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By Ruma Paul, Shoon Naing, Wa Lone, Poppy McPherson and Devjyot Ghoshal (Reuters) – Saifur Rahman woke up to screams. In the darkness, the air reeked of fuel. Flames blazed in the distance. The town of Buthidaung in Rakhine state, Myanmar’s largest settlement of minority Rohingya, was on fire and under attack. “All I could see was fire,” said the 30-year-old Rohingya. “We knew something bad could happen but never imagined this.” When the fires […]
By José Arturo Cárdenas LA PAZ, June 27, 2024 (AFP) – Bolivia’s army chief was arrested Wednesday after sending soldiers and tanks to take up position in front of government buildings in what President Luis Arce called an attempted coup. The troops and tanks entered Plaza Murillo, a historic square where the presidency and Congress are situated, in the afternoon, prompting global condemnation of an attack on democracy. One of the tanks tried to break […]
YANGON, June 20, 2024 (AFP) – Detained Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in “good health”, a junta spokesman told AFP on Thursday, a day after the Nobel laureate turned 79 in military custody. Suu Kyi has been detained by the military since it toppled her government and seized power in 2021, plunging the Southeast Asian nation into turmoil. The Nobel laureate is serving a 27-year sentence imposed by a junta court after […]
GENEVA, March 1, 2024 (AFP) – Three years of military rule in Myanmar have inflicted unbearable cruelty, leaving people trapped in an unending nightmare as the conflict spreads, the UN human rights chief said Friday. The junta is crushing all forms of dissent with total impunity, Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council, urging the United Nations’ top rights body and countries to focus on preventing further atrocities. “The human rights situation in Myanmar […]
YANGON, Myanmar, Feb 1, 2024 (AFP) – Myanmar on Thursday entered its fourth year since a coup snuffed out a short-lived dance with democracy, with the embattled junta warning it will do “whatever it takes” to crush opposition to its rule. The junta extended a state of emergency by six months on the eve of the anniversary, once again delaying promised elections, with a fresh round of US sanctions announced hours later. In the early […]
NAMHSAN, Myanmar, Dec 30, 2023 (AFP) – A squad of Myanmar pro-democracy fighters works quickly to ready drones for an attack on a nearby military base, the latest target in a wave of aerial assaults that has helped turn the war against the junta. The team stood back as one contraption named “Bomber VIII” carrying a new six-kilogram explosive soared over a line of trees. “The military position is four kilometres away from us,” said […]
YANGON, Myanmar, Dec 13, 2023 (AFP) – Myanmar junta authorities have arrested two journalists in night raids, their outlet said on Wednesday, as the military cracks down on independent media. Since toppling Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021, the military has waged a sweeping and bloody campaign against dissent, and at least 170 journalists have since been arrested, according to the United Nations. Local outlet Dawei Watch said two of its employees were arrested […]
SYDNEY, Australia, Nov 14, 2023 (AFP) – Days after Myanmar’s military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021, an Australian economist working with her received an anonymous email telling him the police were watching his room and that he should flee. Sean Turnell, an economics professor at Macquarie University, was detained soon after, as the military launched a sweeping and bloody crackdown on democracy protests and those who had worked with Suu Kyi’s […]
NIAMEY, Niger, Oct 20, 2023 (AFP) – Niger’s military rulers said they had foiled an attempt by Mohamed Bazoum, the former president they ousted in a coup in July, to escape their custody on Thursday. “At around three in the morning, the ousted president Mohamed Bazoum and his family, his two cooks and two security elements, tried to escape from his place of detention,” the regime’s spokesman Amadou Abdramane said on state television. The escape […]
GENEVA, Oct 4, 2023 (AFP) – A United Nations investigation into Myanmar on Wednesday urged the country’s military rulers to end forced labour in the army and to halt all violence against trade unionists. A probe launched by the UN’s labour agency found far-reaching violations of international forced labour and freedom of association conventions in the southeast Asian nation. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted the democratically-elected civilian leader Aung San Suu […]
LIBREVILLE, Aug 30, 2023 (AFP) – Rebel officers in the oil-rich central African state of Gabon announced on Wednesday they had seized power following disputed elections in which President Ali Bongo Ondimba, in power since 2009, had been declared victor. Bongo, 64, whose family has ruled Gabon for over 55 years, was placed under house arrest and one of his sons arrested for treason, the coup leaders said. A worried-looking Bongo, in a video from […]
NIAMEY, Niger, Aug 11, 2023 (AFP) – Fears for Niger’s detained president mounted on Friday, a day after West African leaders declared they would muster a “standby” force in their efforts to return him to power. The European Union and African Union joined the United States and other voices in sounding the alarm for democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, who was ousted by members of his guard on July 26. “Bazoum and his family, according […]
