By Korir, Chief editor API

TO view the photos large scale click on them directly!

African Press International: Kenyan supporting their people at the ICC

If one has to go by what happened today in the ICC day 1 group 2 suspects case, then the prosecution has an uphill battle. The prosecution was attacked and humiliated, being told that their evidence holds no water. “Some of the statements may even have been written in restaurants by people looking for money from you”, Muthaura’s counsel Mr Kahn told the prosecutor.

African Press International: Uhuru with Kenyans at the ICC after the case adjourned

The three Kenyan leaders, baptised as suspects by Ocampo do not have a case to answer at all if one considers the way the prosecution is hiding their witnesses. Instead of being forthcoming with live witnesses in order to give the defence and the court the opportunity to cross-examine them, Ocampo has now chosen to use anonymous witnesses.

African Press International Photo. Mrs Kenyatta 3rd from left with Kenyans at the ICC who came to give moral support to Hon Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta

It seems Ocampo is forgetting that this case is destroying people’s lives, because as it is now there is no doubt that the prosecution has no solid evidence.

African Press International. Giving the suspects in Kenya case Moral support at the court

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African Press International. Giving the suspects in Kenya case Moral support at the court

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moral support, kenyans, chief editor, uhuru, and uphill battle.

By Korir, Chief editor, API

The court was told today that it is not the suspects who are on trial, but the prosecution. Ambassador Francis Muthaura who is suspect nr 1 in Kenya case 2 told the court that he is a man of integrity and a professional who has no time to entertain gangs who go on a murder spree killing innocent people.

He was angered by the prosecution who characterised him as man who loved violence.

http://www.africanpress.me video. Muthaura speaks to the court

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Muthaura talked of his mother and father who suffered during the fight for Kenya’s independence telling the court that he had learnt a lot in life and would wish no one harm. He narrated his professional career taking the court through his first job in Mombasa as administrator, the UN and the East African Community and now as the top man in Kenya’s civil service.

The court heard that he has worked for peace and not violence as the prosecutor wants the court to believe. When the prosecutor asked if the court would allow them to cross-examine him, the court told the prosecution that Muthaura was just making a statement. However, Muthaura reacted by telling the court that he was ready to be questioned if need be because he has nothing to hide.

Ambassador Muthaura’s statement to the court touched the Judges who sat watching as he explained what he has done for the world, especially when he was Kenya’s EU ambassador and UN Permanent representative for Kenya.

It was clear that the court started to see a man of integrity as he spoke about the good he did for a number of countries in Europe.

Muthaura told the court that Ocampo has not shown any respect at all, because if he had, then he should have taken a few minutes while in Nairobi to tell him (Muthaura) that he was a suspect. Muthaura told the court of his meetings with Ocampo in Kenya, and the number of times he had a chat with him (Ocampo) before escorting him (Ocampo) to his car, and at no time did Ocampo indicate to him that he was a suspect.

End

Photo: UNICEF

The Indonesian government is trying to encourage more widespread breastfeeding (file photo)

GENTENG PARAKAN,  – For Naslima, a mother of two in the fishing village of Genteng Parakan, there was never any doubt over how to feed her babies.

“It’s better to breastfeed than to give formula. Babies that breastfeed are healthy,” Naslima, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, told IRIN, outside a local health centre in Indonesia’s West Java Province.

Indeed, Naslima’s two daughters, now seven and 12, were rarely sick with diarrhoea and had a healthy weight, testament to the well-documented benefits of breast-milk.

But Naslima is also an exception in Indonesia. Exclusive breastfeeding is rare in the world’s fourth most populated nation; a source of concern for a country that suffers from high rates of malnutrition and stunting among children.

Only 14 percent of Indonesian babies are exclusively breastfed, according to the Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey from 2002 and 2003. A more recent survey conducted by the Health Ministry showed rates of breastfeeding dropping by 10 percent between 2007 and 2008.

In fact, in larger urban areas where Indonesian women have higher levels of disposable income or are working, an increasing number favour formula over breastfeeding.

“When they see the ads on TV that say formula A has DHA and vitamins, mothers think it is better,” Elin Liani, a midwife said, referring to docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid, which occurs naturally in breast-milk and is considered important for brain and eye development.

In a bid to reduce the influence of formula companies on women, and more importantly, reduce the high levels of infant and child mortality and malnutrition, Indonesia will soon pass regulations that prevent milk formula companies from targeting babies younger than one.

Although a law promoting exclusive breastfeeding has been in place since 2009, it lacks any penalties for violations. The new regulations will lay out exactly what those penalties will be and require employers to allow mothers regular breastfeeding breaks.

Moreover, it penalizes anyone who “intentionally hampers exclusive breastfeeding” with jail terms of up to one year or maximum fines of US$32,000, Iip Syaiful, a nutrition expert from the Ministry of Health, said.

The fines and punishments, which could come into effect as early as the end of September, are currently under review by the Justice and Human Rights Ministry.

The government estimates some 30,000 young children could be saved if their mothers exclusively breastfed them for six months, then continued breastfeeding with supplemental foods until the age of two.

Studies suggest wider promotion of exclusive breastfeeding could prevent 1.4 million child deaths under the age of five, as well as improve child nutrition, a 2008 Lancet report said. 

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 37 percent of Indonesian children suffer from moderate stunting, which delays a child’s mental and physical development and makes children more susceptible to other diseases.

Formula companies adjust

But according to infant formula company SGM - part of the French food conglomerate Danone and one of Indonesia’s largest sellers of infant and toddler milk and foods – the new regulations will not affect its marketing strategy, as it has already modified its TV advertisements to only feature babies older than one.

The Health Ministry admitted many health workers had not received the knowledge about the importance of exclusive breastfeeding

“We’ve been doing this for quite some time, only advertising our growing-up milk, which is for babies one year and above,” Arif Mujahidin, communications manager for SGM, maintained.

Over the past three years, sales of infant formula have dropped in Indonesia, while sales of milk for one-to-five-year-olds have grown steadily, he added.

In 2010, Indonesia’s infant formula market was valued at $136 million, with zero growth from 2009 to 2010, while the country’s growing-up milk market was worth $1.15 billion in 2010, a growth of 9 percent on 2009, according to AC Nielsen data.

Questions of influence

But despite the 2009 law banning health professionals from promoting formula and handing out formula to new mothers, the practice remains rife, breastfeeding activists say.

“In the hospitals they give the women formula straight away if they have any problems at all breastfeeding. I never hear them tell women in the first three days, ‘don’t worry if your milk hasn’t come in, it will’,” Eka Yuliana, a community breast-feeding promoter with Bumi Sehat, a Bali NGO, said, referring to the small amounts of breast milk women typically produce just after birth.

“If doctors would support breastfeeding 100 percent, that would be better,” Yuliana added. She believes doctors have been unduly influenced by the formula companies’ marketing as well.

The Health Ministry admitted many health workers had “not received the knowledge about the importance of exclusive breastfeeding”.

mk/ds/mw  source www.irinnews.org

Photo: Courtesy UNHCR

Of the 9,500 Congolese in Gabon, at least 692 had crossed the border to return to Congo by 1 September (file photo)

BRAZZAVILLE,  – The refugee status of 9,500 people from the Republic of Congo, who have been in neighbouring Gabon since the late 1990s, expired on 31 July, but many are still reluctant to return home.

“Many want to go home but are worried about conditions. We have no houses, no work. Soon it’s back to school and we worry about our children’s education,” said Philippe Vangou, head of a large family, a recent returnee to Brazzaville, the Congo capital.

As of 1 September, of the 9,500 refugees, at least 692 had crossed the border to return to Congo by land and air. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) registered 553 returns in August.

“UNHCR is organizing repatriation, from registration formalities to departure,” said Philippe Bateza, a UNHCR protection officer in Brazzaville, noting that since the signing in 2001 of a tripartite agreement between Gabon, Congo and UNHCR on repatriation, only 2,609 have returned.

“The Congolese authorities… want to reinvigorate the process,” he said.

“So far, 1,700 applications for residence permits – for about 3,500 people – have been lodged with the Gabonese authorities,” UNHCR public information officer Daniela Livia Biciu told IRIN.

“When you count, you find that the number of undecided people is still very significant. What will most of these people decide to do? The next two months will allow us to identify the trend,” Gabriel Ontsira, director of humanitarian information at the Congolese Ministry of Humanitarian Action, told IRIN.

Almost all the Congolese refugees fled to Gabon after several civil wars, which rocked southern and southwestern Congo in 1997-2003. They were chased out of the Bouenza, Niari and Lékoumou areas where armed groups clashed with government forces.

“About 65 percent of returnee children were born during the exile of their parents,” said UNHCR.

Photo: OCHA/Reliefweb

Map of the ROC

To encourage the return of their citizens, the Congolese authorities have had an amnesty in place since 1999 for people who took an active part in the war.

Accommodation problem

“We came back home. We were received by our families but there is a big accommodation problem because in the intervening period our families have grown,” a 39-year-old refugee near Dolisie (Congo’s third-largest city), who wanted to be known only as Paul, told IRIN.

“Not everything is going as we would have wished. It’s a start. We are learning to live again. I think we will eventually adapt,” he added. 

“For many, the family has grown and become a great burden,” said Ontsira.

UNHCR is providing the equivalent of US$200 per adult and $100 per child “to help them make ends meet in the first few days”, said Bateza.

The Congolese government has set aside 300 million CFA francs ($600,000) to help the refugees.

With regard to reintegration, the government claims to have taken all the necessary measures.

“Officials are received by their former local authorities, and their salary arrears are paid; and the same goes for pensioners,” said Ontsira.

lmm/cb/mw source www.irinnews.org

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

The entrance to the demobilization and reintegration commission in Mutobo, Rwanda

MUTOBO, 15 September 2011 (IRIN) – Mutobo is a half-way house between war and peace, where about 9,000 ex-combatants have been processed since 2001 as part of the reintegration of armed militia members from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) into Rwandan society.

For the thousands who have returned, most of whom had not been home since the 1994 genocide, the journey by truck from the demobilization facility in the eastern DRC city of Goma to Mutobo, about 10km west of Ruhrengeri, is a novelty.

Colonel Abraham Bisengimana, 42, a former officer in the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) and a combatant in the eastern DRC with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) since 1997, told IRIN: “We had to walk everywhere, there are no roads there. And if there are, it is too dangerous because of MONUSCO [UN Stabilization Mission in DRC]. We just had to walk to wherever we were going.”

Since his arrival with the 40th intake of the Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Commission (RDRC) earlier this year, his greatest luxury is to allow his mind to wander.

“During war, the only thing you can think about is war. But not here. Here you can think of anything. I can get a passport. I can travel, because I am back in my own country now. Before, I was confined,” Bisengimana said.

More than 17 years after the 100-day genocide that resulted in the deaths of about 800,000 Tutsis (85 percent of the Tutsi population according to the genocide museum in the capital Kigali) and moderate Hutus, the RDRC is a stepping stone home for those who fled to the DRC militias.

Mutobo comprises corrugated iron dormitories with double-bunk beds – with a capacity to house several hundred people – a large lecture hall, kitchen facilities and an administration block, all below a cliff from which people were hurled to their deaths during the genocide.

Augustin Habyaremye: “I don’t want this life anymore”

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

GOMA, 16 September 2011 (IRIN) – At 15, Augustin Habyaremye was forcibly recruited into one of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) armed groups, the Mai-Mai PARECO, but thanks to his aptitude for languages, he soon rose through the ranks to become a sub-lieutenant in the militia’s intelligence section. Full report

Situated close to the road to Kigali, the property is unfenced and the nearby community tend to their fields and livestock a few metres away from where the ex-combatants go about their daily routines. They rise at 5am and lights-out is at 10pm and on Sundays they are allowed to visit relatives, distance permitting.

Every ex-combatant, including from the FDLR, DRC army, defunct FAR and Mai-Mai militias, is required to go through the facility’s three-month reintegration process that provides classes in history, national security, nation-building and reconciliation, geography, the electoral system, HIV/AIDS prevention, malaria and entrepreneurial skills.

The 790 child soldiers who have returned to Rwanda since 2001 are sent to Muhazi, near Kigali.

Bisengimana, who joined FAR in 1989, fought against the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the kernel of the country’s post-genocide government, in the early 1990s and in the late 1990s returned to the country in covert FDLR raids, said: “History taught by the former government [pre-1994] education system was about the bad history of kings before independence [from Belgium in 1962]. Now we are taught [by the RDRC] the bad history of the former [pre-1994] government.

“But what we see is the good intentions of this government. The good things being done compared to what was done by others [governments]. That is important… This Hutu, Tutsi thing is useless. When I left, there were not many roads or houses being built. From what existed before, the country is developing very fast,” Bisengimana said.

Sorting soldiers from civilians

A former member of the Gendarmerie in pre-1994 Rwanda, Clemence Benemariya, 48, ended up in the Republic of Congo, married a national, had three children, practised subsistence farming and “lived a normal life”, she said. When her husband died recently, she had a yearning to return to Rwanda and she and her children were repatriated by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Unaware of the demobilization process, she and her children went to live with relatives in south-west Rwanda. But after a few weeks in the country, a member of the local authority told her she had to attend the Mutobo course, because of her military background.

Becoming a civilian is a compulsory rite of passage in post-genocide Rwanda, but there are some civilians trying to disguise themselves as ex-combatants to be eligible for Mutobo.

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The journey home from war

Although nearly all arriving at Mutobo have been screened by the demobilization facility in Goma, Jean-Marie Turabumukra, the RDRC deputy manager, told IRIN each new arrival was subjected to “fine screening” to separate out the civilians who hoped to sneak into the programme under false pretences.

The process identifies about three out of every 10 “potential clients” as civilians attempting to take advantage of the programme’s opportunities and the US$100 that forms part of the reintegration package, Turabumukra said.

Those identified as civilians are given transport home.

Turabumukra readily admits part of the function of the RDRC is the “psychological demobilization” of ex-combatants, while critics have called it an “indoctrination process”.

“People have been in the bush for 17 years and are provided a certain view of Rwanda. They are told they will be killed if they come here. We take a friendly approach. People must know what happened and why they went into the bush. This is about a new image of the country, for a new society,” he said.

Most people who have land return to it, but by the time they leave, must have “elaborated a small business project”, Turabumukra said. “If they have problems with paying medical fees or other things, they can get assistance.”

Rule by fear

The ex-combatants return to a society lauded and lambasted in equal measure.

On the one hand, access to health and education and a growing economy – rural internet access in Rwanda is reputedly better than in rural Britain – has given it a reputation as a model developmental state.

But human rights organizations consistently highlight heavy-handed state repression, alleged extra-judicial killings – domestically and internationally – by state security operatives, the effective banning of independent opposition parties and widespread press censorship.

Despite an outward appearance of calm, Rwanda is a fragile country ruled by fear

Kagame’s RPF won 93 percent of the vote in the August 2010 election, the second poll since the controversial 2002 “Divisionism” legislation, which provides for hefty prison terms and fines for sowing discord between Hutus and Tutsis, but detractors cite it as vague and used by Kagame’s government to suppress political dissent and opposition.

In a Human Rights Watch report: Time for a Review of UK Policy on Rwanda, published in July 2011, the author Carina Tertsakian, a senior researcher in the Africa Division, notes: “Despite an outward appearance of calm, Rwanda is a fragile country ruled by fear.”

One Kigali resident, who was six at the time of the mass killings and declined to be identified, told IRIN conversations between Hutus and Tutsis remained guarded, more than 17 years later.

Life as a civilian

Safari Martin, 44, a former Lt-Colonel in the FDLR, uses his military alias when meeting IRIN in Kigali. He graduated from Mutobo a year ago. The former FDLR battalion commander of 400 troops said the pain of the two-year separation from his wife and two children – whom he had sent to live in Uganda – was one of the prime motivations to leave, as were divisions within the armed militia group.

“I have had telephone calls [from the FDLR in the DRC] calling me a deserter. If the FDLR see me, they will kill me. To them I am a traitor,” he said.

Martin has been looking for work since leaving Mutobo and even if he were offered a job in the Rwandan army would not accept it, he said. “I do business, petty commerce,” but declined to elaborate.

His 32-year-old wife is studying for a diploma and Martin scrapes together his family’s monthly expenses for accommodation, school fees for his seven year-old daughter and crèche payments for his four-year-old son, mostly through the generosity of his friends.

“If I have food for the month, that is good,” he said. “I regret nothing. I am in Rwanda, with my family and friends. My ambition is to study and educate my children. And if I have work, I will be happy. Life is difficult, but it is passable.”

go/mw source www.irinnews.org