Blood Parliament: Rights groups call for probe after BBC Africa Eye documentary
Leading human rights organisations have renewed calls for investigations into the killing of protesters by Kenya's security forces during demonstrations against a rise in taxes last June.It follows a BBC Africa Eye investigation, exposing members of the security forces who shot dead three protesters at Kenya's parliament, igniting public outrage and demands for justice.Amnesty International and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) said the officers identified in the documentary should "face the law". The BBC said it had cancelled a private screening of the documentary in Kenya's capital Nairobi on Monday "due to pressure from the authorities".
"We are very disappointed not to have been able to share the documentary and panel discussion as planned," a BBC spokesperson said."In the meantime, audiences can watch the film on BBC Africa's YouTube channel," the spokesperson added.'They aimed to kill' - BBC identifies security forces who shot Kenya anti-tax protestersBBC Africa Eye's Blood Parliament documentary revealed how security forces brutally responded to youthful protesters who breached Kenya's parliament on 25 June 2024, the day lawmakers voted to approve the proposed tax hikes.The controversial finance bill was aimed at raising $2.7bn (£2bn) the government said it needed to cut its reliance on external borrowing - but had sparked widespread.Using open-source data and user-generated content, the BBC's analysis of more than 5,000 images identified uniformed security personnel - a policeman and solider - who opened fire killing three unarmed protesters at parliament.The wider clampdown by the security forces on a series of protests against the finance bill left at least 65 people dead, resulted in the forcible disappearance of 89 others and the arrest of thousands, according to Amnesty International. The Kenyan government put the death toll at 42. Amnesty said the documentary corroborated the group's earlier report that "unnecessary and excessive lethal force was used against protesters".It demanded both the police and the Kenya army to "act and publicly state the actions being taken with regard to the findings of the BBC exposé". The rights group urged Kenyans to sign a petition calling for a public inquiry into the killings during what were dubbed the #OccupyParliament protests. The KHRC said the BBC documentary revealed how "organised criminals in police and military uniforms" were deployed "to murder innocent Kenyans".It said the "responsibility rests with [President William] Ruto, who must be held accountable for these deaths".Kenyans expressed their anger online, pressing the government to hold security officers accountable for the killings and injuries of peaceful protesters.Ruto has previously defended police against accusations of brutality and recently warned Kenyans against commenting on military matters. Police have also repeatedly denied involvement in the abductions and killings. No officers have been charged.In response to the BBC documentary, the police service said the force could not investigate itself, adding that the Kenya's Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) was responsible for investigating alleged misconduct.The Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) told the BBC the IPOA had not forwarded any request to look into any of its personnel involved in the operations at parliament.On Monday, following the release of the BBC Africa Eye documentary, the IPOA gave an update on the investigations into police brutality witnessed during the anti-tax protests. The authority revealed that so far, of the 60 deaths under investigation, 41 involved gunshot wounds. IPOA said it had completed 22 investigations, while it was actively pursuing 36, and that two cases were currently before the courts.The investigating agency said it had recorded 233 injury cases during the demonstrations.In a statement, the main opposition coalition said the "execution of peaceful protesters was premeditated and sanctioned at the highest levels"."We strongly warn the Ruto regime on further bloodshed," a joint statement said, reacting to the BBC documentary. The Kenyan government is yet to officially respond to the BBC documentary but one legislator has called for the BBC to be banned in Kenya.George Peter Kaluma said that the 37-minute-long documentary risked "destabilising" the country.But a senator, Edwin Sifuna, defended the documentary saying there were no "fabrications" in it. "We must encourage these stories to be told from all angles for the sake of truth and justice. Those who are uncomfortable with this are wrestling with their own consciences and we cannot help them with that," Sifuna posted on X.
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BBC News
30 minutes ago
- BBC News
Assam: 'I was pushed across the border into Bangladesh at gunpoint'
Shona Banu still shudders when she thinks of the past few 58-year-old, a resident of Barpeta district in India's north-eastern state of Assam, says that she was called to the local police station on 25 May and later taken to a point at the border with neighbouring Bangladesh. From there, she says, she and around 13 other people were forced to cross over to Bangladesh. She says she was not told why. But it was a scenario she had been dreading - Ms Banu says she has lived in Assam all her life but for the past few years, she has been desperately trying to prove that she is an Indian citizen and not an "illegal immigrant" from Bangladesh."They pushed me over at gunpoint. I spent two days without food or water in the middle of a field in knee-deep water teeming with mosquitoes and leeches," Ms Banu said, wiping away tears. After those two days in no man's land - between India and Bangladesh - she says she was taken to what appeared to be an old prison on the Bangladeshi two days there, she and a few others - she is not sure if all of them were from the same group sent with her - were escorted by Bangladeshi officials across the border, where Indian officials allegedly met them and sent them not clear why Ms Banu was abruptly sent to Bangladesh and then brought back. But her case is among a spate of recent instances where officials in Assam have rounded up people declared foreigners by tribunals in the past - on suspicion of being "illegal Bangladeshis" - and sent them across the border. The BBC found at least six cases where people said their family members had been picked up, taken to border towns and just "pushed across".Officials from India's Border Security Force, the Assam police and the state government did not respond to questions from the on alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are not new in India - the countries are divided by a 4,096km (2,545 miles) long porous border which can make it relatively easy to cross over, even though many of the sensitive areas are heavily it's still rare, lawyers working on these cases say, for people to be picked up from their homes abruptly and forced into another country without due process. These efforts seem to have intensified over the past few weeks. The Indian government has not officially said how many people were sent across in the latest exercise. But top sources in the Bangladesh administration claim that India "illegally pushed in" more than 1,200 people into the country in May alone, not just from Assam but also other states. Out of this, they said on condition of anonymity, Bangladesh identified 100 people as Indian citizens and sent them a statement, the Border Guard Bangladesh said it had increased patrolling along the border to curb these attempts. India has not commented on these media reports indicate that the recent crackdown includes Rohingya Muslims living in other states too, the situation is particularly tense and complex in Assam, where issues of citizenship and ethnic identity have long dominated politics. The state, which shares a nearly 300km-long border with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, has seen waves of migration from the neighbouring country as people moved in search of opportunities or fled religious has sparked the anxieties of Assamese people, many of whom fear this is bringing in demographic change and taking away resources from Bharatiya Janata Party - in power in Assam and nationally - has repeatedly promised to end the problem of illegal immigration, making the state's National Register of Citizens (NRC) a priority in recent register is a list of people who can prove they came to Assam by 24 March 1971, the day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. The list went through several iterations, with people whose names were missing given chances to prove their Indian citizenship by showing official documents to quasi-judicial forums called Foreigners a chaotic process, the final draft published in 2019 excluded nearly two million residents of Assam - many of them were put in detention camps while others have appealed in higher courts against their exclusion. Ms Banu said her case is pending in the Supreme Court but that authorities still forced her to BBC heard similar stories from at least six others in Assam - all Muslims - who say their family members were sent to Bangladesh around the same time as Ms Banu, despite having necessary documents and living in India for generations. At least four of them have now come back home, with no answers still about why they were picked up.A third of Assam's 32 million residents are Muslims and many of them are descendants of immigrants who settled there during British Khatun, a 67-year-old from Assam's Barpeta who is still in Bangladesh, says she has temporarily been given shelter by a local family."I have no-one here," she laments. Her family has managed to speak to her but don't know if and when she can return. She lost her case in the foreigners' tribunal and in the state's high court and hadn't appealed in the Supreme after the recent round of action began, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma cited a February Supreme Court direction which ordered the government to start deportation proceedings for people who had been "declared foreigners" but were still held in detention centres."The people who are declared foreigners but haven't even appealed in court, we are pushing them back," Sarma said. He also claimed that people with pending court appeals were not being "troubled".But Abdur Razzaque Bhuyan, a lawyer working on many citizenship cases in Assam, alleged that in many of the recent instances, due process - which would, among other things, require India and Bangladesh to cooperate on the action - was not followed."What is happening is a wilful and deliberate misinterpretation of the court order," he Bhuyan recently filed a petition on behalf of a student organisation seeking the Supreme Court's intervention in stopping what they said was a "forceful and illegal pushback policy" but was asked to first approach the Assam high court. In Morigaon, around 167km from Barpeta, Rita Khatun sat near a table which had a pile of papers on husband Khairul Islam, a 51-year-old school teacher, was in the same group as Ms Banu that was allegedly picked up by authorities.A tribunal had declared him a foreigner in 2016, after which he spent two years in a detention centre before being released. Like Ms Banu, his case is also being heard in the Supreme Court."Every document is proof that my husband is Indian," Ms Khatun said, leafing through what she said was Mr Islam's high school graduation certificate and some land records. "But that wasn't enough to prove his nationality to authorities." She says her husband, his father and grandfather were all born in on 23 May, she says that policemen arrived at their home and took Mr Islam away without any was only a few days later - when a viral video surfaced of a Bangladeshi journalist interviewing Mr Islam in no man's land - that the family learnt where he Ms Banu, Mr Islam has now been sent back to India. While his family confirmed his return, the police told the BBC they had "no information" about his Begum says she is sure her father was declared a foreigner due to a case of mistaken identity - he was also taken on the same night as Mr Islam. "My father's name is Abdul Latif, my grandfather was Abdul Subhan. The notice that came [years ago, from the foreigners' tribunal] said Abdul Latif, son of Shukur Ali. That's not my grandfather, I don't even know him," Ms Begum said, adding that she had all the necessary documents to prove her father's family has now heard that Mr Latif is back in Assam, but he hasn't reached home some of these people are back home now, they fear they might be picked up again abruptly."We are not playthings," Ms Begum said. "These are human beings, you can't toss them around as per your whims."Additional reporting by Aamir Peerzada and Pritam Roy
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Let's give BBC World Service the funding its power deserves
The BBC is many things to many people, from its revered children's and educational programming to the wonders of the natural world, with Sir David Attenborough a trusted guide. In the UK, we are fortunate to have a healthy creative industries and media sector that thrives on the talents of our nation and represents all corners of the country. But how much value does the BBC have internationally? It is a question the government appears to be taking seriously. In January it launched the Soft Power Council with the aim of boosting economic growth and security. • BBC World Service cuts 'leave gap for Russia and China' A central part of the UK's soft power is the BBC World Service, which operates in 42 languages — 43 if you count the recently announced BBC News Polska offer — and delivers independent news to hundreds of millions of people every hour of the day. During decades of drawn-out and bloody wars, through prolonged periods of enforced isolation, the BBC World Service has a history of providing information for those desperately in need. And it's still doing it today, launching urgent services in recent times in countries facing unimaginable horror. Notable interventions include extended broadcasts for Ukraine as the war erupted, a radio service in Sudan as civil combat ensued and enhanced services for Myanmar after the devastating earthquake. And yet among the geopolitical friction and cultural chasms that underlie global conflicts and catastrophes, a more pernicious threat has taken hold. Earlier this year, the latest Global Risks Report published by the World Economic Forum registered disinformation and misinformation as the most prominent risk facing the world. Disinformation drives doubt, division and destabilisation by playing on our insecurities. It has the power to enrage, to shock and to provoke. In the modern world, disinformation is everywhere, fuelled by self-interested states and turbo-charged by artificial intelligence. • Maga propaganda takeover looms for silenced Voice of America In a febrile climate, this can have devastating results. But there is hope. In Nigeria, misinformation that President Tinubu had forged his university documents led to significant unrest until the BBC debunked the claims, calming the situation. In Pakistan, a viral video with more than 400,000 views on X claimed to show an explosion caused by a Pakistani response to hostilities with India over Kashmir. In fact, the images were from the 2020 Beirut port explosion in Lebanon. The BBC's teams used fact-checking, data analysis and video verification to either debunk the content or at least give it more context. Countering disinformation and providing verified, independent news is what makes the BBC World Service the most trusted international news provider in the world. Recent research also found that it is the most well-recognised British cultural export, alongside our world-beating universities, first-class film industry and the Premier League. The organisation drives a favourable attitude towards the UK and also notably increases the likelihood of its audience wanting to invest here. That's not bad for a product the government terms 'soft power'. Let us hope that next week's spending review settlement for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office includes additional resources to restore some of the lost funding to this great British asset. Lord Blunkett was home secretary between 2001 and 2004
BBC News
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BBC Learning English - Learning English from the News / North Korean secrets revealed by phone
() ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ The story The BBC has gained access to a North Korean phone which has been smuggled out of the country. The phone doesn't have access to the internet and is designed to make sure its users follow the rules in North Korea, which is closely controlled by its leader Kim Jong-un. The phone creates a screenshot every five minutes, which is used by the country's authorities to watch the user. The phone also has an autocorrect function which changes terms used in South Korea to expressions favoued by the North Korean regime. News headlines Smartphone smuggled out of North Korea shows chilling details implemented by Kim Jong-un's regime LADbible From 'oppa' to comrade: North Korea's phones auto-correct to fit party line India Today This smartphone smuggled out of North Korea is absolutely wild Futurism Key words and phrases chilling frightening I read a chilling story about a ghost and now I can't sleep. party line the official opinion of an organisation, usually political The mayor didn't say anything new in her speech. Just the usual party line. wild strange or unexpected This TV show is wild. I have no idea what's going to happen next. Next Learn more English vocabulary from the news with our News Review archive. Try our podcast The English We Speak to learn more idiomatic language.
