DIÁRIO DA ÁFRICA

CULTURA ANGOLANA

2012-01-14T11:22:00.000-02:00

Material produzido pelo amigo António Cascais.

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NA ÁFRICA DO SUL, O RACISMO CONTINUA

2012-01-11T19:13:00.001-02:00

Reportagem do Telegraph.

Para assistir, clique aqui.

MANUEL VICENTE E KOPELIPA A CONTAS COM A JUSTIÇA

2012-01-06T11:13:00.003-02:00

Texto do Rafael Marques de Morais:

http://makaangola.org/2012/01/manuel-vicente-e-kopelipa-a-contas-com-a-justica/

Kabila declared winner of DR Congo poll - Africa - Al Jazeera English

2011-12-09T19:32:00.000-02:00

Kabila declared winner of DR Congo poll - Africa - Al Jazeera English

PROTESTOS EM ANGOLA

2011-12-08T20:00:00.000-02:00

reprodução do site Democracy in Africa.

PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTS IN ANGOLA

In recent weeks Angola has been rocked by protests against the MPLA government that have been violently suppressed. Here we provide a summary of recent events based on news stories, eye-witness reports, and blog entries.

Saturday 3 December saw the latest in a succession of youth demonstrations in the Angolan capital, Luanda, which since the start of the year have highlighted poverty and called for President José Eduardo dos Santos to step down after 32 years in office. Saturday’s demonstration began in Cazenga, a neighbourhood that forms part of the expanse of slum housing that is home to most of Luanda’s five million or so residents. The organisers had obtained permits for the march.

A participant in the march wrote on a blog (http://centralangola7311.net/) that at 9 am, when just a small group of demonstrators had assembled in Cazenga, they were attacked by plain-clothes thugs known as “kaenches”, who seized demonstrators’ placards as uniformed police looked on. The march set off around 1 pm and was blocked by a police cordon, but the marchers managed to get around this. They were stopped again at a better-organised cordon some 100 metres further on.

Video taken during the march shows people calling for “health and education” and chanting “Dos Santos, thief, the people don’t want you”. During the stand-off with the police, demonstrators shouted “the police belong to the people, not to the MPLA”, and “the police are hungry, Dos Santos has already eaten”.

At this point, according to the blog, a vehicle, a Toyota Prado, drove into the crowd of demonstrators from behind, knocking over and injuring one man. Demonstrators retaliated by attacking a police car that was behind the Prado, and broke the drivers’ side window. The demonstrators then negotiated with the police and showed them the letter of permission they obtained. The police were unable to produce any written instructions to negate the legality of the march. During this impasse, more “kaenches” started to assemble behind the police lines.

“When their moment came, they acted in a concerted manner: some sprayed the demonstrators’ eyes with a homemade liquid to cause burning and temporary blindness, while others grabbed the demonstrator and laid into him with punches and kicks, one again under the unconcerned eyes of the police,” the blog reports.

According to a witness, the six people leading the march, Carbono Casimiro, Brigadeiro Mata Frakus, Sampaio Liberdade, Libertador, Luamba, Adolfo Pedro, were singled out for beating. They were also sprayed in the face with a substance that caused dizziness and fainting. They were taken to hospital, and returned an hour later. At least three people were seen bleeding as a result of having been beaten by the police.

According to the blog: “Panic set in, and the demonstrators began to stampede, throwing stones and bottles at the attackers. We split up into small groups and went to regroup at Largo de Independência” – a square on the edge of the city centre. The blogger also reports that another group of marchers, who gathered in the São Paulo neighbourhood on the other side of the city centre, also came under attack, and a disabled man was thrown out of his wheelchair.

When a much-reduced number of demonstrators arrived at Largo de Independência, they again came under attack from police.

Four journalists were taken to the Operations Unit of the National Police in Luanda. The Voice of America Portuguese Service named them as Rafael Marques (independent journalist, researcher and blogger), Isabel João and António Paulo (from the paper Novo Jornal), and Coque Mukuta (from Rádio Despertar – the radio station run by the opposition party UNITA). They were later released on the orders of the provincial commander of police. Lisa Rimli, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, was among those sprayed with the noxious substance in the face and eyes.

Pictures and video along with the full eyewitness account in Portuguese can be seen at http://centralangola7311.net/

Before the start of 2011 demonstrations were almost unknown in Angola unless they were rallies organised by the ruling MPLA or the “National Spontaneous Movement”, controlled by the presidency. Despite being aware of profound social inequalities and massive corruption at the top of government, Angolans say the lack of protest action is due partly the political repression of the one-party era, and partly to a fear of violence and disruption borne out of the experience of war.

This year’s wave of defiance has been driven by young people, too young to have clear memories of wartime. It first became visible at a concert in February, when the rapper known as Brigadeiro Mata Frakus – who has remained a central figure in the protest movement – called on Dos Santos to step down. Police intervened to stop a demonstration in March before it got off the ground. Subsequent demonstrations in May, September, October and now December have drawn crowds numbering in the hundreds. Police have not hesitated to arrest and in some cases to beat demonstrators. A group detained without charge in September were eventually released on the orders of the Supreme Court in October.

The protests have aired a number of grievances, including poverty, inequality, lack of social services, and housing demolitions, but the consistent message has been that it is time for Dos Santos to resign.

Horn of Africa Crisis: Drought Zone - Fault Lines - Al Jazeera English

2011-12-08T02:22:00.000-02:00

Horn of Africa Crisis: Drought Zone - Fault Lines - Al Jazeera English

POLÍCIA ATACA MANIFESTANTES ANTI-GOVERNO EM LUANDA

2011-12-03T19:36:00.001-02:00

Sempre é tempo para publicar notícias relevantes, como a da Agência Lusa sobre a violenta repressão da polícia angolana a manifestantes contrários ao governo.

Manifestação em Luanda marcada por incidentes com a polícia

Dezenas de jovens começaram a manifestar-se ao princípio da tarde junto à Praça da Independência, em Luanda, Angola, numa ação que provocou uma resposta musculada da polícia, com recurso a cães e agentes a cavalo.

A ação policial está a ser reforçada por civis que se aproximam dos manifestantes, auxiliando a polícia para tentar impedir o avanço da manifestação.

Iuri Mendes, ligado à organização da manifestação de hoje, disse à Lusa que “foram feitas detenções”, embora desconheça o seu número exato, acrescentando que haverá pelo menos três feridos.

Mendes contesta a atuação da polícia, que “desrespeita o direito de manifestação consagrado na Constituição angolana”: “Em vez de proteger, [a polícia] desrespeita os direitos humanos.”

A agência Lusa tentou obter um comentário dos oficiais da polícia presentes no local, que se escusaram a prestar declarações, alegando estar em curso a operação de controlo da manifestação.

Antes da carga policial os manifestantes gritavam “a polícia é do povo, não é do MPLA” (partido no poder).

Entre os manifestantes está o “rapper” Brigadeiro Mata Frakuz, que já participou em protestos anteriores.

Um dos feridos é um jovem chamado Adolfo, que tinha sido detido numa manifestação a 03 de setembro.

Antes do início da manifestação, Sampaio Liberdade, do Movimento Revolucionário Estudantil, dissera à Lusa esperar duas a três mil pessoas no protesto de hoje.

O movimento de jovens já promoveu desde o início do ano cinco manifestações de contestação ao regime do Presidente angolano, José Eduardo dos Santos, com participações que têm rondado as 500 pessoas.

A 03 de setembro uma manifestação organizada pelo movimento de jovens terminou com a detenção de 21 manifestantes, 18 dos quais foram julgados e condenados a penas de prisão entre um mês e 90 dias, por ofensas corporais à polícia e danos materiais.

Sampaio Liberdade garantiu que as manifestações são pacíficas e que têm vindo a fazer um trabalho de "consciencialização" dos participantes para que "tudo seja feito" para "evitar a violência".

Na organização da manifestação, participam além do Movimento Revolucionário Estudantil, mais amplo, dois movimentos de jovens de caráter local.

EL (CFF)

Para ler no original, clique aqui.

200.000

2011-06-09T13:52:00.002-03:00

O diário alcançou os 200.000 acessos há poucos dias.

Há pouco mais de um ano eu havia anunciado o fim do blog.

A saída da África deixava a proposta do diário sem sentido.

Apenas reproduzir reportagens sobre o continente me parecia sem sentido, mas foi o que acabou acontecendo no último ano.

Não resisti.

Era como se eu estivesse intoxicado pelo continente e precisasse de um tempo para (re)descobrir coisas novas.

Postei aqui algumas notícias que achei interessantes e, algumas poucas vezes, escrevi um ou outro post com algo que ainda estava inédito e que por uma razão ou outra acabei não escrevendo em seu devido tempo.

O motivo deste post é para avisar que o Diário da África continuará na blogosfera.

Não direi, mais uma vez, que é o fim, mas uma espécie de hibernação.

As coisas mudam.

O mais importante é que o conteúdo continuará disponível para quem quiser conhecer e/ou relembrar as aventuras dos dois anos vividos em África.

O fato de o diário ter recebido 200.000 visitas em quase três anos de existência me surpreendeu.

Principalmente pelo fato de não estar ligado a nenhum veículo de comunicação.

O blog foi uma evolução dos e-mails que eu mandava para os amigos e a família no Brasil.

O objetivo era contar o cotidiano num novo continente.

As descobertas, os deslumbramentos, o choque cultural.

Vivemos tudo isso e nos encantamos a cada dia.

Aos poucos, foi recebendo mais e mais visitas.

Agradeço a todos os que frequentaram as páginas do diário.

Que os escritos tenham servido de alguma inspiração e despertado o interesse pela África.

Até breve!

CENSURA CIBERNÉTICA

2011-05-02T17:09:00.001-03:00

The 10 Tools of Online Oppressors

Digital censorship threatens press freedom, new report shows

New York, May 2, 2011—As journalists increasingly use social media to report breaking news and the number of people with Internet access explodes worldwide, governments are employing sophisticated new tactics to suppress information, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, issued today to mark World Press Freedom Day.

CPJ’s assessment of the 10 prevailing strategies for online oppression and the leading countries utilizing such tactics shows that traditional mechanisms of repression have evolved into pervasive digital censorship. The tools utilized include state-supported email designed to take over journalists’ personal computers in China, the shutting down of anti-censorship technology in Iran, monopolistic control of the Net in Ethiopia, as well as synchronized cyber-attacks in Belarus.

“These techniques go well beyond Web censorship,” said Danny O’Brien, CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator and author of the report. “The Internet is being used to spy on writers and sabotage independent news sites where press freedom is most threatened. The aim is not only to censor but to block or disrupt the reporting process and the dissemination of news and information.”

The digital offensive is often coupled with physical intimidation of online journalists. In 2010, CPJ research shows that 69 journalists whose work appeared primarily online were jailed as of December 1, constituting nearly half of all those in prison.

“These sophisticated, often invisible, attacks constitute a new front in the fight for press freedom,” said O’Brien. “Bypassing censorship is important but basic protection of source data and identities should take priority as well. Combined, these digital attacks undermine our universal right to seek information.”

Informação do Comittee to Protect Journalists.

UMA CANÇÃO PARA DÍLI

2011-05-01T17:42:00.000-03:00

ATAQUE DA OTAN MATA FILHO E NETOS DE KADAFI

2011-05-01T10:45:00.001-03:00

Qaddafi Is Said to Survive NATO Airstrike That Kills Son

Mahmud Turkia/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images

Libyan government officials gave a tour of the house they said was hit by a NATO airstrike in Tripoli late Saturday night.

By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: April 30, 2011

REPRINTS

BENGHAZI, Libya — The government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafisaid he survived an airstrike in Tripoli late Saturday night that killed one of his sons and three grandchildren, in the sharpest intensification yet of the NATO air campaign intended to pressure the Libyan leader from power.

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Qaddafi's Son Said Killed in NATO Strike

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Libyan rebels and citizens celebrated Saturday in Misurata after hearing reports that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's youngest son was killed in Tripoli.

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The son, Seif al-Arab Muammar el-Qaddafi, 29, and the grandchildren, all said to be younger than 12, were possibly the first confirmed casualties in the airstrikes on the Libyan capital. And while the deaths could not be independently verified, the campaign against Libya’s most densely populated areas raised new questions about how broadly NATO is interpreting its United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

It is the second airstrike in seven days to hit a location intimately close to the Libyan leader, following a midnight attack last week that destroyed an office building in his compound where he and his aides sometimes work.

In a news conference early Sunday morning in Tripoli, a Qaddafi government spokesman called the strike an illegal attack. “This was a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country,” said the spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim. “This is not permitted by international law. It is not permitted by any moral code or principle.” He said that the colonel and his wife, who were staying at the house along with “friends and family,” were not hurt.

American and NATO officials have said they are not seeking to kill Colonel Qaddafi, and some have suggested it might not be very easy. But frustrated by the evasion and resilience of Colonel Qaddafi’s military, NATO has pledged to step up its strikes on the broader instruments of his power, including state television facilities and command centers in the capital.

In a news release, the NATO mission’s operational commander, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, said he was aware of the reports of Qaddafi family deaths but called them unconfirmed. He added: “All NATO’s targets are military in nature and have been clearly linked to the Qaddafi regime’s systematic attacks on the Libyan population and populated areas. We do not target individuals.”

A NATO official in Naples, Italy, reached by e-mail and responding on condition of anonymity, said that allied planners had not known Qaddafi family members were in the building that was attacked, which the official described as a command and control center. The official would not specify the nationality of the aircraft or pilots that carried out the strike.

In a video broadcast by the satellite channel Al Jazeera, Libyan officials showed reporters what they said was the destroyed house, a large crater, crumbled concrete and twisted metal, and someone dusting off what appeared to be an unexploded bomb.

It is not the first time Colonel Qaddafi has survived such a close call. In 1986, the United States struck his compound in retaliation for a terrorist attack on a German nightclub frequented by American service members. Colonel Qaddafi has incorporated his survival into his cult of personality, preserving the wreckage of the building as a “Museum of Resistance” and erecting a statue of a giant fist grabbing an American warplane.

Although several of Colonel Qaddafi’s seven sons and one daughter play major roles in the Libyan economy and government (including an older brother with a similar name, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi), the son reported killed had been considered a black sheep, believed to spend much of his time in Munich. Many Libyans said they had never seen his picture. In 2007, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that he had been briefly detained by the Munich police after getting into a fight with a nightclub bouncer; no charges were filed.

In Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital in eastern Libya, and in Misurata, a western city that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces have besieged for months, celebratory gunfire rang out and explosions could be heard.

But even then, doubts lingered in Benghazi about whether the news was true: in interviews, residents said they were happy but suspected a ploy by Colonel Qaddafi to win sympathy. Ramadan el-Sheikhy, who said his brother was killed in one of Colonel Qaddafi’s prisons, said any sympathy was misplaced. “I was truly happy at the news,” he said. “Hopefully, he felt the pain of having a relative killed.”

Earlier Saturday, NATO officials had rejected an offer by Colonel Qaddafi to call a cease-fire and negotiate as false. The proposal was delivered in a rambling and often defiant speech, broadcast over Libyan state television, in which Colonel Qaddafi insisted he would never leave Libya.

“Come France, Italy, U.K., America, come, we’ll negotiate with you,” Colonel Qaddafi said. “You lie and say I’m killing my own people. Show us the bodies.”

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O TAPA QUE DEFLAGROU A REVOLTA NO MUNDO ÁRABE

2011-04-24T14:46:00.001-03:00

No The Guardian.

YEMEN: RESIGN FOR IMMUNITY

2011-04-23T22:35:00.001-03:00

Publicado no Truthout.

President of Yemen Agrees to Resign for Immunity

Saturday 23 April 2011

by: Robert F. Worth and Michael Slackman, The New York Times News Service

(Photo: AJTalkEng / Flickr)

Cairo - Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, agreed on Saturday to leave power after 32 years of autocratic rule, according to a top Yemeni official, but only if the opposition agrees to a list of conditions, including that he and his family be granted immunity.

Opposition leaders said they were prepared to accept most of the terms of the deal, which both they and a Yemeni official said would establish a coalition government with members of the opposition and ruling party. The president would turn over authority to the vice president.

But the opposition said it could not guarantee at least one of Mr. Saleh’s demands — that demonstrations be halted — and opposition members said they would present a counteroffer to the president later Saturday. The opposition said it had little influence with the mainly young protesters who have been demanding Mr. Saleh’s departure.

Even if the opposition and the government agree to a deal, it is unclear the demonstrators will go along, especially after pro-government snipers brutally crushed a demonstration on March 18, killing 52.

Mr. Saleh is a wily political survivor, and it was unclear if his offer was a real attempt to calm the political turmoil and growing demonstrations that have rocked his country for weeks or a way to shift blame for a stalemate to the opposition. His offer follows days of unrelenting pressure, from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring states fearful of more instability in the region, for him to step aside.

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A Yemeni official portrayed the deal as one devised by the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional group dominated by Saudi Arabia. But a member of the Gulf council said it had presented only a framework for a political solution, not a plan with such specifics.

“The most important thing in the initiative to all parties, including Saleh himself, is for a smooth and peaceful transition of authority,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the negotiations. “Now the devil is in the details. This is up to them to decide, not up to us.”

Mr. Saleh has been an important ally of the United States in its efforts to stamp out Al Qaeda, which has an active branch in the country. The relationship became especially crucial to the United States after attempted terrorist attempts were linked to the Qaeda branch there. That included an attempt to bring down an airliner bound for the United States at the end of 2009.

But in recent weeks, American officials began joining calls for Mr. Saleh to step down; they said the White House had determined that he would not make the changes necessary to bring stability to the country. American officials were also increasingly worried that the stalemate and continued violence there were allowing Qaeda members to become even more entrenched.

Saudi officials have also been intent on ushering Mr. Saleh from power because of anxiety over continued instability on the Arabian Peninsula.

Nasser Arrabyee contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen.

The article "President of Yemen Offers to Resign for Immunity" originally appeared in The New York Times.

TERRAKOTA - ILLEGAL

2011-04-23T11:42:00.001-03:00

CORREDORES ETÍOPES

2011-04-16T22:31:00.000-03:00

Reportagem da TV Globo.

NUMA RUA QUALQUER EM LUANDA

2011-04-13T23:34:00.000-03:00

Photo by Carlos Alberto Jr.

CONFLITO NA LÍBIA EXPULSA 500 MIL PESSOAS

2011-04-12T17:37:00.000-03:00

Do sítio do Acnur.

Genebra, 12 de abril de 2011 (ACNUR) – O conflito na Líbia, que começou em meados de fevereiro deste ano, já expulsou cerca de 500 mil pessoas do país. Segundo a agência da ONU para refugiados, os novos deslocamentos envolvem 500 líbios da etnia Berber, que deixaram suas casas nas montanhas localizadas no oeste do país e buscaram refúgio na região de Dehiba, no sudeste da Tunísia.

“Eles nos disseram que a pressão cada vez maior das forças governamentais nas cidades do oeste, a falta de medicamentos e a escassez de comida forçaram a saída deles da região”, disse hoje em Genebra o porta-voz do ACNUR, Andrej Mahecic.

O porta-voz lembrou que Dehiba está localizada a cerca de 200 quilômetros ao sul de Ras Adjir, a fronteira por onde dezenas de milhares de pessoas entraram na Tunísia fugindo da Líbia desde o início dos conflitos no país, em meados de fevereiro deste ano.

Segundo Mahecic, as pessoas que chegam têm recursos limitados e “necessidades humanitárias significativas”. Todos estão sendo acomodados pelas autoridades locais em uma quadra esportiva esportivo na cidade de Remada, 45 quilômetros além da fronteira, onde o ACNUR estabaleceu um campo com 130 tendas.

“Eletricidade e água foram conectadas e outros serviços estão sendo estabelecidos. O ACNUR trabalha com uma organização local – Al Taáwon – e o Vermelho Crescente da Tunísia”, explicou o porta-voz.

A comunidade de Remada tem oferecido uma assistência considerável, disponibilizando suas casas para milhares de famílias líbias. Hotéis econômicos em Dehiba e na cidade e na vizinha Tataouine também estão sendo usados para abrigar famílias. Uma escola perto do campo em Remada se ofereceu para receber os estudantes líbios.

Mahecic disse também que pessoas cruzando a fronteira Líbia/Egito têm dado às equipe dos ACNUR mais detalhes sobre os deslocamentos no leste do país, entre as cidades de Ajdabiya e Tobruk. “Milhares de famílias deslocadas nas cidades de Benghazi e Tobruk estão sendo abrigadas por residentes, enquanto outras estão refugiadas em escolas e prédios vazios. As pessoas têm medo de serem pegas pelo conflito em Ajdabya, caso as forças do governo vençam a disputa”, disse Mahecic.

O porta-voz lembrou que pessoas continuam fugindo da Líbia pelo mar em direção à Itália e a Malta. Na manhã de hoje, as forças armadas maltesas ajudaram um barco dom 116 pessoas, incluindo uma mulher já morta. Desde o dia 26 de março, mais de 1.100 pessoas chegaram a Malta em cinco barcos vindos da Líbia. Na Itália, três barcos com 1.008 pessoas chegaram à Ilha de Lampedusa durante o último final de semana. A maioria dos passageiros é formada por somalis e nigerianos. Desde 26 de março, 3.358 pessoas chegaram ao território italiano vindos da Líbia.

Entre as cerca de 500 mil pessoas que já deixaram a Líbia, aproximadamente 200 mil foram para o Egito, 236 mil foram para a Tunísia, mais de 36 mil cruzaram a fronteira com Níger, 14 mil chegaram à Algéria, 6.200 foram para o Chade e outros 2.800 chegaram ao Sudão.

No último domingo, cerca de 3.900 pessoas cruzaram o posto fronteiriço de Sallum, no Egito – entre elas 3 mil líbios. “Isto representa o dobro da média de líbios que têm cruzado aquela fronteira diariamente nas últimas semanas”, afirmou o porta-voz do ACNUR.

Para ler no original, clique aqui.

GBAGBO CAPTURADO

2011-04-11T19:52:00.000-03:00

Do The New York Times.

Former Leader of Ivory Coast Is Captured

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Laurent Gbagbo and his wife, Simone, in Abidjan after his arrest on Monday.

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: April 11, 2011

REPRINTS

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — The strongman of Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo, was captured on Monday after a week-long siege of his residence and placed under the control of his rival claimant to power, according to French and United Nations officials.

The Lede Blog: Video of Gbagbo's Arrest on Ivorian TV (April 11, 2011)
A Strongman Found Support in Prominent U.S. Conservatives(April 11, 2011)

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Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press

Ivory Coast residents celebrated in the streets after the capture of Laurent Gbagbo, on Monday.

Readers' Comments

"I applaud France for its involvement in this sordid affair and hope for the best, but I'm really not very assured that things will improve."

Jason B., Massachusetts

Troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of Ivory Coast’s presidential election last year, had pressed toward the residence where Mr. Gbagbo had been holed up for days. According to French officials, Mr. Gbagbo surrendered at the entrance to the residence, while four French Gazelle helicopters swirled around the area.

“It is my pleasure to announce officially that the former president of Cote d’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, has been arrested,” said Youssoufou Bamba, Mr. Ouattara’s representative to the United Nations. “He is alive and he will be brought to justice to respond to the crimes he committed. In this way, the Cote d’Ivoire reaches the end of its tragedy, of its nightmare.

“His era is over,” Mr. Bamba added, saying Mr. Gbagbo was now “under our custody.”

Cmdr. Frederic Daguillon, a French military spokesman in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s main city, said Mr. Gbagbo had been taken by forces loyal to Mr. Ouattara, a statement that French and United Nations officials in Ivory Coast, Paris and New York reiterated.

“I can affirm that categorically,” Commander Daguillon said. “There was not one single French soldier in the residence.”

Alain Le Roy, the head of the United Nation’s peacekeeping operations, said that Mr. Gbagbo and his wife, Simone, were now being guarded by United Nations security officials, after Mr. Gbagbo had requested their assistance to ensure his physical safety. Mr. Le Roy noted that the same United Nations security officials who had previously been protecting Mr. Ouattara were now protecting Mr. Gbagbo, while Mr. Ouattara and his government decided on his fate.

Mr. Le Roy said that it was up to Mr. Ouattara to decide on the next step, and that Mr. Ouattara had indicated prosecuting Mr. Gbagbo was an option. Mr. Bamba, the United Nations representative, has previously said that Mr. Gbagbo should be tried for war crimes at the international criminal court in the Hague, but other Ouattara officials have said they might try to bring charges at home.

Hamadoun Touré, a spokesman for the United Nations operation in Ivory Coast, said the United Nations had spoken with Gen. Dogbo Blé, the commander of Mr. Gbagbo’s Republican Guards, and that 300 Republican guards had also surrendered.

“One can guess that he was really weakened by the strikes,” Mr. Touré said, referring in part to the French and United Nations attacks on Mr. Gbagbo’s weaponry at his redoubts in recent days, part of what they called an effort to protect civilians. “I think it weakened him a lot.”

Images broadcast on Ivorian television showed a sweating, plaintive Mr. Gbagbo after his arrest. At one point, he appeared in a white tank-top undershirt, wiping dry his face and underarms with a towel as men dressed in military camouflage looked on, smiling.

“I want us to stop the weapons,” Mr. Gbagbo said in a voice slightly hoarse, in video broadcast on French television.

Mr. Le Roy, the peacekeeping chief, stressed that Mr. Gbagbo’s detainment was an important first step to bringing stability to Ivory Coast, but that it was too early for euphoria.

“It’s an important step in the process," he said. "The crisis is not over and we must establish law and order,” he said, noting that there was a pressing need for national reconciliation to take place.

The capture of Mr. Gbagbo brought a dramatic climax to a four-month standoff that has crippled the nation’s economy and plunged it back into civil war. Mr. Gbagbo steadfastly refused to accept Mr. Ouattara’s victory in the elections last year, insisting that he was still the legitimate president of this West African nation, maintaining firm control over the population by conducting attacks on civilians and rejecting international demands to step down.

Now, he is being held at Mr. Ouattara’s headquarters at the Hôtel du Golf in Abidjan, the same place Mr. Gbagbo had cordoned off since the elections, essentially making Mr. Ouattara and his government prisoners there.

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ELEPHANTS IN BOTSWANA

2011-04-11T10:27:00.000-03:00

Photo by Carlos Alberto Jr.

ALLIES OF ZIMBABWE'S PRESIDENT PUSH FOR QUICK VOTE

2011-04-09T14:39:00.001-03:00

Do The New York Times.

Allies of Zimbabwe’s President Push for Quick Vote

Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Some supporters of President Robert Mugabe, above, fear that his health may be ebbing, so they want Zimbabwe to hold an election soon.

By CELIA W. DUGGER

Published: April 8, 2011

REPRINTS

HARARE, Zimbabwe — As Zimbabwe hurtles into another violent political season, President Robert Mugabe’s party is fiercely pushing for a quick election this year because of fears that the president’s health and vigor are rapidly ebbing, senior party officials said.

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Associated Press

In 1985, Mr. Mugabe campaigned in Harare before parliamentary elections. His party, ZANU-PF, increased its majority.

With no credible successor to unite the quarrelsome factions that threaten to splinter the party, its officials say they need Mr. Mugabe, who at 87 has been in power for 31 years, to campaign for yet another five-year term while he still has the strength for a rematch against his established rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, 59.

“There’s urgency, real urgency,” said a party insider, speaking anonymously because of the delicacy of the topic. “The old man is not the same as he was.”

Zimbabwe’s neighbors, who helped broker a power-sharing government led by Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai after a discredited election in 2008, have strongly warned against trying to hold another one too soon. But a separate Mugabe confidant said the party’s power brokers worried that the president would no longer be a plausible candidate by next year.

“Imagine him being supported all the way to the podium to address a rally and him telling the people he is the future of this country,” the Mugabe confidant said. “Even the staunch supporters would not believe that.”

The intensity of the party’s determination to hold an election this year was evident as a newspaper controlled by Mr. Mugabe’s party carried out an extraordinary attack on South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, the official mediator in Zimbabwe’s political crisis, after he publicly called for a halt to political violence in the country.

South Africa had long been criticized for coddling Mr. Mugabe through a decade of rigged, bloodstained elections, but last week Mr. Zuma persuaded regional leaders to endorse assertive, time-consuming efforts to ensure that the next time Zimbabweans voted, they would be able to do so freely and fairly.

“There is no way we can agree to an election in Zimbabwe when the institutions needed to ensure a credible, free and fair election are not in place,” Mr. Zuma told Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai at the meeting, according to Mr. Zuma’s adviser, Lindiwe Zulu.

A day later, Mr. Mugabe defiantly told his party’s central committee that Zimbabwe’s neighbors should not meddle in its political affairs and urged his followers to prepare for an election. An editorial in The Sunday Mail, a state-controlled newspaper, accused Mr. Zuma of duplicity and dishonesty and called him a puppet of the West.

South African officials reacted sharply to the vitriolic, personal attack on the president of the region’s most powerful nation, and Mr. Mugabe’s spokesman this week sought to soften Zimbabwe’s tone, saying the editorial was not government policy.

“President Jacob Zuma’s erratic behavior is the stuff of legend,” one of Mr. Mugabe’s loyalists wrote in the editorial’s opening line.

Mr. Mugabe’s domineering rule has led to the country’s disastrous economic decline, pervasive corruption and an intensely repressive society, but as the centerpiece of the state, there is uncertainty about whether his death would lead to a military coup, a vicious internal battle within his party, ZANU-PF, or some still unforeseen outcome.

“Mugabe’s health is a matter of national instability,” Mr. Tsvangirai said. Having been pressured by regional leaders into the power-sharing deal with Mr. Mugabe, his political enemy, two years ago, Mr. Tsvangirai said of his still dominant partner, “He left the succession way too late, and now there is a scramble between the two main factions of ZANU-PF.”

A Western ambassador here likened this period in one of Africa’s longest-surviving autocracies to the last days of Brezhnev and Franco. It is a time of fevered rumors and back-room plotting.

And it has brought a crackdown on pro-democracy civic groups and members of Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change. The authorities have banned its rallies, rounded up activists and party workers and put truckloads of riot police officers on the streets to head off protests.

The revolutions in North Africa, and particularly South Africa’s support for a no-fly zone in Libya, have unnerved the sprawling spy operation controlled by Mr. Mugabe’s party. Dozens of students, trade unionists and activists who had gathered to watch news reports on the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were arrested in February and charged with treason, accused of plotting to oust Mr. Mugabe.

“We are hearing from the intelligence services that M.D.C. meetings are intended to incite people to engage in an Egyptian-, Tunisian-style uprising,” said a spokesman for Mr. Mugabe’s party, Rugare Gumbo.

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Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/Associated Press

Beyond that, recurrent speculation that Mr. Mugabe suffers from prostate cancer has quickened since he made trips to Singapore in February and March, ostensibly for routine follow-up care after cataract surgery he had there over the Christmas holidays. But why would such an elderly man have made three grueling, transoceanic flights unless he was really sick, analysts here asked.

Cabinet ministers say Mr. Mugabe is mentally sharp, but tires easily and has difficulty walking up stairs. Mr. Mugabe himself declared at his 87th birthday celebration in February, according to an Associated Press account, “My body may get spent, but I wish my mind will always be with you.”

At a conference here in November, Mr. Mugabe was natty in a charcoal gray suit, blue silk tie and matching handkerchief peeking from his breast pocket. A waiter in white gloves poured his juice and hovered nearby. The president’s sonorous voice still echoed in the hall as he read a speech he held up close to his eyes.

But as he left the stage, Mr. Mugabe — his days as a vibrant liberation leader long past — gripped the banister as he slowly made his way down the steps. Outside, an ambulance trailed his limousine.

His press secretary, George Charamba, said at the time that Mr. Mugabe had dashed up 22 flights of stairs when elevators at the party headquarters malfunctioned, leaving security agents panting in his wake. Even some political opponents wonder if he has years left. His mother lived to nearly 100.

“There’s nothing that tells me he’s about to drop dead,” said Theresa Makone, a leader of Mr. Tsvangirai’s party and the co-minister of Home Affairs in the power-sharing government.

But the uncertainty about his health has profoundly unsettled politics here.

After each of Mr. Mugabe’s Singapore trips, Mr. Charamba insisted in interviews that his boss had just been seeking routine eye care. But the spokesman revised that explanation in a recent interview, saying the president had actually made the trips to accompany his wife, Grace, who had badly injured her back while exercising at a gym.

“She’s up and about so we can talk about it” now, he said.

In a rare interview with Reuters last year, Mr. Mugabe himself brushed off rumors he was dying of cancer.

“I don’t know how many times I die, but nobody has ever talked about my resurrection,” he said.

“Jesus died once, and resurrected only once, and poor Mugabe several times,” the president added, laughing gleefully at his own joke.

Under the current Constitution, if Mr. Mugabe died in office, ZANU-PF would choose the next president to finish out his term, legal experts said. Zimbabweans are supposed to vote on a new constitution before the next election, but drafting one has spurred an intense struggle between the parties. The member of Parliament leading the constitution-making effort for Mr. Tsvangirai’s party was recently jailed for almost a month.

Mr. Mugabe wants an election as soon as possible, not because of his own ill health, but because the power-sharing government is not working, his spokesman said.

Mr. Mugabe has unhappily shared the stage with Mr. Tsvangirai in what they call an inclusive government for the past two years. The deal has brought a tenuous political stability and improving economy, but has left Mr. Tsvangirai with little authority.

It was formed after the 2008 election. In May and June of that year, Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants orchestrated a campaign of beatings, torture and murder against Mr. Tsvangirai’s workers and supporters. Mr. Tsvangirai, who won more votes than Mr. Mugabe in the first round, quit the race days before the runoff.

A senior ZANU-PF leader offered a blunt assessment of his party’s current political quandary, acknowledging Mr. Tsvangirai as a formidable opponent.

“Morgan has been in the making for 10 years,” he said, using Mr. Tsvangirai’s first name. “He has contested three elections. So there’s fear he has momentum. Who among our so-called leaders can face Morgan if the old man is gone?”

GIRAFAS

2011-04-08T10:30:00.001-03:00

Matando a sede em Botsuana.

O EXÉRCITO REBELDE NA LÍBIA

2011-04-07T10:16:00.000-03:00

Do The New York Times.

MILITARY ANALYSIS

Libyan Rebels Don’t Really Add Up to an Army

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

In Benghazi, Libyan rebels, including a boy, trained recently, but the rebels lack firepower and knowledge of how to fight a war.

By C. J. CHIVERS

Published: April 6, 2011

REPRINTS

BENGHAZI, Libya — Late Monday afternoon, as Libyan rebels prepared another desperate attack on the eastern oil town of Brega, a young rebel raised his rocket-propelled grenade as if to fire. The town’s university, shimmering in the distance, was far beyond his weapon’s maximum range. An older rebel urged him to hold fire, telling him the weapon’s back-blast could do little more than reveal their position and draw a mortar attack.

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Bryan Denton for The New York Times

A drill instructor high-stepped as rebel volunteers ran in formation recently around the fairground at a training base in the Libyan city of Benghazi.

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The younger rebel almost spat with disgust. “I have been fighting for 37 days!” he shouted. “Nobody can tell me what to do!”

The outburst midfight — and the ensuing argument between a determined young man who seemed to have almost no understanding of modern war and an older man who wisely counseled caution — underscored a fact that is self-evident almost everywhere on Libya’s eastern front. The rebel military, as it sometimes called, is not really a military at all.

What is visible in battle here is less an organized force than the martial manifestation of a popular uprising.

With throaty cries and weapons they have looted and scrounged, the rebels gather along Libya’s main coastal highway each day, ready to fight. Many of them are brave, even extraordinarily so. Some of them are selfless, swept along by a sense of common purpose and brotherhood that accompanies their revolution.

“Freedom!” they shout, as they pair a yearning to unseat Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with appeals for divine help. “God is great!”

But by almost all measures by which a military might be assessed, they are a hapless bunch. They have almost no communication equipment. There is no visible officer or noncommissioned officer corps. Their weapons are a mishmash of hastily acquired arms, which few of them know how to use.

With only weeks of fighting experience, they lack an understanding of the fundamentals of offensive and defensive combat, or how to organize fire support. They fire recklessly and sometimes accidentally. Most of them have yet to learn how to hold seized ground, or to protect themselves from their battlefield’s persistent rocket and mortar fire, which might be done by simply digging in.

Prone to panic, they often answer to little more than their mood, which changes in a flash. When their morale spikes upward, their attacks tend to be painfully and bloodily frontal — little more than racing columns down the highway, through a gantlet of the Qaddafi forces’ rocket and mortar fire, face forward into the loyalists’ machine guns.

And their numbers are small. Officials in the rebels’ transitional government have provided many different figures, sometimes saying 10,000 or men are under arms in their ranks.

But a small fraction actually appear at the front each day — often only a few hundred. And some of the men appear without guns, or with aged guns that have no magazines or ammunition.

For the nations that have supported the uprising, the state of the rebels’ armed wing — known as the Forces of Free Libya — raises many questions. It seems unlikely that such a force can carry the war westward, through dug-in Qaddafi units toward the stronghold of Surt, much less beyond, toward Tripoli, the Libyan capital. And a sustained war of attrition could quickly bleed their ranks dry.

Unlike many antigovernment militias in other countries, the rebel-armed column has not had the benefit of years of guerrilla fighting, which could have winnowed and seasoned its leaders and given them a skeletal field structure to build on.

Instead, Libya’s rebels have entered the grim work of waging war almost spontaneously, and would need time, training, equipment and leadership to develop into even a reasonably competent force.

For now, their ranks have three elements: a so-called “special forces” detachment of former soldiers and police officers; a main column organized into self-led cells of fighters built around a few weapons and pickup trucks; and a sort of home guard that is undergoing quick training to man checkpoints and serve as a civil defense force.

There is also the “shabab,” milling groups of youngsters who arrive at the front each day hoping to pitch in, but with scant idea of how. Officially, the shabab are not part of the fight.

The rebels insist the size of the special forces detachment is large, but on the battlefield it feels anything but. Colonel Ahmed Bani, the military’s top spokesman, suggested that some of these soldiers are being held back for now.

“Our army, the professionals, are still waiting for armaments,” he said. “Only some of them are at the front lines supporting the young men.”

The largest visible body of rebels each day consists of groups of self-led fighters in cars and pickup trucks, who move up and down the highway to Brega, where the Qaddafi forces have plugged the road to Tripoli and taken custody of essential oil infrastructure — a key to the economic fortune of any Libyan government.

These men are a Libyan melting pot, a cross-section of professions and backgrounds. Businessmen and engineers fight beside students and laborers.

A few are Libyans from abroad who hurried home in February or March, answering an urge to topple Qaddafi and remake Libya on less autocratic lines.

They lack structure and they know it. Each contingent fights largely according to its own whim. Sometimes no one knows who is in charge.

“We are without command,” said Ibrahim Mohammed, 32, who said he had served as a sergeant in the Libyan army. “Too many without command. And this is the problem.”

His fighting cell consisted of six men, two pickup trucks, a rebel flag, a heavy machine gun, a few Kalashnikov rifles, a Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle and a surface-to-air missile. The six men — excepting two who are related — had not known each other before the uprising began.

Now they lived in the desert, roaming a single road, dodging mortar and rocket fire. Their truck beds contained blankets, a tarp, ammunition, bottled water and ammunition crates packed with fresh vegetables and canned food.

The third group is made up of more recent volunteers, who turn up each morning for training at a military base at the edge of Benghazi.

Mindful that the rebels lack weapons and trainers, and that sending them into battle against Colonel Qaddafi’s conventional military will get too many of them killed, the rebels’ military leadership is training them for the more limited duties of civil defense.

On two recent mornings, slightly more than 600 volunteers showed up at the base for a half-day of training. They looked to be from 18 to 60 years old.

They briefly marched and jogged on a parade ground. (On the first morning, one of them fainted within 10 minutes.) After this warm-up, the volunteers attended open-air classes on various weapons — the assault rifle, the heavy machine gun, the 82-millimeter mortar.

But the classes contained little more than the nomenclature of each weapon’s parts, a discussion of each weapon’s basic characteristics, and demonstrations of how to assemble and disassemble the weapons, and to clean them.

Tellingly, only the instructors had weapons.

Marey el-Bejou, an Airbus pilot serving as a spokesman for the training camp, said the indoctrination course would last a week. He had no illusions about whether it might produce a real military. He noted that the troops were unpaid and their training was marginal. The military had no barracks, no blankets, no uniforms and, in the eyes of many who showed up, little time.

“Can I be clear?” Mr. Bejou asked. “We are not organized. We do not have weapons, other than anti-aircraft machine guns. If Qaddafi wanted to be here, he could be here in four hours.”

Out on the battle lines near Brega in the afternoon, where spirits were high but fighting skills and ammunition were in short supply, the rebels were engaged in a contest for which they were clearly unprepared. One of their most fearsome weapons said much. It consisted of Grad rocket-launcher tubes, jury-rigged into pods of four. Each was then welded to heavy machine-gun mounts welded or bolted to the bed of a pickup truck. Car batteries provided the power to launch each barrage. The firing switch was a box holding four doorbells, one for each rocket.

As monuments to the rebels’ resourcefulness and determination, these homemade launchers were impressive. As instruments of war, they were not.

To use them against the Qaddafi forces, the rebels sped forward with loaded tubes, stopped along the highway, and fired the rockets toward Brega.

Each of the rockets, slightly more than nine feet long, climbed into the air with tremendous whooshes and long plumes of smoke. They accelerated out of sight.

No one knew for sure where they might land, and firing them this way exposed the rebels to charges that they are waging indiscriminate war.

“ “God is great!” the rebels cheered. Then they pulled back quickly, before the Qaddafi forces fired back, and the highway was pounded with incoming fire, another of the daily exchanges of fire in a ground war bogged down.

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LIBYA AND THE WORLD OF OIL, BY NOAM CHOMSKY

2011-04-04T21:09:00.001-03:00

Publicado no thuthout.

LIBYA AND THE WORLD OF OIL
By Noam Chomsky

Last month, at the international tribunal on crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone, the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor came to an end.

The chief prosecutor, U.S. law professor David Crane, informed The Times of London that the case was incomplete: The prosecutors intended to charge Moammar Gadhafi, who, Crane said, “was ultimately responsible for the mutilation, maiming and/or murder of 1.2 million people.”

But the charge was not to be. The U.S., U.K. and others intervened to block it. Asked why, Crane said, “Welcome to the world of oil.”

Another recent Gadhafi casualty was Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics, who resigned after revelations of the school’s links to the Libyan dictator.

In Cambridge, Mass., the Monitor Group, a consultancy firm founded by Harvard professors, was well paid for such services as a book to bring Gadhafi’s immortal words to the public “in conversation with renowned international experts,” along with other efforts “to enhance international appreciation of (Gadhafi’s) Libya.”

The world of oil is rarely far in the background in affairs concerning this region.

For example, as the dimensions of the U.S. defeat in Iraq could no longer be concealed, pretty rhetoric was displaced by honest announcement of policy goals. In November 2007 the White House issued a Declaration of Principles insisting that Iraq must grant indefinite access and privilege to American investors.

Two months later President Bush informed Congress that he would reject legislation that might limit the permanent stationing of U.S. armed forces in Iraq or “United States control of the oil resources of Iraq” – demands that the U.S. had to abandon shortly afterward in the face of Iraqi resistance.

The world of oil provides useful guidance for western reactions to the remarkable democracy uprisings in the Arab world. An oil-rich dictator who is a reliable client is granted virtual free rein. There was little reaction when Saudi Arabia declared on March 5, “Laws and regulations in the Kingdom totally prohibit all kinds of demonstrations, marches and sit-in protests as well as calling for them as they go against the principles of Shariah and Saudi customs and traditions.” The kingdom mobilized huge security forces that rigorously enforced the ban.

In Kuwait, small demonstrations were crushed. The mailed fist struck in Bahrain after Saudi-led military forces intervened to ensure that the minority Sunni monarchy would not be threatened by calls for democratic reforms.

Bahrain is sensitive not only because it hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet but also because it borders Shiite areas of Saudi Arabia, the location of most of the kingdom’s oil. The world’s primary energy resources happen to be located near the northern Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf, as Arabs often call it), largely Shiite, a potential nightmare for Western planners.

In Egypt and Tunisia, the popular uprising has won impressive victories, but as the Carnegie Endowment reported, the regimes remain and are “seemingly determined to curb the pro-democracy momentum generated so far. A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal” – and one that the West will seek to keep far removed.

Libya is a different case, an oil-rich state run by a brutal dictator, who, however, is unreliable: A dependable client would be far preferable. When nonviolent protests erupted, Gadhafi moved quickly to crush them.

On March 22, as Gadhafi’s forces were converging on the rebel capital of Benghazi, top Obama Middle East adviser Dennis Ross warned that if there is a massacre, “everyone would blame us for it,” an unacceptable consequence.

And the West certainly didn’t want Gadhafi to enhance his power and independence by crushing the rebellion. The U.S. joined in the U.N. Security Council authorization of a “no-fly zone,” to be implemented by France, the U.K. and the U.S.

The intervention prevented a likely massacre but was interpreted by the coalition as authorizing direct support for the rebels. A cease-fire was imposed on Gadhafi’s forces, but the rebels were helped to advance to the West. In short order they conquered the major sources of Libya’s oil production, at least temporarily.

On March 28, the London-based Arab journal Al-Quds Al-Arabi warned that the intervention may leave Libya with “two states, a rebel-held, oil-rich East and a poverty-stricken, Gadhafi-led West. ... Given that the oil wells have been secured, we may find ourselves facing a new Libyan oil emirate, sparsely inhabited, protected by the West and very similar to the Gulf’s emirate states.” Or the Western-backed rebellion might proceed all the way to eliminate the irritating dictator.

It is commonly argued that oil cannot be a motive for the intervention because the West had access to the prize under Gadhafi. True but irrelevant. The same could be said about Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or Iran and Cuba today.

What the West seeks is what Bush announced: control, or at least dependable clients, and in the case of Libya, access to vast unexplored areas expected to be rich in oil. U.S and British internal documents stress that the “virus of nationalism” is the greatest fear, since it might breed disobedience.

The intervention is being conducted by the three traditional imperial powers (though we may recall – Libyans presumably do – that, after World War I, Italy conducted genocide in eastern Libya).

The western powers are acting in virtual isolation. States in the region – Turkey and Egypt – want no part of it, nor does Africa. The Gulf dictators would be happy to see Gadhafi gone – but, even as they’re groaning under the weight of advanced weapons provided to them to recycle petrodollars and ensure obedience, they barely offer more than token participation. The same is true beyond: India, Brazil and even Germany.

The Arab Spring has deep roots. The region has been simmering for years. The first of the current wave of protests began last year in Western Sahara, the last African colony, invaded by Morocco in 1975 and illegally held since, in a manner similar to East Timor and the Israeli-occupied territories.

A nonviolent protest last November was crushed by Moroccan forces. France intervened to block a Security Council inquiry into the crimes of its client.

Then a flame ignited in Tunisia that has since spread into a conflagration.

(Noam Chomsky’s most recent book, with co-author Ilan Pappe, is “Gaza in Crisis.” Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)

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TRAPPING GOATS

2011-04-03T10:47:00.001-03:00

Trapping Goats from Gustavo Neves on Vimeo.

HUNDREDS KILLED IN IVORY COAST TOWN AS CONFLICT INTENSIFIES

2011-04-02T23:00:00.000-03:00

Publicado no The New York Times.

Hundreds Killed in Ivory Coast Town as Conflict Intensifies

Luc Gnago/Reuters

Forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, who seeks to oust

Laurent Gbagbo, near Abidjan on Saturday.

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: April 2, 2011

REPRINTS

DAKAR, Senegal — As rebels swept across Ivory Coast in a rapid advance last week to oust the nation’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, hundreds of people were killed in a single town, the United Nationsand aid groups said Saturday, in the worst episode of violence during the four-month political crisis that has plunged the country back into civil war.

Gbagbo Is Said to Be Close to Defeat in Ivory Coast (April 2, 2011)

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Luc Gnago/Reuters

Gun and artillery fire rocked Abidjan on Saturday as Mr. Gbagbo's loyalists resisted, and retook the state television station.

The New York Times

Duékoué is one of the strategic towns in the country’s cocoa-growing region that was seized last week by forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara.

The exact number of dead was unclear. The United Nations said that 330 people had been killed, while aid organizations put the death toll as high as 1,000. It was also uncertain how many were civilians, and how many were combatants, but Caritas, a Catholic charity whose staff members visited the town, Duékoué, in western Ivory Coast, called it a “massacre.”

The “town was full of bodies,” said Patrick Nicholson, a spokesman for the charity. “They saw bodies in the city, in the bush, mass graves.”

Humanitarian workers did not say who was responsible. But the United Nations said that more than 100 had been killed by Mr. Gbagbo’s fighters, while about 200 had been killed by forces loyal to his rival, Alassane Ouattara, the man recognized by the United Nations, the African Unionand other international bodies as the winner of the presidential election last year.

Mr. Ouattara’s government issued a statement denying responsibility for atrocities in any part of the country, saying its forces had discovered mass graves in other towns that were the result of massacres by Mr. Gbagbo’s forces.

But the killings could call into question how much control Mr. Ouattara has over his forces. If further investigation proved their involvement in civilian deaths, it could tarnish Mr. Ouattara’s reputation overseas, where he is perceived to hold the high moral ground in the standoff with Mr. Gbagbo.

Throughout most of the crisis, civilian killings have come largely at the hands of Mr. Gbagbo’s forces, eliciting threats of criminal charges from international prosecutors. Human rights groups have also accused forces loyal to Mr. Ouattara of some extrajudicial killings, but neither side has been implicated in a single event close to this scale. The United Nations had previously estimated that a total of about 500 people had been killed in the crisis, over four months of tensions and sporadic violence.

Many of Mr. Ouattara’s fighters are former rebels from a 2002 uprising that divided the country in half, and they have come under his banner only recently. The rebels have a history of human rights abuses and had stayed mainly on the sidelines of the political crisis.

Duékoué is one of the strategic towns in the country’s cocoa-growing region they seized last week. A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross “saw a very large number of bodies” there, said a spokeswoman, Dorothea Krimitsas.

“They were shocked by the scale of it,” she said. “We don’t have exact information as to who is behind this. There were at least 800.”

The conflict between Mr. Ouattara and Mr. Gbagbo has unleashed longstanding ethnic rivalries, particularly in the lawless western regions. The Red Cross said the large number of dead it saw in the town on Thursday and Friday were apparently victims of “intercommunal violence.” But it did not assign responsibility for the killings.

With Mr. Gbagbo refusing to step down — despite international condemnation, sanctions and a collapsing economy — the rebels pushed across the country in a rapid sweep last week, advancing all the way to encircle the presidential palace and Mr. Gbagbo’s residence in the nation’s main city, Abidjan.

United Nations peacekeepers are stationed at Duékoué, but it was unclear what knowledge, if any, their base might have had about the mass deaths.

“They are protecting the Catholic mission” where thousands of civilians have taken refuge, said a United Nations spokesman, Hamadoun Touré. “They didn’t tell me anything. If they knew they would have told us,” he said. “In general when there is fighting, there are incidents. Sometimes, there are exaggerations.”

In Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital, gunfire and artillery exchanges rocked the city on Saturday as Mr. Gbagbo stiffly resisted efforts to dislodge him.

Mr. Gbagbo’s loyalists retook the state television station, though Mr. Ouattara’s military spokesman dismissed the significance of its retaking.

“What is preoccupying us is the liberation of the people of Abidjan,” said Capt. Léon Alla, the spokesman. “Not the R.T.I., which is nothing but propaganda,” he said, referring to Radio Télévision Ivorienne.

Still, the station has been one of Mr. Gbagbo’s most powerful weapons in a nonstop campaign to fire up supporters with claims that he is the victim of a Western conspiracy, and both sides have waged a fierce battle for it.

The streets in Abidjan were empty, widespread looting was reported, and residents stayed home, often lying on the floor to avoid stray bullets, which killed a Swedish employee of the United Nations on Thursday. “They are still firing, without interruption,” said Ben Sylla, who lives near the large Agban military base in the Adjamé neighborhood. “Heavy weapons fire,” Mr. Sylla said, adding that dozens of families had taken refuge in a nearby school.

The United Nations spokesman, Mr. Touré, said: “There is firing. Then it calms down. The situation is unchanged.” The United Nations reported that one of its patrols was attacked Friday by Mr. Gbagbo’s forces, and fired back, hitting several of the strongman’s soldiers.

Mr. Gbagbo was believed to be either in the presidential palace downtown, the site of his offices, or in his residence in the Cocody neighborhood. Residents reported hearing gunfire and artillery in both places. His advisers could not be reached Saturday.

DIÁRIO DA ÁFRICA

CULTURA ANGOLANA

NA ÁFRICA DO SUL, O RACISMO CONTINUA

MANUEL VICENTE E KOPELIPA A CONTAS COM A JUSTIÇA

Kabila declared winner of DR Congo poll - Africa - Al Jazeera English

PROTESTOS EM ANGOLA

reprodução do site Democracy in Africa.

PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTS IN ANGOLA

Horn of Africa Crisis: Drought Zone - Fault Lines - Al Jazeera English

POLÍCIA ATACA MANIFESTANTES ANTI-GOVERNO EM LUANDA

200.000

CENSURA CIBERNÉTICA

UMA CANÇÃO PARA DÍLI

ATAQUE DA OTAN MATA FILHO E NETOS DE KADAFI

Qaddafi Is Said to Survive NATO Airstrike That Kills Son

By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: April 30, 2011

Multimedia

The Libyan Rebellion

Qaddafi's Son Said Killed in NATO Strike

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Libyan Forces Chase Rebel Convoy Into Tunisia, a Rebel Fighter Says(April 30, 2011)

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O TAPA QUE DEFLAGROU A REVOLTA NO MUNDO ÁRABE

YEMEN: RESIGN FOR IMMUNITY

President of Yemen Agrees to Resign for Immunity

TERRAKOTA - ILLEGAL

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GBAGBO CAPTURADO

Former Leader of Ivory Coast Is Captured

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: April 11, 2011

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ELEPHANTS IN BOTSWANA

ALLIES OF ZIMBABWE'S PRESIDENT PUSH FOR QUICK VOTE

Allies of Zimbabwe’s President Push for Quick Vote

By CELIA W. DUGGER

Published: April 8, 2011

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Libyan Rebels Don’t Really Add Up to an Army

By C. J. CHIVERS

Published: April 6, 2011

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250 Migrants Missing After Boat Sinks Off Italy (April 7, 2011)

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LIBYA AND THE WORLD OF OIL, BY NOAM CHOMSKY

TRAPPING GOATS

HUNDREDS KILLED IN IVORY COAST TOWN AS CONFLICT INTENSIFIES

Hundreds Killed in Ivory Coast Town as Conflict Intensifies

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: April 2, 2011

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The New York Times