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A new 25-foot mural in the City of New Orleans reminds residents that Albert Woodfox, the last imprisoned member of the Angola 3, has been in prison and in solitary confinement for 43 years. On Friday, July 3rd, artist-activist Brandan “Bmike” Odums, put the finishing touches on the portrait of Angola 3 prisoner Albert Woodfox on the side of a stucco building near the Poydras Street intersection. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

Rwandan intelligence chief Emmanuel Karenzi Karake was arrested last Saturday in London on a European arrest warrant. The warrant was based on a Spanish court’s 2008 indictment of Karake and 39 other top Rwandan officials for genocide – that is, the massacre of Rwandan Hutu civilians and refugees in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

Dr. Charles Kambanda’s essay, which was first posted to the Facebook forum Friends of Reason brought reason to the discussion of presidential term limits in Burundi, which had been overwhelmed by propaganda and fearmongering about the renewal of ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis in the tiny East African nation. KPFA’s Ann Garrison, who studies and participates in the Friends of Reason Facebook forum, spoke to Dr. Kambanda.

On May 21, 2015, David Himbara told a U.S. Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing on U.S. relations with Rwanda that “the smallest administrative unit is 10 houses, and every 10 houses is watched by one individual, and as you move on, the whole state machinery driving fear is very well established.” KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to David Himbara, a Rwandan exile in Canada, who addressed the House subcommittee about how this climate of fear is created.

The Richmond Progressive Alliance, commonly known as the RPA, is backing Planning Commissioner Marilyn Langlois for the vacant seat on the Richmond City Council. The RPA made national and international headlines last November, when each of their three City Council candidates won their seats even though Chevron Corp, spent $1 million each to defeat them. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Richmond City Councilor Eduardo Martinez.

A widely feared and anticipated military attack by U.N. and Congolese troops on the FDLR has not materialized, despite U.N. Special Envoy Russ Feingold’s repeated urgings. Instead, this week, the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo rose up in the streets to demand that their Parliament not pass legislation allowing Congolese President Joseph Kabila to extend his stay in office beyond constitutional term limits. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

In January 2010, Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza returned from The Netherlands to Rwanda to attempt to run against sitting President Paul Kagame. She said she knew that she would be either assassinated or imprisoned, and she is now entering the fifth year of a 15-year prison sentence. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Marie Lyse Numuhoza, the founder of Friends of Victoire, a new organization created to fight for her freedom.

A Rwandan witness for a French court investigating the assassination of two African presidents, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, in 1994 has gone missing and is reported to have been kidnapped in Nairobi, Kenya. The witness, Emile Gafirita, is a former bodyguard to Rwandan President Paul Kagame. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

In Louisiana, a federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court’s ruling that overturned the murder conviction of Albert Woodfox, the last member of the Angola 3 still in prison. The Angola 3 are internationally recognized as political prisoners and symbols of a racist system of mass incarceration and solitary confinement. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Robert King, the other surviving Angola 3 member. Here’s that interview.

The BBC documentary, “Rwanda: The Untold Story,” has become the subject of fierce argument including many open letters to the BBC both applauding and attacking it. Paul Kagame accused the BBC of “genocide denial” and his state newspaper, The New Times, even called on the International Criminal Court to indict the network and/or its producers. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to international criminal defense attorney Peter Erlinder.

On Sept. 4, a white South Carolina highway patrolman, Sean Groubert, shot a Black motorist in Columbia, South Carolina. LeVar Jones, the shooting victim, survived a bullet in the hip. Richland County’s chief prosecutor had Groubert arrested and charged with felony assault and battery. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Kevin Alexander Gray, a South Carolina native and co-editor of “Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence.”

Mike Parker has withdrawn from the Richmond mayor’s race so as to avoid splitting the progressive vote between himself and City Councilor Tom Butt, resulting in a victory for City Councilor Nat Bates, the candidate backed by Chevron, the corporation that for so many years claimed Richmond as a classic company town. KPFA’s Ann Garrison filed this report.

WBAI AfrobeatRadio spoke to St. John’s University Law School Professor Charles Kambanda on April 9, 2011, during the first week of Rwanda’s 17-year commemoration of the 1994 genocide. Pacifica and AfrobeatRadio producer Ann Garrison and Professor Kambanda asked us to republish the audio archive and transcript as the 20th Anniversary Commemorations of the Rwandan Genocide begin.

This week’s mining and business headlines reported that Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler turned a nearly 30,000 percent profit by buying the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s oil rights in waters off its Atlantic Coast in 2006, then selling the same rights back to them six years later. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to anti-corruption and resource theft watchdog Global Witness and filed this report.

Yesterday the Southern Africa Development Community, a regional body, issued a statement of concern about the deployment of Rwandan troops along Rwanda’s common border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, expressing the hope that Rwanda will not invade and is not thinking about invading. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.

On Thursday this week, in a performance that raised eyebrows and caused teeth gnashing among Congolese peace and justice activists, movie actress Angelina Jolie thanked the G8 summit of the world's eight wealthiest nations for their effort to end sexual violence in war. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

Secretary of State John Kerry made headlines this week when he suggested, at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, that President Obama might soon be visiting Africa. Kerry gave no details about when or which countries. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney about the president’s relationship to the continent of his father’s birth.

Earlier this week, a court in Kigali, Rwanda found Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire guilty of treason and denying the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Ingabire’s daughter, Raissa Ujeneza. Ujeneza is a student of international and European law in the Netherlands.

Ann Garrison asks, “What do you think of the first four years of the administration of Barack Obama, the first African American president?” Silvio Michel of the Green Party of Mauritius' response is typical of conversations with people on the African continent, Green or not, though there are certainly exceptions who still admire Obama’s defeat of the color bar to become this country’s highest elected official.

According to Mickey Huff, the corporate media are serving up a diet of “junk-food news to avoid telling the public what is really going on at home and abroad”; for example, Ann Garrison discloses that pilotless drones are fast becoming the dominant means of delivering explosives from the air.