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Year: 2024

Police say 20 abducted Nigerian medical students freed

Police say 20 abducted Nigerian medical students freed

The students were on their way to a convention in Benue State when they were kidnapped by gunmen. Twenty Nigerian medical students who were kidnapped on their way to a convention have been freed more than a week after their abduction, police said. Gunmen seized the students on August 15 as they travelled to a conference in Benue State, in the centre of the country, and later demanded a ransom. “We confirm the release on Friday of our brothers and sisters and some other Nigerians who have been in captivity in Ntunkon forest, Benue State,” Nigerian police spokesman Olumuyiwa Adejobi said on Saturday. State police said in a statement that they had “confirmed the release of the 20 students from the University of Maiduguri and University of Jos”. The students were freed “without any ransom paid”. The group was “rescued tactically and professionally”, according to Adejobi. The country’s police chief had this week deployed a “tactical squad” in Benue State as part of efforts to find the latest victims of a rising wave of abductions in Africa’s most populous country. Fortune Olaye, secretary-general of the Nigerian Medical Students’ Association (NIMSA), also confirmed the release to the AFP news agency. “We’ve spoken to them on the phone. They are safe,” Olaye said. The students were abducted while on the road in a convoy of two buses near the town of Otukpo, less than 150km (93 miles) from Enugu, which often witnesses attacks and kidnappings. Armed gangs have been kidnapping villagers, students and motorists for ransom in northern Nigeria, with security forces unable to end the practice. Thousands of people are abducted for ransom in Nigeria each year, though there are few reliable statistics as many cases are not reported. Cases of kidnapping have increased significantly due to a severe economic crisis which is pushing more people towards crime. The Nigerian consultancy, SBM Intelligence, said it had recorded 4,777 kidnappings in the country between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu taking power in May 2023 and January 2024. Adblock test (Why?)

Philippines demands China halt ‘dangerous actions’ in South China Sea

Philippines demands China halt ‘dangerous actions’ in South China Sea

The Philippines accuses China of firing flares at one of its aircraft as it patrolled over the contested waterway. The Philippines has demanded that China “cease all provocative and dangerous actions” after accusing it of recently firing at aircraft conducting patrols over the South China Sea. The same aircraft also “faced harassment” from a Chinese jet fighter while on a surveillance flight near Scarborough Shoal on August 19, the Philippines’s South China Sea Task Force said on Saturday in a statement. The two nations have had heightened maritime confrontations in recent months, causing fears of a conflict that could draw in the United States, a military ally of the Philippines. “Such actions undermine regional peace and security, and further erode the image of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] with the international community,” the interagency task force said. The aircraft, which belonged to the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), in coordination with the coastguard, monitors and intercepts poachers encroaching on the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone. The task force said the Chinese jet fighter, which was not provoked, deployed flares multiple times “at a dangerously close distance” from the BFAR aircraft. “Its actions demonstrated hazardous intent that jeopardized the safety of the personnel onboard the BFAR aircraft,” the task force said. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said it conducted “countermeasures” against two Philippine military aircraft that flew into its airspace over Subi Reef – a fishing atoll that China has transformed into a militarised island base – on August 22, but did not comment on the August 19 event. The incidents come the same week as the both countries accused each other of ramming vessels and other dangerous actions in the South China Sea, among the world’s busiest trade routes. Tensions have been escalating between the two despite them reaching a deal in July to better manage some maritime disputes to “restore trust” and “rebuild confidence”. China claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, and has a number of coastguard vessels in the waters to protect what it considers its territory. The Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Brunei all contest China’s claims. An international tribunal in 2016 said China’s claim has no basis under international law, awarding a landmark victory to the Philippines which filed the case. China has built seven artificial islands in the South China Sea, equipping them with radar, runways and surface-to-air missiles. It has bristled at military deployments by the US and its allies in the disputed region, saying their presence is a danger to regional security. Adblock test (Why?)

Black freedom has never been on the ballot

Black freedom has never been on the ballot

I almost wish someone would ask us: how does it feel to be a pit stop? To be a refuelling station where sputtering-out political campaigns pull up to receive a laying on of hands; where a Black baritone reverend holds the president’s shoulder and between benedictions issues forth some version of the declaration that “We know Joe”? And that president passes the torch to a Black candidate who can siphon Black popular culture and sponge down a government busy giving standing ovations to the Butcher of Gaza. I almost wish someone would ask before the politicians slip off their oxfords: how does it feel to know that they are only here for the night? To know (what is by now an open secret) that although they promise that we are in this together they have only stopped by to use us. To make us promises and then dart off to fundraising dinners before we can whisper, “Hush now, don’t explain.” Is it not time, now, to refuse to be ping-ponged between those who stand with genocidaires and those who dream of a day of retribution for our surviving them? Can we not saddle up and build a world away from those who dance to our music in the clubs but turn us away at the entrance? Who shoot us when we call for help and circulate minstrel memes of our killed as if they were digital lynching postcards? Why resign ourselves to wait for the enlightenment of evil? To be mules beaten from four years to four years, promised this time really “change is gonna come” as the Earth shrivels, Nazis are inspired, and presidential candidates openly challenge one another to golf. This time will not be different. It is either victory for the lynch mob who marched on the Capitol building with nooses and Confederate battle flags, or those who ask us to look past the slurs they spit at us to “what we have in common”. It is a battle between those who celebrate the reimposition of castration as punishment in a carceral system that disproportionately arrests and sentences Black people and those who are proud to “prosecute the case”.  It will be “triumph of the will” or “Be quiet about the genocide. I’m speaking.” The US has proven itself to be a state where a leftist Black candidate who is not accountable, first and foremost, to white liberals is unelectable. The daring few who speak up against ethnic cleansing abroad are cane-hooked from the stage by Super PACs. As for the rest, if they pay lip service to our liberation, it is openly confessed by their surrogates that this is a trick to gain our support and that they will eventually “pivot” to the centre. That is, after teasing freedom they will move closer to the people who ridicule “wokeness” – ie Black conscious scepticism about the good intentions of the settler-colony – and who prefer the more sober soap box proselytising about the deep state and secret, globalist, Jewish conspiracies in their fake Viking helmets. US electoral politics remain hostile to Black liberation. While racists bask in the likely return of a president who promises to be their “retribution”, no Black candidate can win if they utter a word about reparations for slavery, or agree that Black Lives Matter, or make statements seen as sympathetic to the Defund the Police movement. Criticising the inflated budgets of institutions that hire and protect the men and women who shoot us in our nightgowns and leave us to die on our kitchen floors when we call them for help is toxic in a US political campaign. Yet we are asked to be excited. Thrilled about representation and Black “ascendancy” into the degeneracy of colonial office. Happy for Eric Adams despite his fight to keep solitary confinement in prisons. For Barack Obama despite his imperialist wars. Kamala Harris despite her perp-walking parents of “truant” children. Cornel West despite his love will find a way. Tim Scott. Should such a system that punishes any agenda for Black freedom be rewarded with Black energy? Should we still accept as wise the maxim that “progress is slow” when Nazism makes gains overnight? Should we accept to stand by the door, cap in hand, as they speed by in their motorcades? To be lectured, again, about pragmatism? To be told that we must place our hope in a society where one cannot win an election without appealing to racists? Vote if you must, why not? But this time, when we close the voting booth’s curtain, perhaps we should pivot as well. And turn our backs on a system that still sees our liberation as a liability. Reorient our political identity towards the rising Black anticolonial internationalism that does not, after promising to fight racism, shift to winning over racists. That seeks not to “make our voices against lynching heard” but to make those who would lynch hesitate. We must push past the merry-go-round of leaders that say every four years “This is our time” then “We must wait more”. We must pour that snake oil out onto the road. No more waiting on the messiah Democrat politician. None seeks to be our “retribution”. Patience has only led us to the gate of lynch mob rule. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Adblock test (Why?)