Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 345

Video: These are the Parents from Ayotzinapa

Yesterday, three of the parents of the 43 abducted students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico, who spent over a month touring the United States raising awareness over their plight, were detained by the Mexican authorities. Clemente Rodríguez, Emiliano Navarrete and Bernabé Abraján Gaspar were stopped in Alpuyecas, in the state of Morelos, and were accused of traveling in a stolen vehicle.

The parents reminded the authorities that the car they were using to drive to Mexico City (to further discuss the situation of their missing sons) was given to them by the state of Guerrero, where the town that hosts the College of Ayotzinapa, Tixtla, is. They were promptly set free. But this was a reminder of the many obstacles as they demand justice for their missing sons.

This is why we want to share this video we recorded with Rodríguez and José Antonio Tizapa (another one of the parents) when they spoke in front of the United Nations building in New York, about a month ago, as a way to close the Caravana 43 journey.

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Published on May 20, 2015 20:30

New Ways of Seeing The World: Interview with Director Tala Hadid and Producer Danny Glover of ‘A Narrow Frame of Midnight’

Last week, Tala Hadid’s feature film, Itar el Layl, or, A Narrow Frame of Midnight, had its New York premiere at the 22nd Annual African Film Festival. Evocative, dreamy, lush, and visually captivating, Hadid’s Arabic language art house project embodies the idea that film is always a kind of traveling.

Zacaria, (Khalid Abdalla) having returned home to Morocco after a long time away, searches desperately for his missing brother Yosef, who it is suggested has been recruited into a militant Islamic organization. Propelled forward by clues on scraps of paper and vague whispers by strangers, Zacaria attempts to follow his brother’s movements, moving through Casablanca, Istanbul, and Kurdistan to Bagdad.

Searching for his beloved sibling, seeking a forgiveness and redemption that only a disappeared Yosef can offer, Zaccaria encounters a set of fellow travelers. Most compelling and interesting is his fragile father-daughter relationship that develops with Aichia (Fadwa Boujouane), a young orphan who he rescues from the clutches of a violent sex-trafficking pimp (Hocine Chouti). While Zacaria’s search rests at the center of the plot, the film also and unevenly follows a cast of intriguing women (and the girl) who cross his path. Aichia, Yosef’s abandoned wife, the pimp’s abused partner Nadia (Majdouline Idrissi), Zaccaria’s former lover Judith (Marie-Josée Croze), and a beautiful, expressive Milouda (Hindi Zahra) with whom he seems to share an intimate night of trust and recognition, are in many ways more fascinating than quest-focused protagonist who ambivalently abandons them each.

Nonetheless, Hadid’s film hovers, allowing the viewer a distant view of loss—with a multiple of valences. The loss of brother, husband, lover, parent, child—is interwoven with the loss of safety, peace, memory, nation, and sovereignty. All of the characters, with the exception of the innocent yet fierce Aichia, are haunted by a past, and haunted too by decades of violence still tormenting the present.

The film’s beauty acts as a powerful elixir to its story of war’s wreckage. Zacaria, searching for his brother, visits a slaughterhouse turned morgue, and while blood is efficiently cleansed from the butcher blocks, the camera raises to show a bounty of corpses all covered in sheets the color of pink roses. Under the spell of Hadid’s vision and Alexander Burov’s gorgeous cinematography, a morgue becomes a garden of grievability. Left behind in the hills, Judith anguishes in sun-filled rooms, her shoulders caressed by Aichia’s brown hands and gentle breezes that whirl flower petals in the emptiness.

The beauty of the images cannot serve to temper the many frustrating silences in the film, the personal and political histories fragmented, in orphaned ruin like the dilapidated structures that mark the film’s urban and more rural vistas. Still, tenderness and terror are braided together with an elegant visual language that, while not driven by plot and character development, offers a new and complex vision of worlds in steep contrast to the other-ing images ubiquitously shown in Western media, images that craft the places and people of Northern Africa and the Middle East as strange, terrible, and in need of taming.

Executive produced in part by Louverture Films, the company founded and lead by actor/cultural-activist Danny Glover, A Narrow Frame of Midnight, takes its place within an eclectic collection of global films supported and developed in part by Glover and his team. I had the chance to speak with writer-director Tala Hadid and producer Danny Glover about their collaboration and the broader issues shaping the production and dissemination of African film.

The film has been screened at festivals in Toronto, Dubai, Korea, and London for example. How important was it to both of you that A Narrow Frame of Midnight screen at the New York African Film Festival?

Danny Glover: It is important, as this film tells not only an Arab story, and an African story, but speaks to the human dilemma, ruptures of conflict, historic pain, and everyday life. So I thinks its important, that the African Film Festival include films that go beyond the idea that something African is something only concerned with sub-Saharan Africa. I see this film in the tradition of Ousmane Sembene, Khalil Gibril, and Mariama Ba, those decolonizing and liberation processes, many of which took place at the same time in Africa and the Middle East. The film follows in those traditons, but now we are at a point when the contradictions and the dialectics have changed somewhat, so we are dealing with another kind of resolve to speak to our human existence.

Tala Hadid: I’m happy for all audiences to watch the film. But yes, I agree with Danny, that it has been very important to participant in the African Film Festival, in New York, given what is embodied by Africa. The film comes from the global south, the so-called periphery—essentially telling these stories that are so difficult to be made, to be distributed. It is very important to have spaces such as this to screen the film, so these spaces may be spaces for dialogue. The project aligns with Danny’s work with Louverture Films that produces films from Africa, the Middle East, films with a very specific and crucial political content. The film is set primarily in Morocco, an African country, at the frontier, populated by a mix of Africans and Arabs, very close to Europe; it is an entry point to the continent. The film is open enough to be claimed by African film festivals and has screened at several African film festivals, not just in Europe or the West. And given the importance of Africa, that all eyes are on Africa, it is very important that the film represent the vast open field of many voices that are waiting to tell their stories.

Danny, since Louverture Films has been developing a diverse set of global films, what kind of stories from and about Africa catch your eye and impact your decision making?

DG: Most compelling for me are issues of migration, the collapse of the nation state, the destabilizing of economies that lead to a great deal of internal conflict and general uncertainty. All the time we see boatloads of men, women, and children drowning on their way to places like Spain. So migration is a overwhelming issue that we are dealing with right now. What also happens in these contexts is that women will be at the center of orchestrating these stories. Women and children, families, are the most affected by the trauma of these kinds of events. So women as storytellers in their communities, women artists like Tala, all over the continent, will continue to offer a new way of visualizing what is happening in their communities.

Are the politics of gender and women’s experiences important to you, Tala, as a women filmmaker, is that something that you thinking about? Or are other concerns driving your narratives?

TH: Yes, I agree with Danny, questions of migration from Africa, and many places in the world, where people are on the move due to war, conflict and disenfranchisement, women will be, and are at the center of it. And it is time for women to be heard, but also in regard to issues of class, it is time that we stand at those frontiers, lead the charge, and tell our stories. Women, people, migrants, have the right to speak and essentially not to have someone else speak in our names. I always think of that quote by Aime Cesaire who said “No race possesses a monopoly of beauty or intelligence;” everyone has right to speak from their truth. So in any case, yes, I do think its crucial for women, we’ve been at the center of the home, and that is where the oral tradition comes from, and if there was ever the time to reclaim that, the moment is now. Beyond the dominant stories whether they be patriarchal or from other sources of entitled power, women can possibly tell not only new stories, but give us a new ways of seeing and being seen, jolting spectators toward new ways of looking at the world, and new possibilities.

Speaking of ‘ways of seeing,’ Tala, you were trained as a painter and I know your work as a photographer has received critical attention. Last night at the Q&A, you said it is not only about a film being beautiful, and yet, I was very struck by the beauty and aesthetics of the film. How does your experience with these other adjacent visual modes impact your filmmaking?

TH: Well, they are all tools, whether it is painting, using the camera, it all comes back to a way of looking at the world. This applies also to how you wake up, how you share space with our comrades, walk through a city, read political situations or a book of poetry, all can contribute in the making of an artistic work. All of us are painters, I think, whether we are filmmakers, citizens, laborers, teachers—it is all about ways of looking at the world.

Ok, we are running out of time, so last question: Danny, as a Haitian in Diaspora, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask about your film project on the Haitian Revolution that was being discussed years back, any news on that?

DG: It’s still on my plate! I think it is the greatest story. I was just reading Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism and he discusses how the Haitian Revolution completely transformed Western history. The only time it has happened in human history, the making of a nation from a slave revolt. Nobody talks about that, the only time, and for the large part it has been eviscerated out of history, because it challenges the narrative so many are invested in. But I am fascinated by the amazing and extraordinary capacity of those enslaved people to reimagine life, and to bring life, and to celebrate life. Those are the stories that Louverture Films seek to tell.

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Published on May 20, 2015 08:00

Letters to Hlompho Letsielo

Last week, Lesotho lost one of its most vibrant creative minds, the photographer Hlompho Letsielo. As friends, we’ve written letters to him in the next world.

—

From Lineo:

Picture perfect.

The grief and denial

By-products of guilt rather than loss

Disbelief and shock aside

Torrents of “if only” flow from everyone’s lips

Including my own

If only I video-documented your presentation in January

But the lighting was poor and I dismissed it

I counted on next time and saved it in my visual memory

If only I had been consistent with our heart-to-heart sessions

Could that have made a difference?

Humans, ever so feeble

We applauded your art

Neglected its weight

We saw only the beauty of what you produced

But not the hidden horrors you were fighting off

Consumed by our selfishness

We lament that we’ll never see you again

As if you had something to gain

From our being possessive over you

You did a meticulous job of sowing warmth and inspiration

Planted sparks of your infinite light in all the souls you touched

Yours was a life laced with tales of bravery, laughter and wit

Never a hoarder, you spread love like you earned commission on it

How dare we not follow suit?!

Goodbye Hlompho.

From Zachary:

Hlompho,

I remember when we first met at Times Caffe, on the upper deck, overlooking Kingsway road in Maseru. Chairs were scarce and we happened to find places at the same table. With the smell of chicken grilling on the street below and the pounding of heavy kwaito bass coming from inside the bar we struck up a conversation over Maluti lagers and soon discovered we had the same obsession. The love of capturing light. We shared inspirations and project ideas with earnest enthusiasm and vowed to collaborate. I saw you on the street a few days later and we walked over to Pioneer Mall to look at magazines in the Pick ‘N Pay. We can do better than that, we said.

Hlompho,

Now, a lot of people like snapping pictures and playing with cameras, but photography was never a hobby for you, it was a calling. You hustled with the newspapers in Maseru for a while using borrowed cameras, trying to make it in a small market which doesn’t always value photographers or know how recognize quality. Before long Lesotho couldn’t contain you and you set off to Johannesburg. It wasn’t enough to take good pictures for you, you wanted to know the history of photography and debate the power of the image, so you enrolled in the Market Photo Workshop and continued to hone your craft.

Hlompho,

Your talent was clearly recognized and it earned you an internship with the Mail & Guardian newspaper. You covered intense feature stories where other photographers were afraid to go, documenting township protests and the struggle for hearts and minds between Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema, then the embattled president of the ANC Youth League. At some point you even popped up in Kenya for some reportage. With every M&G feature I would seek out the print edition on the streets of Maseru and buy a copy, proudly telling the paper dealers, You see these pictures? I know the guy who took them. He’s from Lesotho.

Hlompho,

More than once on trips to Johannesburg, a massive metropolis compared to Maseru, I ran into you randomly on the street, always alone and each time wielding your camera. You had your own by then and it never left your side. Whether day or night, whatever the conditions, you were always ready for decisive moments to reveal themselves to you or be created. No place was off limits and you had a knack for weaving through crowds of people with patience and poise. Your smile usually put people at ease, though some were threatened by the power of your lens. Even in the face of intimidation, of physical assault, your persistence endured.

Hlompho,

Eventually you came home to Lesotho. I don’t know what brought you back from South Africa but you came back ready to take over. You dove into photojournalism with energy and professionalism, selling stories to some of the top photo agencies in the world including Getty, Corbis and AFP. It was never lost on me that you always gave meaningful captions to your work, humanizing the people you photographed beyond just the technical soundness of aesthetics. Your images weren’t romantic, they were real. When Lesotho experienced its attempted coup at the end of August 2014 you were relentless in telling the story of a nation of resilient people in the midst of political crisis.

Hlompho,

It was exciting to see that with your presence, Lesotho saw a surge of visual creativity. Your travel and experience allowed you to step back and reflect on the nuances of culture, a quality shared by the best of artists. You had matured into a key figure in the cultural scene and became a mentor to many young creatives. Your work was shown in exhibitions, you shot campaigns for creative local products and you joined forces with friends to film and direct the most exciting music videos Lesotho had seen. Shit, there are even billboards of your work up around town right now. But I think the corporate work bored you. It seemed you preferred the bold pursuit of real stories through documentary work.

Hlompho,

I’ve been too distant to know what caused that boldness to mix with hidden pain in ways which cannot be undone. Loss is always hard to deal with, but the loss of a visionary stings more acutely because of their power to change people’s lives. I don’t know if any institution has the consciousness to pay you proper tribute, but know that the ideas we schemed about and the visions I never had the chance to share will come to be realized.

Hlompho,

Lineo and I invented a new Sesotho word this week as you know we have a habit of doing. I’ll tell you what it is, but I think you’ve understood the meaning for a long time.

lehlo

(n.) Setšoantšo seo ralinepe a tsebang hore se na le botle le botebo hang-hang ha a penya konopo ea kh’amera e nkang senepe.

An image which a photographer knows is perfect the moment they press the shutter button on a camera.

Respect,

Zachary

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Published on May 20, 2015 05:30

How many of you know Dave Chappelle’s mother worked for Patrice Lumumba?

A lot of us have spent hours laughing at Dave Chappelle’s jokes, but few know about the extraordinary life of his mother, Dr. Yvonne Seon. In a recent interview that aired on the internet radio show Congo Live, Seon was asked about her decision to go and work for Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. The broadcast is worth listening too. But Seon’s life also represents a more profound connectivity harbored in the Black Atlantic in the twentieth century especially, which has connected the Congo to North America, and the Caribbean.

Back to Seon. How she got to Congo is a remarkable story. After earning a BA at Allegheny College in northeastern Pennsylvania, she studied for a MA in political science at American University in 1960. She also studied French, which would later prove tremendously useful.

As a student in Washington DC, she was shaped by what she calls “the time of the big change”, marked by the culmination of black liberation in the United States, and on the African continent starting with the independence of Ghana in 1957. By speaking with African diplomats that had began to visit DC, as well as being involved in movements of solidarity such as “Friends of Ghana”, Seon, gained insight into the aspiration and euphoria represented by the prospect of an independent and united Africa.

Following independence on June 30th 1960, Lumumba, then the newly elected Prime Minister of the Congo, made his first official visit to the United States from July 27-29th. Given an army mutiny, and suspicions over his connections to Moscow, Lumumba was already under tremendous pressure. However, Lumumba’s visit also entailed attempting to recruit young professionals that would be willing to fill the gap left by the departure of the Belgian colonial administration. Given her mother’s connection to various African diaspora groups in DC, Seon received an invite to Lumumba’s official reception, “serendipity” as she calls it.

At the reception, one of Lumumba’s aides noticed Seon’s passion for post-colonial Africa, and informed her of Lumumba’s interest of recruiting students like her to the Congo. Seon, at the time aged 21, replied: “I will have to think about that,” but looked forward to meeting Lumumba personally. That very next morning, Lumumba encouraged Seon to accompany him back to the Congo in order to serve as the secretary to the High Commission on the Grand Inga Dam Project, an ambitious initiative which sought to establish Africa’s energy independence immediately.

Seon’s memory of Lumumba was one of a “decisive leader” that “cared deeply about his people.” On Congo Live she also spoke to the danger Lumumba represented to imperialism worldwide, thereby echoing Fanon and others, in viewing Lumumba’s assassination as the personification of the post-colonial dilemma.

Seon arrived in Congo following Lumumba’s assassination in 1961. In an interview with IMixWhatILike, Seon says that she had been disappointed that the Grand Inga Dam project ran into similar difficulties faced by Nkrumah’s Volta River project. The three stages of the dam were never fully completed due to lacking investor confidence, and technical assistance. (As Congo is currently expected to complete the Grand Inga Dam Project by 2016, the largest energy generating body ever built, one wonders if the Congo River can eventually become sub-Saharan Africa’s engine of electrification.)

Seon went on to be appointed as chief administrative officer for the Fourteenth General Assembly of UNESCO, the first African American selected for that role.

Dave Chappelle has publicly acknowledged the extent to which his own work is deeply influenced by his mother: “We were like the broke Huxtables…We used to have a picture of Malcolm X in Ghana …We were poor but we were cultured.” (BTW, Chappelle’s father, William, who was divorced from his mother, was a statistician at Antioch College in Ohio.)

Though Seon’s biography seems unique, she is but one of a rich biography of cross-Atlantic exchange to the Congo. For instance, Kambale Musavuli, a Congolese activist who presents Congo Live, points to the Presbyterian missionaries, Maria Fearing, and William Sheppard, the latter known in Congo as “Mundele N’dom” (Lingala: ”Black White Man), and whose published work of King Leopold’s crimes in the Congo contributed greatly to international and African American discourses about colonialism.

Belgium’s “criminal stupidity” and the restriction to higher education to a tiny minority of evolué, created interesting pathways of “return”, not only for African Americans, but also for the Haitian intelligentsia. Camille Kuyu, a Congolese historian, and philosopher describes this fascinating connection in his book Les Haïtiens au Congo. François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s repressive regime from 1957-1971 resulted in a mass exodus from Haiti. Many sought to move to Congo as agricultural engineers, teachers, and doctors. Raoul Peck, the director of the films such as Lumumba and Fatal Assistance, along with his his family exemplify this dynamic as they found asylum in Congo in 1961.

Lumumba’s ideology of Pan-Africanism sought to anchor the Congo in the forefront of anti-imperialism, and welcome all of its supporters, but it was challenged by Mobutu’s politics of authenticity. Systems of thought such as authenticité, or direct attacks on foreign ownership such as the Zairization campaign, meant that many arrivals were faced with a new “home” conditioned by the politics of indigeneity, which prompted some to leave, while others continue to live in Congo today.

Peck’s, Seon’s and other biographies remind us that home isn’t necessarily a spatial, or rigid concept. Rather than being in a romantic relation to one’s roots, these stories continue to underline the globality, and interconnectivity of blackness, represented in frameworks such as the Black Atlantic. Movement is the revolt against an assigned peripheral reality, a revolt against a space in which thoughts, doctrines, and individuals are demoted and promoted according to their “willingness to integrate”. Seon said it takes a “specific mindset” to engage oneself in this connectivity. Her, and other legacies, as well as the common obstacles to black liberation world-wide, remind us of the importance of this space of exchange, and solidarity, as an avenue for self-actualization.

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Published on May 19, 2015 12:00

New film Red Leaves’ timely depiction of the Ethiopian-Israeli struggle

Watching the film Red Leaves now as opposed to a month ago wouldn’t have gotten the same reaction. The past few weeks have seen what is probably the most extensive coverage of the Israeli-Ethiopian community since the 1996 “blood donation affair.” Then, it was discovered that Israel’s national blood bank was destroying blood donated by Ethiopian-Israelis, claiming that they are in risk to be infected.

This time, the trigger was footage showing a police officer and police volunteer beating an IDF uniformed soldier of Ethiopian origin. The soldier, Damas Pakda, who appeared to not do anything wrong, was then arrested. The incident sparked a wide protest against police brutality, which in itself became an arena for what some had described as the most brutal police attack on Israeli citizens.

In a powerful and heartbreaking scene Red Leaves does present an encounter with law enforcement but only by the end of the film. In fact, this is one of a very few times that characters who are not of Ethiopian origin make an appearance in the mostly Amharic-language film. This makes this film a very rare product in the Israeli film industry by offering an realistic a look into the lives of Israeli-Ethiopians, even though fictional. It is only the second Israeli feature film that deals this way with a community numbered over 120,000. The first one was Zrubavel, which was released in 2008.

28 years ago Red Leaves’ protagonist Masganeo (Debebe Eshetu) immigrated to Israel, following a long journey that went through Sudan. But even now, at the age of 74, he’s still walking. A large portion of the film he walks. He walks to his recently passed wife’s grave, he walks to his kids’ houses, after he decided to sell his apartment and live with them. And he walks away from their homes, one after another, when things don’t go the way he expects, or rather, the way they were done back in the day — in Ethiopia.

The film is about intergenerational gaps and conflicts, concerning tradition, family values, gender roles, and relationships outside the community. But the film mostly demonstrates how they are intensified by the emigration process, let alone a long, traumatic, and in a way a never-ending one for our protagonist, as its long walks, often shot from the back, illustrate. Any descendant of immigrants could easily relate, but really anyone with a family, namely anyone.

Perhaps more important than its universalism, very much carried by its plot line that is inspired by the classic King Lear, Red Leaves’ look into Ethiopian-Jews lives in Israel allows the viewer to start and unpack the complicated situation in which the community operate to struggle these days.

This film, brings to the screen a totally different Israel than the one we usually see (what is often regarded as “other Israel” literally translated to second Israel – a phrase used to describe communities that are on the margins of public attention), is a great introduction to the growing disillusion of the Israeli “melting pot.”

This paradigm of assimilation, which has dictated policies and discourse in Israel for many years, is losing its relevance in the current social justice struggles. For many Ethiopian-Israelis, this dropping of the assimilation idea comes after they went the hardest road to become “Israelis”. As activist Daniel Bashach wrote in Walla News:

The IDF uniforms used to be our best shelter, from cops and racists. And then something happened: the video in which a young soldier of Ethiopian origin got beaten up was not only a turning point but a token of the fact that the uniforms that they once worn with pride became irrelevant, even there, in the place where young blacks feel Israeli and safe. Suddenly they realize that even dying for the country — it’s not enough anymore.

More and more Ethiopian-Israelis, like other identity groups in Israel, reject assimilation and simply demand their rights, starting with not to being discriminated against because they’re black.

* Red Leaves, which screened at the New York African Film Festival, screens this Tuesday May 19, 7:30pm, at the JCC Manhattan.

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Published on May 19, 2015 06:07

What’s the deal with China’s new military base in Djibouti?

China’s willingness to escalate its military presence in Africa took a new turn with recent negotiations between the governments of Djibouti and China to establish a navy base. In the words of Djibouti’s president Guelleh: “the Japanese want to protect themselves from piracy – and now the Chinese also want to protect their interests, and they are welcome.” The negotiations have been ongoing since 2013 while in the meantime Chinese anti-piracy navy fleets often dock at the Djibouti port for fuel replenishment.

What remains to be unveiled about these negotiations is the form of China’s military presence in Djibouti. It could range from securing access to the port for replenishment to constructing a permanent military base. In the case of the former, the implication is that China will be increasing its navy patrols in the region and in the Indian Ocean with more flexibility and fuel autonomy. In the event that China will be building a military base in Djibouti, it will be the first of its kind and would signify a radical change in Chinese foreign policy conduct. Of course the symbolism of China’s first ever military base on foreign soil being negotiated with an African country is in itself an interesting development.

What it means to have Chinese and American Bases Side-by-side in Djibouti?

For one thing, this could be viewed from a realpolitik lens a la Mearsheimer; any rising power will aim at projecting its power. And nothing screams “biggest and baddest dude in the block” louder than a military base and a show of navy muscle. From this perspective, China will eventually pose a threat to US interests in Africa and will lead to containment through alliance with Germany, France and Japan.

Viewed from a more pragmatic perspective, China has increasing numbers of investments and nationals abroad to protect, and setting up a navy base in Djibouti to promote safe trade routes does not contradict China’s principals of foreign policy conduct. Given that the Djiboutian government seems welcoming of China’s presence and in light of the preceding big efforts China made in fighting piracy in the Gulf of Aden, having a base can be viewed as a practical way of ensuring an enduring economic stability. To be sure, besides France and the US, Japan also has a base in Djibouti for the security of its economic interests, yet the Japanese base is not viewed to reflect hegemonic intentions in the continent.

Yet a third interpretation is possible. By working side by side, both Chinese and American officials will be inclined to collaborate, exchange intelligence and learn to work together. From this perspective, this is a great scenario for China-US navy officials to build bonds of trust and learn to collaborate peacefully. Opportunities for socialization are also a source of optimism that future US-China relations will learn to avoid confrontation.

Djibouti Looking both East and West:

Djibouti is host to France’s largest military base in Africa. The small country in the Horn of Africa was a French colony from 1872 and remained under French control until 1977. Since 2003, the Djiboutian government entered into an agreement to lease Lemonnier Camp to the US. Since then, it hosts the USAFRICOM-affiliate Combined Joint Task Force which comprises some 15000 American personnel. Although France has been sizing down its military base in Djibouti, it remains very strategic for security operations both on the African continent and in the Gulf region. However despite historical ties with France and the US, Djibouti is willing to diversify its security partners by drawing closer to China.

Djibouti and China enjoy prosperous economic cooperation. China invests in port construction and road infrastructure which facilitates the flow of goods not only from and to Djibouti but also landlocked neighbor Ethiopia. One could see that no matter how small the Chinese navy base might be, it can -very rapidly- gain a strategic importance in the security of the region.

One of the characteristics of Chinese foreign policy is the anti-imperialism discourse that it puts at the front of its relations with most Global South countries. China prides itself over being an equal partner and a long-time denouncer of Western hegemony. However with talks of establishing a navy base in Djibouti, the first of its kind for the PRC, the discourse is likely going to be framed around the importance and obligation of ensuring security for the economic betterment of the Horn region.

To be sure, China is already a well-established contributor to security endeavors in Africa. It is the largest provider of peacekeeping troops among the United Nations Security Council permanent members, it is also a key mediator in South Sudan, and a key supplier of military equipment to several African governments. Besides, it is expected to see more naval base negotiations with other African states in the near future based on China’s maritime Silk Road vision. Already, there are talks around China negotiating a naval base in Namibia’s Walvis Bay even though this has been refuted by both Chinese and Namibian officials, unlike the case of Djibouti that has been openly –even if vaguely- discussed by both sides.

In the end, maximizing the security of strategic shipping routes would carry positive impacts on the whole East African region. China, France, and the US could all play significant roles in fighting piracy and promoting stability. However, the question remains when are African states going to establish African joint military bases to secure trade routes or fight off piracy instead of merely diversifying the source of foreign influence on their territories?

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Published on May 18, 2015 06:00

What former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré’s July trial in Senegal means for his victims

Next month former president Hissène Habré, who ruled my native Chad from June 7, 1982 to December 1, 1990, goes on trial in Senegal, in a special tribunal set up by the African Union. Habré’s reign was one of absolute terror. He created the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS), which quickly developed into a machine of repression. According to the report of an investigation ordered by the Chadian government in 1992, 40,000 people were killed in the prisons of the DDS.

As Human Rights Watch reminds us, “Habré’s trial will be the first in which the courts of one country prosecute the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes. It will also be the first universal jurisdiction case to proceed to trial in Africa.”

Habré lives in exile in Senegal after he fled there following a coup d’etat by the current president, Idriss Deby Itno. In February 2000, we decided to file charges against Habré before the Senegalese judiciary.

Ever since October 2000—nearly 15 years ago—we had engaged the Cabinet of the First Investigating Magistrate in Chad by handing him 57 charges and a collective complaint against the principal collaborators and accomplices of Hissène Habré, citing them by name.

The two proceedings, in Senegal and Chad, were a long, hard battle. In Senegal, the former President Abdoulaye Wade not only did not want Habré to be prosecuted, but also refused to extradite him to Belgium so that he could be tried there, even as Belgium made repeated requests to extradite him. In Chad, the courts offered no response to our numerous efforts at bringing the henchmen of the former dictator to trial.

The election of the current president, Macky Sall changed things Negotiations between Senegal and the African Union were sealed with an agreement enabling the creation of the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC), which provide for a court of an international character but operating under Senegalese jurisdiction. (The case will be heard by a Burkinabe judge along with two senior Senegalese judges.)

The Chambers were tasked with trying Habré and all people who committed crimes during his rule.

The investigating magistrates of the Extraordinary African Chambers carried out 4 investigatory commissions in Chad in the course of the investigation of victims’ complaints. Their work was recently completed and they issued a referral order before the criminal court of the EAC. We are waiting to find ourselves very soon face to face with Hissene Habré before the court.

For those of us who are from Chad, this is the end of a nightmare, because for more than 20 years we have been rubbing shoulders daily with our torturers without having the slightest certainty that they would be prosecuted, as many of them still occupy influential positions, making them very dangerous both for the victims and for those who accompany them. Many victims have also died without receiving any form of justice. It is a great victory because our persistence and determination have been vindicated: 20 accomplices of Habré were handed sentences ranging from 5 years to life in prison. It’s a great lesson for all those who continue to blindly persecute their people. Impunity no longer has its place in Chad.

I strongly believe in fighting against injustice and I firmly believe that these men and women that I am defending must have been imbued with the same feeling during this 20-year quest for justice. They felt abandoned by their country, Chad, which never recognized their status as victims, nor issued a public apology.

When I found myself facing Habré, alongside two victims and in front of the investigating magistrates for a confrontational hearing, I took full measure of my role as giving a voice to these innumerable people who do not have one.

For me, and, I believe, for many other human rights defenders, impunity is the principal cause of human rights violations. I am convinced that the trial of Hissène Habré will be a turning point for justice in Africa, and this trial will guarantee a final end to these massive and continuous violations in Chad. It will help to ensure that leaders of other African countries stop exterminating and start respecting the people they govern.

* For more on this case, see also previous posts on AIAC: and here

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Published on May 18, 2015 04:00

What former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré’s trial next month in Senegal means for his victims