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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Gabon: The forgotten protests, the blinkered media - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...70961

social movements intervention human rights development africa gabon media

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • not all revolutions are blessed with this level of attention. The West African nation of Gabon is experiencing a popular revolt against the rule of Ali Bongo Ondimba, son of long-time strongman Omar Bongo, president since October 2009. Thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets of the nation's capital Libreville, on 29 January, and faced violent suppression from Ali Bongo’s troops. Protests have spread to other cities, and the crackdown against them has become increasingly fierce. Protests planned for 5 and 8 February were both suppressed with tear gas. At this point, it’s unclear whether protesters will be able to continue pressuring the government, or whether the crackdown has driven dissent underground.
  • while Gabon, blessed with oil wealth, has a very high gross domestic product per capita by sub-Saharan African standards, little of that wealth reaches the Gabonese people, one third of which live in poverty. Little surprise, then, that Gabonese opposition supporters watched the events in Tunisia with a sense of hope and possibility.
  • this lack of attention has consequences. As protests unfolded in Libreville, opposition leader André Mba Obame – who likely won the 2009 election – and his leading advisors took sanctuary in the UNDP's compound in the city, fearing arrest by Ali Bongo’s forces. According to recent Facebook posts, Obame and his advisors are facing steady pressure from UNDP to vacate the premises, and have already been ordered to surrender their cellphones.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • earch for “Gabon” on Google News, and the only recent coverage of protests you’ll find is from Global Voices, where Cameroonian author Julie Owono is following the story closely.
  • Where Global Voices has been vastly less successful is in achieving another of our goals: shifting the global media agenda to be more globally inclusive. In other words, we’re very good at getting attention to different commentators and observers of events to which major media outlets have decided to pay attention. But we’ve had little to no luck shifting attention to stories that fail to register on the media’s radar screen, even when we’re able to provide on-the-ground commentary and eyewitness accounts.
  • The danger of ignoring Gabon’s revolution isn’t just that opposition forces will be arrested or worse. It’s that we fail to understand the profound shifts underway across the world that change the nature of popular revolution. The wave of protests that swelled in Tunisia may not break just in the Arab world, but across a much larger swath of the planet. The brave actions of ordinary Tunisians didn’t just capture the imagination of subjugated people in the Arab world – they were an inspiration to disempowered people everywhere.
  • Arabica Robusta on 19 Feb 11
     
    But not all revolutions are blessed with this level of attention. The West African nation of Gabon is experiencing a popular revolt against the rule of Ali Bongo Ondimba, son of long-time strongman Omar Bongo, president since October 2009. Thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets of the nation's capital Libreville, on 29 January, and faced violent suppression from Ali Bongo's troops. Protests have spread to other cities, and the crackdown against them has become increasingly fierce. Protests planned for 5 and 8 February were both suppressed with tear gas. At this point, it's unclear whether protesters will be able to continue pressuring the government, or whether the crackdown has driven dissent underground.
Arabica Robusta

Hands off Africa! - Pipe(line)Dreams - 0 views

www.pipelinedreams.org/...hands-off-africa

social movements intervention development human rights corporate industry africa ghana ivory cote

shared by Arabica Robusta on 21 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • When I have a bit more time, I’ll write more about “francafrique” and the way Ivory Coast’s failed 2010 election tapped into a deep anger that runs throughout francophone Africa (and beyond). There’s no doubt, either, that both Libya and the Ivory Coast have reinforced many peoples’ opinion that the West will support “change” and “democracy” only when its own interests are advanced.
  • When you consider just how many seriously flawed African elections have gone by recently without the slightest objection from France, the U.S. or the U.N. — Gabon, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda – it’s painfully obvious that Western support for African democracy is highly selective. With all the despots who have been in power for decades in Africa, how did Gbagbo suddenly become so terrible?
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