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ANTANANARIVO, MADAGASCAR — Parched by four years of drought, more than 1.1 million people in southern Madagascar urgently need food aid in a rapidly worsening crisis, experts warn.

About 700,000 people are already receiving food aid and increased emergency assistance is needed, according to WFP which is working with the Malagasy government and other humanitarian agencies.

"Harvests fail constantly, so people don't have anything to harvest and anything to renew their food stocks," Alice Rahmoun, WFP's communications officer in Madagascar said.

More than 90% of the population in Madagascar's "Deep South" region lives below the poverty line, making families extremely vulnerable, according to Amnesty International.

"All aid agencies are working together to try to prevent this crisis from turning into famine," Jean-Benoît Manhes, deputy representative of UNICEF in Madagascar, told The Associated Press.

"But we are witnessing a deterioration which requires increased resources," he said. "To give you an idea, in the months of July and August, 14,000 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition. That is usually the number we treat in an entire year."

The four consecutive years of drought have wiped out crops and exhausted the food reserves of the farming communities of Madagascar's "Grand Sud," or Great South, he said.

Southern Madagascar is used to dry seasons, usually from May through October, known as kere in the Malagasy language when fields are dry and food is short, but this year is much worse, say local farmers.

The ground is so hard that it's difficult to plant crops of corn, rice and cassava that are traditionally started in November.

"It's impossible to cultivate here at the moment," said Nathier Ramanavotse, 68, mayor of Maroalomainty, in the far south of Madagascar.

"It rained a little last week but it's not enough to cultivate. We used to grow a lot of corn here but for four years the crops have failed. It has been getting worse and worse," he said.

"There is no other work to be done here to make money," Ramanavotse said. "We suffer a lot ... many of us have eaten our seeds because it is the only thing left to eat at home. It's an unbearable temptation when you are hungry."

Recently the area has been plagued by intense sand winds, called "tiomena" in Malagasy which means red winds. The sandstorms have engulfed and ruined the early crops that were planted, farmers say.

"All the trees have been cut in the area and there is nothing left to hold back the wind," said Ramanavotse. In the landlocked part of the country, many farmers have turned to tree cutting and coal mining to survive, he said.

Desperate, many families have turned to strategies of last resort to survive, say residents.

"When we run out of money, we eat cactus leaves or tubers," said Liafara, who only has one name. "In this kere, we are eating things that we don't even know the names of. To get water, you have to dig in the Mandrare River which is very dry at the moment and it takes a lot of work."

The mother of five children, Liafara, 37, said it's difficult to stretch their food to feed her family.

"If we have a little money, we buy rice to eat in the evening. We cook it with lots of water to share it with all of us," she said. "But often at night, we can't sleep. We just roll around in bed because we're hungry."

The family lives in Amboasary-Atsimo, the epicenter of the extreme food shortages where 14,000 people are in catastrophic conditions, according to the latest statistics from the World Food Program's Integrated Phase Classification.

"My children, like all those in the village, are very weak. At the moment, they no longer go to school because they can't concentrate due to hunger. We sell what we have at home to eat. We have no more furniture. We even sold the door to our house to get some money," she said.

"Last week, when the rain fell a little, I sold my plates so that I could buy seeds," she said. "Goats and zebus (cows), we sold them a long time ago."

More than 500,000 children under the age of five in the far south of Madagascar are likely to suffer from acute malnutrition until April 2022, according to the Integrated Food Security Classification Framework. Of these, more than 110,000 already suffer from severe acute malnutrition and need urgent action.

The Portuguese charity Brotherhood Without Borders has set up 14 nutritional centers in the Androy region to feed and give emergency care to malnourished children.

"The situation is not improving at all," said Felly Zihal, coordinator for the group's program in southern Madagascar. "There are cases of children who have practically no more flesh. There is only the skeleton and the skin."

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON/LONDON — Iran is facing renewed scrutiny for its deadly suppression of nationwide protests in 2019, as a London tribunal organized by rights groups began hearing testimony Wednesday from relatives of those killed and others regarding alleged crimes committed in the crackdown.

The event known as an international people’s tribunal opened in London’s Church House conference center. Its goal is to investigate alleged Iranian atrocities, including the alleged killing by security forces of hundreds of protesters and wounding of thousands more during the November 2019 protests.

A panel of human rights law and international relations experts from Britain, Indonesia, Libya, South Africa and the United States led the first day of the tribunal, scheduled to last until Sunday. The hearings are organized by three rights groups including London-based Justice for Iran, Oslo-based Iran Human Rights and Paris-based Together against the Death Penalty.

In a TV interview with VOA Persian from the venue, the tribunal’s co-counsel Hamid Sabi said the panelists will hear statements from about 160 witnesses vetted by him and fellow co-counsel Regina Paulose during the five-day event.

The counsels’ role is to gather evidence from the witnesses and provide it to tribunal panelists.

“We gave priority [to getting statements from] families whose loved ones were killed, wounded or imprisoned,” Sabi said. “We also prioritized testimony from eyewitnesses to the crackdown,” he added.

Iran’s government sparked the nationwide demonstrations on November 15, 2019, by ordering a 50% increase in the subsidized price of gasoline, further straining the finances of Iranians facing high unemployment and inflation in a shrinking economy under heavy U.S. sanctions. Rights activists have said Iranian security forces killed hundreds of people and arrested thousands more while crushing the mostly peaceful protests, in which some people also damaged public buildings and businesses.

In Iran’s only acknowledgement of the scale of the killings to date, then-Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli told state television in May 2020 that the death toll was around 200.

Nahid Shirpisheh, whose 27-year-old son, Pouya Bakhtiari, was killed by a gunshot to the head while protesting in the northern city of Karaj, spoke to the panel by video from Iran. Shirpisheh said she and members of her family have been repeatedly intimidated and detained by Iranian authorities in retaliation for publicly campaigning for justice for Pouya. She said her ex-husband and Pouya’s father, Manouchehr Bakhtiari, is currently in prison for his activism.

Iranian rights activist Masih Alinejad, host of VOA Persian’s Tablet TV program, testified in person at the tribunal. She said she also heard from sources in Iran that authorities have been harassing relatives of slain protesters, including by making them bury their loved ones in remote places.

At the start of Monday’s hearing, the panelists said they had sent letters to 133 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accusing them of grave human rights violations and crimes against humanity in suppressing the 2019 protests. The letters invited the officials to present evidence in their defense but no responses were received, the panelists said.

A VOA reporter in London visited the Iranian consulate in the city’s Kensington district Tuesday, seeking comment about the tribunal. The reporter identified himself as affiliated with VOA and asked for a comment after an Iranian consulate staffer opened the door. A male staff member would not respond and escorted the reporter out.

Holly Dagres, a London-based Iran analyst for the Atlantic Council, told VOA it was notable that Iranians provided live video testimony to the tribunal from inside Iran at the risk of angering the Iranian government.

“It demonstrates just how desperate the families of the victims are to have their voices heard, as they seek accountability and justice, that they are willing to risk their own safety, especially with the Islamic Republic actively trying to silence them,” she said.

Amnesty International, which is based in London, was to present its latest findings about Iran’s crackdown on the November 2019 protests to the tribunal Thursday. The group’s Middle East and North Africa director, Heba Morayef, said in a statement provided to VOA Wednesday that the tribunal is a crucial step toward ending impunity for the Iranian perpetrators of the alleged atrocities.

“Crucially, the tribunal must spur U.N. member states into action, both at the current session of the U.N. General Assembly and the next session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, to pave the way for the accountability that is so desperately needed,” Morayef said.

Jason Brodsky, policy director for U.S. advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, said in a VOA interview that the international community has not taken action on the issue because it is too focused on trying to revive restraints on Iran’s nuclear program under a 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers. The United States and Iran have said they are seeking a mutual return to compliance with the deal after Washington withdrew from it in 2018 under the administration of former President Donald Trump and Iran retaliated by openly violating constraints on its nuclear activities a year later.

“The international community spends most of its time chasing after Iranian diplomats on the nuclear deal, but it does not spend a lot of time on the stories that we heard today and that we’ll be hearing in the coming days. And that has to change,” Brodsky said, noting that Iran’s deputy foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kan was scheduled to be in London on Thursday for talks with British officials.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has said it is willing to ease some U.S. sanctions on Iran in return for Tehran restoring full compliance with measures designed to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Tehran has denied seeking nuclear arms under cover of a civilian energy program.

Brodsky said U.S. offers to ease sanctions on Iran, whose leaders have been accused by the tribunal of committing crimes against humanity, send a “mixed and concerning message” about Biden’s pledge to also prioritize human rights in his foreign policy.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a VOA request for comment about whether the tribunal will influence the U.S. to tighten human rights-related sanctions on Iran.

Source: Voice of America

Simon Louagie dreaded losing Talbot House, a World War I soldiers' club that has become an institution in remembrance tourism on the Western Front where soldiers from all corners of the globe fought amid untold carnage just over a century ago.

For months last year, a COVID-19 lockdown closed the club which had always been an open house. Once it was for Commonwealth soldiers who fleetingly shed the fear of battle in Flanders fields that was within earshot.

For generations since, people found history, solace, wisdom and an understanding at Talbot House about why the motto of this region in western Belgium is "Never into war again."

Since the end of World War I in 1918, millions of visitors — from as far away as the United States New Zealand, and South Africa — have flocked to memorials in northern France and Belgium to pay tribute to the fallen.

Now, closing in on two years of the coronavirus pandemic and travel restrictions, the tourist industry welcoming them is crippled. Lockdowns and travel restrictions, of which many remain in place, are keeping foreign visitors away.

Another Armistice Day beckons on Nov. 11 and the outlook remains bleak.

Talbot House manager Louagie remembers that when funds were running low and doors were closed, only one thought ran through his head: "Not on my watch." From as many as 500 guests a day, he sometimes found himself alone.

The house, he said, "needs noise. It needs piano music. It needs visitors, schoolchildren, people playing chess. Cups of tea, rattling in the kitchen to make it come alive. I need to hear the kettle whistle," he said.

"We cannot disappoint all those generations before us by letting it close down," he said. The thought has echoed around the region where hundreds of thousands lost their lives during the four years of fighting which finally led to the victory of allied forces over Germany.

Nick Benoot, who runs the small Hooge Crater Museum not far from Poperinge could not believe it when at the end of 2019, schools started to cancel trips because of reports of a virus in Wuhan, China.

Like Louagie, he had plunged money into the business and needed any income he could get. "Seriously, do you mean that? This is in China. This is far, far away from us," he remembers saying. But the reality of the pandemic, which has since claimed at least 5 million dead across the globe, soon sank in and he had to close on March 13, 2020 - a somber day he remembers well.

From 65,000 paying visitors in 2017 to just 3,000 last year, the numbers demonstrated how remembrance tourism slumped throughout the region.

"It was like we went bankrupt. We had to close everything down," he said.

But each man dealt with it in his own way and is still around to tell his story.

Crowdfunding was the answer for Louagie. Last year, a 98-year-old World War II veteran raised money by walking from a war graves cemetery to Talbot House, cheered on by locals who pulled money out of their wallet when they were not applauding. When a local died, the family asked that instead of flowers, mourners donate money to Talbot House.

"It became very emotional when I saw how many people cared so deeply," Louagie said.

As virus measures eased recently thanks to Belgium's vaccination drive, some visitors enjoyed their breakfast at Talbot house. And just like old times, praise was heaped on English volunteer Libby Madden for her Victoria sponge cake. "You know, we very much want to keep the spirit of this wonderful place alive," she said.

Flanders' fields were once so war-scarred that churches and castles simply vanished as rubble under the mud. Much around Ypres has been restored to its former splendor and imbued locals with an unshakeable sense of optimism.

Benoot was looking at an empty parking lot last year and had missed the din of spoken English from heaps of British tourists that resounded in the museum and cafe. Yet this week, "we have had the first British (bus) in two years."

Even as his income dwindled in the middle of the pandemic, Benoot understood that the message of "the war to end all wars" still needed to be passed on to younger generations.

At 37, he thought himself to old to convey the message to kids, so he left it to his sons Louis and Arthur, 10 and 8, who are now YouTube whizzes to teach kids about gas masks, helmets and medical kits. The Hooge Boys are a hit now.

"We don't do what all the rest does. So I think we have a way to survive," Benoot said.

Even the Last Post ceremony in nearby Ypres — a daily, mournful bugle call harking back to 1928 that had only briefly stopped during World War II — was at risk of being silenced. The tradition has the bugle playing under the Menin Gate where some 55,000 names of soldiers whose remains were never found are engraved.

Yet it pulled through. Volunteers refused to stop and pulled strings all the way up to the top political posts to ensure its continuation, even if it had to be scaled down.

"During COVID, there was only one bugler and the names of 55,000 soldiers," said Benoit Mottrie, the head of the Last Post Association.

On Thursday, there should be the full complement of six buglers again, backed up by a piper, a choir, a band and several hundred invitees and poppy promenade walkers. Even the Belgian prime minister will show up.

Source: Voice of America

South Africa’s last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk, who shepherded the end of the country’s system of white minority rule and who shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela for that work -- died Thursday at his home near Cape Town. He was 85.

In a statement, the F.W. de Klerk Foundation announced his death from mesothelioma, a form of cancer that affects the lungs. He had been ill for several years.

News of his death provoked a measured reaction from President Cyril Ramaphosa, who praised the man for his courage but also recalled the trauma that the racist apartheid system inflicted on the majority of South Africans. He also stopped short of declaring that de Klerk would receive a state funeral, as previous heads of state and apartheid-era luminaries have received.

“We are saddened because he did play a key role in ushering in democracy in our country,” Ramaphosa said. “He was the leader of a party that was largely discredited, in relation to the role that the National Party played in enforcing apartheid. But he had the courage to step away from the path that his party, that he led, had embarked upon from 1948, and we will remember him for that. And, of course, the policies that the apartheid regime espoused and implemented have wreaked a lot of havoc on millions and millions of South Africans and it was the havoc that many of our people will never forget, and have suffered from.”

Mandela’s charitable foundation also noted that the former president’s legacy is a mixed one, in a nation that is still deeply divided along racial and economic lines.

“De Klerk’s legacy is a big one,” Sello Hatang, chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said in a statement. “It is also an uneven one, something South Africans are called to reckon with in this moment.”

Mandela died in 2013, at the age of 95.

The foundation of South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu was even more blunt, giving condolences but also noting that in recent years, de Klerk had defended the apartheid regime publicly.

“It is, however, sad that Mr. de Klerk missed the many chances he had to fully reconcile with all South Africans by acknowledging the full extent of the damage caused by apartheid,” said Piyushi Kotecha, CEO of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. “That damage is with us today. We are in many ways a broken society. It is as our founder, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, has said, Mr. de Klerk could have gone down in history as a truly great South African statesman, but he eroded his stature and became a small man, lacking magnanimity and generosity of spirit.’”

De Klerk stunned the world in February of 1990, five months into his presidency, and less than three months after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, when he opened the way for an end to more than four decades of apartheid. Delivering a bombshell speech to parliament, he "unbanned" the African National Congress (ANC) and announced the release of its leader, Nelson Mandela after 27 years behind bars.

Source: Voice of America

China's leaders have approved a resolution on the history of the ruling Communist Party that was expected to set the stage for President Xi Jinping to extend his rule next year.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the resolution on the major achievements and historical experience of the party was adopted during a four-day meeting of its Central Committee that ended Thursday.

The move is expected to give Xi status beside the ruling Communist Party's most important figures. The statement is only the third statement of its kind in the party's 100-year history after one issued under Mao Zedong, who led the party to power in 1949, and Deng Xiaoping, who launched reforms that turned China into an economic powerhouse.

Issuing a similar statement under Xi would confirm he has amassed enough authority to ignore two-decade-old party practice that says he should step down next year when his second five-year term as general secretary ends.

The party removed term limits on Xi's post as president in 2018, indicating his intention to stay in power.

The history statement is expected to emphasize the party's successes in overseeing China's economic rise and likely ignore deadly political violence in its early decades in power and growing complaints about human rights abuses.

When term limits on the presidency were abolished in 2018, officials told reporters Xi might need more time to make sure economic and other reforms were carried out.

Xi faces no obvious rivals, but a bid to say in power has the potential to alienate younger party figures who might see their chances for promotion diminished.

Also, political scientists point to the experience of other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and warn long periods of one-person rule lead to worse official decisions and economic performance.

Xi has used his control of the party's vast propaganda apparatus to promote his image.

State media associate him with national successes including fighting the coronavirus, China's rise as a technology creator and last year's successful lunar mission to bring back moon rocks.

The 1981 assessment under Deng distanced the party from the violent upheaval of the ultra-radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

By contrast, Xi has promoted a positive image of the party's early decades in power and called for it to revive its “original mission” as China's leading economic, political and cultural force.

Source: Voice of America

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