Cisa News Africa

NAIROBI, February 03, 2012 (CISA) – “Life of consecrated men and women is not an easier one; it calls for prayers and serious commitment,” John Cardinal Njue has said.

Presiding over the Mass to mark the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, on February 1, a day of the Consecrated people at Nairobi’s Holy Family Minor Basilica, the Cardinal urged the faithful to pray for all those in the religious life.

“The faithful must feel obliged to pray for and materially support the life of our consecrated men and women. This is how they will succeed in their missionary work,” he said.

More than ever before religious life today is being challenged by various forces, one of them being secularism, added the Cardinal.

Describing parents as first catechists, he urged them to ensure that they guide their children well on matters pertaining to religious life.

“In this way we shall manage to promote religious vocations among the growing generation” he observed.

“Play your part well and the end result will be more young people coming in to join the Church as religious men and women,” emphasized Cardinal Njue.

The Cardinal paid glowing tribute to the pastoral work of the missionaries in the country and   the entire African continent.

“It is now up to us to ensure that the spiritual seed planted by our missionaries is well watered and weeded,” he advised.

TORIT, February, 03, 2012 (CISA) -Christians of the Catholic Diocese of Torit on Wednesday 01 laid the late Monsignor Silvestro Laharanya to rest at St Peter and Paul Cathedral cemetery, in Torit town.

Hundreds of Christians turned up for the memorial mass at Our Lady of Assumption Church and traveled to Saints Peter and Paul’s Cathedral cemetery, to pay their last respect.

Msngr Silvestro died on SundayJanuary 22, in a Catholic home for the aged, having been there for the last six years.

The late priest who hailed from the Diocese of Torit was born at Isohe in 1932 to Marko Loyee and Lotiye of Imotong, Omogoro Village.

According to the Vicar General of the Catholic Diocese of Torit, Fr Celestino Muras, the deceased was baptized in 1942 before joining Okaru Seminary and later Gulu.

He studied Theology at Tore River Major seminary and was ordained on 18th December, 1960.

He became the Vicar General and later Apostolic Administrator of Juba after the expulsion of missionaries from the Sudan.

Later, Msngr Silvestro worked in  Loa where the SPLA forces captured him during the war.

Fr Silvestro died two months after the death of Fr Andrew Madrama in November last year and coincided with the memorial celebration of late Fr Saturlino Ohure, who is considered the founder of South Sudan liberation struggle.

JEDDAH, February, 03, 2012 (CISA) -Thirty five Ethiopian Christians are awaiting deportation from Saudi Arabia for “illicit mingling,” after police arrested them when they raided a private prayer gathering in Jeddah in mid-December, 2011, Human Rights Watch has said.

Of those arrested, 29 were women. They were subjected to arbitrary body searches in custody, three of the Ethiopians told Human Rights Watch.

The Ethiopians gathered to pray together on December 15, during the advent of Christmas, in the private home of one of the Ethiopians, when police burst in and arrested them, three jailed members of the group, two women and one man, told Human Rights Watch.

“While King Abdullah sets up an international interfaith dialogue center, his police are trampling on the rights of believers of others faiths,” said Christoph Wilcke, senior Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch. “The Saudi government needs to change its own intolerant ways before it can promote religious dialogue abroad.”

In October, Saudi Arabia, together with Austria and Spain, founded the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, located in Vienna, and funded by Saudi Arabia.

The Ethiopians, speaking via telephone from prison, said that about 10 days after being arrested, some in the group were taken to court, where they were forced to affix their fingerprints to a document without being allowed to read it.

Officials told the group that they were being charged with “illicit mingling” of unmarried persons of the opposite sex. Some of the Ethiopians have been living in the kingdom for 16 years, while others are newer arrivals.

Some of the women and men did not have valid residency papers, but all faced deportation, including those with valid papers, the jailed Ethiopian man said.

“Saudi authorities have broken their promises to respect other faiths,” Wilcke said. “Men and women of other faiths have nowhere to worship in Saudi Arabia if even their private homes are no longer safe.”

The Arab Charter of Human Rights, to which Saudi Arabia is a state party, guarantees “the freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs or to perform religious observances, either alone or in community with others,” and prohibits “arbitrary arrest.”

Human Rights Watch has called on the Saudi authorities to release the 35 Ethiopian men and women immediately if there is no evidence to charge them with offenses that are recognizably criminal under international norms.

NAIROBI, February 03, 2012 (CISA) –The United Nations declared an end to famine conditions in Somalia today February 3, but warned that with recurrent droughts in the Horn of Africa hunger remains a threat unless long-term measures are taken to restore food security.

According to a new report by the FAO-managed Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) and USAID’s Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), the number of people in need of emergency humanitarian assistance in Somalia has dropped from 4 million to 2.34 million, 31 percent of the population. At the height of the crisis, 750,000 people were at risk of death.

“Long-awaited rains coupled with substantial agricultural inputs and the humanitarian response deployed in the last six months are the main reasons for this improvement,” FAO’s new Director-General José Graziano da Silva told a press conference in Nairobi after visiting southern Somalia.

“However, the crisis is not over. It can only be resolved with a combination of rains and continued, coordinated, long-term actions that build up the resilience of local populations and link relief with development.

“We cannot avoid droughts, but we can put measures in place to try to prevent them from becoming a famine. We have three months until the next rainy season,” he added.

According to a press statement sent to CISA, Graziano da Silva emphasized that FAO will step up its current efforts in the Horn of Africa and highlighted that agriculture is a key factor in establishing peace and stability in the region.

Although much increased, Somalia’s last crop was from a secondary harvest which only contributes 10 percent of annual cereal requirements, meaning that stocks will only last into the next planting season starting between April and June. The report also warned that an estimated 325,000 acutely malnourished Somali children remain at risk.

The current crisis continues to affect the whole Horn of Africa region with 9.5 million people in need of emergency assistance in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, down from 13 million at the height of the crisis.

BRAZZAVILLE, February, 03, 2012 (CISA) -The Way-C tablet, an African rival to the iPad, went on sale in the Republic of Congo on January 30, 2012 and for now is sold only in Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire, according to its inventor, Verone Mankou.

The Way-C, which means “the light of the stars” in a dialect of northern Congo, was invented in Congo by the 26-year-old Mankou, under his company, VMK.

The device costs $300.

The Way-C tablet will be marketed in 10 countries in West Africa, and in Belgium, France and India, starting February 15.

While the Way-C was designed in Congo, it was assembled in China, to keep the price low and because of a lack of factories in the central African country.

On the official Way-C website, Mankou describes the tablet as being affordable without being a cheaply made product, and filling a gap in the market for a device catering specifically to Africans.

“Originally the idea was to design a low-cost computer to bring Internet access to as many people as possible,” Mankou is quoted as saying.

The Android tablet is a little smaller than the iPad, and weighs 380 g. It has a 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory and supports wifi. Battery life is 6 hours.

“In technological terms, this tablet is equivalent to all those to be found on the market,” Mankou told Agence France-Presse.

KHARTOUM, February, 03, 2012 (CISA) -The official clerical authority in Sudan has called on the body tasked with drafting the country’s constitution to ensure full inclusion of Islamic Shari’ah law.

On  July 13, 2011, Sudan’s President Omer Al-Bashir formed a taskforce comprising legal and religious experts to draft a permanent constitution for the country after its current interim constitution, which was installed in 2005 as per the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with South Sudan, became effectively obsolete following the expiry of that deal’s mandate in July last year.

The CPA paved the way for the secession of the mainly Christian South Sudan from the Muslim-ruled north, rendering the latter relatively homogeneous in terms of religion and culture.

Al-Bashir declared in several occasion that the new constitution will recognize Arabic as the official language and Islam as the only source of lawmaking. Sudan’s [Muslim] Scholars Association (SSA), a body of state-controlled Imams and clerics, on Thursday February 02 issued a statement drawing the attention of the constitution committee to the necessity of fully implementing Shari’ah law.

In a related issue, the SSA urged leaders of rival religious sects to observe peaceful dialogue following the eruption this week of violent confrontation between supporters of the Ansar Al-Suna group and those of Sufi cults.

The clashes, which occurred during celebrations of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday in Sudan’s twin capital city of Omdurman, resulted in the injury of more than a dozen people.

Meanwhile the president of South Sudan has warned of renewed conflict with former foes in north Sudan if bitter oil negotiations do not include a deal on other key issues, including the contested Abyei region.

“It would not be fair to my people to support an agreement that invites more conflict by failing to resolve underlying issues,” Salva Kiir told reporters.

“An agreement that we would consider signing should not only focus on the oil crisis, but be comprehensive to cover all the outstanding issues,” he added.

South Sudan in January took the extreme step of shutting down oil production — the fledgling nation’s top revenue source — as it accused rival north Sudan over an oil dispute and African Union-mediated talks remain stalled.

PORT SAID, February, 03, 2012 (CISA) -The Egyptian government sacked the head of security in the northern city of Port Said after at least 74 people were killed and hundreds more injured in clashes between rival fans following a football match in the city.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim fired city security chief Essam Samak after the violence, one of the deadliest incidents in football’s history, which saw hundreds of supporters of Port Said team Al-Masri invade the pitch to attack fans of Cairo’s Al-Ahly.

The home team had beaten their Cairo rivals 3-1.

State television ran footage of riot police standing rigidly in rows as pandemonium erupted around them.

Ibrahim has said most of the deaths were caused by the crush but medics said some people were stabbed. Hundreds were also reported wounded. Police said 47 people had been arrested.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest political force, accused supporters of ousted President Mubarak of instigating the football violence.

“The events in Port Said are planned and are a message from the remnants of the former regime,” said MP Essam al-Erian in a statement on the Islamist group’s Freedom and Justice Party website. “This tragedy is the result of negligence and the lack of army and police, and those running the country bear the responsibility.”

“There are dead people lying on the ground! There are dead people in the changing room,” Al-Ahly striker Emad Meteab told the team’s satellite channel. “I won’t play football anymore until these people get justice.”

Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzuri held an emergency meeting on Thursday February 02 to discuss the events.

“This tragic incident is interpreted by many as something that is beyond the violent clashes between fans. It is suspected that in fact the military increase the tension  to convince the people of the need to extend the emergency legislation” said Fr Luciano Verdoscia, a Combonian missionary who lives and works in Cairo.

Meanwhile, a fire broke out at Cairo Stadium during the first half of a match between Zamalek and Ismaili clubs. The match was cancelled, but emergency services managed to control the blaze.

In September, Egyptian football fans clashed with police in a Cairo stadium, injuring nearly 80 people, as they chanted slogans against Mubarak and his interior minister.

NAIROBI, February 03, 2012 (CISA) -The Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM) in Kenya launched their golden jubilee celebrations in a ceremony attended by sisters and their friends at the MMM residence in Westlands, Nairobi on Sunday January 29.

“As a congregation we launched the jubilee celebration officially on January 27 which is the anniversary of the death of our foundress. Usually we come together on that day for a get-together,” said Sr Kay Lawlor MMM area leader.

The MMMs are planning for a public celebration on April 15 to commemorate the Jubilee.

The Medical Missionaries of Mary are engaged in several projects around Kenya key among them is the Dispensary in Mukuru-kwa-Njenga slums and St Mary’s medical center in Eldoret where they attend to more than 10,000 people.

Apart from Kenya, the MMMs are also serving in Angola, Benin, Brazil, England, Honduras, Ireland, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and USA and next they are heading to South Sudan.