Nigerians Protest: Gay & Proud
LGBT activists and those alike, convened in New York on Dec. 5th 2011, at the Nigeria Mission House to protest against Nigeria’s recent passing of the Anti Gay bill, which plans to ban homosexuality in the country.
Global Information Network: Africa News Briefs
South Africa, Host Of Climate Confab, Is Africa’s Worst Pollutor
Nov. 29 (GIN) – Delegates from around the world are streaming into Durban, South Africa, for the U.N.’s Conference on Climate Change. Ironically, this is also home of one of the worst polluters on the continent, the Eskom coal-powered national electric company. State-owned Eskom’s coal-fired power stations are responsible for 66 percent of the 6,000 tons of sulphur dioxide pollution spewed into the atmosphere daily.
Sulphur dioxide is dangerous to human health and to plants and corrodes buildings yet dirty and destructive coal plants are opening around the continent at a fast pace.
Prior to the opening of the Durban conference Tuesday, Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, chair of the Africa Group of Negotiators for Climate Change, stated Africa’s concerns. “Africa wants an outcome based on science that is fair and honors the promises all countries have made in the U.N. Climate Convention and its Kyoto Protocol.
Nigeria Joins Uganda To Pass Homophobic Legislation
Nov. 29 (GIN) – Joining a movement fueled by a segment of conservative American evangelicals, the Nigerian Senate approved this week a bill criminalizing gay marriage, gay support groups and same-sex public displays of affection.
It was the latest attack on a minority already facing discrimination in Africa’s most populous nation.
The Senate increased the penalty for gay marriage from five years’ imprisonment proposed in a draft bill to 14 years. The bill must be passed by Nigeria’s House of Representatives and signed by President Goodluck Jonathan before becoming law.
Farmers Prepare “Fight Back” To Foreign Land Grabbers
Nov. 29 (GIN) – An international farmers’ conference in the West African nation of Mali this month drew over 250 participants from thirty different countries to oppose the practice of “land grabbing” by foreign investors.
Ibrahima Coulibaly of the national organization of Malian farmers said in the opening speech: “The land belongs to local communities and it has been like that for generations. Now, governments are pushing farmers off their lands. This is not acceptable. It is a denial of historic rights, rights that exist since hundreds of years, while many states exist only since the 1960s.”
“Land grabbing is happening everywhere,” said Renee Vellve of GRAIN, a farmers’ support group. “The rights of family farmers, pastoralists, artisanal fishers and indigenous communities, are violated constantly and their territories are being increasingly militarized.”
Nestle Company To Investigate Charges It Uses Child Labor
Nov. 29 (GIN) - Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, has announced it will investigate charges of using child labor on the farms that supply it with the cocoa that ends up in millions of chocolate bars.
Beginning in January, the Fair Labor Association, hired by Nestle, will send a team of assessors to Ivory Coast to map the cocoa supply chain. The group has conducted similar investigations in the textile, manufacturing and other industries around the world. But Nestlé is the first food company to open up its supply chain to FLA’s scrutiny.
It’s the first major move to combat child labor since the Swiss company and other major chocolate makers signed a U.S.-brokered agreement in September 2001.
More then 60 countries have been targeted by hundreds of private corporations and dozens of governments. This international “land rush” affects as least 30 million acres in Africa alone, according to GRAIN.
SaharaReporters is an outstanding, groundbreaking website that encourages citizen journalists to report ongoing corruption and government malfeasance in Africa. Using photos, text, and video dynamically, the site informs & prompts concerned African citizens & other human rights activists globally.
COMMENTARY: Senate and Gays By Damola Awoyokun
That is Deuteronomy 22:28. The holy Quran’s Surat Al-Mā’idah 5:38 commands: “As for the thief, the male and the female, amputate their hands in recompense for what they committed as a deterrent [punishment] from Allah. And Allah is exalted in Might and Wisdom.” These are some of the injunctions which in their days were normal and fair but today, thousands of years later, by general consensus we find them proceeds from a completely bizarre morality. Through rigorous philosophical critique of natural laws, through scientific findings and codification of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the human society have advanced from the dark ethics of yesteryears into a brighter modern society. Unfortunately some horrific concepts and ethics of old are still allowed to persist to date.
It used to be a normal practice to kill twins immediately after birth because they are strange; strange because the society refused to be open-minded. Since it was common for women to have a kid at once, the natural law was narrowly interpreted to mean that giving birth to more than one is an abnormal occurrence hence evil. It took Mary Slessor an arduous campaign of enlightenment to turn this practice around in Nigeria. Now it is not baby twins that are seen as evil, it is their murder at birth. For every law of nature there will always be an exception. We are black people, yet we have albinos among us. They are not bad or evil, they are just different. Cat and dogs are meant to be enemies, but we have some that are best of friends. There are some men that have certain features of women and some women have features that traditionally belong to men. Also, there are the hermaphrodites. They are not evil, they are just different. If we have not heard of homosexuality before, meditation on the wonders of nature and how she breaks her own laws supposed to convince us that men who love men and women who love women would exist somewhere. This is neither bad nor evil. It is just nature asserting her rights to break her own rules and enrich the world with differences.
Homosexuality is not evil. Homosexuality is not a western invention. Homosexuality is not a cultural fad. Homosexuality is not a measure of cultural decadence nor is it the sign of end time. Homosexuality is simply a biological fact. You cannot become gay unless you are born one. It is on this note that I find the Senate’s ratification of the Same Gender Marriage Prohibition Bill condemnable. The presidency or the lower House should claim the moral high ground and quash the bizarre bill. Legislation like this should be responsible to modern scientific findings and rooted in ethical reasoning instead of being founded on wilful ignorance or on discredited Arabic or Semitic injunctions of thousands of years ago.
The Senate that supposed to put the pin back into the grenade by educating Nigerians on the normality of homosexuality is allowing homophobia to regain composure, become more virulent and worse, become legal and fashionable. Sen. Baba-Ahmed Yusuf Datti of Kaduna and Dr. Ishaq Akintola have declared with impunity that gays should be murdered.
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