Burkina Faso military rulers scrap electoral commission, take control of future election
Di interior ministry go handle elections in di future, state-run RTB TV report.
Since dem seize power in September 2022, di coup leaders don initiate sweeping reforms, including di postponement of elections wey go lead to a return to civilian rule.
A nationwide vote bin dey due last year, but di junta bin extend di period of transition to democracy until July 2029, e allow leader Capt Ibrahim Traoré to remain in power and free to contest di next presidential election.
Di AFP news agency quote Territorial Administration Minister Emile Zerbo say di electoral commission dey "subsidised" wit around $870,000 (£650,000) a year.
To scrap di commission go "reinforce our sovereign control on di electoral process and at di same time limit foreign influences", e bin add.
Afta e come to power three years ago for middle of criticism say di civilian authorities dey fail to deal wit one growing Islamist insurgency, di military leaders don reject di assistance of former colonial power France in favour of Russia.
Rights groups since don accuse di army say dem dey target civilians for attempt to quash di militants, as well as suppress political activity and di freedom of expression.
Question marks also dey over di effectiveness of di military operation. In di first half of 2025, jihadist group JNIM tok say dem don carry out over 280 attacks in Burkina Faso – double di number for di same period in 2024, according to data wey di BBC verify.
Additional reporting by BBC Monitoring and David Bamford.
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Daughter of woman murdered by man who US deported speaks out: ‘He was denied due process'
The daughter of a woman murdered by a man from Laos who is among those controversially deported from the US to South Sudan has spoken out about her family's pain but also to decry the lack of rights afforded to those who were expelled to countries other than their own. Birte Pfleger lives in Los Angeles and was a history student at Cal State University in Long Beach when her parents came to visit her from their native Germany in 1994 and ended up shot by Thongxay Nilakout during a robbery while on a sightseeing trip. Pfleger's mother, Gisela, was killed and her father, Klaus, wounded. Nilakout, now 48, is Laotian and was among eight convicted criminals from countries including Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam and Myanmar who were deported to the conflict-torn African country, amid uproar over Donald Trump's extreme immigration policies. In an interview with the Guardian, Pfleger said: 'It's been 31 years living with the irreparable pain and permanent grief, so, on the one hand, I wanted him gone. On the other hand, I'm a historian and I have taught constitutional history. He was denied due process and that's a constitutional problem.' The government of South Sudan has not disclosed the men's exact whereabouts since arriving in the country earlier this month, after legal problems had caused them to be stuck in nearby Djibouti after legal wrangling, or provided any details about their future. A lawyer representing the men said 'their situation is fragile,' noting their relatives have not heard from the deportees since a US military plane flew them to Juba, South Sudan's capital, before midnight on 4 July. A police spokesperson in South Sudan, Maj Gen James Monday Enoka, indicated that the men may ultimately be moved on. 'They will be investigated, the truth will be established and if they are not South Sudanese they will be deported to their rightful countries,' Enoka said. But few details are forthcoming. The US Department of Homeland Security called the men 'sickos'. The deportations had been initially blocked by US district judge Brian Murphy, who had ruled that the group needed to receive notice and due process before being taken to South Sudan, including the opportunity to express fear of being harmed or tortured there. But in a 7-2 ruling, the US supreme court paused Murphy's orders, clearing all obstacles preventing the Trump administration's plan. Just days after the ruling, the administration issued a memo suggesting officials would ramp up deportations to third countries with little notice and due process. The directive by Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said US officials may deport migrants to countries other than their own with as little as six hours' notice, even if those third party nations have not made assurances about their safety. Legal experts have objected. 'We are going to continue to fight the policy that conflicts with the statute, the regulations and with the constitution,' said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, an organization leading a class-action lawsuit against Ice. The UN human rights office denounced the action and urged the US to halt deportations to third-party countries. More than 250 Venezuelans have just been repatriated after being deported by the US without due process to a brutal anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador. Previously a multinational group of migrants was sent to Panama from the US and ended up trapped in a hotel then caged in a jungle setting, while more recently another group was deported to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini, which critics there described as 'human trafficking' and lamented the prospect of more to follow. 'International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to serious human rights violations such as torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,' the UN said in a statement. Nilakout was 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his murderous attack on Birte Pfleger's parents. In 2012, the US supreme court ruled that life without parole was unconstitutional for minors. After nearly 30 years behind bars, Nilakout became eligible for parole in 2022, despite a challenge from Pfleger, and was released from a California state prison the following year. He was picked up in Trump's mass deportation dragnet after the Republican president returned to the White House in January. Pfleger, now a history professor at Cal State University in Los Angeles, said she felt conflicted when she found out that Nilokaut had been deported to South Sudan. 'The moral dilemma here is that he should have never been let out of prison. But once he was released from prison, Ice should have been able to deport him, or he should have self-deported to Laos. But of course, what happened is he was put on a Gulfstream jet headed for South Sudan that violated a federal judge's orders to give notice. He and the others were denied due process,' she said. Pfleger continued: 'I am not involved in victims' rights organizations or anything like that. I have not gone to law school, but I have read the constitution and the history of it. And I think that due process rights are fundamental. And when they're no longer fundamental, we all have a problem.' The pain for Pfleger and her sister of losing their mother and their father being wounded having watched his wife get shot and being unable to help her persists, and the family had not expected Nilakout to be freed, she said, adding that her father, Klaus, is 93 and frail. My mom was everything to him,' she said. In a statement, the government of South Sudan cited 'the longstanding support extended by the United States' during its fight for independence and its post-independence development, for the latest cooperation. Between 2013 and 2016, a civil war killed 400,000 people in South Sudan. Earlier this year, the threat of a new war breaking out pushed the US embassy to issue a level 4 warning to Americans not to go to South Sudan because of crime, kidnapping and armed conflict there. The German government recently warned, via the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, posting on social media that: 'After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is again on the brink of civil war.' The UN commission on human rights in South Sudan warned 'We are witnessing an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won public progress.' The UN added that a humanitarian crisis was looming with half the country already suffering food insecurity and two million internally displaced, with a further two million having fled the violence to seek sanctuary in neighboring countries.
BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
DR Congo-Rwanda peace deal: How Trump wants US companies to cash in
The Trump administration is spearheading an ambitious, but controversial, peace initiative aimed at ending the long-running conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that has also drawn in neighbouring mediation efforts come as no surprise, as DR Congo - a nation in the heart of Africa - is endowed with the mineral wealth that the US requires to power the IT, and now AI, revolutions, much of which is currently going to President Donald Trump is expected to host the leaders of DR Congo and Rwanda - Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame - in the coming weeks to seal a peace agreement that he has hailed as a "glorious triumph", hoping to back it up with deals that will boost US investment in the region. US-based World Peace Foundation executive director Prof Alex de Waal told the BBC that the Trump administration was promoting "a new model of peace-making, combining a populist performance with commercial deal-making"."Trump has done this in Ukraine also. He wants to get the glory to boost his own political standing, and to secure minerals that are in America's interests," Prof De Waal said. However, he noted that "in DR Congo, China has already snapped up many of the minerals so the US is playing catch-up". He said that up to now US companies had been cautious about investing in DR Congo because of safety concerns and the "moral hazard" of dealing in so-called "blood minerals" - minerals financing rebellions - but this could change as the Trump administration implemented its peace De Waal said this could also happen in other conflict-hit states like Sudan, where the Trump administration - along with Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt - was expected to get involved in mediation efforts after previous initiatives failed. He added that the Trump administration's peace model could not be dismissed out of hand, especially if it stops fighting that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions of others in conflicts that have raged for more than 30 years in eastern DR Congo. "Trump can get the different sides to talk, and shake things up," Prof De Waal said. But Prof Hanri Mostert, an academic on mineral law at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, told the BBC that DR Congo "risked compromising sovereignty over its minerals". DR Congo could find itself locked into deals for years, in exchange for vague guarantees of security, she said. This was reminiscent of the "resource-bartering" deals pursued by China and Russia in numerous African states, Prof Mostert added. She cited as an example Angola, where China built infrastructure in exchange for oil."Even when oil prices went up, Angola couldn't get more value for it," Prof Mostert said. The US State Department said in 2023 that DR Congo had an estimated $25trn (£21.2trn) in mineral included cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese and tantalum - needed to make the electronic components used in computers, electric vehicles, mobile phones, wind turbines and military hardware."For how long will DR Congo have to give its cobalt to US investors? Will it be 20 years or 50 years? What is the price for peace?" Prof Mostert asked. DR Congo government spokesman Patrick Muyaya confirmed to the BBC's Newsday programme in March that his country wanted to supply the US with "some critical minerals" in exchange for a security M23 rebel group launched a major offensive early this year, seizing huge areas of eastern DR Congo and smuggling minerals across the border to Rwanda, UN experts said in a report earlier this month. The minerals were then mixed with Rwandan production, and "their subsequent export to downstream actors reached unprecedented levels", the UN experts added. Rwanda denies accusations that it backs the M23, even though the UN has provided evidence it has thousands of soldiers in DR phone, a rare metal and the war in DR CongoWhat's the fighting in DR Congo all about?The evidence that shows Rwanda is backing rebels in DR CongoIn what appears to be an attempt to address the issue of mineral smuggling, the US-brokered peace deal between DR Congo and Rwanda provides for a still-to-be negotiated "regional economic integration framework" between the two rival would "ensure illicit economic pathways are blocked" and "mutually beneficial partnerships and investment opportunities" created for "greater prosperity - especially for the region's population"."We're getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it," Trump said, ahead of the peace deal signed by representatives of the two governments on 27 June in Washington. A DR Congo researcher with the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies think-tank, Bram Verelst, told the BBC that the US initiative was running in tandem with another one being led by Qatar, a close US ally. Mr Verelst said the US's focus was mainly on the regional dimension, while Qatar's was on domestic issues between DR Congo's government and the M23 rebel group that has set up its own administration in the east after capturing the regional capital, Goma. Prof Jason Stearns, a Canada-based political scientist who specialises in the region, told the BBC that Qatar, like other oil-rich Gulf states, was expanding into Africa "to project power, influence, but also to seek economic opportunities". He added that it became involved in mediation efforts at the request of Rwanda, which perceived the US as being in favour of DR Congo, something Washington Stearns said Qatar had "massive" economic interests in Rwanda, pointing out that the Gulf state was building a new multi-billion dollar airport in Kigali and was in talks to acquire a 49% stake in the national airline. He explained that the US and Qatar were working closely together, but it was less than ideal to have two processes because "you don't want to end up in a situation where there is a peace deal between DR Congo and Rwanda, but Rwanda then says: 'We don't control the M23', and the M23 continues escalating [the conflict] in eastern DR Congo". "So it's very important that the two processes are tightly tied to each other since the actors are so closely linked," Prof Stearns added. Under the peace deal, DR Congo and Rwanda agreed to launch a "security co-ordination mechanism" within 30 days of the 27 June Verelst said that a ceasefire was expected to take effect on Tuesday, followed by the DR Congo government and the M23 signing a comprehensive peace agreement by 18 August, building on the "declaration of principles" they had already Congo-based International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank analyst Onesphore Sematumba said the US and Qatar were getting deals struck in "record time" since Trump's rise to the US presidency in January. Mr Sematumba said their intervention came after various Africa-led mediation efforts had "failed to get the parties to sign even a single document" since 2022. "Regional players do not have the same leverage to influence Kigali and Kinshasa," he added."But between the signing of an agreement and the achievement of peace, the road can be long, and it will be long in this case," Mr Sematumba warned. One key question is whether the M23 will give up the territory under its control, as demanded by Tshisekedi's Sematumba said the M23 had agreed to "state authority" being established across DR Congo, however, the rebels have also said they would not give up a "single centimetre" of land. "Personally, I think the transition should be gradual, and for certain areas there should be some kind of co-management. But everything will depend on the tact of the mediators, and their ability to break the ice," Mr Sematumba said the success of the peace initiative also hinged on what the agreement called the "lifting of defensive measures" by Rwanda, widely interpreted to mean the withdrawal of its troops from eastern DR Rwanda denies backing the M23, it says it wants to wipe out the FDLR, a militia born from those who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and then fled into DR Congo. Rwanda has accused the Congolese army of working with the peace deal spells out that the FDLR should be "neutralised", however this has been attempted several times over the past three decades."For Rwanda, the neutralisation of the FDLR is a precondition for the withdrawal of its forces, while DR Congo says the two must be achieved simultaneously," Mr Sematumba pointed out, saying that mediators would have to find a solution as these issues had led to the failure of previous peace initiatives."Just by following the different interpretations given by the parties to the texts signed, you can sense all the difficulties that lie ahead," Mr Sematumba said. Prof Mostert agreed that diplomacy on its own could not achieve peace, and a broader initiative was needed."You build peace by transforming pain. That takes more than diplomacy. It takes dialogue, decentralised participation and dignifying people's experiences," she said."That's why I believe it is important that the dealmakers and the lawmakers remain aware of historical traumas, including decades of resource exploitation," Prof Mostert if he wants the peace to hold for long enough for US companies to profit, Donald Trump may have to keep the pressure on for some time to come. Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Sky News
13 hours ago
- Sky News
Democratic Republic of Congo: At least 34 people killed after Islamic State-backed rebels attack Catholic church
Islamic State-backed rebels killed at least 34 people in an attack at a Catholic church in eastern Congo on Sunday, according to officials. A civil society leader in Komanda, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, told the AP news agency that the attack was believed to have been carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan Islamist rebel group. Dieudonne Duranthabo, civil society coordinator, said: "The bodies of the victims are still at the scene of the tragedy, and volunteers are preparing how to bury them in a mass grave that we are preparing in a compound of the Catholic church." He condemned the attack "in a town where all the security officials are present" before adding: "We demand military intervention as soon as possible, since we are told the enemy is still near our town." Other city officials told the Reuters news agency that 38 people were killed, 15 injured, and several others were still missing. Christophe Munyanderu, a human rights activist present at the scene in Komanda, said shots were heard overnight, but people at first thought it was thieves. "The rebels mainly attacked Christians who were spending the night in the Catholic church," he said. "Unfortunately, these people were killed with machetes or bullets." The ADF was formed by disparate small groups in Uganda in the late 1990s following alleged discontent with former president Yoweri Museveni. In 2002, following military assaults by Ugandan forces, the group moved its activities to the neighbouring DRC, and has since been responsible for the killings of thousands of civilians. According to a 2019 report on terrorism from the US Department of State, the ADF established ties with Islamic State in late 2018 It comes after at least five other people were killed in an attack on the nearby village of Machongani, where a search is ongoing. "They took several people into the bush," Lossa Dhekana, a civil society leader in Ituri province, told the AP, "we do not know their destination or their number".
