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By David Robie
This article was published in Asia-Pacific Report and is being republished with the author's permission.
SUVA, Fiji, 6 March 2023 (IDN) — Two countries. A common border. Two hostage crises. But the responses of both Asia-Pacific nations have been like chalk and cheese.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK | OUAGADOUGOU, 6 March 2023 (IDN) — In the bad old days of French colonial rule, Africans were forbidden from making films. As a result, one of the first films ever produced by an African "Afrique-sur-Seine" (Africa on the Seine), was made in Paris in 1955 by students. Among them was Paulin Soumanou Vieyra from Benin, now considered a pioneer of African cinema.
By Kalinga Seneviratne
SUVA, Fiji 6 March 2023 (IDN) — Alarmed at Japan’s plans to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean regional leaders are calling upon the Japanese government to immediately call a stop to such plans.
Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Fisheries and Marine Resources, Jelta Wong, said on Monday (6 March) “there is little doubt that this nuclear wastewater will find its way into ecosystems and food chains, so contaminating people and also harming Pacific fisheries industries”.
By Farai Shawn Matiashe
MUTARE, Zimbabwe, 5 March 2023 (IDN) — Every morning as Mercy Mubatsa fetches water from a tap outside her home in Penhalonga, a mining area 263 kilometres (163 miles) outside the Zimbabwean capital Harare, her anxiety is heightened.
In March last year, mercury and cyanide deposits from artisanal gold mines in Penhalonga were detected in Lake Alexander, about 32 kilometres from the mines, that supply water to her home.
By Azu Ishiekwene
The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP newspaper based in Abuja, Nigeria.
ABUJA, 3 March 2023 (IDN) — The last thing he wants to hear is that he desires anything other than what is good for Nigeria. Hero of Nigeria’s civil war; a former military president who supervised the first-post-war transition to civilian rule; two-term civilian president; and a much sought-after African leader, Olusegun Obasanjo considers it beneath his status to suggest he can sometimes be wrong about his choices for the country.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK | ABUJA, 2 March 2023 (IDN) — An error-filled election exercise witnessed countrywide and worldwide marred Nigeria’s much-awaited national polls, leaving the victory by the ruling party candidate stained by the stench of corruption and dubious validity.
Held on February 25 using the supposedly secure Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), polling stations had uploaded only two-thirds of the 36 states reporting results by February 28 evening, angering those who had waited hours on line to cast their vote.
By Alon Ben-Meir*
The following is the third instalment in a series of three articles. The first addressed how Israel lost its way, the second dealt with how the Palestinians lost their way. The following article offers a way out of their 75-year-old bloody and perilous conflict.
NEW YORK, 2 March 2023 (IDN) — It is time for Israel and the Palestinians to face the bittersweet truth and accept certain realities on the ground that neither side can change short of a calamity. These inescapable realities will frame the contours of a peace agreement in the context of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation.
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, 2 March 2023 (IDN) — When the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on 23 February calling on Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally” withdraw all of its military forces from Ukraine and the cessation of hostilities, the vote was 141 in favour, 32 abstentions and seven against.
Besides Russia, the six “noes” included Belarus, North Korea, Mali, Eritrea, Nicaragua and Syria, the only Middle Eastern country openly supportive of the invasion.
By Jeffrey Moyo
CAPETOWN, South Africa, 01 March 2023 (IDN) — Thirty-seven-year-old Lwandile Zwane of Khayelitsha and her two daughters have their super by 4 pm to beat the six-hour electricity outage across Capetown.
Characterized by slum settlements, Khayelitsha is a township in South Africa’s Cape Town where power outages have not spared many poor South Africans as the African country contends with energy shortages.
By Neville de Silva*
LONDON, 01 March 2023 (IDN) — Apocryphal or not, France’s Bourbon king Louis XIV is attributed to have said “l’etat, c’est moi” (I am the State). These words reflect the era of France’s pre-revolution tyranny.
Thankfully Sri Lanka has not descended to such state tyranny—not yet, some might say—though signs of repression that clamp down on liberty, equality and fraternity (as the French revolutionaries would have said) are not hard to discern even as the economic stranglehold on a struggling people continues to tighten and the country’s professionals leave our shores in droves in search of a better tomorrow.
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