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She had traveled to Alabama all the way from California to be here for this moment.

She had managed to stay dry in a torrential downpour that would have forced many others away. Had somehow beat the odds, got in line early, and secured one of the sold-out opening day tickets for access to The Legacy Museum.

So it was a surprise to Isoke Femi that the hardest thing for her to manage were the words to describe what she had just witnessed.

“My experience in there… is so painful,” she said exiting the exhibit.

Site of slave warehouse

Built on the site of a slave warehouse in downtown Montgomery, once the epicenter of the slave trade in the United States, in a town that at one time was the capital of the Confederacy, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is filled with visual exhibits that serve as a catalyst for understanding what many blacks in the United States have historically endured.

“Five-thousand blacks were lynched between 1880 and 1940,” said civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was an early supporter of the museum and the nearby National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a new memorial that sits on a grassy, six-acre hill overlooking Montgomery.

It is the first memorial and museum of its kind in the United States, tackling subjects such as racial terrorism and lynching.

Founded by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization working in marginalized and impoverished communities, the group hopes the Memorial and The Legacy Museum will help change the national narrative about race.

“We must face the truth of our origins,” Jackson told VOA in an exclusive interview immediately following his own trip through the museum in its opening hours. “We are a post-genocidal, post-slavery, post-Jim Crow society.”

​Facing the past

But not a post-racial society, says Mark Potok, former senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center, who spent much of his career tracking hate groups in the United States.

“It is white people in this country, and in the South in particular, who are so averse to facing the past squarely,” he said.

Potok says racism and bigotry, particularly in Alabama, which now hosts this museum and memorial, are not yet consigned to the history books.

“It’s worth remembering that 15 years ago, a very short time ago, the majority of white people in Alabama voted to keep segregated schools in the state constitution,” Potok said.

Jackson says it’s not just Alabama.

“And even today … 200 attempts to get federal anti-lynching legislation has not passed,” he said.

Speaking to the impact of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, he hopes “this will give us a deeper narrative … and we will seek to become better. At the end of the day, we must educate and enlighten us. Not make us get behind more barriers.”

Change at the ballot box

The biggest barrier in Jackson’s mind today is the one keeping people from the ballot box.

“There are 4 million blacks in the South unregistered to vote,” he said.

Mark Potok agrees with Jackson, and believes the best way to bridge the racial divide in the United States is to vote.

“You know, it’s not beating up white supremacists on the streets of Charlottesville,” he said. “It is really changing the people who represent us.”

Isoke Femi, still reeling from her walk through the images and displays that deal with powerful and uncomfortable truths long avoided, sees hope in the crowds around her.

“The love it took to do this, the commitment, the courage, and the fact that everybody is here that it’s not just something that black people are coming to. Everybody is here. And even if they can’t find the words … they want the healing of America.”

In that healing, Jesse Jackson hopes there is also a lesson.

“We must learn to live together,” he said. “And that is one of the great challenges of our past.”
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North Korea’s main underground nuclear test site may be damaged and portions of it unusable, but analysts say that does not mean Pyongyang can no longer carry out nuclear tests at the facility or elsewhere.

Late last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to halt nuclear and missile tests and to close its Punggye-ri facility. The site has been used for all six of the isolated country’s nuclear tests.

In recent years, the stability of Mount Mantap at the site has increasingly been a concern because of the possibility of radiation leakage. And now news has surfaced regarding two new studies by Chinese seismologists that confirm those concerns.

Study: Test site collapse

According to media reports, scientists in China have found that following North Korea’s latest nuclear test last year, a cavity inside Mount Mantap collapsed. One study said the breakdown of the mountain created a chimney that could allow radioactivity from the blast zone to rise into the air.

A report in the Wall Street Journal this week said the study also warned that any further testing at the site with a similar yield could cause an environmental catastrophe.

Another study that was published this month by several other Chinese scientists came to the same conclusion about the collapse of a cavity at the facility but did not say whether the site was still usable, the Wall Street Journal added.

North Korean analysts say that even if the collapse of parts of the facility happened and if Mount Mantap is unusable, there are other mountains nearby and other tunnels.

Many tunnels

Joseph Bermudez, a North Korean expert with 38North, said the northern entrance at the Punggye-ri facility leads to a series of tunnels that branch off, which is how they have been able to host so many tests at the site.

“Obviously the tunnel that was used for each of the tests is no longer viable but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t another branch that the North Koreans could use,” Bermudez said.

At the site, there are three other entrances. One to the east that was apparently used for North Korea’s first test, another to the south that has not been used and then a portal to the west, he added.

Bermudez said that until last week there was excavation activity at the west portal and right before Kim’s announcement that the facility would be shut down all of the carts were pulled out and lined up in a neat row for satellite surveillance to pick up.

“This is a clear indication that they’re telling us, “Hey, look, we are stopped,’” he said. “As far as we can tell, North Korea’s Punggye-ri facility is ready and capable of conducting another nuclear test anytime Kim Jong Un decides to do so.”

Other mountains

James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that even if North Korea cannot use Mount Mantap there are other mountains in the vicinity or elsewhere.

“The decision not to test is a political decision, it is not, I think one forced on North Korea for technical reasons,” Acton said. “This is neither a technically enforced decision nor is it a permanent decision. It would not be difficult to reverse.”

Some have suggested North Korea had little choice but to halt its tests because of mounting pressure from international sanctions and the geological structure of the test site.

Kim’s announcement late last week to close the site, stop tests and focus on opening up the economy is a welcome shift, said professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. But also one that should be approached carefully as the pledges do not amount to much.

“He (Kim) has not put much on the table, he has not said the existing nuclear stock or the longer range nuclear missiles that the North Koreans have are open to negotiations,” Tsang said.

Tsang said that Kim’s pledge to halt tests could be related to the condition of the facility, but also because the North does not have any plans to carry out tests for now, especially with U.S. intelligence agencies and others closely watching the facility.
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Hundreds of people lined up in the rain to get a first look at a lynching memorial and museum that opened Thursday in Montgomery. 

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice commemorates 4,400 black people who were slain in lynchings and other racial killings between 1877 and 1950. Their names, where known, are engraved on 800 dark, rectangular steel columns, one for each U.S. county where lynchings occurred.

A related museum is also opening in Montgomery, called The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

Many visitors shed tears and stared intently at the commemorative columns, many of which are suspended in the air from above.

Toni Battle drove from San Francisco to attend. “I’m a descendant of three lynching victims,” Battle said, her face wet with tears. “I wanted to come and honor them and also those in my family that couldn’t be here.” 

Angel Smith Dixon, who is biracial, came from Lawrenceville, Georgia, to see the memorial.

“We’re publicly grieving this atrocity for the first time as a nation. … You can’t grieve something you can’t see, something you don’t acknowledge,” she said. “Part of the healing process, the first step is to acknowledge it.”

Shame, fear

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, a longtime civil rights activist, told reporters after visiting the memorial that it would help to dispel America’s silence on lynching.

“Whites wouldn’t talk about it because of shame. Blacks wouldn’t talk about it because of fear,” he said.

The crowd included white and black visitors. Mary Ann Braubach, who is white, came from Los Angeles to attend. “As an American, I feel this is a past we have to confront,” she said as she choked back tears.

Launch events include a “Peace and Justice Summit” featuring celebrities and activists, including Ava DuVernay, Marian Wright Edelman and Gloria Steinem.

The summit, museum and memorial are projects of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery-based legal advocacy group founded by attorney Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, known popularly as a “genius” grant, for his human rights work.

The group bills the project as “the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African-Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.”
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A judge ruled Thursday that an independent official called a special master should be the first to examine documents seized by FBI agents from U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Barbara Jones, a former federal judge in the Southern District of New York who has overseen cases ranging from organized crime to corporate compliance, will decide which of the documents should be handed over to prosecutors.

Jones will review the documents and determine which may be shielded by attorney-client privilege.

The FBI raided Cohen’s office and home on April 9, an action that infuriated Trump. Prosecutors said they have been investigating the lawyer for months, largely over his business dealings rather than his legal work.

Trump on Thursday in an interview with Fox News said Cohen had handled only “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his overall legal work.

But Trump and Cohen have sought to limit what documents prosecutors could see, citing attorney-client privilege.

The prosecutors initially said the documents should be reviewed by lawyers within their own office, who would be walled off from the main prosecution team. Cohen argued that his lawyers should get a first look.

In the end, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood decided at a hearing Thursday to opt for a special master, something that both sides had indicated they would be open to.

Prosecutors have said they do not believe the papers are likely to contain many privileged documents related to Trump. In a court filing Thursday morning, they cited Trump’s comment that Cohen handled only a small part of his legal work.

“The letters I received from counsel for Mr. Cohen and the intervenors has convinced me that this process can go quickly with the special master,” Wood said.

Cohen sat in court to hear the decision, wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and pale yellow tie.

Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Cohen, called Jones “a wonderful choice” to be special master.

Jones was not among the seven proposed candidates for special master recommended by prosecutors and Cohen’s lawyers.

​’Crazy deal’

In the Fox News interview, Trump said that he had nothing to do with the criminal investigation into Cohen.

The probe “doesn’t have to do with me,” Trump said. “They’re looking at something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business.”

Trump also confirmed for the first time that Cohen had represented him in “this crazy Stormy Daniels deal,” referring to an adult-film star who says she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006.

Prosecutors are investigating Cohen for possible bank and tax fraud, possible campaign law violations in connection with a payment to Daniels, and perhaps other matters related to Trump’s presidential campaign, a person familiar with the probe has said.

The investigation stemmed in part from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, something that Trump has repeatedly denied.

Cohen has admitted paying $130,000 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, before the 2016 election to secure her silence about the one-night stand she said she had with Trump. Cohen said the payment was legal, and Daniels has sued to end her nondisclosure agreement.

Trump, who has denied having an affair with Daniels, said Cohen did nothing wrong in representing him in the Daniels case.
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The Trump administration has decided to end special protections for an estimated 9,000 Nepalese immigrants in the United States.

Immigrants will have until June 24, 2019, to leave or find another way to stay in the country to allow for an orderly transition.

They were granted special protections under President Barack Obama after an earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 killed more than 8,000 people. The Obama administration extended the protections for 18 months in October 2016.

But the Department of Homeland Security says Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has concluded the disruptions from the earthquake “have decreased to a degree that they should no longer be regarded as substantial.”

The U.S. created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 to provide a safe haven for countries affected by war and natural disasters.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer plans to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a lawsuit filed against him by adult-film star Stormy Daniels. 

Michael Cohen said in a brief filed Wednesday in a California court that he decided to invoke his constitutional right after the FBI raided his home, office and hotel room earlier this month. 

The raids sought documents relating to Daniels and other matters. 

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is suing Cohen for defamation for suggesting that she lied about an alleged affair with Trump. 

Cohen has admitted paying Daniels $130,000 in hush money just weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket and that then-candidate Trump had no knowledge of the transaction.

Some legal experts said the payment could be construed as an illegal campaign contribution. 

Trump denied knowing about the payment and has also denied there was an affair.

Daniels is suing Trump and Cohen in hopes of being freed from a nondisclosure agreement.  Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, had previously told reporters that he expected Cohen to plead the Fifth Amendment, but it was not official until the court filing Wednesday. 

Along with making the payment to Daniels, Cohen also negotiated a $150,000 payment in 2016 to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who also says she had an affair with Trump. 
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U.S President Donald Trump Tuesday praised the strength of America’s partnership with France — and the personal friendship he has developed with his French counterpart. President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Washington will be closely followed by the arrival of German Chancellor Angela Merkel later this week. And, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the two European leaders are lobbying hard for Trump to shift his position on trade tariffs and the Iran nuclear deal.
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Tanzania is trying to avert mass demonstrations planned for Thursday, organized through social media to protest curbs on political and press freedoms imposed since President John Magufuli assumed power three years ago.

Officials have warned residents against street protests in the East African nation, one of the continent’s most peaceful countries. The protests also are planned at the country’s foreign embassies, including in Washington, where at least a dozen people staged an early demonstration Wednesday morning.

Some wore masks as they circled outside the embassy in light rain, carrying signs with messages such as “Magufool must go!”

“Everybody is scared of the president and the establishment,” said Mange Kimambi, a California-based political activist who is promoting the protests from her popular Instagram account. “So I came here to extend support to them and to encourage them to continue standing for their rights and struggle to remove him from power.” 

Tanzania’s ambassador to the U.S., Wilson Masilingi, was unavailable to comment to VOA.

The main protests are set for Thursday, Tanzania’s Union Day. The holiday commemorates the 1964 merging of Tanganyika and the Republic of Zanzibar.

On Tuesday, police already were conducting exercises on the streets of Moshi, a stronghold of the main opposition party Chadema, local media reported.

In Dar es Salaam, the former capital, Police Chief Sweethbert Njewele said security forces were poised to deploy. But, according to The Citizen, a news website, he assured a local business group Wednesday that “there will be no demonstrations. Everyone should go about their work as they usually do.”

The U.S. Embassy there issued an alert Tuesday, advising that Tanzanian officials had threatened “serious consequences” for protesters and that police previously had used tear gas and live ammunition to quell demonstrations. 

The alert also noted that “the U.S. government has restricted the movement of Peace Corps volunteers throughout Tanzania” but that no other Americans there on official duty faced such limitations.

Magufuli, since taking office in 2015, has rolled out tough economic reforms and cracked down on corruption. He also has suspended the licenses and operations of news organizations seen as critical of his administration. Last Friday, Tanzania’s regulatory agency for communications ordered the operators of online platforms to register for a license for a fee of roughly $900 or face fines and up to a year in jail. Those operators have until May 5 to register.

One of Magufuli’s chief critics is Kimambi, who lives in Los Angeles. The 38-year-old mother of three uses her Instagram account to berate the Tanzanian government, its president and other officials, and to rally her 1.8 million followers to demonstrate Thursday in Tanzania and at its embassies around the world.

Magufuli has warned that security forces would clamp down on “illegal” demonstrations.

“Some people have failed to engage in legitimate politics; they would like to see street protests every day. … Let them demonstrate and they will see who I am,” the president said at a public event in early March in northwestern Tanzania, Reuters news service reported.

Outside Tanzania’s embassy in Washington on Wednesday, Kimambi invoked the name of Tanzania’s first president.

“Mwalimu [Julius] Nyerere once said that if you have a leader who is not following the rule of law and respecting the constitution, our duty is to contain him,” she said. “Even if it means paying a price by taking risks, notwithstanding such threats from the authorities.”

On Tuesday, Kimambi claimed on Instagram that representatives of the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department intercepted her at the Los Angeles airport, as she was getting ready to board, to caution her about threats to her safety in Washington. She posted a photo of FBI and LAPD business cards, set on an aircraft tray table, with individuals’ names and contact information redacted in black. She also wrote that she was trembling because of the threats.

Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI field office in Los Angeles, told VOA that it’s against agency policy to confirm or discuss whether the agency had made such overtures.

Kimambi strongly supported candidate Magufuli during the 2015 election. But, after he took office, she turned against him for measures such as banning opposition parties from conducting political activities and for ending live broadcasts of parliamentary proceedings.

This report originated in VOA’s Swahili Service.
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