12-04-2021

MOndAy, APRIL 12, 2021
5
People queue to receive a vaccine at Parirenyatwa Hospital on 31 March.
Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA
Zimbabwe’s senior citizen are
skeptic on Covid vaccine
nyASHA CHIngOnO
They may be old, frail, and vulnerable
but they are the foot soldiers at the
front of Zimbabwe's Covid vaccination
drive. Amid widespread scepticism
among the younger population, it is
elderly people who are coming out to
lead by example.
The queues at the vaccination
centres in the capital, Harare, are
dominated by older people. At Wilkins
Hospital, Felda Mupemhi, 85, grasps
her walking stick as she trudges
toward a white tent, where nurses are
administering the Sinopharm vaccine.
"We stand a chance of beating
Covid-19 if we take this vaccine. So, I
came here to make a statement to the
younger [generation] that they too can
get vaccinated, so that we save others,"
says Mupemhi. There were worries the
vaccine might cause her health
complications but after a short
assessment interview with a health
worker, she received her first dose of
the Sinopharm vaccine.
Mupemhi says initially she had been
sceptical: "I had already dismissed
prospects of getting this vaccine. I
feared it would trigger some health
issues, as I am not young. But after
seeing that my neighbour, who is my
age, was still OK a week after getting it,
that gave me the courage."
Peter Hadingham, 82, was initially
turned away when health officials cited
his age and asthma as possible risk
factors, but a few weeks later he was
thrilled to be accepted for his first
dose. "I have a bit of asthma and a bad
back, so I cannot walk straight, but
otherwise I am healthy. I have a flu
vaccine every year, there is no
difference. [People] should think of the
rest of the population - they should get
vaccinated, because there is nothing to
be afraid of," Hadingham says.
Health officials have recorded
growing numbers of senior citizens
getting the Sinopharm and the Sinovac
vaccine as Zimbabweans begin to
soften their attitudes towards the
Chinese jab. "The uptake from last
week is very encouraging. The elderly
are coming, and those with chronic
diseases have also been visiting our
centres in large numbers," Harare city
health department director Dr Prosper
Chonzi told the Guardian.
"Our older population appreciates
that they are vulnerable. Once you get
the infection, chances of severity are
high, so they are jumping at the
opportunity. If you are given the offer
of getting the vaccine, and it is free, it is
wise to take it," he says.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa
launched the second phase of the
country's vaccination rollout on 24
March, covering people with preexisting
conditions, the elderly and
those confined to settlements and
institutions, such as prisons and
refugee camps.
Zimbabwe's economy was
precarious before the pandemic, and
has been hit very hard by Covid
lockdowns; in March the World Food
Programme reported that food
insecurity, particularly among the
urban poor, is soaring. Food prices in
February were 35% higher than the
same month in 2020.
Parirenyatwa Hospital, one of the
biggest in the country, was
overwhelmed by Covid patients at the
peak of the pandemic, just after
Christmas. Now its stressed health
professionals are working their way
through the long vaccination queue, a
stark contrast to the low numbers who
showed up during the first phase of the
programme. By 29 March, about
69,751 Zimbabweans had been
vaccinated, up from 43,295 people the
week before.
The government plans to inoculate
60% of its population to achieve herd
immunity, about 10 million people,
and has received nearly two million
doses of vaccines from China, while
India donated 35,000 doses of the
Covaxin at the start of April.
Health officials say there was initial
scepticism about the efficacy of the
Sinopharm vaccine, said by the
government to be between 65% to 70%
effective. Low uptake was also
recorded among frontline health
workers during the first phase of the
rollout, despite efforts by doctors to
encourage uptake on social media.
At a Harare vaccination centre,
Malcom Michelle, 65, has been
queueing for an hour, and is not happy
about the lack of social distancing.
"There is need for more vaccination
centres to open. As you can see, there
is hardly any social distancing here.
Apart from that, we just must go with
the flow," Michelle says.
According to Harare city council,
which runs satellite clinics around the
city, 24 vaccination centres have been
set up, but people still prefer to go to
the major referral centres such as
Parirenyatwa, meaning longer
queues.
Hidden human rights crises threaten
post-Covid global security
KATE HOdAL
Neglected human rights crises around
the world have the potential to
undermine already precarious global
security as governments continue to use
Covid as a cover to push authoritarian
agendas, Amnesty International has
warned.
The organisation said ignoring
escalating hotspots for human rights
violations and allowing states to
perpetrate abuses with impunity could
jeopardise efforts to rebuild after the
pandemic.
"We've seen the development of new
legal tools to supposedly 'combat fake
news' but which in fact repress freedom
of expression, attacks against human
rights defenders - particularly
environmental defenders - the world
over, and further repression of
[minority] populations who have fallen
off the agenda altogether," said Agnès
Callamard, Amnesty's new secretary
general.
"The voices and experiences of all these
people must be at the heart of our reboot
post Covid-19. If they are not, then the
crises will multiply and the [current]
system will perpetuate." A number of
under-reported crises were taking place
across the globe that warranted
immediate attention, said Callamard.
Amnesty's global report for 2020-
2021, published on Wednesday, found
The funeral of Jorge Enrique Oramas, 70, a social and environmental
leader killed on 16 May 2020 in Villacarmelo,
Colombia.
Photo: Luis Robayo
that "fake news" laws in the Gulf,
Hungary and Singapore were being used
to silence criticism of governments and
responses to the pandemic.
Singaporean authorities used the
Protection from Online Falsehoods and
Manipulation Act, which forces online
media platforms to carry corrections or
remove content the government
considers to be false - with penalties of up
to 10 years' imprisonment or fines of up
to S$1m (£540,000), throughout 2020
against government critics and political
opponents.
Activists in Western Sahara, which has
been locked in a decades-long struggle
for independence from Morocco, faced a
number of interrogations and trumpedup
charges for their human rights work,
according to the report.
"Western Sahara has been living under
oppression for many decades, but [the
decision by Donald Trump] to recognise
Morocco's sovereignty has simply
escalated the repression," said Sahrawi
activist Mohamed Elbaikam. "Activists
are seeing their salaries cut off or frozen;
they're being followed and targeted with
trumped-up charges, their family
members are threatened, their phones
and internet connections are hacked, and
some are being tortured and sent to
prison without trial."
The human rights situation in the
Philippines, already tenuous, worsened
dramatically in 2020. In July 2020, the
Philippines passed an anti-terrorism bill
and its broad and vague definition of
terrorism has since been used to target
rights campaigners. The island nation is
already the second deadliest country
behind Colombia for human rights
activists, according to the advocacy
group Front Line Defenders. The vast
majority of those killed in 2020 were
working on environmental, land and
indigenous rights, it said.
The demerits of aid agencies
SARAH JOHnSOn
Aid agencies are hindering
development and undermining efforts
to attract investment in Somaliland,
according to a former World Bank and
UN official turned entrepreneur.
Ismail Ahmed, founder of the
money-transfer
company
WorldRemit, claims Somaliland, his
birthplace, has had to battle "negative
PR" from aid agencies exaggerating
their role to protect their interests.
Somaliland declared itself a sovereign
state independent of Somalia in 1991,
but it is not recognised internationally.
The British-based Ahmed has
launched the Sahamiye Foundation,
with a 10-year plan to give away more
than half of his wealth, amounting to
$500m (£365m), to help Somaliland,
primarily in health and education.
"Aid agencies exaggerate what they do
in markets like this. A tiny fraction of
what they raise reaches intended
beneficiaries," he said.
"What they fail to understand is
investment carried out by businesses.
Somaliland's GDP is dominated not by
the state but by the private sector," he
added. "That negative PR, where they
exaggerate issues, is really
protectionist … and often leads to
businesses cutting investment."
His foundation, based in London
and Somaliland's capital, Hargeisa,
aims to double literacy rates in two
years, increase access to health
information and help people gain new
technical skills. Ahmed is frank about
what he sees as the failings of aid, to
which Somaliland has had little access.
Though it has 4.4 million inhabitants
and its own currency, army and
parliament, it remains an
unrecognised country and so does not
receive funds from the World Bank or
International Monetary Fund.
In the early days of the pandemic,
Ahmed said, the World Bank
predicted that remittances - money
transferred back to their country by
migrant workers - to sub-Saharan
Africa would drop by 23%. The Somali
government forecast that transfers
would fall by up to 40%. Aid agencies
claimed remittances would "more or
less collapse", said Ahmed, adding that
as the media reported this, food prices
went up and businesses cut
investment.
"This did more harm than good in
Africa. They had no basis to say this,"
he said. "I've been involved in
remittances for 40 years. We have
hard data to show what was
happening. They never bothered to
check the facts. "Remittances are
counter-cyclical and so during an
economic downturn we expect to see
an increase in transaction numbers.
That is exactly what happened in
2020." Somaliland's central bank
reported that remittances increased
from $1.1bn to $1.3bn last year.
Ahmed came to the UK as a refugee
from the war that broke out in
Somaliland in 1988. Arriving with $60
to his name, he spent his summers
picking strawberries in Kent to send
money back to his family, then in an
east African refugee camp.
He returned to Somaliland in 1992
for his PhD research into remittances.
He said: "I saw the scale of remittances
was far bigger than anything. The UN
was exaggerating the bit of aid they
delivered."
His early career saw him working for
the World Bank and the UN, where he
thought he "could make a difference".
Instead, he witnessed corruption while
working in Nairobi and became a
whistleblower, which lost him his job.
Four years later, he won
compensation from the UN, using the
money to launch WorldRemit in 2010.
It has gone on to become one of the
world's largest digital cross-border
payment companies.
Now Ahmed's focus is on his
foundation, starting with a Somali
language app. "During Covid, we saw
difficulties reaching people who can't
read," said Ahmed. "Thanks to
technology, we can now do something
that was unthinkable in the past. With
our app, someone can reach functional
literacy in 50 to 100 hours."
He added: "Somaliland could
become an example of where things
have been built from the ground up,
where people have owned what they
are doing, where people are
accountable. In Africa, the media
focuses on what goes wrong, but
Somaliland is one of the success
stories."
Ismail Ahmed, founder of WorldRemit, plans to give away $500m to fund health and education
through his Sahamiye Foundation.
Photo: Tolga Akmen
Croatian border police accused of
sexually assaulting Afghan migrant
LOREnzO TOndO
A woman from Afghanistan was
allegedly sexually abused, held at
knifepoint and forced to strip naked by
a Croatian border police officer, during
a search of a group of migrants on the
border with Bosnia. The European
commission described it as a "serious
alleged criminal action'' and urged the
Croatian authorities "to thoroughly
investigate all allegations, and follow
up with relevant actions".
According to a dossier from the
Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the
incident occurred on the night of 15
February, in Croatian territory, a few
kilometres from the Bosnian city of
Velika Kladuša.
In the report, seen by the Guardian,
the woman said she tried to cross the
border with a group of four others,
including two children, but they were
stopped by an officer who allegedly
pointed a rifle at them. The Afghans
asked for asylum. However, according
to the witnesses, one of the officers tore
the papers apart and laughed.
"He insulted us, slapped the elderly
man who was with us and the children,
and told us to empty our pockets and
show them our bags," said the woman.
"Then he took me aside and started to
search me," she said. "I insisted that he
should not be touching me. He asked
me why. I told him because I am a
woman and a Muslim and it's haram.
The officer slapped me over the head
and told me: 'If you are Muslim, why
did you come to Croatia, why didn't you
stay in Bosnia with Muslims?'"
The officer allegedly removed the
woman's headscarf and jacket. "After
he removed my jacket, he started to
touch my breasts, and I started to cry,"
said the woman. "I gave the police
officer 50 euros that I had in my pocket,
hoping that he would stop touching me.
The officer ordered me to remove all
my shirts and I refused. He continued
A blocked-off crossing on the
border of Bosnia and Croatia,
in the northern Bosnian village
of Bosanska Bojna.
Photo: Elvis Barukcic
to touch me on my breasts and behind,
and I cried a lot. The officer told me to
stop crying while gesticulating that he
would strangle me if I continued. I was
scared but I stopped crying."
Minutes later a police van arrived and
the migrants were ordered to get inside
and driven for about 20 minutes before
being told to get out.
An officer again asked the woman to
strip naked. "I objected and I was
slapped hard in the face and told: 'strip
naked,'" she said. "I had six T-shirts and
three pairs of pants on me. I removed
all but one shirt and trousers and I
covered myself with a blanket. An
officer approached me and started to
touch me over the blanket. He felt my
clothes and slapped me, saying I
needed to remove everything, even
underwear. The officer started to
search and touch me, while I was
naked. He then asked me if I loved him.
He told me: 'I love you, do you love me?
Do you want me to take you
somewhere to be with me?'.
"I was scared and in tears. He asked
to take me to the forest and asked me if
I understood what he meant. I gestured
to him that I didn't understand. I did.
The officer then grabbed my shoulder
and pushed me in the direction of
another officer. They both had
flashlights on the forehead and I
couldn't see well. The officer that had
touched me pulled out a knife and put it
on my throat. He told me that, if I ever
said anything to anyone, he would kill
me, and, if I ever came back to Croatia,
I would meet my end, in the forest,
under him."
The officer allegedly hit the woman
again and the other members of the
group on their faces, heads and legs.
Then the officers reportedly ordered
them to walk to Bosnia. "The testimony
is truly shocking," said Charlotte Slente,
DRC secretary general. "Despite the
lower number of pushbacks recorded
by the DRC in 2021, the patterns of
reported violence and abuse at the
Croatia-BiH [Bosnia-Herzegovina]
border remain unchanged."
"Once again, this underscores the
urgent need for systematic investigations
of these reports," Slente added. "Despite
the European commission's engagement
with Croatian authorities in recent
months, we have seen virtually no
progress, neither on investigations of the
actual reports, nor on the development of
independent border monitoring
mechanisms, to prevent violence at the
EU's external borders. It really is time to
turn rhetoric into reality - and ensure that
truly independent border monitoring is
put in place to prevent these abuses and
ensure that credible and transparent
investigations can effectively hold
perpetrators of violence and abuse to
account."