21, April 2020
UN slaps sanctions on Central Africa rebel chief 0
The UN Security Council on Monday imposed sanctions on Central African Republic rebel leader Abdoulaye Miskine, who last year signed a peace agreement between the government and armed groups.
Miskine, founder and head of the Democratic Front of the Central African People (FDPC), was offered a government position under the terms of the February 2019 accord.
However, in the last report by UN experts monitoring sanctions and an arms embargo imposed in 2013, the self-proclaimed general was mentioned as looking for fighters.
Despite the signing of the agreement, Miskine “remains a threat to the peace, stability and security of the CAR,” a diplomat said.
Miskine had signed the peace agreement in Khartoum between CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera and the heads of 14 armed groups.
Under the deal, militia chiefs were given senior government positions in the purported aim of helping to cement peace.
Miskine was named as an adviser to the new government but never took up his post, according to Bangui.
In November 2019, the Central African government said Miskine had been arrested in neighboring Chad and demanded his extradition.
He has now been put under UN sanctions, which include an asset freeze and travel ban. One of the world’s poorest countries, the landlocked CAR has been mired in conflict for years.
Most of the country is in the hands of armed groups that claim to represent religious or ethnic communities, and often fight over the country’s rich mineral resources.
Miskine set up the FDPC in 2004, when the country first plunged into civil war, and gave himself the rank of general.
He joined the coalition of mainly Muslim militias that in 2013 overthrew then-president Francois Bozize — a revolt that sparked French military intervention and the holding of elections for a successor.
Since then the CAR has been devastated by fighting between numerous rebel militias and government forces and also between the armed groups themselves.
The violence has abated in CAR since the Khartoum accord, but fighting between rebel groups continues and the toll among civilians is still rising. More than a quarter of the 4.7 million population have fled their homes.
Source: AFP
21, April 2020
Covid-19 deaths in France surpass 20,000 as hospitalisations continue to fall 0
France has reported 547 deaths in hospitals and nursing homes from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours as the number of new hospitalisations continued a slow decline.
France – which on Monday became the fourth country to record more than 20,000 deaths as a result of the pandemic and has the fourth-highest toll in the world – has been in virtual lockdown for nearly five weeks and is due to start lifting some confinement measures from May 11.
“Tonight, our country has passed a barrier that is symbolic and particularly painful,” top health official Jérôme Salomon told reporters, announcing a total death toll of 20,265 people while welcoming new falls in the numbers in hospital and intensive care.
The 547 new deaths reported – including 444 in hospital and 103 in nursing homes – marked an increase over the previous 24 hours.
Salomon, however, highlighted other welcome signs that the virus curve had passed its peak. He said 5,683 patients were receiving intensive care for the virus on Monday, down from a peak of 7,148 on April 8. Hospitalisations likewise continued a near week-long decline.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told a news conference on Sunday that falls in the number of people in intensive care were one of the encouraging signals that pressures on hospitals were easing.
But he shut down any expectations that the gradual exit from confinement in May, due to start with the reopening of schools, would allow people to move around or interact as before, especially as a vaccine against the virus was still far off.
“It won’t be a return to normal life,” Philippe said, adding that as France introduces more testing, people with coronavirus would have to remain isolated at home or in hotels laid on by the government. “From May 11, we will enter a second phase, when we will regain some of our freedoms.”
The French state has given few details yet of the pace at which businesses like cinemas or bars will reopen, only saying that as some stores open up again, people will have to maintain safe distances from each other.
France will, however, lift its ban on visits to nursing home residents, provided people did not touch their relatives, Health Minister Olivier Véran told the same briefing. Elderly people in nursing homes account for nearly 40% of the coronavirus fatalities in the country.
The government has come under fire in recent weeks after shortages of medicines, hospital equipment such as ventilators and face masks for doctors as well as front line workers in sectors like supermarkets added to problems in handling the crisis.
Philippe said that in the past week France had managed to import just under 81 million masks, exceeding for the first time “in a long time” its weekly needs of about 45 million.
By June, France will also have secured and produced 15,000 more ventilators for resuscitation units in hospitals and another 15,000 less heavy-duty versions – helping it exceed its projected needs.
“That will not only allow us to secure our situation, but thereafter to also mobilise some ventilators to help France’s allies internationally,” Philippe said.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)