As Uganda’s presidential nominations draw closer, opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as the musician Bobi Wine, has vowed to rock the halls of power with a run for the top job. Wine describes President Yoweri Museveni’s 33 years in power as a dictatorship. Museveni, meanwhile, has described Wine as an enemy of prosperity, and in November called for more riot police to deal with his opponent. Halima Athumani reports from Kampala.
Day: December 26, 2019
A Moroccan YouTuber was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for “insulting the king” in a video broadcast on social networks, his lawyer said.
In a separate case, a Moroccan journalist and activist was charged and detained over a tweet that had criticized a court decision, his defense council told AFP.
The cases come after the Moroccan Human Rights Association had deplored in July an “escalation of violations of human rights and public and individual freedoms” in Morocco.
The YouTuber Mohamed Sekkaki, known as “Moul Kaskita”, was sentenced by a court in the western city of Settat to four years in prison, his lawyer Mohamed Ziane told AFP.
Sekkaki, whose videos usually exceed 100,000 views, was arrested in early December after posting a video in which he insulted Moroccans as “donkeys” and criticized King Mohammed VI, whose is considered “inviolable” under the constitution.
Ziani said his client would appeal the verdict.
The conviction of the YouTuber came less than a month after a Moroccan rapper was sentenced to a year in prison for “insulting a public official”.
Also on Thursday, journalist Omar Radi, 33, was detained in Casablanca and now faces trial, his lawyer Said Benhammani told AFP.
He is being prosecuted for a tweet published nine months ago criticizing the judge in charge of the case against the leaders of the Hirak protest movement, he said.
Morocco’s criminal code punishes “insulting magistrates” with imprisonment of between one month and one year.
The group Reporters Without Borders in its latest annual press freedom index ranked Morocco 135th out of 180 countries.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the governments in Moscow, Damascus and Tehran to stop the violence in Syria’s rebel-held province of Idlib.
“Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands” of civilians in the northwestern province, Trump tweeted, adding: “Don’t do it!”
Heightened regime and Russian bombardment has hit jihadist-held Idlib — the country’s last major opposition bastion — since mid-December, as regime forces make steady advances on the ground despite an August ceasefire and U.N. calls for a de-escalation.
Nearly 80 civilians have been killed by airstrikes and artillery attacks over the same period, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which estimates that more than 40,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks.
Turkey called Tuesday for the attacks to “come to an end immediately,” after sending a delegation to Moscow to discuss the flare-up.
Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Ankara was pressing for a new ceasefire to replace the August agreement.
Trump on Thursday praised Turkey’s efforts, tweeting that Ankara “is working hard to stop this carnage.”
Turkey’s highest court on Thursday ruled in favor of Wikipedia, saying the Turkish government’s two-year ban on the online encyclopedia constitutes a violation of freedom of expression, the state-run news agency reported.
Turkey blocked Wikipedia in April 2017, accusing it of being part of a “smear campaign” against the country, after the website refused to remove content that allegedly portrayed Turkey as supporting the Islamic State group and other terrorist organizations.
Access to Wikipedia and all its language editions was blocked under a law that allows the government to ban websites it deems pose a national security threat.
Wikipedia declined to remove content from the community-generated site, citing its opposition to censorship. It petitioned the Constitutional Court in May 2017 after talks with Turkish officials and a challenge in lower courts failed.
The Anadolu Agency reported that the Constitutional Court decided the ban amounted to a violation of freedom of expression. The justices voted 10-6 in favor of Wikipedia, the agency said.
There was no immediate comment from the government and it was not immediately clear when access to the website would be restored.
Many Turks have found ways to circumvent the ban on Wikipedia and other blocked websites.
From a trade war to disagreements on Hong Kong and human rights, the ties between the United States and China were seriously tested in 2019. And despite the recent agreement on phase one of the trade pact that averts the imposition of further tariffs against each other, some analysts say Washington’s issues with Beijing are more intractable. State Department correspondent Nike Ching has the story