Nairobi — DR Congo: Sixty one people on death row in Kinshasa may soon be executed, despite assurances given to an Amnesty International delegation in August 1999 by the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that a moratorium on executions was in place.
Amnesty International urges President Laurent-Desire Kabila to grant a presidential pardon sparing the lives of the 61 prisoners on death row and to impose an immediate and binding moratorium on any further executions.
Many of the 61 men, who are on death row at the Centre penitentiaire et de reeducation de Kinshasa (CPRK), Kinshasa Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre, were reportedly convicted by a military court known as the Cour d'ordre militaire (COM), Military Order Court, of violent offences, including murder and armed robbery. At least one of them, Kasilibani Kabamba, was reportedly found guilty of treason. (Source: Amnesty Internation)
Southern Africa
Heavy rainfall in Southern Africa is causing flooding over large areas of Mozambique and South Africa. Mozambican government officials say tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee after their homes were destroyed by flooding in and around Maputo. The military have been called in to airlift foreign tourists cut off by floodwaters in the Kruger National Park, South Africa's biggest game reserve. The heaviest rains for 50 years are on their way west and are crossing the border into neighbouring Botswana. In South Africa, 15 people were reported to have drowned while trying to cross a swollen river in Northern Province, which together with neighbouring Mpumalanga province saw the worst of the flooding. (Source: BBC News)
Sierra leone
Sierra Leone will need to import 329,000 mt of cereals this year to make up for a shortfall and feed its roughly 4.5 million people, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) said in a report 4 February. Estimated imports for 1999 were 290,000 mt, 13 percent less than at present.
During the seven-year war, farmers lost their seeds, implements and other assets. There was large-scale destruction of infrastructure and rural instructions. Farm families have been displaced and labour is scarce, FAO said.
Senegal
Campaigning for Senegal's presidential elections on 27 February got off to a calm start on 6 February, news reports said.
The strongest of the seven candidates challenging the incumbent, Abdou Diouf, who has ruled Senegal since January 1981, is Abdoulaye Wade, a five-time presidential challenger. Wade heads a six-party opposition bloc known as Coalition pour l'Alternance 2000 (CA-2000) that includes his Parti democratique senegalais.
Diouf, who is on the ticket of the Parti socialiste, will also face his one- time information and interior minister, Djibo Ka, backed by the Union pour le Renouveau democratique. Other contenders include Moustapha Niasse, head of the Alliance des Forces de Progres, and former education minister Iba Der Thiam, head of the CDP/Garab-Gui party. (Source: IRIN)
Uganda
Raising tensions with the Roman Catholic church, rebels in eastern Congo accused Archbishop Emmanuel Kataliko of collaborating with Congo's president and refused to let him into the region they control on Saturday.
Airport authorities in the eastern rebel stronghold of Goma blocked Kataliko from disembarking from an aircraft and returning to his parish in Bukavu, where he is based, rebel spokesman Kin-Kiey Mulumba said.
Kataliko has been an outspoken critic of the rebels and their Rwandan allies, often accusing them of human rights violations.
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"He is not persona non grata. But he is not welcome in Bukavu until tensions there calm. He will be allowed back after some time," Mulumba said on the telephone from Goma, 60 miles north of Bukavu.
Kataliko was traveling from the capital, Kinshasa. He was forced to fly on to his native Bunia, in northern Congo, which is controlled by a different rebel faction.
The rebels had announced earlier in the week that they were planning to ban the archbishop. On Friday, the Catholic church in Kinshasa insisted that rebels had no right to do so. Church officials called his silencing an act of "war against freedom of expression, which conceals badly a new dictatorship under the cover of the rebellion." (Source: AP)
AFRICANEWS News & Views on Africa from Africa Koinonia Media Centre, P.O. Box 8034, Nairobi, Kenya email: amani@iol.it
