I am jotting these few lines from the offices of the Centre for Multiparty Democracy-Kenya here in Nairobi. It is almost 16:00 Kenyan time. I have just been informed by Mr. Omweri Angima the CMD-K Program Officer that the centre's Executive Director, Ms. Njeri Kabeberi and Mr. Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu, the Chief Executive Officer of NCEC are currently confined at the Lusaka Airport having been barred entry into Zambia where they were going to attend a conference/meeting convened by Freedom House on the Zimbabwean Crisis. Haron Ndobi the well known human rights lawyer walked into the office and briefed me further on the situation, revealing that he had spoken to Njeri over the phone. Mr. Ndobi in turn called up Kenya's Foreign Affairs minister, Mr Moses Wetangula who has since called the country's High Commissioner to Zambia to give the Kenyan government a full briefing. In the meantime, K24, the 24 hour Nairobi-based television station has carried a live telephone interview with Njeri Kabeberi who basically reiterated that they were barred from entering Zambia.

In terms of details, Njeri Kabeberi and Cyprian Nyamwamu were delegates to a meeting entitled "Civil Society Conference on Transitional Processes in Zimbabwe" organized by Freedom House Southern Africa slated to take place in Lusaka, Zambia from 7th to 9th August, 2008.

Among the participating organizations are the following:

The Kenyan government should immediately open an investigation into the recent beating and sexual assault of civil society activists by police, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said Tuesday. "We join Kenyan human rights leaders in strongly condemning the police attacks on civil society activists as they prepared to hold a peaceful rally," said Suliman Baldo, Director of ICTJ's Africa Program. "The government must immediately investigate the attacks, as well as end the growing trend of police brutality and intimidation against Kenyan civil society."

SOPUDEP is a private non-profit school in Haiti that has served the poorest and most vulnerable children of the community of Petion-Ville since 2001. On Tuesday, August 5, 2008, the SOPUDEP school will begin the procedure to file an injunction against Mayor Lydie Clark Parent and ask the court to uphold their binding 12-year lease at their current location. In an effort to show Mayor Parent and the Haitian court the importance of the SOPUDEP school, they ask that all people of goodwill and solidarity please write a letter expressing their support for the school and its more that 450 students.

Gugulethu backyard dwellers who tried to occupy unfinished flats in Langa at the weekend, on Sunday told of the “horror” they experienced when people armed with knobkieries and bricks launched a violent attack on them. Saturday’s occupation, led by the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC,) was meant to be peaceful and to protest against the long wait for housing, but a number of its supporters have told how the vicious attack left them with bruised limbs, fractured ribs and head injuries.

The Kenyan government should immediately open an investigation into the recent beating and sexual assault of civil society activists by police, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said Tuesday.

"We join Kenyan human rights leaders in strongly condemning the police attacks on civil society activists as they prepared to hold a peaceful rally," said Suliman Baldo, Director of ICTJ's Africa Program. "The government must immediately investigate the attacks, as well as end the growing trend of police brutality and intimidation against Kenyan civil society."

On August 4, 2008, the 400 member organizations of Kenya's National Civil Society Congress demanded action from Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga in an open letter condemning "documented and verified acts of police terror, intimidation, violence and impunity."

In one such incident on July 8, 2008, Kenyan police stormed into a Nairobi hotel where a group of civil rights activists were planning a peaceful anti-corruption rally. Police beat seven of the activists, and one officer also sexually assaulted Anne Njogu, Executive Director of the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness in Nairobi.

Ms. Njogu and her colleagues were taken to a police station in Gigiri, where police again attacked the activists, beating them with police batons and kicking them.

"The sexual assault against Ms. Njogu is part of an appalling wave of violence against women in Kenya," said Debra Schultz, Acting Director of ICTJ's Gender and Transitional Justice Program. "The Kenyan government must take steps to end impunity for gender-based crimes wherever they are committed."

About the ICTJ The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. The Center works in societies emerging from repressive rule or armed conflict, as well as in established democracies where historical injustices or systemic abuse remain unresolved. To learn more about the ICTJ, please visit

* For more information, please contact Stephen Boykewich, Communications Associate Office at + 1 917 637 3845 Mobile, 1 917 602 0084 or [email][email protected]

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

To celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) is holding a photo competition based on the theme - ‘Dignity and justice for all of us’.nThe theme reinforces the vision of the Declaration as a commitment to universal dignity and justice, and reinforces how human rights are an inextricable part of our lives – for everyone, everywhere, everyday.

Tanzania is undertaking a US$10 million programme to modernise medical laboratories in regional hospitals to improve HIV/AIDS monitoring, Minister of Health David Mwakyusa has said. The programme was launched on Monday 28 July in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, and is being backed by the Abbott Fund, the philanthropic arm of Abbott Laboratories.

On Tuesday, July 8, senior police officers in Nairobi, Kenya, beat,
sexually violated, and arrested a group of seven civil society advocates as
they planned a peaceful protest against government corruption. Two of them,
including Ann Njogu, a leading democratic voice and Kenyan lawyer who
helped push through Kenya's landmark Sexual Offences Act, suffered sexual
violations.

Mr. President,

4613 soon to be half a million Kenyans say you are greedy!!

Yes Mr. President and fellow cronies posing as leaders. There are over 4000 Kenyans across the world and more and more joining everyday with one simple message to you:

YOU ARE SHAMELESS!

Kenyans online have joined hands on Facebook:
* "How sad and frustrating is it to find that our MP's earn the highest salary compared to all the other countries in the world. While 20 million Kenyans are in abject poverty; living on less than $ 1.00 a day.
* As Kenyans we need to stand for our rights to live and prosper in our country.
* Therefore please join us to bring change in our country by reducing our MP's salaries and privileges, so as to improve the life of the mwananchi.

OUR GOAL IS TO UNITE AND GET HALF A MILLION KENYANS IN THIS GROUP.....can we do it?....lets try"

click to join the Facebook campaign
click

As members of Zimbabwe’s political elite finally sat down for talks in South Africa on Thursday, many of their fellow citizens who sought refuge in the country are facing deportation back to the homes they fled as a result of political violence.

I hope you have all seen reporting over the past few days about the video of the shooting of Ashraf Abu Rahma in the Palestinian town of Ni'lin and the obvious abusive use of force by the Israeli Occupation Forces. If not, briefly, Rahma was handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten, and eventually shot at close range by a rubber coated steel bullet fired by an IOF soldier. The event was documented by a 14 year old girl who captured this human rights abuse on video from the window of her home. The video shows that Rahma was handcuffed and blindfolded when he was shot, and clearly identifies the face of the soldier who shot him. Residents of Ni’lin have since seen this soldier, who continued to serve his unit in Ni’lin. The shooting took place in the presence of a lieutenant colonel, who held Rahma’s arm as the soldier deliberately fired the shot.

As the petition notes: "The shooting of Ashraf Abu Rahma is consistent with the abuse that Palestinians suffer at the hands of the IOF, and consistent with the abuse that the people of Ni'lin suffer as they exercise their basic human right to protest against the construction of the illegal apartheid wall that is being built on their land....."

The petition demands that the soldier in question, his lieutenant commander, and all others involved in this incident are brought to justice. This shouldn't even be a question.

Please consider signing the petition and please circulate as they need as many signatures as possible within this week.

Video can be watched at: [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

As a collective of concerned organizations and individuals, the Resist AFRICOM campaign is comprised of organizations and individuals that are dedicated to speaking out against this extension of the military industrial complex. It is imperative that those of us that care about various wars in Africa show our support of this campaign. Whether it be the pending war in the Niger Delta or the continous tragedies in the Congo, Sudan or Somalia, it is time we come together to say: enough is enough! AFRICOM is currently staged in Stuggart, Germany and as of October 2007, it is scheduled to be a fully functional military command in October 2008.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) welcomes the current moves towards a negotiated settlement to the ongoing political and economic crisis which has gripped Zimbabwe for the past ten years.

While we are still of the view that President Thabo Mbeki is not the best person to lead the mediation, we take note of the inclusion of the AU and the UN on the expanded mediation team.

We are reliably informed through rumours that an expanded mediation team, led by South African president Thabo Mbeki, is currently in Zimbabwe to facilitate the signing of the MoU.

Our concern however is that, there has not been openness and wider consultation on the drafting of the MoU. On behalf of labour, the MoU has not been availed to us for scrutiny or comment. The only time we have had a feel of the MoU, has been through the media, where we are told that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had at one time refused to sign it. Nothing more has been said about the document.

The process seems to have been left to the three antagonizing parties, that is, the MDC – T, the MDC – M and Zanu PF.

The current problems in Zimbabwe now require, not only a political solution, but concerted approach which involves all arms of the civic and political world.

Zimbabwe is not made up of supporters of Zanu PF and MDC alone, but a plethora of groupings which have to be consulted if the process is to gain wider acceptance by the majority.

On behalf of labour, we call upon the facilitators of the dialogue process to include civic groupings, churches, labour and political parties in the negotiation process.

It is our hope and wish that the above will be taken seriously for the outcome of the negotiating process to reflect the will of the people of Zimbabwe and not self seeking power sharing agendas.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

93 Malagasy peasants appeared in the Court of Miarinarivo, a town situated in 90 km west of Antananarivo in mid-November, 2007 following a "popular rebellion" in the hamlet of Ankorondrano which led to three deaths.

As G8 leaders wrapped up their forum in Hokkaido in Japan, some 13,000km away, the hundreds of people who had gathered for the seventh annual alternative People’s Forum, this year held in the town of Koulikoro, Mali, were issuing a closing statement to their own conference, and its tone was defiant.

Thousands of business-owners closed down their shops across the capital and several of the city’s main roads have been blocked in protest of a government decision to stop fuel subsidies, which caused prices to rise steeply overnight. The government, which has been subsidising fuel prices for the past three years, removed these subsidies on 6 July because it could no longer afford to keep them in place. As a result the price of a litre of fuel rose by 29 percent in 24 hours, and the price of diesel by 44 percent.

Finally the nomination process in the search for Kenyan heroes has been launched. The debut nomination form was published in The Daily Nation on 4th July 2008 and in Taifa Leo on the same day. You can also nominate your Kenyan hero.

Bank Information Center has recently released it's new "Handbook for Advocacy on Extractive Industry Revenues: Good Practices and the IMF’s Guide on Resource Revenue Transparency."

On Wednesday, July 2nd at the Bellville Magistrates Court courtroom E, two members of the Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign, Jerome Daniels and Ridwaan Isaacs, were each sentenced twelve months in prison - simply for being community leaders at Delft-Symphony Way settlement. Both maintained their innocence on charges of malicious destruction of property brought by Elmory Isaacs, a former resident of the same settlement, who presented no evidence beyond her own testimony.

On June 29 three police vans pulled up to Symphony Way dressed in riot gear. Without warning, they began pepper spraying people in the settlement and attempted to arrest an older resident named Auntie Tilla. When it was all over, the road's pastor had been assaulted, beaten and abducted and five residents had been pepper sprayed multiple times.