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US President Hastily Ends Africa Trip



Continuing his tour of the African continent, the US President made a flying visit to the North African state of South Azanta, a US ally to which Washington has sent much arms. Unfortunately, the President could not leave the Azantan airport, as the capital was gripped by a wave of strikes and demonstrations by the political opposition. In a brief press conference at the airport, amid the distant sound of exploding shells, the President told his hosts that Azanta needed to follow the US example of democracy, openness and tolerance. He said he had received disturbing reports of targetted killings by the Azantan security forces against minority ethnic groups. He said the Azantan President could not escape responsibility for the actions of forces under his authority. He said the Azantan government's failure to take action against a systematic pattern of targetted killings perpetrated over many years was tantamount to an endorsement of these killings, for which these officials ultimately would be held responsible. 

In a no-nonsense mood, the President urged Africa to follow the example of the West and not take direction from the likes of China and Russia, which did not have a culture of respect for human rights including the right to peaceful protest. He said that peaceful protesters in Azanta had faced massive intimidation by government security forces carrying military assault weapons and protest leaders had been arrested and detained. by the police. He said that such oppressive tactics only served to increase disaffection. He maintained that Azanta had a massive number of uncoordinated, heavily-armed security forces, and that no government could survive by attempting to hold its civilian population under heel by force of arms. He said African politicians should understand that ultimately power was held through the will of the people and not by the maintenance of a massive security force. He said that in many parts of Africa there was no real independence of the police or judiciary, and that these two sectors worked closely with the politicians to protect each others interests. In America, he said, peaceful protest was a right and the police did not interfere with it. African leaders, he said, spent too much time protecting and rewarding their own tribesmen rather than  concentrating on the nation as a whole.

When asked by a journalist how the Azantan President could be held responsible for the actions of the police force, whilst in America the President was absolved of blame for police actions, he replied that in America police officers accused of wrongdoing were taken before a court of law, tried and if convicted, severely punished. When told that 99.9% of such trials had ended in acquittal of the officers concerned, the President expressed doubt that Azantan journalists would have accurate statistics on the US justice system.





When told by journalists that according to official figures US police killed several thousand civilians per year whilst Azantan police only killed several hundred, the US President appeared to become somewhat irritated and said that by no stretch of the imagination could the situation in Azanta be compared to that in America. He said per capita police killings of the civilian population were two to three times higher in Azanta than in America, and in any case the American police had been acting within the ambit of US law.

When asked by journalists whether he in fact was not responsible for the high level of police killings in the US, having allowed the situation to fester for so long, he replied that he had come to Africa to help Africans, not to be insulted by African journalists

As tension mounted in the conference room, the President declined to take further questions and flew out of the airport shortly thereafter. It was later announced that he would be cutting short his African trip to attend to pressing issues back in his country. It was understood that restive tribesmen had created a potentially embarrassing situation in his country that required his personal attention.

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