Interview with VOA’s Shaka Ssali on Problem of Child Soldiers, Parts 7-8

Part 7: Shaka Ssali – the importance of education click here
Narrator:

Dr. Shaka Ssali

Former child soldiers require above all the opportunity for education. Shaka Ssali is living proof of the transformational power of knowledge. Through education, Ssali has himself become a positive role model for others. Born in Uganda, Ssali was enlisted in the army when he 16 years old as a cadet officer. After almost five years he had risen to the rank of lieutenant. But even as a young child, he says, he had a burning desire for knowledge.
Shaka Ssali:
I was a news hound, and from the time I was a kid interacting with the cinema I developed an interest in reading magazines. I would about humor, you know, about Vietnam, and that kind of stuff.
Narrator:
The 1960s in Africa were times of political and social change. Through magazines, Ssali was able to become an observer of this change and develop understanding. He learned about events and issues such as apartheid in South Africa and the role of Nelson Mandela, the revolution in Rhodesia and Ian Smith, and the other key players and struggles of the time.
Shaka Ssali:
I sort of looked at them as if in fact they were like a bible. One of them was called Africa magazine; another was called Drum magazine. Drum was published out of Soetto in South Africa, and Africa magazine was published out of London. I would do anything in the world to make sure I had unfettered access to a copy. To know what was going on. Through that, my mind was able to be carried you know, throughout the continent basically. And in the process, I started developing an interest in some day becoming a journalist. I loved the idea of having a byline, by so and so…
Narrator:
After his time in the Ugandan Army, Ssali came to the United States in 1976, where he sought and received political asylum. He attended the State University of New York to pursue his studies.
Shaka Ssali:
Eventually, when I come to the United States, I have made up my mind. I really want to be a journalist. So I go to the State University of New York. They didn't have a journalism major, but they had a communications and rhetoric major. Then I start studying about Africa. I developed a passion for Africa.
Narrator:
During his journalism studies, Ssali authored stories in a student magazine containing harsh criticism for the African leaders of time – such as Uganda's Idi Amin, Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta and Mobutu of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Shaka Ssali:
So I found myself somehow associating myself with those forces frankly that were promoting change. And in the process, I realize that each time I wrote an article, I got very, very positive feedback from a lot of people, and that encouraged me enormously.

Narrator:
After a disappointing experience as an intern at Newsday in New York, Ssali went back to school, this time in Los Angeles at the University of California, or UCLA.
Shaka Ssali:
For me I was very ambitious in the sense that I looked at myself someday as someone that would be like a research reporter on Africa, analyzing Africa. I sort of reasoned that if I went to graduate school, picked up higher degrees and what have you, developed my writing skills, that New York Times or Time magazine would find me irresistible. I went into some classes of history and philosophy and I became extremely bored. So I went to go check out some of the courses in the film school. And they had some of the courses which they called non-Western films. And I started attending those courses because I thought that coming from where I do, you have very high rates of illiteracy. And therefore, the best really medium of communication for my people, I reasoned, would be using the moving picture. So I felt that yeah, this was going to be a great opportunity for me. I was going to do documentary film making, to empower those people that can neither write nor read – that's how I looked at it.
Part 8: Shaka Ssali – thanks and contribution
Narrator:
Today, Ssali is a popular radio talk show host with Voice of America. His programs have loyal followings across Africa, Europe and the United States.
Shaka Ssali:
I have two programs that I host. One is called Straight Talk Africa, a weekly, live, international call-in talk show. It is a program that is really designed to empower the audience. It empowers the audience in the sense that the audience has the opportunity to call in, give their telephone number, especially from Africa where they do not have the collect facility, then the operator calls them back and they ask a question, they ask it live. That is one of the real opportunities for example that, even in Tanzania, one can actually call into the show and get the opportunity to interact with his President, something that is very rare. It is also live and therefore most of the interaction really is something close to being authentic, you know, it's not predetermined and what have you, and so it really makes a lot of difference, especially with the latest technological developments of the cell phone. You can literally go anywhere, in the villages, you know.
Narrator:
Ssali's contribution to understanding, by telling his own story through his writing and radio shows have given him a special place in many African communities. He himself tells us that the children in Africa, where he came from, have the potential to make great contributions themselves. He told us how he sees that potential through an example.  
Shaka Ssali:
And then I was in Kenya, I went to visit former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi. And he's a guy who used to tell me that – whenever I would ask him what is the single most important decision that you have made during your presidency, you know things like that, he would tell me education, education. How he has built many schools, he has contributed land for people to build schools in their communities, and so I took him on. I said: you know you used to tell me, Mr. President that you were the education president. I want to get the opportunity now to see some of those schools that you built. We went around – we went to one of his, a secondary school near the place where he was born – one of the remotest parts of Kenya. And I was talking to these kids, and it became immediately clear to me that a lot of these kids could one day actually go to places like MIT, CalTech. It was amazing to find that they were so familiar with my work. And I said “how?” They said: we listen to you on the radio. We never miss your program. Why? They said, well because of the things you do, you're like a teacher, it's like you're teaching us about Africa. And it's amazing, they would say, that you've stayed in the states for many years but you have never lost your accent, your intonation. We identify with you very easily. You never try to become what you are not, you know stuff like that. So, it's amazing what it has really done for me and it's incredible, it's incredible…

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Mass removal of Rwandans from Ugandan refugee settlements

Mass removal of Rwandans from Ugandan refugee settlements

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/6596

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Reports reaching IRRI and RLP indicate that on the morning of Wednesday 14th July 2010, OPM Directorate of Refugees and Police officers in Nakivale (Isingiro District) and Kyaka II (Kyenjonjo District) began rounding up Rwandans and forcing them against their will to board trucks to return them to Rwanda.

Reports indicate that those targeted in this manner were lured with the promise that they would be granted refugee status and food. Instead they were met by a large number of Ugandan police who rounded them up and forced them onto trucks. Shots were fired by police. Some individuals appear to have been injured during the process, and in some cases parents were separated from children. Reports further suggest that Rwandan security agents and authorities were present at the scene.

By removing settlement-based Rwandans in this manner, the Ugandan government is in breach of its own Citizenship and Immigration Act, which outlines the due processes by which failed asylum seekers who have exhausted their right of appeal should be deported. It has also violated the obligations created by domestic and international law, including the Constitution, the Children’s Statute and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These breaches come just days before the African Union Summit on ‘Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa’ is due to begin in Kampala.

IRRI and RLP condemn this forcible removal of Rwandans from Ugandan refugee settlements.

We further note that this comes barely a month after our drawing public attention to the fact that many Rwandan refugees and asylum seekers fear persecution if returned to their country of origin (see report titled, “A Dangerous Impasse: Rwandan Refugees in Uganda” available on www.refugeelawproject.org and www.refugee-rights.org) The report made a number of recommendations to the governments of Uganda and Rwanda, and to UNHCR, in order to improve protection for this group of refugees. In particular, it stated that the Ugandan government must scrupulously uphold its international and national legal obligations with regard to the protection of refugees and to the truly voluntary nature of any repatriation.

We therefore call for an immediate halt to the current removal process. We also call on the Ugandan government to ensure that any failed asylum seekers are able to exhaust the appeal processes provided for under the Refugees Act, and, where these routes have indeed been exhausted, that the Government follow due process for deportation as provided for under the Citizenship and Immigration Control Act.

For further information or comments, please contact;
Dr. Chris Dolan, Director, Refugee Law Project,
dir@refugeelawproject.org, +256 414235330/ 343556

or

Dismas Nkunda, Co-Director, International Refugee Rights Initiative,
dismas.nkunda@refugee-rights.org +256 782310404 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +256 782310404      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Ugandan Troops Want A License To Kill

July 16, 2010:  Uganda is enraged by al Shabaab's terror attack inside its capital on the 11th, and is calling for the AU (African Union) to increase the peacekeeper force in Somalia to 20,000 troops, and allow it to go after al Shabaab and other Islamic radical groups. The bombing enraged Ugandans, and other East African nations, who are now more willing to fight Islamic radicalism. Part of this attitude is the fact that most East Africans are not Moslem, and are hostile to Moslems, and Arabs. For thousands of years, Arabs have traded with East Africa, operating from fortified coastal towns. This trade also included buying Africans (usually from other Africans) as slaves and shipping them throughout the Middle East, and beyond. When Islam came along 1,400 years ago, the Arabs tried to impose the new religion on East Africans, without much success. The Somalis were one of the few exceptions, apparently because they had, in distant antiquity adopted a language similar to Arabic. Although black (and often enslaved by Arabs), Somalis have always considered themselves Arabs. Thus there has long been hostility between Somalis and the other black Africans to the south. This is even seen in refugee camps in Kenya, where Somalis and refugees from Sudan (where Arab speaking northern Somalis have been driving black African Somalis from their villages in western Sudan) fight each other. In the last few days, a battle in the Kenyan Dadaab camp left over fifty injured. Most of the violence is instigated by Somalis, usually against non-Moslem Africans. The Moslem black Sudanese are often targets of Somali aggression as well. The Kenyan refugee camps contain people from Sudan, Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Ethiopia. The Dadaab is the largest refugee camp in the world, holding about a million people (99 percent of them Somalis). There are Somali refugees throughout Africa, and there is constant friction with non-Somali Africans. The July 11th al Shabaab attack in Uganda has caused unease among Somalis in Mogadishu, as they expect the 3,500 Ugandan AU peacekeepers to seek revenge, and to kill a lot of civilians in the process. Al Shabaab often uses civilians as human shields, who get killed in the crossfire. The AU peacekeepers are from black African nations that have long suffered from the arrogance and violent behavior of Somalis. An AU offensive in Somalia would get pretty nasty, particularly because the AU troops have shown no reluctance to shoot up human shields al Shabaab might use. It's because of these volatile attitudes that the AU and UN are reluctant to turn the peacekeepers loose in Mogadishu. Al Shabaab, meanwhile, is experiencing more internal dissension because of the Uganda bombing. The foreign al Qaeda men who urged the bombings be carried out, and probably advised on how to do it, are now less popular. Many al Shabaab members are aware of the superior combat power of the foreign troops, and that al Shabaab cannot stand up to this kind of force, especially if it contains a lot of Ugandans seeking revenge. Thus there is now more opposition to al Qaeda within al Shabaab, and Somali Islamic radicals in general.
Uganda believes the al Shabaab bombing in Uganda was carried out by at least twenty al Shabaab members who entered Uganda (via Kenya) several months ago. Police have arrested nine Somalis in Uganda, and accused them of participating in the terror plot.
July 15, 2010: Uganda offered to supply another two thousand troops for the Somali peacekeeping force, to bring it up to strength (8,100), if no other nation comes forward. Uganda already has 3,500 troops in Somalia.
The U.S. has pledged to provide more support for peacekeepers in Somalia, especially if those peacekeepers are allowed to do some peacemaking against Islamic radical groups (like al Shabaab). The U.S. has a special operations base in Djibouti (on Somalia's northern border), as do special operations troops from France and other NATO nations. The U.S. Special Forces troops run discreet intelligence operations in Somalia, including the use of UAVs. In the past, the U.S. has armed these UAVs with Hellfire missiles, and has had warships off the coast hit targets in Somalia with cruise missiles.
Worldwide pirate attacks have fallen 18 percent this year (for the first six months), from 240 attacks to 196. Because of the anti-piracy patrol, attacks in the Gulf of Aden fell over 60 percent (from 86 to 33), while attacks farther off the east coast of Somalia increased 16 percent (to 51). Somali pirates have seized 27 ships in the first six months of 2010, most (16) of them far at sea.
July 14, 2010: Uganda has asked for the African Union (AU) to change the ROE (Rules of Engagement) for the peacekeepers in Somalia, so that these troops can go after al Shabaab. The AU follows the UN in having its peacekeepers forbidden to take offensive action.
Ugandan police have already been arresting suspects in the July 11 bombing. The U.S. FBI, which has long maintained some personnel in Uganda, to coordinate efforts against Islamic terrorists, was quick to provide the Ugandans with data on what al Shabaab might be up to. The U.S. monitors al Shabaab as much as possible, but rarely shares the data, in order to safeguard the sources and methods used to collect it.
July 13, 2010: Many members of the AU are calling for more peacekeepers to be sent to Somalia, and for these troops be allowed to go after Islamic radical groups. Al Shabaab thought the attack would intimidate the 52 AU members, but it has had the opposite effect. Most AU members, especially the non-Arab ones, are enraged and want vengeance and justice.
July 11, 2010: In Uganda's capital, two suicide bombers attacked a large group of Ugandans and foreigners watching the World Cup final, as well as an Ethiopian restaurant, killing at least 76 people. A third suicide vest was found in a suburban disco, where the bomber apparently had second thoughts. Al Shabaab later took credit for the attack. Al Shabaab has been threatening such attacks for months, in retaliation for the presence of Ugandan peacekeepers (and largely non-Moslem ones at that) in Somalia. Only about 12 percent of Ugandans are Moslem, and only a few of those are radicals. But that would have been enough to help the Somali radicals plan and carry out an attack. Ugandan police promptly arrested the usual suspects in the Ugandan Islamic radical community, and some of these guys turned out to have al Shabaab connections. Uganda does not border Somalia, but does share a long border with Kenya, which is home to over a million Somali refugees.
July 10, 2010:  On the Ethiopian border, at least sixteen were killed when a Somali militia clashed with Ethiopian troops.
Al Shabaab has acted on its pledge to conscript young men to join the fight against the Transitional Government and various Somali militias. Today, at least a hundred young men were forced, at gunpoint, to "join" al Shabaab.

ZAPATERO WILL SHARE U.N. HONORARY POST WITH THE CRIMINAL KAGAME

ZAPATERO WILL SHARE U.N. HONORARY POST WITH THE CRIMINAL KAGAME

“The biggest criminal on active service” is nominated by the U.N. to serve as example of the struggle against hunger and discrimination

This past June 7, Soraya Rodríguez, secretary of State for International Cooperation, took pleasure in explaining to the Spanish senate that, in recognition of Spain’s commitment to the Millenium Development Goals, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had just appointed José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to chair the international group that will ensure the implementation of these goals. In this role, Rodríguez Zapatero will serve as the representative of the developed countries and will share this honorary position with the representative of the developing countries.

In a solemn assembly entitled Declaration of the Millenium and held in New York in September 2000, the 192 member countries of the U.N. had set out to achieve these 8 goals by 2015. The Declaration of the Millenium sought to accomplish goals yearned by millions of people, noble goals such as eradicating poverty and hunger, ensuring primary school education around the globe, reducing infant mortality, establishing gender equality, and achieving environment sustainability.

So far, so good – yet a surprise lies in store. Hidden inside the respectable present our president has received lurks a surprise “little gift”. This time, however, it bears no resemblance to the traditional practise on the feast of Epiphany dating back to the second century whereby the lucky person who found a bean in his ‘King’s cake’ was crowned almighty king for a couple of days. This time, rather, it is a poisoned gift which will turn Zapatero into a pitiful universal symbol of the unthinkable degree of corruption that the U.N. has now reached.This U.N. is being manipulated by a small, dark and extremely powerful international elite which is directly responsible for establishing a global situation which has brought about highly criminal and mass collateral impact. This corrupt U.N. which some parties want to establish as the new and sole Global Government. This gift is no other than the fiend who has been chosen to co-chair the group, as representative of the developing countries: Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda.

Who is this man? Paul Kagame is the man who, according to countless witnesses, snatched power as head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front which had just invaded Rwanda from Uganda, following the assassination of his colleague, moderate general Fred Rwigema in October of 1990. Kagame’s new strategies focused on sowing terror among the large Hutu majority and on instigating an exodus from a large part of the country in order for him to get a hold of power more easily in the capital city of Kigali. Under his command, to cite just an example, hundreds of Hutu peasants were slit open and tied to an object with their own guts in order for relatives and acquaintances to find them in such state. Kagame is the man who ordered the assassination of nine Spanish nationals who had been inconvenient witnesses of his misdeeds. Kagame is the man who ordered the assassination of three bishops and dozens of people with them, and told his subordinates who, taken aback, didn’t know whether they had correctly understood his instructions: “I’ve already told you to get rid of that scum.” Kagame is the man who, amid loud guffaws, fired a powerful machine-gun himself, murdering dozens of Hutu civilians at a market. He is the man, who even recently, in the midst of an impassioned speech, regretted only having murdered some hundred thousand Hutu refugees in Congo and not all of them…A list of similar examples could go on forever. But anybody can find these examples in the February 5 2008 judicial order, issued by Judge Fernando Abreu Merelles, which holds Kagame responsible for the most serious crimes in international law and has issued arrest warrants against 40 of his closest associates. As Filipe Reynjens and many other experts who know him well point out, Kagame is, in short, the world’s “biggest criminal on active service.”

The Millenium Development Goals have thus been undermined to such an extent that they now appear as a mere masquerade, as a philantropic facelift of the immense pillage that a powerful elite of our globalized world, using monsters like Kagame, is carrying out in countries like Congo, countries which this elite moreover claims to be helping out. I can’t think of a metaphor which could more powerfully reveal the pitiful state of things in the world today than this mass criminal’s philantropic chairmanship at the U.N. Mr. Zapatero, is that what you are willing to stand for alongside Kagame? Being the new international public face of a philantropic farce which now sinks its roots in secret societies that date back centuries? The public face of a criminal farce which is today one of the main strategies vying to establish a New World Order in which the U.N. must be the main “charitable” agent?

Who are those people who, having so much power as to be able to dictate a criminal agenda to the U.N., are capable of debasing what is holiest, all the deepest yearnings of humankind? How have we possibly been able to sink to such a level of collective perversion and madness? How have we gone so far as to accept, as paradigm of the Millenium Goals, an individual who is responsible, not only for the great impoverishment of Congo and the mass of Hutu peasants in Rwanda, but also for the devastation of these two countries where millions of Rwandans and Congolese have died? What important stakes do these elites hold in Congo and in all of Central Africa that they can act with such blatant shamelessness and put forward to the world such a fiend as guide? It’s now clear why Ban Ki-moon never responded to Judge Fernando Andreu Meralles who at the beginning of 2009 issued another resolution demanding that he hand in the evidence of the pillage that Kagame had carried out in Congo. It’s also clear why in its report dated November 2009 the U.N. panel of experts accused us, the small organization that initiated such lawsuit, of being the leading financial backer of the huge conflict in Congo. How outrageous is everything in this incredible story!

Mr. Zapatero: this denunciation is not against you, but rather for your sake. It’s the denunciation made by people who are deeply disappointed with your behavior concerning this current major conflict, a conflict in which nine Spanish nationals were murdered following orders from Kagame. It’s the denunciation by people who back then voted for you and even now don’t want to see you stoop so low. Don’t yield once again, Mr. President. Not this time, please. It would be far too humiliating. Be wary of those people who, whether outside or even inside your inner circle, lead you to such embarrassing situations. Don’t insult so many of us Spaniards who understand the meaning of what you are about to do. Now you can’t say you weren’t informed. Or is it, rather, that you are paying off some ‘favor’ to those who call the shots in the world? Mr. Zapatero, don’t be co-chair of the Millenium Goals with Kagame, don’t go down in history as the accomplice of such a fiend and his extremely powerful godfathers in their operations of global pillaging and deceit. They will be brought to light in the short run. Don’t lend them a hand, don’t stain your own hands with innocent blood. This attempt to clean up the image of this thug Kagame and of his criminal pillage of Congo is so blatant and preposterous that it will most certainly backfire.

Joan Carrero, president, Fundació S´Olivar

Bernat Vicens, president, Drets Humans de Mallorca