cross‐posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2719560

Port Sudan, 6 June – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is warning that the number of people displaced by conflict inside Sudan could top 10 million in the coming days. The world’s worst internal displacement crisis continues to escalate, with looming famine and disease adding to the havoc wrought by conflict.

IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix, which issues weekly statistics, recorded 9.9 million people internally displaced across all 18 states in Sudan this week – 2.8 million prior to the April 2023 war, and 7.1 million since. More than half of all internally displaced persons (IDPs) are women, and over a quarter are children under the age of five.

“Imagine a city the size of London being displaced. That’s what it’s like, but it’s happening with the constant threat of crossfire, with famine, disease and brutal ethnic and gender-based violence,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope. “Humanitarian needs in Sudan are massive, acute and immediate, and yet only 19 per cent of the funds we have asked for have been delivered. Unified international efforts are required to avoid a looming famine.”

In total, some 12 million have been forced to flee their homes in Sudan, with more than 2 million crossing borders into neighbouring countries, principally to Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt.

After years of protracted crisis, full-scale civil war erupted in mid-April 2023 when fierce fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out in the capital Khartoum, and quickly expanded across the huge country, home to nearly 50 million people.

The brutality and intensity of the war are relentless, with reports of grave violations of human rights including ethnic violence, rape and gang rape as tools of war. Seventy per cent of the people forced to move in Sudan are now trying to survive in places that are at risk of famine. Humanitarian access is patchy or non-existent. The upcoming rainy season will complicate this and may lead to climate-related disasters and the spread of disease.

Last week, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations system, issued a stark warning that the situation in Sudan had reached catastrophic levels.

In Al Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the intensifying conflict has left more than 800,000 civilians trapped in what the IASC called “a merciless onslaught of fighting and aerial bombardments.” Essential infrastructure, including health care, has collapsed. Prices of food, water and fuel have skyrocketed, making these basic essentials unaffordable.

“Crucial roads out of Al Fasher are blocked, preventing civilians from reaching safer areas, while at the same time limiting the amount of food and other humanitarian aid coming into the city,” added Othman Belbeisi, IOM’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. “We join the United Nations in calling for an immediate end to the fighting and the guarantee of safe, unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access across the borders and across frontlines. Millions of lives depend on it.” 

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2512597

A worthwhile read on global capitalism, sub imperialism, apartheid and post apartheid South Africa, Israel, global apartheid and BRICS+.

He and his right-hand man Ousmane Sonko have an anti-colonial stance and want to pull out of the CFA Franc.

France was recently expelled from Niger, and now there is a new blow coming.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4176177

Kwame Ture: Marx did not 'invent' laws of socialism

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2202139

TIL

The [neo]imperialists don’t respect Nigerien sovereignty, just as they don’t respect Iraqi sovereignty. In 2020, Iraq’s Parliament voted to have all U.S. troops leave the country. They are still there in 2024.

If the troops refuse to leave, the U.S. becomes an occupation force, illegal under international law. What part of “Get out!” don’t these Pentagon operatives understand?

Historically, capitalism developed in Europe and later in the United States based on the rapid accumulation of wealth needed to finance industrialization and expansion by brutally kidnapping, enslaving and exploiting Africa’s people. Western capitalists have plundered the African continent for centuries, looting its land and precious resources and squeezing exorbitant wealth from its impoverished working class, including by paying starvation wages.

Of course, in true arrogant, [neo]colonial fashion, [neo]imperialism insists its presence is welcome. Welcome? Why would any African country want this ugly, bloody history to continue on its soil?

U.S. out of Africa! Get out and stay out!

The Confederation for Democracy and Socialism, a coalition of nine popular parties, in a Feb. 2 statement released in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, wrote: “For the CDS member parties, postponing the elections is not only legally impossible but also politically inappropriate. There is no institutional crisis in the country, no interruption in the regular functioning of institutions that could justify such a postponement.” They demanded that Sall schedule the election for Feb. 25.

A Feb. 24 demonstration supported this demand, according to El Salto, a left-wing Spanish newspaper: “‘We took to the streets to ask Macky Sall to call elections before April 2,’ explained Ana, 32 years old. She was taking part in a peaceful protest in favor of the party of the opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, imprisoned since June 2023, attended by several hundred people on February 24 in the center of Dakar.”

More demonstrations in Dakar protested the election postponement in early March. The struggle over scheduling the election is really a struggle over letting the party in power, the Alliance for the Republic, rig the elections.

Senegal is a member of ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, along with Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo. In its 50 years, ECOWAS has been the regional organization coordinating the economic development of its members.

At the end of the 37th African Union (AU) summit, which took place the weekend of Feb. 17–18 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the organization’s member states pledged their “unbreakable, permanent and total commitment to the Palestinian people in their legitimate struggle against the […] occupation and for the restoration of their inalienable rights,” including the right to self-determination, the return of refugees and the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem [al-Quds] as its capital.

Another declaration highlights the need to put an end to the […] occupation, which undermines the foundations of the international legal order. The African countries renewed their call for an end to […] aggression against Gaza and expressed their deep dismay at the humanitarian and health catastrophe in that territory. Up to now, the genocidal war waged in Gaza by Tel Aviv has already claimed more than 100,000 victims, including all dead, wounded and missing.

In the same vein, the AU summit called for removing Cuba from the list of countries allegedly sponsoring terrorism, a list drawn up unilaterally by the U.S. The pan-African organization condemned, for the fifteenth consecutive year, the illegal economic, commercial and financial blockade perpetrated by Washington against Havana, now for more than six decades.

The African countries reaffirmed their support for the resolution that the United Nations General Assembly passes every year regarding removing the blockade of Cuba and deplored the measures implemented by the U.S. at the end of 2017, which reinforced this unilateral measure and extended its extraterritorial character.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1781850

I hope they do more on African cities.

These military actions, which were portrayed in the U.S. and French media as “undemocratic,” had strong popular support. The first took place in Mali in 2020, the last in Niger in 2023. They all led to the expulsion of French troops and a reduction of U.S. intervention emanating from the CIA’s base in Niger.

The joint statement, published on the National Council for the Defense of the Fatherland of Niger webpage, read, “ECOWAS, under the influence of foreign powers and having betrayed its founding principles, has become a threat to member states and their peoples […] the organization has failed to assist our countries in the fight against terrorism and insecurity.”

Col. Amadou Abdramane, spokesperson for Niger’s junta, reading from a statement in a televised address, said ECOWAS had turned away from “the ideals of its founders.”

The three countries have formed a mutual defense pact and hired Russian advisors to supply the military technical aid that the French troops previously provided.

It is still not clear what the outcome will be, but it is clear that the masses of the three countries are engaged and active.

Here is the message just to save you an extra click:

Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist [neocolony] against Innocent Civilians in #Gaza

On Namibian soil, #Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions. The German Government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil. Therefore, in light of Germany’s inability to draw lessons from its horrific history, President @hagegeingob expresses deep concern with the shocking decision communicated by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany yesterday, 12 January 2024, in which it rejected the morally upright indictment brought forward by South Africa before the International Criminal Court that [neocolonialism] is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Worryingly, ignoring the violent deaths of over 23 000 Palestinians in Gaza and various United Nations reports disturbingly highlighting the internal displacement of 85% of civilians in Gaza amid acute shortages of food and essential services, the German Government has chosen to defend in the International Criminal Court the genocidal and gruesome acts of the [neocolony] against innocent civilians in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza. Various international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch have chillingly concluded that [Zionism’s régime] is committing war crimes in Gaza.

President Geingob reiterates his call made on 31 December 2023, “No peace-loving human being can ignore the carnage waged against Palestinians in Gaza”. In that vein, President Geingob appeals to the German Government to reconsider its untimely decision to intervene as a third-party in defence and support of the genocidal acts of [neocolonialism] before the International Criminal Court.

The ICJ has had a sordid history of either ruling on behalf of [neo]imperialist governments and their puppets […] against oppressed and/or sovereign governments, or to censor genuine complaints such as the one South Africa just filed. Even though the ICJ has not formally responded to the complaint to date, [Zionists] felt compelled to respond right away, falsely labeling it as being “antisemitic”.

Two Palestinian resistance groups praised the South African complaint on Dec. 30 — Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — that were republished on the Resistance News Network.

ETA: *South Africa puts [Zionists] on trial before the world*