The oFFICIAL memmorial for Michael Jackson at the 02 Arena in Greenwich
ayoub mzee paying my respects at the O2 Arena where Michael Jachson was supposed to perform the last 'This is it Tour'.He inspired us all at some point or another he will be sadly missed.
Michael, just wanted to say that all through my childhood l grew up with your music, you are my inspiration. Your not just an 'Icon', but a friend to the world and I hope after the last 15 years of torment you can finally look down on the world and see the grief and mourning and just how many hearts of people you have 'touched' of all ages, colours and creed. You did it my friend - you made a global diffence and will continue shaping the world with your music, lyrics, video's for many, many years to come. Luckily for me l saw you in the UK when you toured for Bad, Dangerous and History. Al l can say is perfection. RIP
We loved you but God loved you more AND he took you away
You will live eternally in our hearts!!!!
RIP Michael !! You're always the King Of Pop !!!
Life is eternal, and love is immortal,and death is only a horizon;and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.R.I.P
Legends never die....they just transition to a better place
RIP a very big fan of you! Photos: Ayoub mzee
Jackson’s kids cry for Ugandan ‘mum’
Rwaramba holding one of Michael Jackson’s masked children in one of her rare public appearances
By Henry Mukasa and Agencies
UGANDAN-born Grace Rwaramba finds herself at the centre of a custody battle for the three children of Michael Jackson, currently being looked after by the singer’s 80-year-old mother. Rwaramba, a 42-year-old Rwandan woman who was born in Uganda, worked for Jackson for 17 years, five years as his secretary and 12 years as a nanny to his children, before she was sacked six months ago. American and British media houses reported yesterday that Jackson’s mother, Katherine, called up Rwaramba in London saying that the inconsolable children were crying out for her. “She said: ‘Grace, the children are crying. They are asking about you. They can’t believe that their father died,” Rwaramba said over the weekend in her first press interview, published in the UK Sunday Times. The former nanny spelled out her fears over the orphaned children. “I’m really distraught for them. Michael had not been eating and the kids had been so scared for him. Now the youngest has been saying, ‘Why daddy? God should have taken me, not him.” She openly wondered why Katherine could not allow her talk to the children, whom she said regard her as their mother. “I asked to speak to the children. She said they were sleeping. But she had just said they were crying. She never let me speak to them.” A family friend was quoted by News of the World, a UK tabloid, as saying: “Katherine wants the kids. But Michael always said he wanted Grace to have them if something happened to him.” Sources said Rwaramba had taken an increasingly central role in the lives of the children, who reportedly call her “Mom”. She and Jackson were even rumoured to be considering marriage in 2006. In the Sunday Times, she narrated her difficult life with the pop star, who she said routinely fired her and then begged her to return. “I was getting phone calls that they were being neglected. Nobody was cleaning the rooms because Michael didn’t pay the housekeeper,” she said. “I was getting calls telling me Michael was in such a bad shape. He wasn’t clean. He hadn’t shaved. He wasn’t eating well. I used to do all this for him and they were trying to get me to go back.” Rwaramba claimed that while she gave the children love and a stable environment, they had a cold and uneasy relationship with their father. “I used to hug and laugh with them. But when Michael was around, they froze.” As for the masks Jackson made the children wear in public, Rwaramba revealed: “They didn’t like them. It was not my idea. I hated it as well. So whenever I had a chance I misplaced the masks or forgot to pack them.” Her account provided a view of the real world of Michael Jackson behind the masks, the wigs, the make-up and the surgery: his running around the world with the three children – to Bahrain, Ireland, Germany, New Jersey – and his drug addiction. She recalled incidents when she had to pump the singer’s stomach many times after a high dose of drugs. “There was one period that it was so bad I did not let the children see him.” She said he was furious with her for calling in the help of his mother and sister. It was one of the times he fired her. Rwaramba is the founder and director of World Accountability for Humanity, a charity that aims to improve the lives of the disadvantaged. On her website, she says her parents, Job Rwaramba and Magdalena Kinyogote, had fled the first troubles in Rwanda in the 1960s and settled in Uganda, where Grace was born. At the age of 13, she went to a multi-ethnic boarding school in Connecticut (US) and later received her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Atlantic Union College, a Seventh-day Adventist college in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, another woman in Jackson’s life, Debbie Rowe, with whom he was married between 1996 and 1999, revealed that she got two of his children through artificial insemination. “Michael was divorced, lonely and wanted children. I was the one who said to him: “I will have your babies,” she said in an interview published over the weekend by London’s News of the World. “I was just the vessel. It wasn’t Michael’s sperm. I got paid for it, and I’ve moved on. I know I will never see my children again.” Blonde Debbie, now 50, spoke out at the ranch in California where she lives a reclusive life surrounded by more than 30 horses. After a difficult second birth, which left her scarred, she said Jackson dumped her. The singer’s third child, Prince Michael Jackson II, nicknamed ‘Blanket’, was said to be born from a surrogate European mother the singer never met. Aides say Blanket is the most similar to Jackson in looks, personality and musical talent. Over the years, several women have come forward to claim they are Blanket’s mother. The most recent was a woman calling herself Billie Jean Jackson, who last year filed a law suit in Los Angeles seeking one billion dollars. Jackson left a debt of $500 million (about sh1,000b). [source : new vision]
Eti na mimi nafanya ka wimbledon kangu
Nakula tizi
Rwaramba holding one of Michael Jackson’s masked children in one of her rare public appearances
By Henry Mukasa and Agencies
UGANDAN-born Grace Rwaramba finds herself at the centre of a custody battle for the three children of Michael Jackson, currently being looked after by the singer’s 80-year-old mother. Rwaramba, a 42-year-old Rwandan woman who was born in Uganda, worked for Jackson for 17 years, five years as his secretary and 12 years as a nanny to his children, before she was sacked six months ago. American and British media houses reported yesterday that Jackson’s mother, Katherine, called up Rwaramba in London saying that the inconsolable children were crying out for her. “She said: ‘Grace, the children are crying. They are asking about you. They can’t believe that their father died,” Rwaramba said over the weekend in her first press interview, published in the UK Sunday Times. The former nanny spelled out her fears over the orphaned children. “I’m really distraught for them. Michael had not been eating and the kids had been so scared for him. Now the youngest has been saying, ‘Why daddy? God should have taken me, not him.” She openly wondered why Katherine could not allow her talk to the children, whom she said regard her as their mother. “I asked to speak to the children. She said they were sleeping. But she had just said they were crying. She never let me speak to them.” A family friend was quoted by News of the World, a UK tabloid, as saying: “Katherine wants the kids. But Michael always said he wanted Grace to have them if something happened to him.” Sources said Rwaramba had taken an increasingly central role in the lives of the children, who reportedly call her “Mom”. She and Jackson were even rumoured to be considering marriage in 2006. In the Sunday Times, she narrated her difficult life with the pop star, who she said routinely fired her and then begged her to return. “I was getting phone calls that they were being neglected. Nobody was cleaning the rooms because Michael didn’t pay the housekeeper,” she said. “I was getting calls telling me Michael was in such a bad shape. He wasn’t clean. He hadn’t shaved. He wasn’t eating well. I used to do all this for him and they were trying to get me to go back.” Rwaramba claimed that while she gave the children love and a stable environment, they had a cold and uneasy relationship with their father. “I used to hug and laugh with them. But when Michael was around, they froze.” As for the masks Jackson made the children wear in public, Rwaramba revealed: “They didn’t like them. It was not my idea. I hated it as well. So whenever I had a chance I misplaced the masks or forgot to pack them.” Her account provided a view of the real world of Michael Jackson behind the masks, the wigs, the make-up and the surgery: his running around the world with the three children – to Bahrain, Ireland, Germany, New Jersey – and his drug addiction. She recalled incidents when she had to pump the singer’s stomach many times after a high dose of drugs. “There was one period that it was so bad I did not let the children see him.” She said he was furious with her for calling in the help of his mother and sister. It was one of the times he fired her. Rwaramba is the founder and director of World Accountability for Humanity, a charity that aims to improve the lives of the disadvantaged. On her website, she says her parents, Job Rwaramba and Magdalena Kinyogote, had fled the first troubles in Rwanda in the 1960s and settled in Uganda, where Grace was born. At the age of 13, she went to a multi-ethnic boarding school in Connecticut (US) and later received her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Atlantic Union College, a Seventh-day Adventist college in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, another woman in Jackson’s life, Debbie Rowe, with whom he was married between 1996 and 1999, revealed that she got two of his children through artificial insemination. “Michael was divorced, lonely and wanted children. I was the one who said to him: “I will have your babies,” she said in an interview published over the weekend by London’s News of the World. “I was just the vessel. It wasn’t Michael’s sperm. I got paid for it, and I’ve moved on. I know I will never see my children again.” Blonde Debbie, now 50, spoke out at the ranch in California where she lives a reclusive life surrounded by more than 30 horses. After a difficult second birth, which left her scarred, she said Jackson dumped her. The singer’s third child, Prince Michael Jackson II, nicknamed ‘Blanket’, was said to be born from a surrogate European mother the singer never met. Aides say Blanket is the most similar to Jackson in looks, personality and musical talent. Over the years, several women have come forward to claim they are Blanket’s mother. The most recent was a woman calling herself Billie Jean Jackson, who last year filed a law suit in Los Angeles seeking one billion dollars. Jackson left a debt of $500 million (about sh1,000b). [source : new vision]
Eti na mimi nafanya ka wimbledon kangu
Nakula tizi
Women Against Rape Press Release
Rape: Deprioritised by Southwark police yet again
Two more women have now come forward with complaints about Southwark police force handling of rape cases – the same Sapphire unit that only this March was the subject of a damning report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
The report exposed the scandalous and negligent way the police investigated the rape of a 15-year-old in 2005. Basic evidence was not gathered or went missing. The man was acquitted, the girl lives in terror of seeing him again, and other women are in danger as a result – we know of at least one who was attacked by the same man.
The report found that hundreds of rapes and sexual assaults in the Sapphire unit were turned over to untrained, unqualified officers; uncaring supervisors failed to advise, check or monitor them; and while the rape unit was systematically deprioritised and starved of resources, resources were found instead for motor crimes and robbery. As Amerdeep Somal the commissioner of the IPCC said, “The report into this investigation highlights that significant errors were made that compromised the quality of the investigation into a very serious offence. This was not a complex investigation but basic lines of enquiry were not pursued. Sadly the police investigation into this matter fell far short of what the victim had a basic right to expect.”
Yet Southwark’s response to two more reported rapes just two months after this report, has led another two women to complain.
Sally Freeman, the mother of the young girl who made the first complaint, is now a campaigner with Women Against Rape. She says, “What do we have to do to get Southwark police to do their jobs? I was really shocked and distressed to see Southwark are in the news again for not treating rape victims appropriately. We are four years down the line and nothing has changed. What is the point of my whole family going through the process and anguish of making a complaint if nothing ever changes? We made the complaint in order to change things for future victims and it is really distressing to think that victims are still being failed. What is the IPCC there for, is it just a con, to waste our time?”
As a result of her daughter’s complaint, one officer was “disciplined” with “words of advice” and three received written warnings for their failures. That’s all! And this was not even the first time these same officers had been complained about: two of them had only a month earlier received “words of advice” for their failures in the rape case of another young person. Yet they went on immediately to do the same thing again in the 15-year-old’s case.
Now, four years later, the Met say Southwark Sapphire is appropriately staffed, “lessons have been learned” from this case and from the Worboys and Reid fiascos. But the two new complaints indicate that, yet again, nothing has changed.
Sally Freeman says, “This proves what we have been saying. Words of advice and written warnings are water off a duck’s back, just public relations. The man in charge, the Deputy Borough Commander, was allowed to dodge his IPCC interview and to swiftly move elsewhere – to a Centre of Policing Excellence! Officers have to be sacked when they sabotage rape cases, especially the ones at the top who are deprioritising rape. Otherwise, nothing will ever change.”
As WAR’s petition says, “Police officers, prosecutors and judges who have shown themselves to be sexist, racist or otherwise prejudiced against victims of sexual violence, or to be negligent and incompetent in the prosecution of rape cases, should be publicly disciplined, moved off rape cases or sacked, depending on the nature of their offence. We believe that’s the only way those responsible for the criminal justice system will be held to account, so women, children and men are finally protected from the violent crime of rape.”
Women Against Rape
Website: www.womenagainstrape.net
Email: war@womenagainstrape.net
Tel: 020 7482 2496
Rape: Deprioritised by Southwark police yet again
Two more women have now come forward with complaints about Southwark police force handling of rape cases – the same Sapphire unit that only this March was the subject of a damning report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
The report exposed the scandalous and negligent way the police investigated the rape of a 15-year-old in 2005. Basic evidence was not gathered or went missing. The man was acquitted, the girl lives in terror of seeing him again, and other women are in danger as a result – we know of at least one who was attacked by the same man.
The report found that hundreds of rapes and sexual assaults in the Sapphire unit were turned over to untrained, unqualified officers; uncaring supervisors failed to advise, check or monitor them; and while the rape unit was systematically deprioritised and starved of resources, resources were found instead for motor crimes and robbery. As Amerdeep Somal the commissioner of the IPCC said, “The report into this investigation highlights that significant errors were made that compromised the quality of the investigation into a very serious offence. This was not a complex investigation but basic lines of enquiry were not pursued. Sadly the police investigation into this matter fell far short of what the victim had a basic right to expect.”
Yet Southwark’s response to two more reported rapes just two months after this report, has led another two women to complain.
Sally Freeman, the mother of the young girl who made the first complaint, is now a campaigner with Women Against Rape. She says, “What do we have to do to get Southwark police to do their jobs? I was really shocked and distressed to see Southwark are in the news again for not treating rape victims appropriately. We are four years down the line and nothing has changed. What is the point of my whole family going through the process and anguish of making a complaint if nothing ever changes? We made the complaint in order to change things for future victims and it is really distressing to think that victims are still being failed. What is the IPCC there for, is it just a con, to waste our time?”
As a result of her daughter’s complaint, one officer was “disciplined” with “words of advice” and three received written warnings for their failures. That’s all! And this was not even the first time these same officers had been complained about: two of them had only a month earlier received “words of advice” for their failures in the rape case of another young person. Yet they went on immediately to do the same thing again in the 15-year-old’s case.
Now, four years later, the Met say Southwark Sapphire is appropriately staffed, “lessons have been learned” from this case and from the Worboys and Reid fiascos. But the two new complaints indicate that, yet again, nothing has changed.
Sally Freeman says, “This proves what we have been saying. Words of advice and written warnings are water off a duck’s back, just public relations. The man in charge, the Deputy Borough Commander, was allowed to dodge his IPCC interview and to swiftly move elsewhere – to a Centre of Policing Excellence! Officers have to be sacked when they sabotage rape cases, especially the ones at the top who are deprioritising rape. Otherwise, nothing will ever change.”
As WAR’s petition says, “Police officers, prosecutors and judges who have shown themselves to be sexist, racist or otherwise prejudiced against victims of sexual violence, or to be negligent and incompetent in the prosecution of rape cases, should be publicly disciplined, moved off rape cases or sacked, depending on the nature of their offence. We believe that’s the only way those responsible for the criminal justice system will be held to account, so women, children and men are finally protected from the violent crime of rape.”
Women Against Rape
Website: www.womenagainstrape.net
Email: war@womenagainstrape.net
Tel: 020 7482 2496
