Deaths and violence have been taking place in Nigeria amidst religious tension and a national fuel crisis that has so far lasted 2 days. While the Islamist group Boko Haram remains hostile towards Christians, the country’s situation has been worsened by the removal of fuel subsidies. With gas costs rising, a general strike and demonstrations have put the country on hold making peace an even more challenging prospect.

A doctor in the North, near the recent violence in a town called Potiskum, told Al-Jazeera that on Tuesday eight people were brought in to the mortuary.  They were killed when a group of gunmen stormed a pub. Among the dead was a 10-year-old girl.

In Benin, to the south, Al-Jazeera reported that a mosque was set ablaze and an Islamic school nearby had been burnt down.

Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer. On Monday during protests against rising fuel prices and religious conflict, a group separated from the demonstration and terrorized a Hausa neighborhood - the Hausa community being a predominantly Muslim ethnicity.

Al-Jazeera reports that President Goodluck Jonathan claimed Boko Haram sympathizers were in various branches of the Nigerian government. He said, “The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought” in the late 1960’s.

The country is divided between the mainly Muslim north, and the mainly Christian south.

*link to Al-Jazeera article*

(AFP Photo)

lifeisliterallylimited:

UN again calls for end to bloodshed as activists say nine people were shot dead by security forces on Monday.

Syrian security forces have killed 2,700 people since anti-government protesters started six months ago, the United Nations human rights office said.

“As of today, 2,700 people, including at least 100 children, have been killed by military and security forces since mass protests erupted in mid-March,” Kyung-wha Kang, deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Monday.

She said “the scale and nature of these acts may amount to crimes against humanity” and that her office was prepared to send its confidential list of 50 suspects linked to those crimes to the International Criminal Court, if the UN Security Council refers the situation in Syria to the Hague-based court.

She called on President Bashar al-Assad’s government to co-operate with an international inquiry into the bloodshed so as to ensure accountability for all violations and to “break the culture of impunity in the country”. 

Assad has repeatedly said Syria is facing a ”foreign conspiracy” and has blamed most of the deaths on “armed criminals”.

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inothernews:

Ratko Mladic, above, in 1993.  Via the New York Times:

Ratko Mladic, the fugitive accused of masterminding the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, had been captured but refused to give details.

Mr. Mladic, a former Bosnian Serb general, was one of the world’s most wanted criminals, evading capture for more than 15 years despite an increasing international effort to hunt him down. Serbian news reports said that he was living under the name of Milorad Komadic and was captured after a tip that he had identification documents for Mladic and appeared physically similar.

Mr. Mladic was blamed for the worst ethnically motivated mass murder on the Continent since World War II that resulted in the massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

Mr. Mladic had become the main obstacle to Serbia’s candidacy to join the European Union. He had been in hiding since 1995, widely believed to be protected by allies in the Serbian military and intelligence.

(Photo: Petar Kujundzic / Reuters via the New York Times)

I studied Srebrenica for a class about genocide a few semesters back. That class changed my life and made me interested in putting an end to political violence against all humans. Violence against humans in general, really. So this is good for me to see, that this prick is finally busted. Hope he gets what he deserves. It was a disgusting massacre.

(via pantslessprogressive)

internationalcalamityasia:

On May 9^th and 10^th, the United States and China took part in a round of strategic and economic talks aimed at increasing cooperation between the two countries and working out disagreements that they have had in the recent past. Some issues were worked out, and the two countries were able to…