Free Republic

Ethiopia’s brutal Marxist dictator, known as the African Pol Pot, became the first fallen leader to be found guilty yesterday of genocide in his own country after a 12-year trial.Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former President, who fled to Zimbabwe in 1991, was accused along with top members of his military Government of killing thousands during his 17-year rule. The period was marked by vicious crackdowns on opponents, disastrous wars with neighbouring countries and rebel groups and devastating famines in which starvation was used to force peasants into submission. “Members of the Derg [Government] who are present in court today and...

President Trump, in an interview on “Hannity” on Tuesday, slammed the World Health Organization (WHO) for its “China-centric” views, adding the global health agency’s projections and pronouncements about the coronavirus pandemic have been routinely wrong. One of WHO’s earliest flawed pronouncements, the president told host Sean Hannity, was to strongly recommend against the U.S. restricting travel from China. Earlier Tuesday at a news briefing, Trump said he may put a “very powerful hold” on U.S. funding to the WHO. Sen. Lindsey Graham also said that the World Health Organization (WHO) should not receive funding from the United States under its...

A Sudanese woman who was sentenced to death for refusing to renounce her Christian faith has reportedly given birth in prison.

Meriam Ibrahim was sentenced to 100 lashes and death on Sunday. She had been given three days to recant her faith. But Meriam defiantly told the judge that she was never a Muslim, that her mother raised her Christian after her father abandoned the family. It was then that the judge pronounced that she be given 100 lashes after the baby is born, and then hanged to death. Meriam is eight months pregnant. The ACLJ is very influential with channels to act for her freedom. They also have a petition, so please go to their site aclj.or to sign. Sudan's...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. State Department on Monday declined to say if Martin Wani, a 20-month-old Christian boy imprisoned by the Islamist Sudanese government, is a U.S. citizen. “You don’t know whether that little boy in prison is a U.S. citizen?” CNSNews.com asked State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki at the department’s Monday press briefing. “I don’t have any more details to share,” Psaki said. The State Department also would not say if the boy’s father, Daniel Wani, is a U.S. citizen and if, as the father has reportedly said, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum asked the father to secure DNA...

“I am a Christian, I have not apostatized.” Thus Sudanese Doctor Maryam Yahya Ibrahim, declared to the court, after a Muslim religious tried for 30 minutes to convince her to “return to Islam” or retract her apostasy. The story, namely Maryam’s nightmare, who is a 27-year-old mother of an almost two-year old boy and eight months pregnant, shows what a long way some Muslim countries have to go to ensure the fundamental rights of their citizens. On May 15, 2014 she was sentenced to death for apostasy and to 100 lashes for adultery. Initially, in August of 2013, Maryam was...

Mariam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, brought her punishment of death upon herself, said Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa: "We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam." "I sentence you to be hanged to death." For good measure, Judge Khalifa ordered the woman to be beaten with 100 lashes of the whip before being hung for "adultery." She's nine months pregnant. They'll permit her to give birth to her baby and wean it before executing her. However, the punishment for "adultery" -- 100 lashes -- will be administered immediately after the birth. The "adultery" in question...

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Israel informed the United Nations Friday that it reserves the right to use force to stop a new aid flotilla from reaching the blockaded Gaza Strip. In a letter sent to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said the stated intention of the Bolivian-flagged all-women cargo ship Mariam "is to violate the existing naval blockade of Gaza." She added that Israel also had information that another vessel, the Naji al-Ali, plans to leave from a Lebanese port with the aim of violating the blockade. "Israel reserves its right under international law to use...

"The Fate of Africa"... is a heavy book, but it is light reading because it is so unfashionably straightforward. Martin Meredith has written a narrative history of modern Africa, devoid of pseudointellectual frills, gender discourse or postcolonial angst. He takes each of the larger African countries and tells you what happened there after independence.... Mr. Meredith's critics will accuse him of cultural insensitivity. By knocking down Africa's heroes, he is denying Africans the right to be proud of their own heritage. This is piffle. If Africa is to prosper, the first step is for Africans to understand what has gone...

The first time Bono and Madonna got together to save Africa, the unintended consequence was the death of perhaps as many as 100,000 people. That's aid expert David Rieff's conclusion in the July 2005 issue of the resolutely liberal American Prospect magazine regarding the end result of Live Aid in 1985. Billed as "The Greatest Show on Earth," Live Aid was a multivenue rock concert held on July 13, l985, in London and Philadelphia in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. With an estimated 1.5 billion viewers watching the live broadcast in 100 countries, the event reportedly...

In the houseof Mariam Hamza, George Galloway is considered something approaching a god. There are photographs of him on the walls, there are posters of his famous sanction-busting bus trip from Big Ben to Baghdad and only good words are spoken about "Uncle George". "He is a good person. I cannot describe him in mere words. He is the one who saved my daughter," said Mariam's mother, Karima, dismissing reports that the Labour MP took money from the Iraqi regime with a shake of her head. "She was dying, she was like a skeleton and then God sent Mr Galloway...