"If
you don't know what is going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck.
You are in a bubble. I'm not a Christian, but they are systematically
killing the Christians in Nigeria. they have killed over 100,000 since
2009. They have burnt 18,000 churches."
"This
is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza.
They are literally trying to wipe out the Christian population of an
entire country. Where are the kids protesting this?"
Commentator Bill Maher
"In
North Korea, it's illegal to be a Christian. It's illegal to own a
Bible. There's an estimated 60,000 Christians imprisoned or in Labour
camps in North Korea. There's no way to openly express your faith in
North Korea."
"It's
not only you who will be punished: North Korean authorities are likely
to round up your extended family and punish them too, even if your
family members aren't Christians."
"Persecution
is growing around the world, both in global spread, but also in
intensity. We recognize now that more than 380 million Christians face
high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith in Jesus
Christ."
Andrew Croft, communications and relations manager, Open Doors Canada
"You
could face house arrest, forced marriage, forced Islamic rituals or
even threats to your life [as punishment for those who convert to
Christianity]."
"[In Sudan], More than 100 churches have been damaged so far, and Christians have been abducted and killed."
"[In
Pakistan], the number of Christian girls [and those from other minority
religions are] abducted, abused and forcefully converted to Islam
[frequently backed by lower courts] is growing."
"In
recent years the [Chinese] government has aggressively tried to ensure
all religious expression is brought into line with official Chinese
Communist philosophy."
Open Doors Canada
The governments of Kenya and the US announced a US$10 million reward for
information on terror suspect Mohamoud Abdi Aden in 2023.
Yasuyoshi Chiba/ AFP via Getty Images
An
estimated 62,000 Christians, since 2000, have been murdered in Nigeria.
People found to be Christian in North Korea risk death by government
forces, alternately being sent off to labour camps. Blasphemy laws in
Pakistan carry the death penalty, with a quarter of all blasphemy cases (blaspheming against Islam or the Prophet) representing charges against fewer than two percent of the population: Pakistani Christians.
The
reality is that Christians across the world have become an endangered
species. And while in the West there is no end of commiseration with
alleged charges of 'genocide' being committed by Israel in Gaza
resulting from Palestinian terrorist groups -- led by the infamous Hamas
having committed a mass atrocity of savage proportions in Israel, owing
to the Israel Defense Forces' response in counter-attacking the various
Palestinian terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad, Fatah and Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine alongside Hamas all of which took
part in slaughtering 1,200 Jews on October 7, 2023 -- the plight of
Christians worldwide appears to be studiously ignored.
In
the West itself there appears an increasing intolerance for
Christianity, despite that democracies have always been
Judeo-Christian-inspired in their human rights laws and systems of
justice in general. In the past several years as a result of a false
report out of Canada that spun around the world, that Indigenous
children housed and educated in mostly Catholic but government-sponsored
Residential Schools suffered abuse and died in numbers over 160 years,
greater than those of the general population, an aboriginal-led
cataclysm of rage saw 100 churches being burned, with no one held to
account.
According to the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON) which promotes human rights and religious freedom, "the silent slaughter" of
Christians over the past two decades saw 43,000 Christians murdered by
the Boko Haram Islamist terror group. Muslim nomadic cattle herders --
extremist Fulanis -- killed another 19,000 who were pastoralists,
farmers resisting the arable land they farmed being overrun by cattle,
while the herders -- as in Sudan's similar conflict in Darfur against (Muslim) farmers followed a similar trajectory.
Brookings
Of
the 276 Christian schoolgirls kidnapped in 2014 by Boko Haram from the
town of Chibok in Nigeria, 82 of the girls have never been recovered. "Both
of these groups (Islamic State West Africa and Boko Haram) and other
groups like them have radicalized ideologies to build a Sharia state", charged Andrew Croft of Open Doors Canada. Nigeria, wrote U.S. Rep. Riley Moore, is now "the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian", addressing U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as he called for Nigeria to be re-designated a "country of particular concern".
Open Doors published
a list of countries in 2025, where Christians are most persecuted.
North Korea is top on the list at No.1. Somalia is No. 2 on the list
where Christians are the targets of Al-Shabab, the violent Islamist
group whose goal is to eradicate Christianity as a curse against Islam.
No.3 is Yemen, followed in succession by Libya, Sudan, Eritrea and
Nigeria. Some 97 million Christians in China face stern government
regulations.
Countries
on the record as among those where Christians are persecuted are
generally authoritarian where the rising growth of Islamist extremism is
a driver.
Last
year, in an address to the United Nations, Archbishop Paul Gallagher,
the secretary for relations with states with the Holy See, stated that"The
data show that Christians are the most persecuted religious group
worldwide, and yet the international community seems to be turning a
blind eye to the plight". Adding to that plaint from
the Vatican, is the peculiarity of the Vatican itself doing little to
indicate it is determined to campaign against the oppression of
Christians in lands where totalitarian Islamism is the source of that
persecution.
"The
dignity of the individual and the nature of the quest for the ultimate
truth require that everyone should be free from constraints regarding
religion. Society and the state must not force someone to act against
his or her conscience, nor prevent anyone from acting in accordance with
it", urged the Archbishop. Fine words, but the followup action absent in large part. The Center for Religious Liberty released a report last year: "Free to Believe? The Intensifying Intolerance Toward Christians in the West":
"As
the mainstream culture moves further and further away from a Christian
world view, Christian beliefs that contradict progressive secular values
are increasingly denounced by the culture and wrongly portrayed as
being hateful or bigoted." As an example, a Finish member of Parliament was prosecuted for 'ethnic agitation' resulting from "a
tweet containing a Bible verse in which she indicated disapproval of
her church's sponsorship of a Pride event, for discussing her beliefs on
a radio show and for publishing a pamphlet promoting a biblical
understanding of marriage through her church".
Abuja National Mosque, Shiraz
"Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian Christians have faced increased scrutiny and punishment."
"For
Christians, there is no escape from the extremist policies of a
government [Islamic Republic of Iran] fuelled by an extremist
interpretation of Shia Islam that leaves no room even for Sunni Islam,
much less religious minorities like Christianity."
International Christian Concern (ICC)
"It
is shocking to see western countries -- the same ones we think of as
free and open societies -- take authoritarian measures against
Christians simply trying to live out their faith."
"Hostility toward Bible-believing Christians is clearly and steadily rising in the west."
"In terms of migrants per day, December 2023 has been larger than any average we have ever seen."
"Every official who is commenting on it, on all levels, says they're near or past the breaking point."
"If
you move to a place that's super remote, there won't be a lot of agents
on staff, and that increases your chances of being released into the
U.S."
"There is nowhere to put people They can't hold you."
Adam Isacson, migration expert, Washington Office on Latin America
Women wait in a hallway Friday, Dec. 15, 2023, at a Border Patrol station in Ajo, Ariz. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
In
a remote, cold and lonely place while awaiting the arrival of border
guards, dozens of migrants huddle close to a hole in the border wall.
They have been given coffee by aid group No More Deaths. Given blankets,
food and emergency telephone calls should there be any there who
sustained life-threatening injuries on their journey. Those hailing from
Sudan have escaped another Darfur-like conflict, patiently waiting for
their search for haven to end far from their homeland.
Among
them are others, not only themselves fleeing war in Sudan, but those
escaping from Central American violent gangs and Mexican cartels. All
have crossed illegally into the United States, trekked over rugged
terrain for tiring hours, to arrive near Sasabe, Arizona exhausted,
hungry and cold. They wait to turn themselves over to authorities to be
given the opportunity to ask for asylum; stranded in the Arizona desert,
but hopeful.
Just
as night time temperatures begin dropping, a convoy of American Border
Patrol agents roll in. The men are loaded into a van where they're
briefly processed. The van continues driving in its search for more
people needing rescue. "We are not equipped to deal with this. It's a humanitarian disaster", comments Scott Carmon, a Border Patrol watch commander, of the crisis unfolding at the southern U.S. border.
A migrant walking along a road shadowed by the steel columns of the separation border between Mexico and Arizona. AP
Once
again, migrant encounters reach toward record levels, testing the
capacity of American law enforcement. Thousands of migrants arrive
daily, on their way from Africa, Asia, the Middle East or South America.
Relentless violence, desperation, fear and poverty drive them from
their places of birth where they can no longer find a future.
There
was a broad sigh of relief in the spring when crossings into the U.S.
declined after the lifting of pandemic border restrictions. The
anticipation was that the floodgates would burst, but they held. More
lately, numbers have spiked. The number of apprehensions in a recent
week soared to over 10,000 a day -- the Border Patrol found itself
stretched beyond capacity.
Small
towns on both sides of the border were overwhelmed with people funneled
through new routes by human smugglers, to evade capture.
American
officials monitored a caravan moving north through Mexico comprised of
over 2,000 migrants, heading toward the United States; unlikely to
complete their journey according to experts, but drawing significant
media notice to the migrant tide crossing the border. What has caused
the recent swell is as yet unknown.
Theories
include larger numbers of Mexicans fleeing from cartel turf battles;
rumours of a key legal pathway ending; smugglers who push desperate
people of all nationalities to attempt entry at increasingly remote
parts of the vast border. Border officials in Arizona closed a key port
of entry to legal crossings early in December to enable them to focus on
the unlawful entries.
Migrants huddle around fires for warmth along the U.S.-Mexico border near Lukeville, Arizona.Camilo Montoya-Galvez/CBS News
"Marburg is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as the more well-known Ebola virus disease."
"In 2008, two independent cases were reported in travellers who visited a cave inhabited by Rousettus bat colonies in Uganda."
World Health Organization
"WHO
is on the ground supporting health authorities [in Ghana where the
latest outbreak has occurred] and now that the outbreak is declared, we
are marshalling more resources for the response."
Dr.Matshidiso Moeti, Regional Director for Africa, World Health Organization
Rousettus
aegyptiacus or Egyptian fruit bats. Prolonged exposure to mines or
caves where they live can result in human infection of the deadly
Marburg virus disease.Photo by Peace River Refuge and Ranch
In
1967 two cases of the disease occurred, one in Marburg and Frankfurt,
Germany, the other in Belgrade, Serbia. This is the origin of the naming
of the virus; Marburg. The cases were traced back to a laboratory
working with African green monkeys that had been imported from Uganda.
The WHO reports that prolonged exposure to mines or caves where colonies
of bats live can result in human infection.
The
Ghana Health Service's Disease Surveillance Department recommends
certain steps in avoidance of contracting the virus; abstaining from
consuming bush meat; washing hands frequently with soap and water, and
taking care not to handle dead bodies of those who may have had the
Marburg virus. Timely and sterling recommendations for Africa, should
outbreaks continue to be confined to that continent.
The
suspected causes and such exposure leading to a virus leaping the
species barrier from wild animals to humans has a familiar ring to it
for most people; it was at the live animal market in Wuhan, China, that
transmission from animal [bats infecting commonly consumed mammals]
to human took place; bush animals sold for human consumption, infected
with SARS-CoV-2 transmitted it to people at large through contact in the
Huanan market.
Police in Wuhan, China, shut down the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on 1 January, 2020.Credit: Noel Celis/AFP via Getty
Marburg
virus is more vindictively fatal than COVID-19; an estimated 88 percent
of those infected may never recover. It has an incubation period
between two to 14 days. Infection can spread from person to person
through direct contact with bodily fluids. Clothing which has been worn
by someone infected with Marburg can also become a source of infection.
No cure exists for the virus, though treatment for its symptoms is
available.
Symptoms
of infection include high fever and severe headaches, muscle aches and
pains. Severe diarrhea, stomach pain, nausea and vomiting may begin on
the infection's third day. Those infected become extremely lethargic. In
cases that become fatal, a patient generally bleeds from the nose and
gums.
Marburg
virus cases and outbreaks have been reported in Angola, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda with links to
Zimbabwe. In 2021 an outbreak was declared in Guinea, lasting for five
weeks following a single case of the virus.
Out
of the 590 people who contracted the disease since 1957, 478 died of
it, according to the World Health Organization's data on major
outbreaks. Two deaths occurred in June in Ghana when two unrelated
people died in hospital following their hospitalization because they
were suffering from diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting.
Doctor Mark Katz, a member of the World Health
Organisation (WHO), taking an oral sample from patient Feliciana
suspected of having Marburg haemorrhagic fever in Kinguangua, near Uige.
Feliciana’s grandmother, sister and ex-husband died of Marburg
haemorrhagic fever. The young woman tested negative after being
transported to the Uige Provincial Hospital for observation.Photo by CHRISTOPHER BLACK/AFP/Getty Images
"It happens like this. When they catch men, they behead them. they kidnap children. They take women to the bush. When they catch old people, they beat them."
"My house was burned down. I don't know where my mother is, or where my father is."
"Tanzania does not want Mozambican people. We don't know why."
Heka Amisse, refugee from Palma, Cabo Delgado, Mozambique
"Those pushed back from Tanzania end up in a dire situation at the border."
"UNHCR reiterates its call for those fleeing the conflict to have access to territory and asylum, and [for] the principle of nonrefoulement [no forced return] to be respected."
"Refugees must not be forced back into danger."
UNHCR spokesman
"Tanzania used to be a world leader on refugees. In the '60s and '70s it not only let them in and let them stay indefinitely but it had pathways to citizenship, it had laws on inclusion into health systems, education, labour markets."
"That allows richer countries and countries farther away from conflict countries to essentially do nothing, or do the minimal, and leave all the burden to neighbouring countries."
"And the neighbouring countries, like Tanzania, are very understandably not pleased with this situation."
Leah Zamore, Centre on International Cooperation, New York University
Displaced women and children wait at a building used as shelter after they fled attacks in Palma, Mozambique
Islamists again. Islamists everywhere. Wreaking havoc, destroying towns and villages, creating hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing mass murder, kidnapping and slavery. Africa is overrun with Islamist terrorists. Refugees like Heka Amisse streamed out of their city of Palma located in the northernmost province of Mozambique bordering Tanzania. Increasing violence in the region brought the refugees for haven to neighbouring Tanzania.
And Tanzania is responding by enacting a program of return in direct contravention of international agreements, by returning these displaced people to the very country they fled in terror. Rwandan and South African troops have been sent to quell the violence along the border between the two countries where civilians are caught in the conflict pitting Mozambican forces against the Islamist terrorist hordes aligned with Islamic State's vicious ideology.
This is an escalating insurgency in Cabo Delgado, ongoing since 2017 where the Islamic State-affiliated terroristts have slaughtered some three thousand, forcing another 800,000 to flee for refuge. The recent discovery of great quantities of liquefied natural gas offshore of Palma has seen it become a hot spot of the conflict where French oil giant Total Energies has been stopped by the increasing attacks in Palma.
Heka Amisse and her husband, like thousands of other Mozambican citizens, were returned by the Tanzanian military to Negomano, a border town in Mozambique. The refugees are being forcibly returned to the country they fled. Over 9,600 people looking for haven in Tanzania were returned through the Negomano border since January. In a two-day period in June close to 1,000 people were forced back into the country they fled.
When Rwandans and people from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo desperately sought refuge, Tanzania had responded by helping them in offering asylum. Tanzania was recognized in 2019 by Filippe Grandi, agency head of UNHCR as "one of the most important refugee asylum countries in Africa". That refugee asylum country with its outstanding humanitarian record is bitter about its recognition as a host country.
Lacking international financial support to assist them in integrating refugees into host communities, it groans under the weight of a responsibility left to it alone. Systems working with refugees fail to distribute responsibility of hosting fairly or evenly among nations, leaving the refugees to be coped with by a small number of developing countries where the refugees are concentrated in countries neighbouring those embroiled in conflict.
Displaced Mozambicans gather at Negomano Border point after being forcibly returned from Tanzania. UNHCR/Eduardo Burmeister
Fundamentals in the Best/Worst-Laid Plans of Mice and Men
"This
is all part of China's education as a rising power. It has taken a
flawed model that appeared to work at home, building large
infrastructure projects, and hubristically tried to apply that abroad."
"Historically,
most infrastructure booms have gone bust. Whether China can avert that
fate may depend on its ability to renegotiate loans with countries now
in urgent need of debt relief."
"If
China is unable or unwilling to provide sufficient relief to its
borrowers, it could find itself at the centre of a debt crisis in
developing markets."
Jonathan Hillman, author, The Emperor's New Road
"In
domestic Chinese media, the frequency of the topic occurring has come
down a lot in the last few years, partly to downplay China's overseas
expansion ambitions."
"I expect this retrenchment to continue."
Chen Zhiwu, professor of finance, Hong Kong University
"Volatile
Sino-U.S. relations and more restrictive access to overseas markets for
Chinese companies have prompted a fundamental rethink of growth drivers
by Beijing's top economic planners."
"Naturally,
if stste-owned enterprises decide to switch back to the domestic market
in order to follow the leadership's wishes, the budgeted financial
resources for overseas investments will reduce accordingly."
Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China, Chatham House think tank, United Kingdom
"This
has to be the time for a rethink. It's been such a priority for Xi
Jinping, he's invested so much in it that he's not going to just turn
the lights off."
"But
they need to seriously implement their own debt sustainability analysis
and their own social and environmental impact tools."
Kevin Gallagher, director, Boston University Global Development Policy Center
Workers take down a Belt and Road Forum panel outside the venue of the forum in Beijing. BAKER/AFP via Getty Images
When China
initially embarked on its ambitious Belt & Road project, it had
plans to link itself to a new 'Silk Road', an enterprise that was meant
ultimately to expedite Chinese trade and transport and shipping
globally, the trade colossus thinking ahead to the future -- its future
-- as the world's major producer and seller of goods. Its plan to
finance major infrastructure projects was sold to countries in Africa
and the Middle East and Europe convincingly assuring them that this
would modernize their countries for the future in new highways and
bridges and other forms of infrastructure.
That many of these
countries had no basic infrastructure of the type Beijing was
describing, or insufficient or outdated ones was because they lacked the
financial wherewithal to build them. Beijing obviously reasoned and
explained to any governments that were skeptical that the Belt &
Road initiative would benefit all concerned; give immediate employment
to their nationals in building the projects, and extend employment
through operational ties that would ultimately result, enriching both
China and the countries it was investing in, so they could pay back the
huge loans.
Some economists raised concerns that this would result
in massive indebtedness, that some of those countries would never be
capable of extracting themselves from. And this was all well before
anyone might have thought ahead to a massive economic blow that would
strike globally with the introduction from China to the world at large
of a global viral pandemic devastating world economies. Long before the
Belt & Road initiative rang a bell of opportunity to Beijing it was
busy investing in other countries' natural resources.
Security personnel stand guard near a "Golden Bridge on Silk Road"
decoration for the Belt and Road Forum outside the China National
Convention Center in Beijing earlier this year. (Jason Lee/Reuters)
As
it did in Venezuela, reaching agreement with Hugo Chavez where between
2007 and 2013 the China Development Bank loaned out to Venezuela close
to $40 billion with Venezuela's oil wealth as surety, boosting Hugo
Chavez's plan for "a Great Wall" erected to fend off U.S. hegemonic
reach. And then Venezuela's oil resources ran into trouble with refining
problems because no funding was directed to upgrading its oil
infrastructure. After investing to that degree Beijing felt compelled to
continue in the face of Venezuelan mismanagement and lent out another
$20 billion, and all too soon Venezuela defaulted.
That might have
been a lesson in not hedging bets, failing to look ahead to the future
when all the signals were already in evidence. But the Belt & Road
followed nonetheless. "Chinese
foreign policy and policy bank officials entered into their outsized
economic and political relationship with [Venezuela] with a combination
of hubris, ambition and naivete. [This] has contributed to the region's
worst economic, humanitarian, and political crisis in decades", wrote Matt Ferchen of Merics, a think tank based in Berlin.
And
that hinted at what is now proceeding with the Belt & Road, where
at least 18 processes of debt renegotiation with China have occurred in
2020 -- and yet another dozen countries still in discussions with
Beijing, covering $28 billion in Chinese loans as renegotiations have
proliferated since the pandemic hammered emerging economies in Africa
and elsewhere wherein Beijing saw opportunities for massive Belt &
Road investment.
Originally, when Xi Jinping addressed a hall of heads of state and delegates from over 130 countries in Beijing, he proclaimed "a project of the century".
Where he promised that China was prepared to spend a stunning $1
trillion on building infrastructure, mostly in developing countries
around the world, financing almost all of it through its own financial
institutions. Data published this week indicates that President Xi's
script has been revised downward. The world's most ambitious development
program is now on hold.
China
is now looking at the unwanted potential of its first overseas debt
imbroglio. Chinese financial institutions tasked to drive the Belt &
Road in tandem with bilateral support to governments has hit a detour
leaving Beijing mired in debt negotiations with a host of countries it
had so assiduously wooed. Researchers at Boston University maintain an
independent database on China's overseas development finance, and they
have found lending by the China Development Bank and the Export-Import
Bank of China in free fall, collapsed from a peak of $75 billion in 2015
to last year's $4 billion.
Falling
under the direct control of China's state council the two banks
function as arms of the state providing the overwhelming bulk of China's
overseas development lending. Funds disbursed by the two banks rival in
scale the disbursement of the world's largest multilateral lender, the
World Bank. Between 2008 and 2019, the two Chinese banks loaned out $462
billion, a tad less than the $467 billion the World Bank extended.
Photo: LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images
The
sharp scale-back of lending by the Chinese banks represents an
economic earthquake and should it persist, an infrastructure funding gap
in Asia alone will be exacerbated, a gap that has reached $907 billion
at this point. Chinese credit has formed a large portion of
infrastructure financing in Africa and Latin America, and the gap
between what is needed and what may be available is expected to become
wider, as well.
Beijing
has regrouped, examined its losses and decided to scale back,
retreating from overseas development finance, to shift policy from
outside the country to internal investments. "China is consolidating, absorbing and digesting the investments made in the past",
advised Wang Huiyao, an adviser to China's state council, president of
the Centre for China and Globalization think tank. The politboro will
now place greater emphasis on China's domestic market, and less on
commerce with the outside world.
Coping Desperately With an Insatiable Novel Coronavirus
"To protect and build towards our shared prosperity at least $100 billion is needed to immediately resource a health and social safety net response." "In a best-case scenario -- $44 billion would be required for testing, personal protection equipment, and to treat all those requiring hospitalization." "We estimate that between five million and 29 million people will be pushed below the extreme poverty line of $1.90 per day owing to the impact of COVID-19." UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
Nigeria, the most populous and oil-wealthiest country on the African continent is set to lose between $14 billion and $19.2 billion in revenues from oil exports this extraordinary year of 2020. But then, the pricing war between Russia and Saudi Arabia not only beggared their own oil exports, but impacted deleteriously on oil revenues of first-world advanced countries like Canada. So Nigeria has not been alone in experiencing a drop of revenues from oil.
87 million people live in extreme poverty, in Nigeeia.Photograph: Sombo Sombo/Alamy
Yet even when Nigeria was receiving full value on the market from its oil exports, as one of two African wealthiest countries, it has never managed its economy to benefit its huge population of close to 200 million people, close to half of whom live in dire poverty, outstripping even India's indigent numbers with its far more numerous total population.
The African continent sees so many of its 54 countries in turmoil, beset with poverty and backwardness, conflict, ethnic and religious confrontations, tribal divisions of competitive advantage and never-ending territorial ambitions. All that, and endemic corruption, and national leaders wedded to self-aggrandizement siphoning off their nations' wealth to make themselves wealthy, withholding services other than to those who support their tyranny all make for a formula for failure.
So fa there have been fewer than 20,00 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus throughout the total of Africa's 54 countries while over two million have been reported globally. But the UNECA now warns that the pandemic is likely to kill at the very least 300,000 Africans, while placing 29 million in extreme poverty unless $100 billion is released as a continental safety net. This, at a time when the world's economy is fast sinking.
While EU countries Italy and Spain have been brought low by the virus, flooded with cases of COVID-19, with an incredible death rate resulting, they have appealed for help in securing personal protection equipment for their medical personnel who are also dying of the virus, and critical medication, seeing none of their neighbours in the European Union responding to their pleas. All countries of the world are facing dangerous shortages of drugs and protective equipment for health workers. Where will such short-supply equipment be sourced for Africa?
A private security guard stands with a semi-automatic rifle loaded with
rubber bullets in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, on April 17, 2020
Moreover, African finance ministers have now as well collectively called for an additional $100 billion in stimulus; effectively placing a stop to all external debt service. This, at a time when countries in Europe, North America and South Asia are struggling to support their economies, borrowing heavily in a desperate attempt to shore up local business enterprise and mass unemployment to avoid total economic collapse. Focusing on stimulus for their own badly faltering financial status where is the stimulus for Africa to come from?
The UN agency created a four-scenario model based on preventive measures introduced by governments in Africa so that in the total absence of interventions a calculated 1.2 billion Africans would be infected, with 3.3 million dying this year. In other words, in a continent of 1.3 billion people in total, the forecast is for virtually all to contract the novel coronavirus. A winnowing out of the weakest and most vulnerable. Nature at its survival-harshest.
Municipal workers dressed in protective gear rest while on duty
disinfecting a street during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in the
Bab el-Oued district of Algeria's capital Algiers on April 9
However, since most of Africa has mandated social distancing ranging from curfews and travel guidelines in some countries to full lockdowns in others, with best-case scenarios reflecting intense social distancing, Africa would see 122.8 million infections, 2.3 million hospitalizations and 300,000 deaths, once a threshold of 0.2 deaths per 100,000 people weekly has been reached.
Then there is the dire reality of 36 percent of Africans living without access to household basic hygienic facilities, and adding to that the continent has 1.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people where advanced, developed countries average 5.98 beds per 1,000 people, and again a formula for disaster. Balancing that is the youth demographic of 60 percent below the age of 25, an age far less dramatically health-compromised by the infectious coronavirus.
Yet, Africa being Africa, 56 percent of the urban population live in overcrowded slums with a greater, vulnerable population resulting from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malnutrition. According to the UNECA report, 94 percent of Africa's pharmaceuticals are imported, hard up against 70 countries globally responding to their own flood of COVID cases banning or limiting exports of supplies essential to fighting the virus. A situation again, universally shared.
A man carries a box of protective masks to emergency
workers Thursday in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. The West African
country has seen relatively few confirmed cases of the coronavirus to
this point — but global health officials fear that won't always be the
case. John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images
"Talking with jihadists and fighting terrorism is not contradictory. I have a duty and a mission today to create all possible
spaces and to do everything possible so that, by one means or another,
some kind of appeasement can be achieved. It's time certain avenues were
explored." "We're going to try and do what the people want, like with the jirga in
Afghanistan, to put it into practice, and we're trying to do it without
being naive, we're not gullible." "We'll continue with our work, with our
duty, but we want to make sure that we will no longer be stubborn about
things, stuck, or obtuse." Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita
"People think that Shariah is more rapid, less corrupt and delivered in a manner that people can understand." "It is also less costly." Drissa Traore, head, Bamako office, International Federation for Human Rights
"The jihadists have gained the hearts and minds of many people." "But what people are asking for are basic social services; they are not asking for jihadist services. They want things like roads and education." "The battle will never be won through military means." Riccardo Maia, MINUSMA head office, Timbuktu
"In all countries in the region you can see economic and social progress in capitals and other cities, but not when you leave the cities." "If you go to more remote areas, nothing has changed for 20 or 30 y6ears. You don't have leaders in the region who seem genuinely to appreciate the stakes." Gilles Yabi, director, Wathi, West African think tank
The Western effort -- mostly through French military intervention followed by diplomacy in a former French colony -- to curtail Islamist insurgencies spreading with alarming rapidity through the Sahel region of Africa, sees the minds of ordinary Malians appear to have accepted the message delivered by jihadists even though they recall the Islamist brutality they reeled under eight years earlier when a jihadist seizure of Timbuktu destroyed heritage sites and irreplaceable ancient documents and slaughtered the unconvinced.
Back then it was forbidden to smoke, for a woman or girl to be seen in the presence of men or boys at risk of flogging. Even so, the jihadists earned a reputation of stern anti-corruption and in their presence there was no crime being committed, given that Shariah actively engaged with the chopping off of hands as a deterrent against theft. "Now there are bandits everywhere", one disgruntled man stated, using a chopping down motion to indicate the effectiveness of Shariah.
The 2013 French-led military force drove the al-Qaeda affiliates from Timbuktu and other Malian towns, but seven years on, jihadists are still about in northern Mali, expanding their reach into other regions the while, despite the presence of 5,000 French troops and a 15,000-strong separate UN peacekeeping force named MINUSMA. The Sahel, a vast region on the southern fringe of the Sahara, now hosts the jihadist insurgency in other states.
Militants have convinced many northern Malians that they should be trusted to represent the people's interests far more than the government in Bamako, the capital of the country. Successive governments in Bamako have neglected the communities in northern Mali for decades. Government is equated with police, soldiers, judges and officials accused with being invested in what they can loot from northern Mali, not in benefiting locals.
Bribery and extortion, and/or involvement in Saharan drugs, weapons and people-smuggling networks cross the region and to the people living there, this is what they think of how the government manifests its interest in their welfare. Even while the jihadists have their hand in drug running as well as smuggling, they have been seen to use their profits to build Koranic schools and Shariah courts to aid in entrenching their extreme ideology, presenting themselves as the legitimate alternatives to the ineffective, disinterested state.
MINUSMA has been heartened by the arrival of 250 British soldiers to aid them in fending off repeated attacks on bases, and mounting dangerous operations to protect civilians. The group has performed whatever it could manage to replace the vacuum left by the state; repairing the road from the Niger to Timbuktu, and in Gao, a former jihadist town, helping to fund women's agricultural collectives, and build police stations, important moves to help win support among the populace.
Mali's president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is recognized among other Sahelian leaders as making no serious effort to address the frustration that exists in ignored and marginalized parts of their states, according to analysts. Possibly, in reaching an accord with the Islamist fanatics, the government can dispense with the nuisance pretense of fairly administering a portion of the country that is of little interest to them, voluntarily offering a firm foothold to jihad which will inevitably begin to make further inroads.
The futile West hoping to save Muslims from the greater and graver human rights abuses of Shariah-led Islam. And while France invests itself in trying to save its former colonies from collapse into the hands of Islamist terrorism, it nurtures at home in its banlieues transposed Islamists hostile to French values and ideology and determined to transform France into a bastion of Islamist Shariah using whatever means and patience required to achieve their goal.
"The European Union does not pay for labour under this project." "The project only covers the procurement of material and equipment to support the rehabilitation of roads [in Eritrea]." European Commission
"Despite the peace agreement with Ethiopia, the human rights situation in Eritrea remains dire." "The government [of Eritrea] continues to conscript much of its population into indefinite national service and [to] hold scores of political detainees in inhumane conditions." "For the EU to rely on the government to do its monitoring, I think
it is incredibly problematic, especially when obviously some of the
issues the EU will be discussing with the government are around labour
force." "And as we know the government has quite bluntly said that it will continue to rely on national service conscripts." Laetitia Bader, regional member, Human Rights Watch
National service in Eritrea is supposed to last 18 months but it can continue indefinitely, rights groups say Getty Images
"The EU has made support for democracy a more prominent objective in
its relations with African countries since the early 2000s, I would
say." "And
the EU has put more emphasis on developing its instruments to support
democratic reforms."" But the context now for democracy support in Africa
and globally is a very different one because there is more of a
competition of political models with China and other actors." Christine Hackenesch, German Development Institute
The European Union has provided roughly $22 million to Eritrea, the source of most of the asylum seekers headed to Europe for the past several years. Equipment and materials were funded to build a road in the country, a practical and useful initiative, but one that is more complicated than might seem on the surface. Since many of the workers tasked to build the road are forced conscripts. And since the EU provides a no-strings-attached funding for the road-building, it is unable to monitor the project.
Human-rights groups, examining the situation, have been clear in their condemnation of the EU's initiative to use the funding as a prod to the Eritrean government to make a better effort to keep its citizens at home and out of Europe. Even though the situation became known months ago, the EU gave Eritrea an additional tens of millions to fund what has been labelled a system of forced labour described by the UN as "tantamount to enslavement".
The additional funding represents an example of desperation to extract itself from the quandary of Eritreans choosing to leave their cloistered nation of around five million in he Horn of Africa. Since the EU decided to make its aid unconditional with no guarantees of democratic reforms it is left now with no avenue to address the situation. Part of a $6 billion European Union Trust Fund for Africa, created when the refugee crisis was at its 2015 peak, it was meant to "address the root causes of migration".
Yet asylum seekers flooding out of Eritrea remain high, with at least 5,000 people seeking asylum in Europe yearly for the past decade An exception occurred in 2015-16, when the number rose to over 30,000 and last year more than 10,000. Since up to 80 percent of asylum requests ended up being successful according to Eurostat, the funding by the EU to Eritrea has been fundamentally purposeless.
From the total emergency fund, $300 million has been earmarked for Eritrea in the hope that it would aid the local economy to create jobs to ensure Eritreans remained at home, and helping to contribute to the peace agreement with its neighbour Ethiopia, reached in 2018. None of which changes the reality of Eritrea's reputation as one of the world's worst human rights abusers.
"It's my 6-year-old daughter who had measles first. She had a lot of fever." "I called the doctor but it was Friday. He had already gone to town. I went to see another doctor who told me that my daughter had an allergy." "This misdiagnosis was almost fatal." Erika Hantriniaina, Ambalavao, Madagascar
"Vitamin A is given to children to increase their immunity. We try to reduce the fever. If there is a cough, we give antibiotics." Dr. Boniface Maronko, World Health Organization
"The epidemic unfortunately continues to expand in size. Malnutrition is the bed of measles." "But immunization is not the only strategy for the response to this epidemic. We still need resources for care, monitoring and social mobilization." Dr. Dossou Vincent Sodjinou, WHO epidemiologist
"He has a fever. I think it's measles because there are these little pimples that have appeared on his face." "I'm so scared for him because in the village everyone says it kills babies." Nifaliana Razaijafisoa, Ambalavao, Madagascar
A
volunteer nurse examines six-month-old Sarobidy, who is infected with
measles, while her mother Nifaliana Razaijafisoa looks on at a
healthcare centre in Larintsena, Madagascar. (Laetitia Bezain/Associated Press)
Madagascar has logged beyond 115,000 cases of the largest measles outbreak in its history. Misinformation and hesitation born of deliberate campaigns to turn people away from having their children inoculated have resulted in measles cases rising globally. It is a lack of resources in Madagascar, however, that has driven the rise of measles infections.
On Madagascar's main island only 58 percent of people have been vaccinated, representing a major feature in the spread of the outbreak. One of the most infectious diseases, immunization rates are required to be at least 90 to 95 percent, even higher, for the herd immunity effect to prevail in the prevention of measles outbreaks.
It is mostly children under age 15 that have died from the measles infections since the outbreak began in September, according to the World Health Organization. Close to fifty percent of Madagascar's child population is malnourished, complicating the outbreak. For rural dwellers, simply reaching a clinic for help can represent a challenge.
Health centres in the country are often understaffed or are staffed with poorly qualified workers and many people living in Madagascar cannot afford to see a doctor, or to buy medicine. Information on health issues can be lacking entirely or be unreliable.That vaccines are free in public health centres doesn't reach all parents.
There are no specific treatments for measles; instead the symptoms are treated. Highly infectious, the disease is spread by coughing, sneezing, close contact or infected surfaces. Should the disease fail to be treated in its early stages by antibiotics, complications including diarrhea, bronchitis, pneumonia and convulsions can manifest.
Free medications have been sent to regions most affected by the outbreak, by Madagascar's health ministry. Dr. Maronko supervises efforts to contain the outbreak, reminding heads of health centres in the Ambalavao region not to ask parents to pay, having seen some doctors asking them for money. WHO began a third mass vaccination campaign with the goal of reaching 7.2 million children, six months of age to nine years, in Madagascar last month.
Mothers wait to have their babies vaccinated against measles, at a healthcare center in Larintsena, Madagascar. Laetitia Bezain / AP
"Let it [Ebola] stay in Congo. We seldom see Congo people here. Let it not come." "In that state [hallucinogenic trance resulting from seeds he feeds his patients], they say many things." "And I can tell from their words whether it is demons or a curse making them ill, and I can decide how to treat them." Samuel Muriisa, 74, traditional healer, Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda
Traditional healer Gogo Phephisile Maseko attends to patients using a blend of cannabis and other herbs in Johannesburg
AFP/Getty
In 2014, during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, there is the example of a prominent traditional native healer who became a vector, linked to over 300 cases of the dread disease, as a "super-spreader". The healer lived in rural Sierra Leone, and died after the virus was communicated to her from one of her patients. When she died it was viewed as a calamity, bringing hundreds of relatives and admirers from a long distance to attend her funeral.
They helped to wash her body. A body unbeknownst to them, thriving with virus.
And when they subsequently returned to homes in Guinea and Liberia the worst Ebola epidemic in history was ignited. According to the World Health Organization about 80 times as many traditional healers are present across the continent of Africa, as are medical doctors present to use modern medicine in the treatment of illness and disease. It is traditional for Africans to consult their healers. And millions of Africans do just that.
Congo is now facing an Ebola outbreak with doctors fighting the disease as best they can among patients that become infected while in the process of visiting their traditional healers. When they arrive to see their faith healers it is usually because they are ill with a cough or malaria or minor health problem. But in the course of being treated, they lie next to someone afflicted with Ebola, not yet diagnosed. And they become infected, themselves.
Mr. Muriisa is the most highly respected omushaho wekishaka -- traditional healer -- in the area of Uganda bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo. He understands the disease is raging a mere 30 kilometres distant. But one of his wives whom he utilizes as his triage nurse claims she can recognize anyone with bleeding eye sockets or fingernail beds, known, she heard as the chief symptoms of Ebola. What she obviously does not know is that most victims of Ebola never hemorrhage, and for those who do, bleeding represents a late-stage symptom.
In his office, a thatched mud hut located at the top of a steep hill over a boat landing, he wears a cloak of serval cat fur and a black-and-white monkey hair headpiece, the symbols of his office as a medical practitioner. Lake Bunyonyi lies at an altitude of 2,000 meters, crowded with farmers, crawfish-gatherers and lakeside resorts. Africans travel long distances to visit healers in their home villages, trusting the healers who spend time with their patients, speaking homey dialects.
Payment of vegetables, alcohol, chicken and goats for medical services are negotiable, as the currency of value recognized by the indigent and by their healers. Trust is also placed in herbalists who dispense teas, ointments and powders proven to alleviate simple and common conditions like allergies, nosebleeds, arthritic pain or toothaches. Potions to ward off lightning strikes or jealous neighbours are also available.
While Mr. Murissa agrees he cannot cure cancer, he does treat snake bites successfully. And the treatment of mental illness begins by the patient imbibing hallucinogenic seeds from a shrub, to enable the good doctor to determine whether he must treat demons or a curse, after interpreting the patient's stream of consciousness emissions.
"They [the estimated number of dead and humanitarian needs] are nowhere near the scale and magnitude of the problem. And I fear we will be seeing more in the weeks and months ahead, and we should brace ourselves." "The situation is simply horrendous, there is no other way to describe it. Three thousand people who are living in a school that has 15 classrooms and six, only six, toilets. You can imagine how much we are sitting on a water and sanitation ticking bomb." Elhadj As Sy, secretary-general, International Federation of Rd Cross and Red Crescent Societies "Yesterday [we] did a reconnaissance and we found another [inland] lake." "So we are still very early in the phase of identifying what the scope of this is, for who is affected and how many are lost." Emma Batey, coordinator, Oxfam, CARE, Save the Children consortium
"[What rescuers are seeing is] sometimes it's just a hut completely surrounded by water." "If islands are big enough, we can even see smoke coming out, meaning that they're cooking." "[It remains] super difficult [to estimate a death toll let alone the numbers missing]." Pedro Matos, emergency co-ordinator, World Food Program
"I've never seen anything like this. We were not warned. Suddenly the roof flew away." "[She and neighbours herded children away but] we lost some of them." "[They have received nothing from aid groups or the government] not even bread." Marta Ben, 30, mother of five
More than 65,000 people are already in shelters in central Mozambique [Enock Muchinjo/Al Jazeera]
Parts of Mozambique are finally seeing flood waters recede as the estimated number of deaths rises above a thousand, the number the country's president predicted earlier in the week. Thousands of dazed and fearful survivors are slowly making their pilgrimage toward Beira, the city where 90 percent of its infrastructure has been destroyed. Despite which, it has become a centre for rescue efforts for the entire region.
People have made their cautious way along roads heavily carved by the raging floods days ago, while others were rescued as part of a local effort by fisherman plucking stranded people from small islands, to bring them to safety. Despite the rain, helicopters take off to search for people clinging to rooftops and branches of trees. Water-borne diseases threaten as a result of water and sanitation systems being destroyed.
In the centres, children absent parents, separated in the chaos or newly orphaned wait to be tended to, confused and fearful. Women stake out places for themselves and their children on sidewalks with nowhere else to go, awaiting aid that hasn't yet reached them. They sit there, barefoot, nursing cooking pots, minding their children and begging those passing by for help.
In Zimbabwe, school children and their headmasters are missing. Miners operating illegally looking for gold and diamonds, have been swept into the raging rivers. In the worst-affected part of Zimbabwe, a woman who had left Chimanimani for the diamond fields to search for her son-in-law, who mined illegally, buried and mourned him.
"There are no jobs and all he wanted was to feed his family. He was with his colleagues. They thought it would be easier to mine since the rains would keep the guards and the police away from patrolling", said Maina Chisirlirwa of her son-in-law who was swept away while his colleagues survived. Even police, arresting illegal miners were swept away with their prisoners.
Thousands of people are still awaiting rescue from flooded areas across in southern Africa Getty Images
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
"As
the mainstream culture moves further and further away from a Christian
world view, Christian beliefs that contradict progressive secular values
are increasingly denounced by the culture and wrongly portrayed as
being hateful or bigoted." As an example, a Finish member of Parliament was prosecuted for 'ethnic agitation' resulting from "a
tweet containing a Bible verse in which she indicated disapproval of
her church's sponsorship of a Pride event, for discussing her beliefs on
a radio show and for publishing a pamphlet promoting a biblical
understanding of marriage through her church". 
![More than 65,000 people are already in shelters in central Mozambique [Enock Muchinjo/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/3/23/551032f077144639818dbca7626fb87e_18.jpg "Cyclone-hit Mozambique: cases of cholera, malaria, typhoid")
