Local trade unionists are demanding answers following the apparent killing in custody of Sipho Jele, an activist in the Swaziland Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union (SAPWU) and People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), who was arrested during May Day protests. Swaziland's largest opposition party, PUDEMO is being relentlessly persecuted under the government's notorious Suppression of Terrorism Act. Swaziland has been living under a State of Emergency since 1973. Swazi authorities are calling the Jele's death a suicide.

Members of the Mauritanian diaspora in the United States are organizing a demonstration to protest against the recent incendiary statement of Prime Minster Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf that his government will generalize the use of Arabic at all levels of the administration and educational system. "If such a policy is implemented, it will amount to a cultural genocide against Black Mauritanians who have been discriminated against for too long," reads a statement by protest organizers. The statement also notes a recent comment by Minister of Culture and Youth Cisse Mint Boide that "The national languages are obstacles to the emergence of the Arabic language."

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in a survey of global press-freedom "Predators" released May 3, ranks Eritrea's President Issaias Afeworki as the world's worst abuser of media freedom. RSF charges that Eritrea permits no independent media and the state-run newspapers and television network do not allow stories that challenge the nation's leadership or its policies. The government has described a free press as "incompatible" with Eritrean culture and last year President Isaias said no Eritrean should want or need to attack their own country.

Ethiopian and Eritrean scholars each laid the blame for the antagonism of their respective peoples on dictatorial rulers and extremist "liberation fronts" that took secession as the only viable solution to a complex problem. Speaking at the Ethiopian and Eritrean Friendship Conference held March 12-4 in San Jose, Calif., panelists and attendees emphasized the need to start a process of healing, renewal and normalization of people-to-people relations—in repudiation of succeeding rulers and political elites that never represent the interests and desires of their people.

A UN-recognized World Heritage Site housing the burial grounds of the kings of Buganda was gutted by fire outside Uganda's capital of Kampala March 15, sparking fears of renewed tension between the government and ethnic Baganda. Police were deployed to the site in Kasubi, a suburb of the capital, as stones were thrown at firefighters arriving to tackle the blaze.

Sudan's security forces arrested a Somali insurgent leader while he was attempting to cross the border to Eritrea, the Somali news website Mareeg Online reported March 14 from Mogadishu. Muse Abdi Arale, defense secretary for the Hizbul Islam group, was reportedly arrested while trying to enter in Eritrea with money embezzled from the rebel group. Sheikh Hassan Mahdi, a senior official from Hizbul Islam, confirmed this version of events to Mareeg Online.

Government troops—the FARDC—in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are to blame for much of the epidemic of sexual violence in the east of the country, according to US and UN reports detailing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity by various groups there. FARDC is trying to rout the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) from the Kivu region and Oriental province in eastern Congo, but operations have been criticized for their impact on civilians.

The US State Department's annual human rights report, released this week, charges that Ethiopia is holding several hundred political prisoners, including the leader of one of the country's largest opposition parties. The 2009 report says Birtukan Mideksa, president of Ethiopia's opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice party, was held in solitary confinement for the first six months of the year despite a court ruling that it violated her constitutional rights.