Quotes

‘The Congolese Government may recognise the need for greater security in Ituri and North Kivu provinces, but imposing martial law hasn't accomplished that. Despite the government's efforts to spin its actions as military successes, many people across eastern Congo still live in constant fear of the next massacre.’

– Thomas Fessy, senior Congo researcher at Human Rights Watch, noting that attacks on civilians by armed groups have continued in two conflict-ridden provinces of eastern DRC since the government imposed martial law in May

‘The ongoing conflict in northern Ethiopia is a tragedy causing immense human suffering and threatens the unity of the Ethiopian state.’

– US President Joe Biden, who has signed a new executive order authorising broad sanctions against those involved in perpetrating the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia as reports of atrocities continue to emerge from the Tigray region

‘I will never ever believe that Dr Haffejee took his own life, and the reason I am saying that is with all the beating that he had received during the day and into the night, plus he was a very thin person, he was weak, weak, weak, weak, weak. He was so weak he was trembling, he was shivering and he did not have the energy to do that type of … I do believe that he twisted himself to death, that’s all I can say.’

– Mohum Gopal, a junior within the apartheid era Security Branch police at the time of Dr Hoosen Haffejee’s death on 3 August 1977. He told KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) Judge Zaba Nkosi that he had been beaten up so badly and was so weak that it was unfathomable how he would have managed to take his own life by hanging himself.