IBB backs calls for creation of state police
General Babangida who made the observation in an interview with Channels
Television in Minna said the solution to the problem is dialogue and
perseverance. The former president also threw his weight behind the calls for the
establishment of state police, saying that the fears being entertained
in certain quarters for the creation of state police were unfounded. “Left to me, the whole essence of governance is to provide adequate
security for the people and in whatever way this is achieved, it is
acceptable. I don’t think what happened in the 50s should continue to
haunt us. We should try to move on. “When we were there, we established the National Guards that was so
vilified and was later dropped. Why should we think that what happened
in the 50s when the regional police were used to intimidate members of
the opposition political parties will continue to happen under the
present dispensation.
“I don’t think the incumbent governors can use state police to intimidate anybody. Honestly, the fear is unfounded.” General Babangida expressed optimism that the country will overcome
the present security challenges rocking some parts of the country saying
that the country had overcome similar crisis in the past and can still
do it again. While calling for support from the federal government in tackling the
raising security problem, he appealed to Nigerians not to allow the
present crisis to divide the country along ethnic line.
He also enjoined the Nigerian media practitioners to stop giving
prominence to those suggesting the break-up of Nigeria and described the
call on President Goodluck Jonathan to resign as laughable.
Russian judge sentences Pussy Riot trio to two years in jail
The
trio from punk bad Pussy Riot, handcuffed in a courtroom cage, reacted
with giggles and one rolled her eyes when the judge issued the sentences
after reading the guilty verdict for almost three hours. A man in the courtroom shouted “Shame!” and hundreds of protesters
outside the Moscow courthouse repeated that chant and whistled when news
of the sentence came. “They are in jail because it is Putin’s personal revenge,” opposition
leader Alexei Navalny said in the courtroom. “This verdict was written
by Vladimir Putin”. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina
Samutsevich, 30, were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious
hatred for performing a “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour
Cathedral. They called on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin.
The defendants said they were protesting against close ties between
Putin and the Russian Orthodox church and did not intend to offend
believers, but the judge rejected those arguments. Prosecutors had requested three-year sentences. The two-year
sentences include the nearly six months served since the defendants were
jailed following the February 21 protest.
Mine “bloodbath” shocks post-apartheid S.Africa
Newspaper
headlines screamed “Bloodbath”, “Killing Field” and “Mine Slaughter”,
with graphic photographs of heavily armed white and black police
officers walking casually past the bloodied corpses of black men lying
crumpled in the dust. The images, along with Reuters television footage of a phalanx of
officers opening up with automatic weapons on a small group of men in
blankets and t-shirts, rekindled uncomfortable memories of South
Africa’s racist past. Police chief Riah Phiyega confirmed 34 dead and 78 injured after
officers moved in against 3,000 striking drill operators armed with
machetes and sticks and massed on a rocky outcrop at the mine, 100 km
(60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. Phiyega, a former banking executive who was only appointed to lead
the police force in June, said officers had acted in self-defence
against charging, armed assailants at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum plant. “The police members had to employ force to protect themselves from
the charging group,” she told a news conference, noting that two
policemen had been hacked to death by a mob at the mine on Tuesday. However, the South African Institute of Race relations likened the
incident to the 1960 Sharpeville township massacre near Johannesburg,
when apartheid police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters,
killing more than 50.
“Obviously the issues that have led to this are not the same as the
past, but the response and the outcome is very similar,” research
manager Lucy Holborn told Reuters. In a front page editorial, the Sowetan newspaper questioned what had
changed since 1994, when Nelson Mandela overturned three centuries of
white domination to become South Africa’s first black president. “It has happened in this country before where the apartheid regime
treated black people like objects,” the paper, named after South
Africa’s biggest black township, said. “It is continuing in a different
guise now.” President Jacob Zuma cut short a visit to a regional summit in
neighbouring Mozambique to head to the mine. Zuma, who faces an internal
leadership election in his ruling African National Congress (ANC) in
December, said he was “shocked and dismayed” at the violence, but made
no comment on the police behaviour. “We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any
dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law
or violence,” he said in a statement. Despite promises of a better life for all South Africa’s 50 million
people, the ANC has struggled to provide basic services to millions in
poor black townships. Efforts to redress the economic inequalities of apartheid have had
mixed results, and the mining sector comes in for particular criticism
from radical ANC factions as a bastion of “white monopoly capital”.
POLICE PRESENCE
As dawn broke, hundreds of police patrolled the dusty plains around
the Marikana mine, which was forced to shut down this week because of a
rumbling union turf war that has hit the platinum sector this year.
“There were no problems overnight. The problem is the hill over there
where the shooting took place. I am not sure what will happen today,”
said Patience, a woman who lives in a nearby shanty town. She declined
to give her full name.
Crime scene investigators combed the site of the shooting, which was
cordoned off with yellow tape, collecting spent cartridges and the slain
miners’ bloodstained traditional weapons – machetes and spears.
Six firearms were recovered, including a service revolver from one of the police officers killed earlier in the week. Prior to Thursday, 10 people had died in nearly a week of conflict
between rival unions at what is Lonmin’s flagship plant. The
London-headquartered company has been forced to shut down all its South
African platinum operations, which account for 12 percent of global
output. South Africa is home to 80 percent of the world’s known reserves of
platinum, a precious metal used in vehicle catalytic converters. Rising
power and labour costs and a steep decline this year in the price have
left many mines struggling to stay afloat.
Although the striking Marikana miners were demanding huge pay hikes,
the roots of the trouble lie in a challenge by the upstart Association
of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) to the 25-year dominance of
the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a close ANC ally. “There is clearly an element in this that a key supporter of the ANC –
the NUM – has come under threat from these protesting workers,” said
Nic Borain, an independent political analyst. AMCU leaders have been criticised for telling the striking miners –
many of whom are barely literate – that they were “prepared to die”
rather than move from their protest hill. Pre-crackdown footage of dancing miners waving machetes and licking
the blades of home-made spears raised questions about the habitual use
of violence in industrial action 18 years after the end of apartheid. “This culture of violence and protest, it must somehow be changed,”
said John Robbie, a prominent Johannesburg radio host. “You can’t act
like a Zulu impi in an industrial dispute in this day and age,” he said,
using the Zulu word for armed units. World platinum prices spiked nearly 3 percent on Thursday as the full
extent of the violence became clear, and rose again on Friday to a
5-week high above $1,450 an ounce. Lonmin shares in London and Johannesburg fell more than 5 percent to
4-year lows at Friday’s market open, although later trimmed their
losses. Overall, they have shed nearly 15 percent since the violence
began a week ago.
Source:www.channelstv.com
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