sank to a new five-year low in June as a rise in Saudi supply did not offset losses in Iran and Venezuela due to U.S. sanctions and other outages elsewhere in the group, a Reuters survey found.

The 14-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped 29.60 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, the survey showed, down 170,000 bpd from May’s revised figure and the lowest OPEC total since 2014, the survey showed.

The Reuters survey suggests that even though Saudi Arabia is raising output following pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to bring down prices, the kingdom is still voluntarily pumping less than an OPEC-led supply deal allows it to. OPEC renewed the supply pact at meetings this week.

Despite lower supplies, crude oil has fallen from a six-month high above $75 a barrel in April to below $63 on Friday, pressured by concern about slowing economic growth.

“The decision of OPEC+ at the beginning of the week to extend its production cuts has done nothing to change this,” Carsten Fritsch, analyst at Commerzbank, said of this week’s drop in prices.

“A series of disappointing economic data from the United States, China and Europe has sparked new concerns about demand.”

OPEC, Russia and other non-members, known as OPEC+, agreed in December to reduce supply by 1.2 million bpd from Jan. 1 this year. OPEC’s share of the cut is 800,000 bpd, to be delivered by 11 members - all except Iran, Libya and Venezuela.

The producers at meetings this week in Vienna extended the deal until March 2020.

In June, the 11 OPEC members bound by the agreement achieved 156% of pledged cuts, the survey found, more than in May, due to lower production in Iraq, Kuwait and Angola. All three of the exempt producers also pumped less oil.

The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran in November after pulling out of a 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and six world powers. Aiming to cut Iran’s sales to zero, Washington this month ended sanctions waivers for importers of Iranian oil.

Iran’s crude exports have declined to less than 400,000 bpd from more than 2.5 million bpd in April 2018.

In Venezuela, supply fell slightly in June due to the impact of U.S. sanctions on state oil company PDVSA and a long-term decline in production, according to the survey.

Among countries pumping more, Saudi Arabia boosted supply by 100,000 bpd to 9.8 million bpd from May’s revised figure, the survey found. This is still below its OPEC quota of 10.311 bpd.

Output also rose in Nigeria - which last month overproduced its target by the largest margin.

June output was the lowest by OPEC since April 2014, excluding membership changes that have taken place since then, Reuters surveys show.

The Reuters survey aims to track supply to the market and is based on shipping data provided by external sources, Refinitiv Eikon flows data and information provided by sources at oil companies, OPEC and consulting firms.


Additional reporting by Rania El Gamal and Ahmad Ghaddar; Editing by Susan Fenton
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

US To Pursue Citizenship Question On Census But Path Unclear

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, walk on the tarmac upon arrival at Morristown Municipal Airport, in Morristown, N.J., Friday, July 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

BY MARK SHERMAN, JILL COLVIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Friday it will press its search for legal grounds to force the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, hours after President Donald Trump said he is “very seriously” considering an executive order to get the question on the form.

Trump said his administration is exploring a number of legal options, but the Justice Department did not say exactly what options remain now that the Supreme Court has barred the question at least temporarily.

The government has already begun the process of printing the census questionnaire without that question.

The administration’s focus on asking broadly about citizenship for the first time since 1950 reflects the enormous political stakes and potential costs in the once-a-decade population count that determines the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives for the next 10 years and the distribution of some $675 billion in federal spending. It also reflects Trump’s interest in reshaping how congressional districts are drawn.

“You need it for Congress, for districting,” he said Friday. “How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons.”

Districts now are based on the total population. Some Republicans want them based on the population of eligible voters, a change that could disadvantage Democrats by excluding immigrants. The Supreme Court has left open the issue of whether districts based only on the population of eligible voters is constitutional.

The Census Bureau’s own experts have said a citizenship question would discourage immigrants from participating in the survey and result in a less accurate census that would redistribute money and political power away from Democratic-led cities where immigrants tend to cluster to whiter, rural areas where Republicans do well.

Trump, speaking as he departed the White House for a weekend in New Jersey, said he might take executive action.

“It’s one of the ways that we’re thinking about doing it, very seriously,” he said.

An executive order would not, by itself, override court rulings blocking the inclusion of the citizenship question. But such an action from Trump would perhaps give administration lawyers a new basis to try to convince federal courts that the question could be included.

“Executive orders do not override decisions of the Supreme Court,” Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a statement Friday. The organization is representing plaintiffs in the census lawsuit in Maryland.

Later Friday, Justice Department lawyers formally told U.S. District Judge George Hazel in Maryland the administration is not giving up the legal fight to add the citizenship question to the next census. But they also said it’s unclear how they will proceed, according to a court filing.

“They still say they don’t have clear instructions on what to do,” said Saenz, who took part in a conference call with the judge and lawyers for both sides in one of three lawsuits seeking to keep the question off the census. The other two are in New York and California.

Hazel had expressed mounting frustration with the mixed signals the administration was sending, first telling him on Tuesday that the question was off only to have Trump tweet the next day that the administration was “absolutely moving forward” with efforts to include the question.

Friday evening, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal judge in New York to permanently block the administration from adding the citizenship question to the 2020 census.

“The Trump administration repeatedly argued the census forms could not be altered after June 30. They’ve now changed their tune because the Supreme Court ruled against them. They can’t have it both ways,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s voting rights project.

Trump’s administration has faced numerous roadblocks to adding the question, like last week’s Supreme Court ruling that blocked its inclusion, at least for now. Both the Justice and Commerce departments indicated on Tuesday that they were moving forward with the census, minus the citizenship question.

But Trump has insisted otherwise, pushing his administration to come up with a way to include the controversial query. He suggested Friday officials might be able to add an addendum to the questionnaire with the question after it’s already printed.

In the Supreme Court’s decision last week, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four more liberal members in saying the administration’s current justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.”

The administration had pushed the Supreme Court to decide the case quickly, citing a July 1 deadline to begin printing the forms. The court made the rare move of taking up the case directly from a trial court in New York before an appeals court had weighed in. As recently as June 20, Solicitor General Noel Francisco reminded the justices of the need for a quick decision, writing that “for all practical purposes, the Census Bureau needs to finalize the 2020 questionnaire by June of this year.”

The Trump administration had said the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters’ access to the ballot box.

But the question’s opponents say recently discovered evidence from the computer files of a Republican redistricting consultant who died last year shows that, far from helping minority voters, discrimination against Hispanics was behind the push for the citizenship question.

Hazel on Friday gave the plaintiffs in the Maryland claim until Aug. 19 to gather more evidence and take testimony from administration officials. If Hazel finds discrimination, that could be a separate basis for blocking the citizenship question.

Preparations for the $15.6 billion 2020 Census are intricately choreographed. More than 425,000 people have already started applying for the half million positions needed for the 2020 Census. The bureau also is in the middle of a test run, with 480,000 households sent questionnaire information, according to the bureau’s monthly status report from May.

The ongoing legal wrangling itself could hurt the census, said John Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. The group is a plaintiff in the Maryland case. “The government is trying to sow seeds of confusion in the public,” Yang said.

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Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland, and Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.

Sudan's Protesters Claim Victory For Their 'Revolution'

RCHIVO - En esta fotografía de archivo del 30 de junio de 2019, manifestantes sudaneses gritan consignas durante una protesta contra el consejo militar, en Jartum, Sudán. (AP Foto/Hussein Malla, archivo)

BY FAY ABUELGASIM, NOHA ELHENNAWY

KHARTOUM, SUDAN (AP) — Leaders of Sudan’s pro-democracy movement welcomed on Friday the power-sharing agreement with the ruling military council as a victory for their “revolution,” raising hopes for an end to the three-month standoff with the generals and deadly violence.

“Today, our revolution has won and our victory shines,” read a statement posted early Friday on the Facebook page of the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, which has spearheaded the protests.

The emerging deal could break the political impasse that has gripped the country since the military ousted the longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April, amid an uprising against his rule.

In the following months, protesters stayed in the streets demanding the generals handover power to a civilian leadership. Talks collapsed when security forces razed a protest camp outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on June 3 leaving more than a hundred killed, according to protesters.

The African Union and Ethiopia made intensive efforts to bring the generals and the protesters back to the negotiating table.

Negotiations resumed earlier this week, after tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Sudan’s main cities over the weekend, in the biggest show of numbers since the razing of the protesters’ sit-in camp. At least 11 people were killed in clashes with security forces, according to protest organizers.

When news of the deal broke around dawn on Friday, hundreds of protesters returned to the streets dancing, singing and waving Sudanese flags, while passing drivers honked.

The military-controlled Al-Sudan television channel played national songs. It also reran excerpts of the press conference announcing the agreement, held jointly by protest and military leaders, which it subtitled “Congratulations to the Sudanese people.”

“We hope that the formation of transitional institutions marks the beginning of a new era,” said Omer El-Digair, a leader of the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change, a political coalition representing the protesters, at the joint press conference with the military and African mediators following the conclusion of the deal. “We hope it is an era where we can shut off the sound of pistols and destroy for good prisons of arbitrary detention.”

The two parties agreed to form a joint sovereign council to lead the country during a transitional period of three years and three months, said the SPA statement.

The council will include five civilians representing the protest movement and five military members. An eleventh seat will go to a civilian chosen by both parties.

A military member will preside over the council during the first 21 months, followed by a civilian member after, according to the statement.

This suggests a significant concession on the part of pro-democracy forces, which had insisted that the sovereign council have only a civilian president. However, the deal did secure another key demand, that protest leaders select the members of a technocratic Cabinet to be formed independently from the generals.

The two parties also agreed to launch “a national independent investigation” into the killings of protesters since al-Bashir was ousted on April 11, according to the statement.

Rep. Amash, Lone GOP Critic Of Trump, Leaves Republican Party

In a June 12 file photo, Rep. Justin Amash listens to debate as the House Oversight and Reform Committee considers whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents related to the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Image: J. Scott Applewhite

BY DONNA CASSATA

WASHINGTON (THE WASHINGTON POST) -- Rep. Justin Amash, the only Republican in Congress to have accused President Trump of impeachable acts, said Thursday that he is leaving the GOP and becoming an independent, bemoaning that “modern politics is trapped in a partisan death spiral, but there is an escape.”

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, the Michigan congressman described himself as a lifelong Republican who has grown disenchanted with party politics and frightened by a two-party system that has “evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions.”

Citing the warnings in George Washington’s farewell address, Amash said Americans “have allowed government officials, under assertions of expediency and party unity, to ignore the most basic tenets of our constitutional order: separation of powers, federalism and the rule of law.”

He maintained that most Americans are not “rigidly partisan” and that the country can do better than the two-party system.

“No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us,” Amash wrote, declaring his party affiliation as independent on the nation’s Independence Day.

Amash, who was elected in the tea party wave of 2010, embraced libertarian principles and repeatedly broke with his party on major issues and even the mundane before he challenged the president.

A few hours after Amash’s declaration, Trump derided him in a tweet: “Great news for the Republican Party as one of the dumbest & most disloyal men in Congress is ‘quitting’ the Party. No Collusion, No Obstruction! Knew he couldn’t get the nomination to run again in the Great State of Michigan. Already being challenged for his seat. A total loser!”

House Republican leaders had no immediate response to Amash quitting the party.

Amash does not mention Trump by name in the op-ed, but his party switch comes weeks after he posted tweets arguing that former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented “impeachable conduct” in his report on Trump’s campaign and administration and Russian interference in the 2016 election. In subsequent public statements, Amash challenged colleagues from both parties to act.

About 80 House Democrats and several 2020 presidential candidates have called for launching impeachment proceedings against Trump, a step that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has resisted. Amash is the only Republican calling for such a move.

His stand has drawn the wrath of Trump, widespread criticism from other Republicans, and a challenger in next year’s election. Amash, 39, who is serving his fourth term, has not announced whether he will run again. He has acknowledged that he is instead considering running for president as a member of the Libertarian Party.

Michigan state Rep. Jim Lower, a Republican, announced his bid for Amash’s House seat, describing himself as “a Pro-Trump, Pro-Life, Pro-Jobs, Pro-2nd Amendment, Pro-Family Values Republican.”

Last month, Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, indicated that he planned to campaign for Lower.

“See you soon Justin,” Trump Jr. said in a tweet. “I hear Michigan is beautiful during primary season.” Attached to his tweet were poll results showing Amash trailing Lower in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District.

Past supporters of Amash also turned on him in the aftermath of his impeachment comments.

The leader of the Club for Growth, a conservative group that has staunchly backed Amash since his first congressional run in 2010, and whose spending helped him overcome a 2014 primary challenge, criticized his comments.

The congressman has been steadfast in defending his position. Facing voters at a town hall in Grand Rapids several weeks ago, Amash said Congress “has a duty to keep the president in check.”

“I’d do it whether it was a Republican president or a Democratic president,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You elected me to represent all of you.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has dismissed Amash as an outlier among Republicans, citing a number of instances in which the congressman voted with Democrats.

“Justin Amash can determine his own future. But I think, on a philosophical basis, he’s probably in a different place than the majority of all of us,” McCarthy said last month.

Amash also left the conservative House Freedom Caucus, a group he helped found four years ago.

It was unclear whether the congressman would caucus with Democrats. The only other independents in Congress — Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) — caucus with Democrats in the Senate.

9 Nigerians Among 44 Migrants Bombed In Libya

Migrants in Libya. Image via PM News.

PM NEWS
Nine Nigerians were among the 44 migrants killed in an airstrike on a detention centre in Tajoura, Tripoli on Tuesday night.

Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Executive Chairman/CEO, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), said some of those killed had been profiled to leave Libya in the coming days.

International Organisation for Migration(IOM) said that more than 180 others staying in the same detention centre were registered to return to their home countries through the UN agency’s voluntary migrant return programme, which helps arrange their documents and transport.

In a statement on Thursday, Dabiri-Erewa condoled with families of the nine Nigerians.

She said it was regrettable that migrants survived a treacherous journey only to be killed in someone else’s war in Libya.

“It is disheartening that nine Nigerians have been identified as victims in the unfortunate incident.

”Nigerians, who were due to be airlifted back to Nigeria, were cut down in their prime,” she said.

The NIDCOM boss reiterated her call for Nigerians, especially the youths, to shun movement into hostile countries.

According to her, if they must travel, they should do so legally with a legitimate mission to those countries.

Dabiri-Erewa prayed for the repose of the souls of all the people, who died in the airstrike and sent condolence messages to the families of the victims.

She noted that more than 13.000 migrants had been brought home so far, from Libya, and expressed appreciation to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), NEMA and other international agencies involved in the evacuation of the migrants.

She, however, called on the UN to hasten up in the protection of other detention centres from such attacks.

IOM has moved around 40,000 migrants out of Libya through the same program me.
The airstrike on the Tajoura centre where at least 600 people were being held, came less than two months after another airstrike landed less than 100 meters from the centre, injuring two people.

Political Void Crimps Nigeria's Stocks, Rattles Investors

* Nigeria still without a cabinet four months after election

* MSCI Nigeria index down 15% in 2019, defying frontier rally

* Civil servants with little authority left in charge

* Payment delays frustrate contractors

BY KARIN STROHECKER, ALEXIS AKWAGYIRAM & LIBBY GEORGE

LONDON/LAGOS (REUTERS) - The failure of Nigeria's president to appoint a cabinet four months after winning a second term has stymied the country's stock market, prompted foreign investors to trim holdings and threatened growth prospects for Africa's largest economy.

Inaugurated on May 29, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria's 76-year-old former military leader, faces a long list of challenges including tepid economic growth, high unemployment and a decade-old Islamist insurgency.

Government activities, which almost ground to a halt ahead of February's election, slowed further after his victory, leaving foreign investors trying to gauge how much of a hit the stock market will take from the hiatus.

"It is massive," said Andrew Brudenell, lead senior portfolio manager for frontier markets equities at Ashmore Group. "Even when oil prices were back up at $70 heading to $80 again, the stock market did not do anything. They (stocks) just continue to trickle down as people give up on their investments."

The stock market in Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, has failed to keep up with frontier markets peers, a subset of smaller and often riskier emerging economies. The MSCI Nigeria index has dropped more than 15% since the start of the year, making it one of the worst performing markets in the index, even as the wider MSCI Frontier Market index rallied nearly 10%.

Nigerian politics often move at a glacial pace. Buhari took six months to swear in a cabinet after the 2015 election - a delay critics contend contributed to the slow response to low oil prices that pushed Nigeria into a recession in 2016.

But some investors said they had hoped that as the incumbent, he would move more quickly. Senegal's Macky Sall and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa both appointed ministers within days of being sworn in as president this year.

THE BIG VOID

Since the dissolution of Buhari's first cabinet in late May, senior civil servants, who oversee day-to-day operations but lack authority to approve major decisions, have run Nigeria's government departments.

Civil servants do not approve capital expenditure, which means contractors are not getting paid.

"The process of payments is challenging and extremely time consuming," said one large government contractor, who asked not to be named.

Civil servants also do not take leading roles in deal-making in the all-important oil sector, a fact that has slowed negotiations with Saudi Arabia, a source close to the talks told Reuters.

Saudi Arabia is considering investing millions of dollars into revamping the state oil company's ailing refineries – a years-long target for the petrol-importing country. It is also mulling construction of an entirely new refinery and investing in liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The political void has affected investors of all types.

"You want to see that: a) people are in control and b) work on behalf of all stakeholders - including foreign shareholders," said Julian Mayo of Fiera Capital. "I don't think really any of that applies in Nigeria at the moment."

WHY CHANGE?

Buhari has offered no public explanation for the delay. Some insiders say it stems from a desire to avoid delegating to ministers.

Members of his first-term cabinet complained they lacked access to Buhari and did not know what was expected of them, said Clement Nwankwo, director of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, an Abuja-based think-tank.

"Whether his approach is related to his military background, I don't know. It just seems to be who he is," Nwankwo said.

Buhari's spokesman, Garba Shehu, declined to comment on this but rejected suggestions that delays over cabinet appointments had adversely affected government operations.

"Normal running of government is going on because the permanent secretaries (senior civil servants) are running the ministries until the ministers are appointed," he said.

Shehu said Buhari would likely submit cabinet nominees to the upper house of parliament in July. Picks must be vetted by security services and then approved by parliament. But the legislature is expected to go on leave in July and not return until September.

Some observers question how much difference new ministers will make in an administration in which power is concentrated in the hands of the president and a close circle of confidants, including chief of staff Abba Kyari.

"I don't see any reason why that would necessarily change," said a Western diplomat, who did not want to be named.

Buhari has made other key appointments: He confirmed central bank governor Godwin Emefiele for a second term and appointed a new head of the state oil company.

Bucking a trend of one-term governors, Emefiele said he will keep the controversial managed float of the naira, which investors and the International Monetary Fund have asked Abuja to scrap.

That policy prompted many overseas investors to quit Nigeria in Buhari's first term.

"Across the board everyone is saying they don't see any prospect for real policy change," said a U.S.-based fund manager, speaking on condition of anonymity.

(Reporting by Karin Strohecker in London and Alexis Akwagyiram and Libby George in Lagos Additional reporting by Paul Carsten and Felix Onuah in Abuja and Chijioke Ohuocha in Lagos Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram and Karin Strohecker Editing by Alexandra Zavis and Frances Kerry)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Distrust Of Nigerian Police Grows Among Women Over Rape Allegations

Image via Legit/NAIJ

BY OLUWATOSIN ADESHOKA

ABUJA, NIGERIA (TRT WORLD) -- Several women have alleged that they were raped by members of the police who used plastic bags often used to sell water in little packages in Nigeria as condoms.

When the news broke that officers of the Nigerian police arrested women and allegedly raped them while they were detained, Chioma Aguwegbo was disappointed but not surprised.

One evening in 2017, at one of the many illegal checkpoints established by officers of the Nigerian police in Abuja, Agbuegbo and her friend were stopped. Agwuegbo’s friend, who was driving at the time, was wearing a short skirt with her thighs exposed and was forced to get out to open the trunk of her car.

“Because she was exposed, I immediately came down to open the trunk of the car because I had longer shorts, but the police told me to get back into the car,” Agwuegbo tells TRT World. Thankfully that was one of the milder interactions had with the Nigerian Police.

While Nigerians took to social media and the streets to protest the arbitrary arrests and deaths of Nigerian citizens by the police in the#EndSARS campaign, the targeted arrests of women in Nigeria's capital city Abuja had been largely unreported.

“To a large extent, the treatment of women as property in Nigeria extends to institutions and their interactions with women,” Agwuegbo explains to TRT World.

Over 65 women were arrested by the police and a task force in a raid of night clubs in Abuja on April 27. In a press conference held by the women in Abuja, they alleged that they had been arrested, asked to give bribes for their freedom and when a few of them could not, they were raped and beaten.

Several women alleged that they were raped by members of the police who used plastic bags often used to sell water in little packages in Nigeria as condoms.

In the end, 27 women were charged with prostitution without access to their lawyers or families and coerced into pleading guilty.

The women who pleaded guilty were sentenced to a month in prison or told to pay the fine of $8.3 [3,000 Naira].

This Abuja incident is a prime example of gender-based violence and sexual harassment against women in Nigeria. The Women At Risk International Foundation reports that over 10,000 girls are raped or sexually assaulted every day in Nigeria and as of 2016, Nigeria had only 18 recorded rape convictions.

Among the abusers are policemen who use their power as a means for extortion — taking monetary or sexual bribery from women, especially those vulnerable positions. Through extensive interview-based research that Human Rights Watch carried out in 2011, it found that many policemen use the threat of rape and other forms of sexual assault to extort money from women, particularly at checkpoints, in public spaces or those in police custody.

In 2012, Nigerian actress Dorothy Njemanze was arrested with three other women by officers of the same task force and accused of being a prostitute. Despite her arrest, she was never charged. But in a high-profile case, Njemanze took the Nigerian government to court and in October of 2017, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court ruled in her favour, ordering the Nigerian government to pay Njemanze and two other women $50,000 (18 million Naira).

“But as a woman in Nigeria, even around law enforcement, there is a serious fear of being sexually molested,” Agwuegbo says.

After the arrests of the women, protests were quickly organised via Twitter and people organised in various cities including Lagos, Abuja, Accra in Ghana and in the United Kingdom.

“As huge as the gaps in policing in Nigeria are, there is a bigger problem of sexual harassment in Nigeria and at the moment, it does not seem like a priority for the Nigerian government,” Ayodeji Osowobi explains. Osowobi is the founder of Stand to End Rape, a non-profit established in 2014 to bring forward conversations about sexual rights in Nigeria.

“We are invested in the creation of a framework to guarantee safety at home and in the workplace for women in Nigeria,” Osowobi tells TRT World. Her non-profit was one of the major players in the protests organised to get justice for the arrested women.

During the planning stage of the protests, the organising groups reached out to inform the police of their protest and to get a security detail, but the response given to them was that the police would not guarantee their safety during the protests.

Already, there is a general distrust of security agencies in the country with ‘peaceful protests’ often turning bloody. In 2018, officers of the Nigerian army shot dozens of peaceful Shia protesters in Northern Nigeria.

While protesting at the front of the police command in Lagos state, Ebele Molua was threatened by a policeman who wanted to “press her breasts”.

“I understood the situation the women were in immediately it was said to me because we were at the police station, the one place we are supposed to be safe, but I was still very scared,” Moula explains.

At the end of the protest, she filed an official complaint to the police, but until today does not know how the case ended. “I got a couple of calls from officers of the police and eventually the man apologising, but I was not told any action had been taken against him,” Moula says.

The protests and their subsequent coverage, however, did not do anything to bring about any change or discussions with regard to policy. Instead, non-profits and people on social media are taking a different approach towards the next generation of Nigerians. Ololade Ginikale, Founder of the Hands Off Initiative, goes around schools in Nigeria teaching consent to teenagers and young adults.

With a network of volunteers across Nigeria and even extending to South Africa and a few West African cities, Ginikale is looking to change the status quo on how Africans see and interact with sex. “I believe [that] if children and young people are made to understand what consent is, there will be a whole generation where cases of sexual assault, harassment and rape will be non-existent,” Ginikale explains.

However, as a largely conservative country it is unlikely that conversations about sex and harassment in Nigeria will be brought up on a national scale. Several older Nigerians including religious leaders believe that it is the proliferation of Western ideas that have led to incidences of rape and harassment in the country.

Nigerian comedian and actor Ime Bishop Umoh released videos on his social media accounts asserting that the women allegedly raped by the police were not raped but stolen from. He argued that they could not have been raped because they are “selling themselves”.

But, the times are changing. Nigeria is currently in the middle of its #MeToo campaign with the church firmly rooted in a scandal. On Sunday June 30, peaceful protests happened simultaneously in Abuja and Lagos at the church whose leader is accused of being a rapist.

While this seems like slow progress, it is still progress. Non-profits and women on Nigerian social media are at the forefront of protests and discussions about women's rights and freedoms. Agbuegbo is excited. “This generation of Nigerian women are ready to scream for their rights and it’s obvious that this is the way we will change the world”.