NAIROBI: A Kenyan court on Thursday ordered doctors to end a strike in the next five days or face jail after a stoppage of more than six weeks that has plunged state hospitals into crisis at the start of an election year.
Justice Hellen Wasilwa had initially handed union leaders a suspended one-month sentence on Jan. 12 after they defied a December ruling declaring the strike illegal. She had also given them a two-week period for negotiations to avoid jail.
On Thursday, she extended the period for the doctors to call off the strike by five days. “The role of this court is to bring a solution, and an amicable solution,” she said when announcing the extension.
Several thousand doctors and their supporters marched from the court to the center of Nairobi for a meeting where union leaders were to discuss their response to the court order.
The 5,000 members of the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists’ Union (KMPDU) first walked out on Dec. 5. Since then, newspapers have reported patients in critical condition left unattended and published images of empty hospital beds as families have taken patients home to look after them.
The union is demanding the fulfilment of a 2013 agreement which it says awarded doctors a 150-180 percent pay rise on basic salaries, a review of working conditions and promotions criteria, as well as hiring of more staff in state hospitals.
The East African state’s government says it can only afford a 40 percent pay rise but would work to meet other conditions.
“We are not refusing to pay doctors. But if they ask ridiculous amounts, you have to (explain) why we cannot afford that,” Finance Minister Henry Rotich told Citizen TV on Wednesday, saying conceding would encourage more worker strikes.
Lecturers at public universities launched a strike last week, a further headache to the government in the approach to presidential and parliamentary elections in August when President Uhuru Kenyatta will seek a second and final term.
Kenyan court tells doctors to end strike in days or face jail
Kenyan court tells doctors to end strike in days or face jail
Bangladesh begins exhuming mass grave from 2024 uprising
- The United Nations says up to 1,400 people were killed in crackdowns as Hasina attempted to cling to power — deaths that formed part of her conviction last month for crimes against humanity
DHAKA: Bangladeshi police began exhuming on Sunday a mass grave believed to contain around 114 unidentified victims of a mass uprising that toppled autocratic former prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year.
The UN-supported effort is being advised by Argentine forensic anthropologist Luis Fondebrider, who has led recovery and identification missions at mass graves worldwide for decades.
The bodies were buried at the Rayerbazar Graveyard in Dhaka by the volunteer group Anjuman Mufidul Islam, which said it handled 80 unclaimed bodies in July and another 34 in August 2024 — all people reported to have been killed during weeks of deadly protests.
The United Nations says up to 1,400 people were killed in crackdowns as Hasina attempted to cling to power — deaths that formed part of her conviction last month for crimes against humanity.
Criminal Investigation Department (CID) chief Md Sibgat Ullah said investigators believed the mass grave held roughly 114 bodies, but the exact number would only be known once exhumations were complete.
“We can only confirm once we dig the graves and exhume the bodies,” Ullah told reporters.
- ‘Searched for him’ -
Among those hoping for answers is Mohammed Nabil, who is searching for the remains of his brother Sohel Rana, 28, who vanished in July 2024.
“We searched for him everywhere,” Nabil told AFP.
He said his family first suspected Rana’s death after seeing a Facebook video, then recognized his clothing — a blue T-shirt and black trousers — in a photograph taken by burial volunteers.
Exhumed bodies will be given post-mortem examinations and DNA testing. The process is expected to take several weeks to complete.
“It’s been more than a year, so it won’t be possible to extract DNA from the soft tissues,” senior police officer Abu Taleb told AFP. “Working with bones would be more time-consuming.”
Forensic experts from four Dhaka medical colleges are part of the team, with Fondebrider brought in to offer support as part of an agreement with the UN rights body the OHCHR.
“The process is complex and unique,” Fondebrider told reporters. “We will guarantee that international standards will be followed.”
Fondebrider previously headed the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, founded in 1984 to investigate the tens of thousands who disappeared during Argentina’s former military dictatorship.
Authorities say the exhumed bodies will be reburied in accordance with religious rites and their families’ wishes.
Hasina, convicted in absentia last month and sentenced to death, remains in self-imposed exile in India.
