Day: May 28, 2021

Leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) reaffirmed their solidarity with Mozambique late Thursday, saying they will continue with efforts to address terrorism in that country.

The regional body of 16 countries held a Double Troika Summit of Heads of State and Government on Thursday in Mozambique’s capital of Maputo to discuss the growing terrorism and instability in Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique.

The leaders unanimously agreed in a communiqué that they will ensure that lasting peace and security prevails in Mozambique, saying instability in Mozambique is also a threat to the SADC region.

In late March, an armed militant group believed to be affiliated with the Daesh/ISIS terrorist group attacked the coastal town of Palma in Cabo Delgado near the border with Tanzania, killing dozens and injuring scores of others.

The armed group, locally known as al-Shabaab but with no established links to the armed militant group in Somalia, has wreaked havoc in northern Mozambique since late 2017, killing hundreds, displacing communities and capturing towns.

Cabo Delgado province is rich in natural gas, and companies such as France’s Total SE were set to extract liquefied natural gas (LNG) from offshore sites in the Indian Ocean.

In a turn of events, French energy giant Total announced in April that it is suspending its $20 billion LNG project in Mozambique following militant attacks in Cabo Delgado.

The SADC’s summit was attended by Mozambique’s President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi, president of Botswana and chairperson of the SADC, and Malawi’s President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, who is also the incoming chairperson of the SADC.

Others included South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Hussein Ali Mwinyi, president of Zanzibar, representing Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president of Tanzania.

“While the SADC region remains stable and generally peaceful, terrorism continues to be a serious threat that requires urgent, concrete and decisive attention,” the SADC’s Executive Secretary, Stergomena Lawrence Tax, said in her remarks.

She also expressed the SADC’s sympathy to the government and people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who were hit by a volcanic eruption on Saturday from Mount Nyiragongo in the city of Goma.

“The eruption resulted in the displacement of thousands of people and has destroyed property. May I express our sympathy and thank local and international organizations that are working with the government in supporting the affected communities,’’ she said.

The SADC will convene an extraordinary summit on June 20 in Mozambique to announce intervention measures needed in fighting terrorism and insecurity in northern Mozambique.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Turkish police arrested 35 people over their suspected links to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group behind the 2016 defeated coup in Turkey, security sources said on Friday.

In Turkey’s largest city Istanbul, prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 46 suspects as part of a probe against police academy students who were reportedly in contact with the FETO terror group, said the sources, asking not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

Turkish police carried out operations across six provinces and arrested 30 suspects, with efforts underway to nab the remaining individuals, the sources added.

Nine of the suspects were abroad, according to the sources.

Five more suspects, including four on-duty soldiers, were nabbed in Turkey’s eastern Batman province.

Separately, prosecutors in the capital Ankara issued arrest warrants for 22 suspects for cheating in a police exam in 2012.

FETO and its US-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, which left 251 people dead and 2,734 injured.

Ankara accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Bangladesh’s coastal regions bore the brunt of Cyclone Yaas, with tens of thousands of people left homeless and hundreds of homes, roads, crops and fish farms destroyed.

Around 2,570 homes alone on the southeast coast of Cox’s Bazar district were damaged, the district administration said Thursday.

But Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and on Bhasan Char island were not seriously affected due to precautionary measures by the government and support from UN agencies, said officials.

More than 150,000 people became stranded, 20 kilometers (12 miles) of embankment areas were damaged and over 3,000 hectares of shrimp enclosures were flooded and hundreds of homes damaged due to the effects of the cyclone on the coastal southwestern district of Satkhira.

The cyclone battered Bangladesh on Wednesday, affecting at least 27 subdistricts of nine southern coastal districts, according to the Disaster Management and Relief Ministry.

“Embankments around villages were damaged due to Cyclone Yaas. Hundreds of homes and crops were submerged in saltwater while roads and communication infrastructure have been destroyed,” Bachchu Shekh, a resident of the affected coastal area, told Anadolu Agency.

“Overflowing tides were strengthened by surrounding rivers and entered localities Thursday due to the cyclone. We were submerged and affected with untold suffering here in the coastal regions,” he added.

“Some shelters were destroyed at refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. However, no major destruction or any casualties have been reported so far at the refugee camps. We are yet to assess the losses and damage and will hold a meeting to determine those,” Mohammad Shamsud Douza of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission told Anadolu Agency.

People affected in these areas have been trying to repair the damaged embankments, dams and roads to save livelihoods and belongings while the government assured that it will extend all-out support.

Shrimp enclosures and coastal forests including mangroves and the Sundarbans were also affected by the cyclone, while four deer were also found dead. Official committees have been formed to determine the losses and damage in the country.

In Cox’s Bazar, local authorities and aid agencies are responding as needed in the Rohingya refugee camps amid reports of damage to shelters, latrines and water points due to bad weather in the past few days, said Syed Md Tafhim, national communications officer at the Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG) for the Rohingya response in Cox’s Bazar.

According to an incident report of the ISCG on May 26, six toilets and six water points were partially damaged while 75 shelters were destroyed, but no cases of dead or missing were reported in the 32 refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.

Source: Anadolu Agency

In the midst of a sea of ripe sorghum crops, 63-year-old Clara Matsilele moved with the agility of a teenager as she reaped her crops, helped by her daughters-in-law.

Just last year, Matsilele harvested three tones of sorghum even as Chilonga had minimal rains, yet what has kept many peasants going like Matsilele has been the drought-resistant small grains crops that villagers here have depended on generation after generation.

For Matsilele, the only time they experience hunger is when locusts pounce on their crops.

But many like her (Matsilele) have also made money with their resilience in the face of harsh climate change impacts in this region.

Apparently, Chilonga lies in region five of this Southern African nation’s Masvingo Province, where droughts have become a norm over the years, with the area famed for aridity and erratic rainfall patterns.

In fact, many parts of Chilonga, which is a remote area over 40 kilometers South-east of Chiredzi town, have over the decades been certified unfit for agriculture.

But even as that is the case with the area, many villagers like Matsilele of the minority Shangani tribe are outclassing climate change impacts here, making ends meet on one of the driest lands in the country.

“This year alone, I’m aiming to harvest about four tonnes of sorghum, part of which I will sell and use the remainder for my consumption with my family up to the next farming season and beyond,” Matsilele told Anadolu Agency.

Like the rest of Zimbabwe’s region, five south of the country, Chilonga is famed for receiving very little rain each year.

In the midst of the scarce rains here, the minority Shangani tribe has nevertheless managed to harvest plenty, meaning constant victory on the villagers’ part against ongoing droughts that have pounded the region over the years.

Instead of falling victim to the constant droughts here, many Chilonga villagers like 42-year-old Shonani Chauke, a single mother of seven, have turned their misfortune into gold, growing drought-resistant crops like sorghum and millet, which they sell to big Zimbabwean beer-brewing companies like Delta and Chibuku.

As a result, many villagers like Chauke, even as droughts pounce almost every year, their pockets are sure to be fat and their stomachs full as they switch to drought-resistant crops, which they have turned into cash crops as well as their constant staple amidst droughts.

“I have no hunger in my home and nobody starves in my home for as long as we grow sorghum and millet because these crops survive with very little rains, which means guaranteed food and money for my family and me,” Chauke told Anadolu Agency.

In fact, several villagers in Chilonga have capitalized on their drought crisis, entering into contract farming with beer-brewing companies like Delta and Chibuku, which buys the sorghum grown by the villagers in the midst of the harshest climate change impacts here.

Delta and Chibuku breweries apparently use small grains crops like sorghum to produce beer and as such, the villagers have turned their own curse into a blessing, meaning the constant droughts for them have become opportunities to earn even better for themselves and their families.

“The resilience against climate change impacts has enabled villagers here to identify opportunities instead of misery for themselves and now even as it rains less and less in Chilonga, drought-resistant crops grown by villagers have more and more become sources of money and food for them” Denis Mangari, a former agricultural extension officer in Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Agriculture, told Anadolu Agency.

As villagers in Chilonga outclass growing impacts of climate change, Zimbabwe’s climate change activists like Kudakwashe Makanda, who is also the programs manager for the Youth Initiative for Community Development (YICD), a youth civic organization, think cropping should match with climatic conditions where people live and farm.

“There is a need to sensitize local communities to grow crops suiting their local climatic conditions. For instance, there are areas that can only do well with goat farming, which means if certain communities can just aim to rear goats, they can do exceedingly well,” Makanda told Anadolu Agency.

Such has been the step taken by many villagers in Chilonga, paying off in the process.

Makanda said ‘sometimes issues of starvation happen because people in our communities farm crops that don’t suit their local climate.’

But many farmers in Chilonga, like 44-year-old Livson Chikutu, have over the decades learned the ropes and the aridity in Chikutu’s area had become something to live with, rather gainfully.

“Our main crops are drought-resistant crops such as red and white sorghum, which do well in less or very little rains. Once there is that little rain, I personally understand I would be going to have a bumper harvest to sustain my family. This year obviously, we are having a bumper harvest although we had problems with locusts that descended on some of our fields,” Chikutu told Anadolu Agency.

Happison Chikova, a climate change expert who holds a degree in Environmental Studies from the Midlands State University in Zimbabwe, said there is more being done by communities surmounting climate change impacts in Zimbabwe.

“Those people in Chilonga are not going to be pounded by climate change impacts for they are resilient, meaning in their case they grow millet, sorghum, traditional crops which are drought-resistant and not easily affected by water stress, meaning at the end of each harvest they have enough to eat and extra to sell,” Chikova told Anadolu Agency.

Apart from reaping the rewards of growing drought-tolerant crops like sorghum and millet, Chikova also said rearing ‘mixed breed of cattle which are commercially viable’ has helped Chilonga villagers to smile all the way to the bank even amid incessant droughts.

But to Chikova, ‘each area has its own solutions to climate change.’

“In Mutare, for instance, there is something different that people do to fend off climate change impacts. In Chilonga or Mwenezi, there are also ways people have adopted in order to defeat climate change impacts,” said Chikova.

But even as villagers in Zimbabwe’s remote areas like Chilonga are beating climate change impacts, more still needs to be done, according to climate change experts like Godfrey Sibanda.

“I think the use of underground water could be a solution. Therefore, borehole drilling with pumps powered by solar technology will provide water for horticulture even in the driest of places,” Sibanda told Anadolu Agency, this getting buy-in from top government climate change leaders like Washington Zhakata.

“Irrigation is one of the most effective adaptation strategies in those areas (Chilonga). Water harvesting techniques need to be implemented to ensure water availability. Pan feeding of livestock can generate alternative sources of income to cushion the communities frequently affected by droughts,” Zhakata, who is Zimbabwe’s director of Climate Change Management in the Ministry of Environment, told Anadolu Agency.

Of Chilonga, Sibanda said, “this is a hot area where solar technology can do wonders.”

“Solar technology can power some other business activities which can generate revenue besides water for irrigation,” added Sibanda.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Bulgarian Turks, who were persecuted in 1984-1989 on the grounds that they opposed an assimilation campaign against them in the country, cannot forget the suffering they endured.

Cemil Birtane, 73, and Kiymet Birtane, 70, migrated from Bulgaria to Turkey at the end of 1989 after Cemil spent four years and six months in prison and exile for opposing assimilation.

“We were tortured and beaten for one year and four months in the Belene Prison. Later, I was sent to another prison with 80 friends. After a year there, I was exiled to different villages in Bulgaria. I was released after four years and six months,” said Cemil, recalling those years.

“They sent my clothes home and told my wife I was dead. She was told not to search for me anymore. Thank God I was released after these four years and six months and Bulgaria deported me,” he added.

Cemil recounted that despite pressure from authorities, they continued to oppose the assimilation campaign in prison and went on hunger strikes with their companions, adding they also removed the Bulgarian names they were given from their bedside and wanted to keep their Turkish names.

Bulgarian authorities wanted to send Cemil and his family to Austria or Sweden, but he refused. He took refuge in the Turkish embassy in Belgrade, then in Yugoslavia.

“The Turkish Embassy sent us to a refugee camp for a week. I’m very happy we came to Turkey. We’re very happy that we’re were freed from persecution and pressures.”

– ‘We did not give up on being Turkish whatever they said’

Sukru Korkmaz, who came to Turkey 32 years ago and lives in the northwestern province of Edirne, could not hold back tears while retelling his story of migration.

Korkmaz said everyone who did not give up on being a “Turk” in Bulgaria was forced to migrate and were subjected to physical and psychological violence.

He said the most difficult time in his and his family’s life was in Bulgaria, especially in the Belene Camp, adding that he could not forget his experiences there.

“We didn’t give up on being Turkish, whatever they said. They told me: ‘You’re blonde. You speak Bulgarian very well. You’re Bulgarian. Ottomans forced you to be a Turk.’ I and hundreds of others like me did not accept this,” said Korkmaz.

“They sent us to the Belene camp. I stayed there for a year and a half. They locked us somewhere in the camp and never let us out.

“We couldn’t change our clothes for months. We got lice, we smelled. We were under psychological and verbal abuse for months. They let me see my family after every six months. We could only see [each other] through glass. Thank God, we left that all behind.”

Source: Anadolu Agency