Newshour DRC: Rights group alleges mass killings by armed group M23
Also in the programme: the Israeli Defence Force has called around 60,000 reservists in what is being seen as evidence of an imminent operation to take over Gaza City; and the scientific research giving hope to people who have lost their sense of smell.
(Photo: a member of the M23 rebel group walks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, March 2025. Credit: Reuters / Z. Bensemra)
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BBC News
2 hours ago
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Leading conservationist in South Africa denies smuggling rhino horns worth $14m
A leading conservationist in South Africa, charged with smuggling rhino horns worth $14m (£10m), has insisted he has "nothing to hide". In a statement, John Hume, the former owner of what is thought to be the world's largest rhino farm, denied allegations that he trafficked the horns from South Africa to South East Asia. The 83-year-old Mr Hume and five others, including a lawyer and a game reserve manager, have appeared in court on 55 charges, including theft, money laundering and fraud. The group was allegedly part of an international rhino horn trafficking syndicate between 2017 and 2024, prosecutors said. Mr Hume and his co-defendants are accused of smuggling more than 960 horns, obtaining permits to sell them locally, when the true intention was to export the horns to South East Asia, where they are used in traditional medicine. The sale of rhino horns is legal between citizens in South Africa, but exporting them is not allowed. The accused appeared in a magistrate's court in the capital city Pretoria on Tuesday and were granted bail. They did not enter a plea - this is not required in South Africa during an initial court appearance. Mr Hume, however, proclaimed his innocence in a statement. "I have nothing to hide and have fully cooperated with investigators for years," he said. "I categorically reject the allegations against me and maintain that I have never acted unlawfully. I am confident that, once the facts are tested in court, I will be vindicated and my innocence confirmed." Mr Hume's former farm, Platinum Rhino, was home to approximately 2,000 southern white rhinos. He sold the farm in 2023, saying he could no longer continue to support the rhinos, which he had been breeding for over two decades. Mr Hume was born in Zimbabwe and raised on a sheep farm. He made a living developing holiday resorts, before turning his hand to conservation in the 1990s. You may also be interested in: Rhino horns turned radioactive to fight poachers in South Africa Illegal trade booms in South Africa's 'super-strange looking' plants PODCAST: Women in South Africa and Zambia protect wildlife from poachers Go to for more news from the African continent. Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica Animals South Africa Africa
BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
Newshour DRC: Rights group alleges mass killings by armed group M23
A report by Human Right Watch alleges the M23 rebel group killed at least 140 people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last month in one of the worst atrocities committed since its insurgency in 2021. The overall number of victims could exceed 300. We hear from an eye witness and the DRC foreign minister, who says the alleged massacres violated a ceasefire agreement. Also in the programme: the Israeli Defence Force has called around 60,000 reservists in what is being seen as evidence of an imminent operation to take over Gaza City; and the scientific research giving hope to people who have lost their sense of smell. (Photo: a member of the M23 rebel group walks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, March 2025. Credit: Reuters / Z. Bensemra)
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
To Americans, Britain is no longer the free country we thought it was
Every year, the US Department of State releases a report on human rights practices in other countries (CRHRP). One of my first assignments as a political officer at the US embassy was to coordinate and edit one country report. Not surprisingly, certain governments sometimes take issue with how their policies are characterised in the CRHRP. For example, South Africa claimed a recent CRHRP was 'inaccurate and deeply flawed' in criticising them for failing to 'investigate, prosecute and punish officials who committed human rights abuses … or violence against racial minorities'. President Cyril Ramaphosa seemed bewildered in May when President Trump took him to task for the murders of white farmers. His government's defence seems to be that South Africa's horrific levels of crime afflict everyone, not just white people, and that the motives are not racist but merely criminal. That is unlikely to mollify a country impoverished under an incompetent succession of ANC leaders, nor will Ramaphosa's explanation that they haven't actually used their sweeping new Land Expropriation Act inspire commercial farmers who feed the country to invest in their farms. But I digress. China doesn't just reject US criticism, they've cheekily published their own report criticising the US for 'the chronic disease of racism,' and 'basic rights and freedoms being disregarded'. Usually, the governments taking the most criticism in the CRHRP are repressive or feckless regimes, from China to Zimbabwe, that suppress free speech, stifle religious expression, or oppress women, minority groups, and political dissidents. That doesn't sound like the England in which I was born over half a century ago. But this year, the Country Report on the UK flags Britain as a risky place to speak your mind. The CRHRP claims that 'the human rights situation worsened in the United Kingdom during the year,' citing 'credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression; and crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by anti-Semitism'. The report notes restrictions on speech – even silent meditation – near abortion clinics, and the Online Safety Act's curtailment of internet speech, policed by Ofcom. It calls out government censorship of speech deemed misinformation or 'hate speech', including in relation to migrants and crimes committed by foreign nationals. It could have gone even further. In its section on Worker Rights, the CRHRP doesn't discuss the people who have been sacked or disciplined for refusing to accept the forced speech codes of gender ideology, like prison officer David Toshack or nurse Jennifer Melle; or for social media posters who have criticised government action, like teacher Simon Pearson. Like the proverbial frog in slowly heating water, perhaps Brits can't see what is happening to their freedoms. But looking from the outside, we can, and the State Department has called it out. In reaction, I expect the British Left to be as indignant and in denial as the establishment in Washington DC is about crime. Now Donald Trump has temporarily taken over local law enforcement in the city, the Leftist establishment and the national media are claiming that violent crime is lower than in recent years. This ignores some inconvenient realities. First, unreliable numbers. The city has reportedly just settled a lawsuit from a whistleblowing police officer who had alleged that her supervisors were re-classifying serious crimes as lesser offences, to flatter the city's crime statistics. Second, even the supposedly lower murder rate puts Washington among the most dangerous cities in the nation. Like the DC establishment, the British government and much of the media are happy to ignore Lucy Connolly, who is still in prison after she made an unwise online post (and then deleted it); Hamit Coskun, who was prosecuted after he burnt a book; and the thousands of ordinary Brits who have been accused of 'Non-Crime Hate Incidents,' which is at the very least an astonishing waste of police time. The Left likes to pretend that the real villains in the fight for free speech are people like Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater, and JK Rowling, who courageously state objective truth, rather than the gender ideologues trying to force women to accept men in their changing rooms, prisons, and shelters. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and other writers of the early 20th century predicted a future where the populace was dumbed down, repressed, and fed information by an authoritarian state. In the dystopian futures they imagined in 1984 and Brave New World, independent, critical thinking was banned and speech violators were punished. That sounds like the logical destiny of Britain if it maintains its present course. There is already a semi-official dogma on gender ideology, immigration, and crime which it is costly to challenge. Censorship and group-think get worse if not disrupted. Instead of rejecting America's criticism in high dudgeon, I hope Britain will heed the warning of its Atlantic cousins and return to the people their right to speak their minds. For the land of Magna Carta to slowly sink into repression and state control would be a great injustice to Britain's present inhabitants, and an insult to our ancestors' work of centuries. 'The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)' from Academica Books.
