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IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 5 covering the period 29 January - 5 February 1999

ANGOLA: Humanitarian agencies will stay The UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, this week said that humanitarian agencies would remain in Angola because the total number of war victims now in need of assistance had reached 1.5 million. Speaking at a news conference in New York, Griffiths, who visited the region following recommendations to the Security Council that the 1,000-strong UN Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) be withdrawn, was emphatic: “I think that the first simple fact is that, as far as humanitarian agencies are concerned - they are not going to be leaving Angola.” But the already “very difficult” task of the 92 international NGOs, UN agencies such as WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, WHO and 170 local NGOs would become more difficult. Since the breakdown last year of the UN-brokered 1994 Lusaka Protocol peace accords, he said renewed fighting between the government and the UNITA rebel movement had now forced 550,000 people to flee their homes bringing the total in need of aid to 1.5 million. “What we are talking about,” Griffiths added, “is a new caseload created in this current cycle of violence.” The major problems included the lack of access to people in UNITA-held territory. Angolans reported seeking refugee status in Congo and Zambia Meanwhile, humanitarian sources in the Angolan capital Luanda told IRIN they were checking reports that people fleeing heavy fighting this week were starting to cross into neighbouring Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The sources said humanitarian agencies, already assessing a huge movement of internally displaced people, were concerned at reports that some were fleeing to DRC and that as many as 450 people might have already fled to Zambia. UNHCR said it was checking the reports. In the latest fighting around the Zaire Province capital of M’banza Congo 500 km north of Luanda which was captured by UNITA on 26 January, they cited unconfirmed reports of thousands fleeing towards the strategic oil installations at Soyo, and beyond towards the border of southwest DRC. Further south, outside the government-controlled town of Malanje 380 km east of Luanda, which has sustained heavy shelling from long-range UNITA artillery guns this week, the sources reported thousands of displaced people roaming the area. MSF Holland said a survey of the Malanje area showed growing levels of malnutrition. “The town is inaccessible and there is concern because WFP food stocks already in place cannot be distributed because of this situation,” one humanitarian official said. Dos Santos takes helm of new “crisis” cabinet After the government acknowledged that UNITA had captured M’banza Congo, Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos announced that he had assumed the helm of a tighter crisis government pledged to tackle UNITA as its main priority. Aircraft crashes in Luanda shanty settlement Angola’s civil aviation authorities said they were considering withdrawing the operating licences of all Antonov AN-12 aircraft in the country after one of the Soviet-era planes crashed into a neighbourhood of the capital Luanda. Official media reports said 30 people had died and 27 were injured when an AN-12 attempting an emergency landing burst into flames and crashed on Tuesday in the crowded Cazenga shanty settlement. The civil aviation department that there had been at least 6 crashes involving AN-12 aircraft during the past six months. ANGOLA-ZAMBIA: Angola again accuses Zambia of assisting UNITA For the third week running, Angola’s national television service and the official daily, ‘Jornal de Angola’ said Luanda had “irrefutable proof” that Zambia was involved in “a plot designed to help UNITA overthrow the legitimate government of Angola by force”. The media even named Zambian officials it alleged were assisting UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. The reports did not elaborate further on the claims. Earlier, the Zambian government protested to the UN Security Council at “persistent accusations” by Angola. A senior government official told IRIN that Lusaka was still awaiting clarification from Angola on the claims first raised in a letter to the Zambian government on 14 January. The government has denied the allegations. In a letter to the Security Council last week, the Zambian government said it had twice summoned the Angolan Charge d’Affaires to explain Luanda’s accusation that it had “credible information” on “substantial involvement of the Zambian authorities in the logistic and military support” for Savimbi and was still awaiting a response from Luanda. It recalled that similar allegations last year had been checked by a joint UN and OAU verification mission and that they had cleared Zambia of any wrongdoing, as had various joint Angola/Zambia Joint Inspection Team verification missions. It called on the UN to send a new team of independent monitors to investigate the latest allegations. NAMIBIA: HIV/AIDS epidemic reaches “crisis proportions” Namibia currently ranks as one of the three countries most affected by HIV/AIDS in the world, according to the latest UN Namibia Human Development Report. The report published last week, cited an overall prevalence of about 20 percent among sexually active adults. “This means that one in five Namibians aged 15 to 49 is infected and likely to die within the next seven years,” it said. The “crisis proportions” of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Namibia were already reflected in the number of deaths being reported: “In 1997, AIDS continued to be the number one killer of Namibians , causing as many deaths (1,539) as tuberculosis (847) and malaria (723) combined. Over 11,600 new cases of HIV infection were reported in 1997, bringing the total number of cases reported to almost 50,000.” But it said the number of cases reported was lower than the number of cases which actually occur. UNAIDS and WHO have estimated the total at more than 150,000 out of the country’s population of 1.6 million. NAMBIA-BOTSWANA: Caprivi asylum seekers growing The number of Namibians fleeing seccessionist tensions in the northern Caprivi Strip south into Botswana has been increasing daily over the past two months, according to the UNHCR. The number of asylum seekers had risen from 849 at the beginning of December to over 2,400 this week, a spokesman told IRIN. He said Botswana’s independent Refugee Advisory Committee had interviewed most of the refugees and had submitted a report to the government. Officials said the committee had recommended that the majority be granted refugee status. Many of the asylum-seekers, most of whom are being housed in the Dukwe refugee camp north of the capital Gaborone, claimed in interviews with Botswana officials that they were fleeing harrassment and intimidation by Namibian state security forces. LESOTHO: Former ruler charged over murder of aid worker Lesotho’s former military ruler, Major-General Elias Phisoane Ramaema, was charged this week with the murder of a veteran Irish aid volunteer who was ambushed and stabbed to death on 21 January. Ramaema, who handed power to a civilian government in 1993, is in prison facing robbery and murder charges, after a four-wheel drive vehicle belonging to the humanitarian worker, Ken Hickey, was found in his possession with number plates substituted for those of the general’s car. His daughter-in-law and a son later turned themselves in to police after Hickey’s keys and mobile telephone were also found in the family home. The spokesman said Hickey, 75, the father of two sons and a daughter, was ambushed about 10:00 p.m. on 21 January as he returned home after a meeting with the Irish Consul-General in the Capital, Maseru. A qualified engineer, he has worked in Lesotho for seven years as a volunteer with the Irish Agency for Personnel Service (APSA). After previous assignments in Egypt and Malawi, he was helping with the construction of footbridges in the Southern African mountain kingdom. ZIMBABWE: International press watchdog supports journalists Article 19, the London-based international centre against censorship said this week it would support an appeal to the Zimbabwe supreme court on behalf of two journalists who were detained and tortured last month after publishing a report alleging an army coup plot against the government of President Robert Mugabe. Lawyers for the two journalists, Mark Chavunduka, editor of ‘The Standard’, and the author of the report, Ray Choto, are mounting a direct challenge to the “colonial statute” under which the two were charged for disseminating false news. “If successful, this challenge will put an end to one way in which the government attempts to gag its critics,” said Andrew Puddephatt, executive director of Article 19. “Zimbabwe’s supreme court has often been stout in its defence of the constitution in the past, although the government has sometimes simply amended the constitution when it finds itself on the wrong end of a court decision.” The fact that the government was prepared to violate human rights and torture its critics was the cause of alarm and despondency in Zimbabwe, he said. COMORO ISLANDS: New OAU peace initiative launched The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) this week announced the launch of a new peace initiative aimed at resolving secessionist tensions in the Indian Ocean Comoro islands. It called for the “urgent convening” of an inter-island conference in March once a team of senior regional officials had assessed the situation. The initiative was announced in a 12-point joint statement after talks chaired in South Africa last week by OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim. Salim and the foreign ministers of South Africa, Mauritius, Madagascar, the Seychelles, and representatives of Algeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso said they were concerned at the “continuing state of insecurity” in the island of Anjouan, and especially at the presence of armed militias which were currently observing a truce following a week of fighting in December. They recommended that the inter-island conference be “followed immediately by a meeting of donors in Mauritius to address socio-economic problems in the archipelago. BOTSWANA: Government vigilant on cattle lung disease The Botswana government has stepped up surveillance of the country’s borders to be on the alert for any outbreak of cattle lung disease (CBPP) even though it was eradicated in Botswana three years ago. The daily ‘Botswana Gazette’ quoted the livestock coordinator of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Dr Musa Fanikiso as saying: “Botswana has increased its surveillance along the borders where the disease is a threat.” CBPP, otherwise known as Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia is widespread in Tanzania, northern Namibia and southern Angola. He said cases of CBPP have also been reported in northern Zambia bordering Tanzania.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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