Does military’s recapture of Khartoum mark a crossroads in Sudan’s conflict?

NAIROBI: Misinformation and online hate speech are fueling panic and division in South Sudan at a time of acute political tensions that observers fear could drive the country back to war.
Ethnic divisions, particularly between the largest communities, the Dinka and Nuer, fueled the brutal civil war of 2013-18 in which some 400,000 people died.
After years of relative calm, there are worrying signs of renewed ethnic polarization, said Nelson Kwaje, chair of Digital Rights Frontlines, an organization based in the capital Juba that monitors hate speech and misinformation online.

It comes as the 2018 peace agreement between President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, First Vice President Riek Machar — who are respectively of Dinka and Nuer ethnicity — is hanging in the balance after Machar’s arrest on Wednesday.
He said mobile phone penetration in South Sudan is only 40 to 50 percent, and social media use around 10 percent at a conservative estimate.
However, those with access are often “the loudest voices,” and their messages spread through communities by more traditional means, helping poison the atmosphere.
Kwaje, speaking from Juba, said life in the city was still “relatively calm.”
But “social media disinformation and hate speech, which is very intense,” is stoking fears.
“There are rumors of assassinations, talk of retaliatory violence ... warnings about ethnic violence,” he said.
First, the brutal killing of an army general captured by members of a predominantly Nuer militia known as the White Army, and then a video appearing to show a young Dinka man being savagely treated by people with Nuer accents.
Ethnic polarization had reduced considerably in recent years, said Kwaje, but those videos have once again “radicalized people.”
“The polarization is obvious,” he said.
“If more incidents go in this direction, it will go to the next level of people taking up arms.”
“South Sudan has limited access to good information and free media. It creates a vacuum,” said Kwaje.
“The people who fill the vacuum are not all nefarious; many just want to share information to protect their community.
“But then you have actors who want to engage in fan engagement, and a small section who are politically motivated.”
He said it was hard to identify who was behind these political messages, but they were consistent and well-designed.
“When we see that level, we know there’s someone on a payroll,” said Kwaje.
“We have better shock absorbers now,” said Kwaje.
When the civil war broke out in 2013, there was an evident tribal divide “from day one,” he said.
The peace agreement that ended the war in 2018, “for all its faults,” engaged the international community, partially unified and disarmed Kiir and Machar’s respective armies, and installed an arms embargo that limited the supply of weapons to some extent, said Kwaje.
“Young people are also aware of the dangers of dividing along tribal lines. There is a lot of messaging about peace.
“But what pushes people to the edge is sharing content showing someone from your tribe being mistreated. Whether that content is factual or not, that immediately radicalizes you.”

ISTANBUL: Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators rallied Saturday in Istanbul in defense of democracy after the arrest of mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkiye’s worst street unrest in over a decade.
Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkiye’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid Al-Fitr celebration which starts Sunday, marking the end of Ramadan.
Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition party CHP which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but AFP was unable to independently confirm the figure.
The mass protests, which began with Imamoglu’s March 19 detention on contested fraud and “terror” charges, have prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.
Widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as CHP’s candidate for the 2028 race on the day he was jailed.
As his wife, Dilek, arrived on stage, massive applause arose from the crowd which was a sea of Turkish flags and pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkiye’s founding father.
Imamoglu was resoundingly re-elected mayor for the third time last year. The anger over his arrest which began in Istanbul quickly spread across Turkiye.
Nightly protests outside Istanbul City Hall drew vast crowds and often degenerated into running battles with riot police, who used teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters.
“We are here today for our homeland. We, the people, elect our rulers,” insisted 17-year-old Melis Basak Ergun, a young protester who vowed they would never be cowed “by violence or tear gas.”
“We stand behind our mayor, Imamoglu.”
Turkish authorities did not comment on the latest mass protest. Erdogan has previously branded the demonstrations “street terror.”
In a letter read out to the crowd, Imamoglu addressed Turkiye’s youngsters, saying: “If young people are on the front line, it’s because they’re the ones who feel most anxiety about the future.
“The youth are telling Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Show the people respect. Don’t touch the nation’s will. Don’t cheat — compete fairly. But Erdogan is closing his ears to these voices,” he wrote.
“This is not about Ekrem Imamoglu, it’s about our country... It is about justice, democracy and freedom,” he said, as the crowd roared back: “Rights! Law! Justice!“
“Everywhere is Taksim, resistance is everywhere!” they chanted, referring to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square, site of the last massive wave of protests in 2013.
The last major demonstration called by CHP was Tuesday ahead of Saturday’s big rally, although students have continued to protest throughout the week.
Speaking to French newspaper Le Monde, Ozel said there would be weekly rallies every Saturday in different cities across Turkiye as well as a weekly Wednesday night demo in Istanbul.
“If we don’t stop this attempted coup, it will mean the end of the ballot box,” he said.
“I joined the rallies outside City Hall for four days together with university students. I told them not to give in,” protester Cafer Sungur, 78, told AFP.
“There is no other way than to keep fighting,” he said.
“I was jailed in the 1970s but back then there was justice. Today we can’t talk about justice anymore.”
Student groups have kept up their own protests, most of them masked, in the face of a police crackdown that has seen nearly 2,000 people arrested.
The authorities have also cracked down on media coverage, arresting 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deporting a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arresting a Swedish reporter who flew into Istanbul to cover the unrest.
Eleven journalists were freed Thursday, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.
Swedish journalist Joakim Medin was jailed on Friday, his employer Dagens ETC told AFP.
Reporters Without Borders’ Turkiye representative Erol Onderoglu said Medin had been charged with “insulting the president” — a charge often use to silence Erdogan’s critics.
“The judicial pressure systematically brought to bear on local journalists for a long time is now being brought to bear on their foreign colleagues,” he told AFP, two days after the deportation of BBC correspondent Mark Lowen.
He said authorities had accused him of being “a threat to public order.”
Baris Altintas, co-director of MLSA, a legal NGO helping many of the detainees, told AFP the authorities “seem to be very determined to limit coverage of the protests.
“We fear the crackdown on the press will not only continue but increase,” she said.