ANCYL wants 'radical' land reform
2010-04-30 11:13
Johannesburg - The ANC Youth League supported President Jacob Zuma's call for a review of the "willing buyer willing seller" land redistribution strategy, a spokesperson said on Friday.
"The African National Congress Youth League is totally behind President Jacob Zuma’s call for a decisive land redistribution strategy, particularly the long overdue review of the willing buyer-willing seller principle," said a statement from Floyd Shivambu who had just returned from a league field trip to Venezuela on oil nationalisation.
The ANCYL also agreed with Black Management Forum (BMF) president Jimmy Manyi's contention that the constitutional imperative of providing a fair price for land needed to be revised because under the current system "exorbitant" market-related prices were being paid.
Zuma broached the topic at a BMF conference on "unintended consequences" of the Constitution.
No land invasions - Zuma
But, Zuma hastened to add there would be no land invasions, an apparent reference to Zimbabwe's land redistribution programme widely regarded as the main contributor to that country's economic crisis.
"There will be no similar kinds of land invasions in this country, because we do things within the law," he said.
Zimbabwe's land redistribution policy was largely run by people calling themselves war veterans who would camp on farmers' property and either forcibly remove farmers or harass them into leaving. A void in agricultural knowledge, and of the funding required for inputs, saw the agricultural sector plunged into a crisis that left huge swathes of the country dependent of food aid.
[Actually, that isn't even remotely true. It were the US Bush Administration sanctions, co-written by the likes of Eddie Cross, which put the government on a credit freeze and forced it to operate on a cash only basis, which destroyed the Zimbabwean currency and made imports of inputs like fuel, tractors, etc. impossible. See here. For a detailed analysis of the land reform situation by 2008, read prof. Ian Scoones' article:
A new start for Zimbabwe?
by Ian Scoones
15 September 2008
- MrK]
The league said that historically defined racial inequalities should be appreciated and that it would lobby for a "more radical and decisive" economic transformation and land redistribution programme.
"None of these programmes will undermine the rule of law, but will ensure that law is progressively utilised for redress purposes."
The land reform department said that its core land reform programme was to redistribute 30% of white-owned agricultural land.
Redistribution
To date 5.9 million hectares of land had been acquired through redistribution and restitution.
The league's president Julius Malema recently said he supported Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's programme of land seizures from white farmers, and that South Africa's political freedom would mean nothing if a practical programme of intervention on property issues was not decided.
He claimed that South Africans did not own their own country because the land was owned by foreigners.
The league had already spoken out on its belief that mines should be nationalised, and, said Shivambu, on the Venezuela trip, they learnt how the state's control of oil contributed to the national fiscus.
"People are having immediate benefits from the state's control of the oil industry," said Shivambu, who accompanied Malema on the trip.
- SAPA
Labels: ANC YOUTH LEAGUE, LAND REFORM, NATIONALISATION
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Zuma rules out farm invasions in SA
By Our Correspondent
April 29, 2010
JOHANNESBURG – South African President Jacob Zuma has reiterated that his government will not tolerate the lawless invasions of commercial farms as witnessed in Zimbabwe over the past 10 years. Zuma, however, acknowledged that his administration had to move with speed to address land imbalances in the country.
South Africa, which celebrated 16 years of independence on Monday, is struggling to solve the delicate and often emotive issue of land reform which seems to be gathering momentum on a daily basis with everyday protests and farm killings.
Zuma told BUA News, the South African government’s official news outlet Thursday, that there would not be any Zimbabwe-style land invasions in South Africa.
“There will be no similar kinds of land invasions in this country, because we do things within the law,” said Zuma.
He, however, hinted at his government’s frustration with farmers’ reluctance to release land for sale to the government. Zuma said that current land redistribution method of “willing buyer willing seller” must be revisited.
“Significant changes will need to be made to the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ model. Government is investigating less costly ways of land redistribution,” said Zuma.
“The general view is that the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ model has not worked appropriately or adequately thus far. It is very important, however, that it’s done within the ambits of the law.”
Most farmers appear adamant to hold on the land. In rare cases where they have heeded the call to the ‘willing buyer willing seller’ policy, they often priced their farms way out of the government’s reach.
The situation has raised fears of farm invasions with reports that white farmers being murdered at a rate of 3000 a year, according to agricultural organisation Agrisa.
South Africa had set a target to redistribute land to about 30 percent of its population by 2014, a target that the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Gugile Nkwithi has already ruled out.
The resettlement exercise will need R80 billion, an amount that the South African government – already dealing with a wide range of other problems such as service delivery, housing, education and health problems – will struggle to mobilise.
There are growing fears that Africa’s biggest economy will deteriorate in sporadic Zimbabwe-style land invasions if the land issue is not addressed as a matter of urgency.
Unlike their Zimbabwean counterparts Zanu-PF, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) is not in danger of losing political power. But inequalities among blacks and whites in might soon force the ANC – led government to push through some form of radical reforms.
Labels: JACOB ZUMA, LAND REFORM
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Meditating over Mufumbwe
By The Post
Sat 01 May 2010, 04:00 CAT
There is need to seriously take stock of what happened, of what went wrong in Mufumbwe. There is need to do this in order to ensure that what happened, what went wrong in Mufumbwe is not repeated anywhere in our country.
The essence of elections was lost in Mufumbwe. And if care is not taken it may be lost elsewhere or everywhere in our country.
As we have repeatedly stated before, elections are not a fight for survival where contestants should mobilize impis, militias in an effort to try and annihilate their opponents. Democratic elections are a competition to serve.
This being the case why should anyone spill blood to win an election, to be of service to his people?
We should not allow violence to dominate or characterize our elections because where there is no peace people cannot freely express their will.
And elections are the central institution of democratic representative government because in a democracy the authority of the government derives solely from the consent of the government.
The principle mechanism for translating that consent into governmental authority is the holding of free and fair elections.
Where violence dominates the campaigns, it is not possible to have free and fair elections because people will not be able to express themselves freely out of fair of repression.
Some of them may even stay away from polling stations for fear of being victimized, of being harassed or beaten.
And in the light of the violence that characterized the Mufumbwe parliamentary by-election for which we blame Rupiah Banda and his cadres, we make a special appeal to the government and to the ruling MMD to realize that they have a serious responsibility.
As facilitators of the elections, they should ensure that elections are held in an atmosphere devoid of violence or intimidation of any form.
To do this they will have to first ensure that the concerns of all other participants are adequately addressed.
They will have to show political maturity and sincere aspiration for peace and harmony anchored in justice. Their own campaigns should avoid provocative statements and actions.
Rupiah needs to change his style of doing politics. His entire political campaign seems to be anchored on singling out his opponents for victimization by accusing them of all sorts of things and then setting cadres on them.
Rupiah practices politics of division instead of looking for the common good of all people and enter into sincere dialogue with his opponents.
Violence must be avoided because, as we have already pointed out, the electoral campaign should not be confused with a battle field where the aim is to destroy the other.
They shouldn’t forget that real political victory lies on the ideals proposed, on the ethical values of the candidates, on the respect for the freedom of choice of all citizens, and not on any form of moral pressure or intimidation of political opponents or voters.
We say this because voting only bears positive fruits for the country when people freely and fairly choose their representatives who will serve the community with justice towards all; people who consider the public interest rather than their own and who respect the rights of others.
Good elections require intelligent and responsible participation of all voters. Where there is violence and intimidation, this is not possible.
Our vote should not be used as a tool for division, disunity but as a powerful weapon for unity, an instrument of justice and peace. On our voting, on the quality of it, the discernment behind it, depend the progress and peace of our country.
The interests of the political parties should be kept subordinate to the public good. It is always important to carry out political campaigns in a peaceful and honest way, devoid of any violence and slander of other opponents.
All citizens must be guided by the truth, integrity and justice. It is important for all our politicians to remind themselves that elections are for the good of the people and the country, and not for a political survival of any individual or party.
If the spirit of the primacy of the common good were to animate all our political players, including Rupiah, will would not be witnessing such violence which leaves the public dismayed and disheartened.
There is need for our politicians to remind themselves of the noble goals of political activity, and especially of elections.
Politics and the elections that accompany it, aims at the promotion of the common good and the service of all people. We should all be moved with indignation whenever there is lust for power that fuels intolerance, intimidation and violence.
Where there is electoral violence citizens will never be confident that the results are accurate and reflect their will and indeed that the government does rest upon their consent.
Political competitors don’t necessarily have to like each other, but they must tolerate one another and acknowledge that each has a legitimate and important role to play.
And the ground rules, together with the behaviour of the President and other key politicians, must encourage tolerance and civility in public discourse.
Moreover, no matter who wins, all should cooperate in solving the common problems of the society.
Electoral violence also leads to voter apathy.
And the lingering danger of voter apathy is not that public offices will go unfilled, but that office holders will be elected by smaller and smaller percentages of eligible voters.
And without increased participation, elections will start to become useless and people maybe forced to find other ways that are less desirable of choosing their leaders and democracy will begin to weaken.
Voting in an election of public officials is the most visible and common form of participation by citizens in the governance of their country, and also the most fundamental.
Therefore, the ability to conduct peaceful, free and fair elections is at the core of establishing a democratic society.
Election campaigns must be peaceful because their function is deadly serious: to provide a peaceful and fair method by which the citizens can select their leaders and have a meaningful role in determining their own destiny.
It is for these reasons that we feel Rupiah needs to do much more in his conduct to set an example that will lead his party and all Zambians to a culture of tolerance and help remove violence from our elections.
Rupiah could have stopped the violence that rocked Mufumbwe because he started it and it was within his powers to stop it.
He chose not to stop it because he thought that would win him a parliamentary by-election.
He didn’t win albeit the violence. Rupiah resorted to violence because he knew that he and his party were not popular in the area and they had to use brute force to intimidate the people to vote for them.
This seems to be a common phenomena whenever and wherever the MMD is not popular. In areas where they are popular it’s very rare that they resort to violence.
But this is a recipe for disaster which must be stopped or else we risk everything that our people have struggled to achieve in terms of national unity, peace and stability. It’s clear from both Mufumbwe and Milanzi that the MMD is losing political grip.
They lost Mufumbwe, which was their constituency to UPND. And their performance in Milanzi, although they won, there isn’t much improvement and the opposition is closing up on them. And opposition PF has shown serious improvements in Milanzi that cannot be ignored.
This is not a good sign but its something which should be taken sensibly, calmly and with humility. Winning or losing an election is not a matter of life and death in a democracy. These are things people should get used to in a multi-party dispensation.
Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, POLITICAL VIOLENCE
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Two juveniles die in Mufumbwe accident
By Speedwell Mupuchi and Jane Mwakasungula in Mufumbwe
Sat 01 May 2010, 04:20 CAT
Inspector General of Police Francis Kabonde (l) with losing MMD candidate Mulondwe Muzungu (r)
TWO Mufumbwe juveniles yesterday died on the spot when they were run over by a motor vehicle in the morning. The two were part of the people celebrating UPND’s victory early in the morning. Police confirmed the hit-and-run accident but could not state who was responsible.
Acting police deputy spokesperson Moses Siwali told journalists in Mufumbwe that the two juveniles, aged eight and nine died on the spot while three other people sustained various injuries when a motor vehicle believed to be a Pajero ploughed through a crowd of people that stood by the roadside.
He said the accident happened at around 05:30 hours at Farmers’ Training centre area when the vehicle which was moving from the western direction Zambezi direction to eastern direction Kasempa direction ploughed through the crowd.
Siwali said as a result, the two juveniles, Emmanuel Sambo nine and Kennedy Kafula eight, both from Mufumbwe’s Chikanya village in chief Chizela’s area, died after being hit.
“They all died of fatal head injuries. Their bodies are lying in Mufumbwe General Hospital mortuary,” said Siwali.
“The three others injured have been identified as Adolf Muyuyu, 34, of Solwezi’s Zambia Compound who sustained a fractured right arm and deep cuts on the right leg and chin.”
Siwali said the second, Victor Musumadi, 29, who sustained a fractured right leg and general body pains and is from Mufumbwe’s Chikanya village.
He named the third as Doris Mulenga, 14, who sustained a fractured right thigh, a cut on the right leg, a cut on the right breast, a cut on her upper eye and bruises on the right arm.
Siwali said the girl is a grade nine pupil at Chizela Basic School and her condition was critical.
He said people who were present when the accident happened said the vehicle looked like a Pajero and police had launched a manhunt.
Immediately, word went round Mufumbwe that Kajilo Muzungu, the son of losing MMD Mufumbwe by-election candidate Mulondwe Muzungu allegedly caused the accident.
However, Siwali said, “If he Kajilo is positively identified, the law will take its course”.
Many people in Mufumbwe braced the night and stayed awake to await the outcome of the Mufumbwe by-election.
By press time, the girl and another injured person were reported to have been evacuated to Mukinge Hospital in Kasempa.
The residents and many UPND cadres broke into jubilations and songs around 03:45 when word went round that Elliot Kamondo, their candidate, was leading and was likely to take the seat.
Many people lined up along the main road, the Mutanda-Chavuma road to celebrate.
A check at the hospital found the bodies of the two juveniles lying on a stretcher while two men who were seriously injured were receiving treatment.
One of the victim’s mother identified as Kiren Mungala blamed the MMD and Kajilo for the accident.
“Ba MMD mwanjipayila mwana! Mama ba Kajilo, mama! MMD you have caused the death of my child, , ooh Kajilo ooh,” cried Mungala.
Eyewitnesses said the vehicle which ploughed into the crowd, was red in colour and labeled Obama 1, allegedly similar to the one Kajilo had been driving.
Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, POLITICAL VIOLENCE
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Mufumbwe celebrates MMD defeat
By Speedwell Mupuchi and Jane Mwakasungula in Mufumbwe
Sat 01 May 2010, 04:10 CAT
UPND cadres marching with a mock coffin symbolising the death of the MMD in Mufumbwe yesterday -Picture by Abel Mambwe
MUFUMBWE residents erupted into ululations and jubilation yesterday when the UPND candidate in the by-election Elliot Kamondo was announced winner of the poll. And UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema said his party’s victory meant another demonstration by Zambians desiring change.
Returning officer Rodgers Chiyang’a announced Kamondo was the duly elected member of parliament for Mufumbwe at 12:45 hours. Kamondo who polled 5,313 votes to beat his closest rival, MMD’s Mulondwe Muzungu who polled 5,009 votes while the UNIP candidate Stephen Kamwengo polled 180 votes.
Ballot papers from three polling stations were delayed for about four hours.
The results from the last polling station only came through at 12:15 hours.
Immediately the declaration was made, the whole Mufumbwe boma broke into songs.
“Twalishiba fwebene eh, twalishiba fwebene eh, change eh, change eh, change eyo tulefwaya! (We know ourselves what we want, it’s change we want),” sang the high-spirited Mufumbwe residents. “Uno mwaka muleya, eh, uno mwaka muleya eh, iyaya elele, iyaya elele mama Pact iyo yaisa (You are going this year, here comes the Pact).”
The supporters walked to Freedom Square and waited to be addressed by Hichilema.
Meanwhile, there was an ugly exchange of words during announcement of results at the civic centre when Chiyang’a wanted to change the result of Kapenzhi polling station long after they were recorded on the chart.
The results, as agreed by stakeholders and recorded on the chart, read that UPND polled 364 while the MMD got 112.
Chiyang’a even announced other results from other polling stations when an officer from the Electoral Commission of Zambia went to him talk to him about the results of Kapezhi polling station.
Chiyang’a then announced that there should be an amendment to the results to read that MMD got 212.
As soon as he said this, the UPND officials reacted angrily to the suggestion.
“Stop doing that, don’t start misbehaving like that. I am coming from the polling station (Kapenzhi), we know you,” Copperbelt UPND chairperson Elisha Matambo retorted while pointing at the ECZ officer.
“You did the same in Kangwena and in Solwezi, now you want to change by 100 votes? Stop that...”
Matambo reminded Chiyang’a and the ECZ officers that they went to the polling station together with Mufumbwe Council secretary Aaron Kamalondo, the district election officer.
“Can you respect the will of the people!” he said.
Later the UPND called their vice-president Richard Kapita and he too reasoned with the officers saying Kamalondo and his team even blamed him for taking them to Kapenzhi polling station in the night.
“We knew there would be problems. He (Kamalondo) is aware of this. The result we got at the polling station is 112 for MMD, why do you want to change now? He (Kamalondo) is even ashamed,” said Kapita.
The election officers tried to argue that the records presented by the presiding officer had 212 votes for MMD.
This forced the officers to bring in the presiding officer to confirm his record but the UPND rejected the idea insisting that the results recorded on the score chart were the correct ones.
The UPND members, whose tampers were high, stood their ground and the matter was stood down, for consideration later.
The matter was only resolved after the final results were announced and the UPND through their chairperson for legal, Jack Mwiimbu, made a conditional concession to allow the alteration (give MMD the 100 votes) provided there would be no further alterations.
And around 03:00 hours, Chiyang’a announced that results from about five remaining polling stations would only be known around 07:00 and 08:00 hours.
However, the results took long raising suspicion that MMD wanted to tamper with them.
Results from about three polling stations were ferried to the totaling centre around 09:00 hours while a hour later, results from another polling station were announced.
Meanwhile, celebrations of Kamondo’s victory started around 03:00 hours when word leaked that he was headed for victory.
UPND agents and officials obtained results from all the polling stations by 23:00 hours and were merely confirming them at the totaling centre.
Several people stayed awake singing songs and dancing.
The people even made a mock coffin and wrapped it in an MMD Chitenge material and started marching along the road with it.
“Muzungu alala, alalaa! MMD yalala, yalala!” sang the elated cadres, some of whom powdered their faces white.
The jubilation grew bigger around 11:00 hours when UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema and Kamondo walked to the totaling centre to check on the process which was being delayed.
The UPND supporters raised the UPND symbol while calling Hichilema, Obama.
Earlier, Muzungu arrived together with Inspector General of Police, Daniel Kalenga, Elijah Muchima and Richard Taima.
Muzungu and Kabonde stayed in the totaling centre for about 15 minutes and was seen recording some of the results before walking out.
Kamondo said he was humbled and happy that the will of the people prevailed in spite of intimidation from the MMD. He thanked Mufumbwe residents for their courage amidst violence perpetrated by the MMD thugs.
“I thank the people of Mufumbwe for their confidence in me,” he said.
Hichilema said Zambians had made a decision that no one would stand in their way of change. He said people should read in between lines whenever they saw a clear message.
He explained that Mufumbwe had always been controlled by the ruling party.
“This is the first time that an opposition party is winning an election in Mufumbwe. The people of Mufumbwe are part of the Zambians who have made a decision to change,” said Hichilema.
He said he was waiting to hear from critics of his party, that it was going down.
Hichilema said his leadership was working as evidenced in victories in recent elections.
He said the UPND won local government elections in Gwembe and Shilenda.
“This party is growing,” he said.
“For Rupiah Banda, I say there is no need to put people in detention without any reason. There is no need to bring brutality to a democratic process like this one. Our people were battered.”
And MMD member Mundia Ndalamei who sat through the totaling process said the UPND’s win was just luck.
He said the MMD would now mobilize the grassroots for 2011 elections. He said the MMD tried but could not match the UPND’s popularity.
He also said it was unfortunate that many people did not cast their ballots because of the violence that characterised the campaigns.
Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, ELLIOTT KAMONDO, MMD, UPND
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Milanzi victory shows Rupiah is on strong ground – Kazonga
By Chibaula Silwamba and Christopher Miti in Milanzi
Sat 01 May 2010, 04:30 CAT
OUR victory in Milanzi demonstrates that President Rupiah Banda is on very strong ground, MMD campaign manager for the just-ended Milanzi by-elections Dr Eustarckio Kazonga said yesterday.
Milanzi constituency by-elections returning officer Mukiti Lukonga declared MMD’s Whiteson Banda duly elected member of parliament for Milanzi constituency after polling 5, 120 votes against Patriotic Front (PF)’s Albert Banda who polled 2, 347 and UNIP’s Musa Banda got 2, 194 votes in elections held on Thursday.
In an interview, Dr Kazonga said Whiteson’s victory proved the confidence that the people of Milanzi have in President Banda, his government and the ruling party.
“As I indicated at the beginning of the campaign that ours will be issue based campaign and indeed we are able to sale our programme to the people of Milanzi and the people understood what we are doing and what we are going to do for them. The President is on very strong ground as demonstrated by these results,” Dr Kazonga said.
Whiteson said he was humbled that President Banda, the MMD national executive committee and the whole party machinery supported his candidature and pledged to help develop the constituency.
Asked if he had expected to win by a landslide, Whiteson responded: “I expected to win by this wide margin because people supported me, people really wanted me to be their MP.”
He urged the losing candidates to work with him because their interests too were to develop Milanzi. Whiteson, 35, also advised youths to join him in developing Milanzi.
“I want to encourage the young ones that they should join politics because us the youths are the future leaders. I am encouraging the young people to join politics,” Whiteson said.
“As member of parliament, my first priority is road network as you know in order for development to go well, we need proper road network. Milanzi is a rural constituency. People are farmers and once the farmer harvests he needs to take his produce to the market. So if you have good roads that is good.”
And MMD Eastern Province chairperson Kennedy Zulu said the wide margin between Whiteson and Albert Banda was an indication that the province was no go area for the opposition.
“The difference is more than 100 per cent. Even putting the two parties, UNIP and PF together we will still hammer them,” said Zulu.
“I want to thank the people of Milanzi for behaving themselves in a civil way because issues of violence were very minimal. This is the way it should be. To the opposition, Eastern Province is no go area for the opposition; we are strongly behind our President Rupiah Banda.”
And a consortium of elections observers – AVAP, SACCORD and Caritas Zambia – stated that the election largely reflected the wishes of the majority people of Milanzi constituency.
In a communiqué at the end of the by-elections, the three organisations stated that campaigns were peaceful but lacked content as the politicians concentrated on character assassination and “name calling”.
“We noted across all political parties that in their quest to win votes, they used food donations, cash exchange and sponsoring beer,” they stated.
They observed that the public media concentrated on the MMD candidate whereas the private media focused on the PF candidate.
“The reportage of this election left much to be desired in terms of language. Issues and seemed like it was a presidential race rather than parliamentary elections. This had the effect of overshadowing the candidates,” the civic organizations stated.
They stated that the polling day was peaceful, the turnout was fairly good and the majority of voters being women.
However, they observed that at Chamiwawa polling station, police officers were found managing voters.
“The counting was done to the satisfaction of the parties,” they stated, adding that the announcement and collation of results was transparent.
Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, EUSTARKIO KAZONGA, MMD
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Rupiah has become a burden to MMD, says Mpombo
By Patson Chilemba
Sat 01 May 2010, 04:10 CAT
GEORGE Mpombo yesterday charged that the election results in Milanzi and Mufumbwe show that President Rupiah Banda has become a very big political burden to the MMD and the party should start head-hunting for a new president.
And MMD national secretay Katele Kalumba said the MMD defeat in the Mufumbwe parliamentary by-election was expected because UPND had made "major infiltration" into North-Western Province.
Meanwhile, Patriotic Front (PF) president Michael Sata urged the people of Eastern Province to open their eyes to the reality that people wanted change.
Commenting on the MMD's defeat in Mufumbwe as well as their victory in Milanzi constituencies, Mpombo - who is Kafulafuta MMD member of parliament and former defence minister - said the MMD should be sad because they had lost their own seats consecutively, in Mufumbwe and Solwezi.
He said there was also nothing to be proud of over the victory in Milanzi because the opposition PF had made inroads into the area, saying they had been making progress with each election.
"Results in both constituencies actually show that clearly Mr Banda has become an albatross, a very big burden to the political fortunes of the MMD and he should immediately step down so that the party can start re-organising itself because the results in both Mufumbwe and Milanzi are a referendum on his leadership," Mpombo said.
"The results are very clear that he is a liability to the political fortunes of the party and that the MMD should start head-hunting for a candidate that will revive the political fortunes of the party."
Mpombo said President Banda's undemocratic conduct and stubbornness had not gone well with the people.
"In fact, it would be hollow celebration over Milanzi victory. I mean there is nothing to be proud about because this is the second seat we have lost in North Western Province. And the loss of Mufumbwe is a clear manifestation that the party has lost North-Western Province and the party should now show the nation which province has taken over from North-Western Province," Mpombo said.
"Because in political analysis, the party is actually on it's way to Damascus, on its way to a very big political Armageddon. They have lost in Mufumbwe and the opposition have made tremendous inroads in Katete. So there is nothing to celebrate about. It is a sad moment for the party."
Mpombo said the violence which characterised the Mufumbwe elections should be blamed on President Banda because he failed to display leadership qualities. He said he expected President Banda to come out strongly and not take partisan sides by defending the MMD cadres.
"Because there is evidence; Honourable Kakoma the way he was beaten, the intention was to kill. Even the police should have come out strongly. As a leader, when these things are happening you should rise above partisan positions. The back ends at Rupiah Banda's desk,” Mpombo said.
“He should take responsibility. This is what leadership is all about. This was a very serious issue because it paints a very bad picture for 2011. But Mr Banda has proved himself to be a total failure and his leadership is no longer relevant to Zambia."
And Katele Kalumba conceded defeat over the Mufumbwe elections.
"We expected it. But we have done better than we expected because we know that we had some major infiltration by UPND in that Province. We know that. We are not politically blind to the fact," Kalumba said. "It does obviously raise concern to every political party.
To lose a seat which you held is not something pleasant. But we also have to look at the facts on the ground. The change as you probably have seen was in local government. We seem to have had problems in Zambezi and Mwinilunga."
Kalumba said the MMD should refine its message in North-Western Province, saying the party would not give up on the province.
"It happens that provinces can begin to have questions about where they stand politically. But we are looking on our members of parliament from North-Western Province to redouble their efforts. We are grateful in Kasempa we won the local government by-elections.
That tells you that all is not lost. I am looking at the margins, it's not the way we have hammered these people here Milanzi," said Kalumba. "Our call is upon the MPs and councilors in North-Western Province to get back to the basics; get back to the drawing board and reach our people. Now at the same time you must give us credit, in politics you can't have it all. We were the only party divided according to our fighting capacity."
Meanwhile, Sata said he was glad that PF got over 2000 genuine votes in Milanzi unlike the MMD which got votes through buying voters’ cards. He said he had been making progress in Milanzi from 2006.
"We had only 600 votes in 2006. When we went back in 2008, we had 1600 votes. now we have moved to over 2000 genuine votes. So the MMD are waning out," Sata said.
He said the MMD was exploiting the people’s poverty. Sata said the MMD majority in parliament had now been reduced to 13 including the nominated members of parliament.
"And despite the behaviour of our 13 or 14 members of parliament, MMD should think seriously," said Sata. "You can see we are reducing them. I am appealing to our brothers and sisters in Eastern Province to open their eyes and see that the whole country wants change. It is themselves, if they don't want change that is their problem."
Labels: BY-ELECTIONS, GEORGE MPOMBO, KATELE KALUMBA, MMD, RUPIAH BANDA
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The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial, and the Genocide Conspiracy
keith harmon snow
12 March 2010
My experience with the Great Lakes region of Africa began in 1991. While traveling in southern Uganda I was witness to the shooting of an unarmed man by unknown assailants believed to be rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front. Since then I have worked tirelessly to uncover the truth about the war in the Dem. Republic of Congo (DRC) and 'genocide' in Rwanda.
I began researching and reporting on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda in 1995; I began reporting on events in Zaire (DRC) in 1996. In 2000 at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania I explored the case of Major Bernard Ntuyahaga, ex-Forces Armée Rwandaise (ex-FAR), a celebrated Hutu 'genocide ringleader, who I personally met there.
Of course, I presumed the man guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide, prior to any trial, according to the prevailing climate of institutionalized suspicion and assumptions of guilt against all Hutu people, and certainly against all officials of the former government under President Juvenal Habyarimana. Major Ntuyahaga committed genocide. We all knew it. Why bother with a trial?
On April 6--the anniversary of the double presidential killings--2001 I gave expert testimony at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing, convened by Cynthia McKinney, ranking member of the International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee, International Relations Committee, convened to assess genocide and covert operations in Central Africa.1
For the last 15 years I have been investigating militias and criminal rackets and propaganda about Central Africa. I investigated massacres, assassinations, torture, rape as a weapon of war, and disappearing, individuals and groups, multinational corporations, state and non-state actors, Africans and non-Africans.
Eastern Congo's north and south Kivu provinces are effectively controlled to this day by criminal networks from Rwanda: there are Rwandans who have fled Rwanda there, and others who are allied with the Kagame regime.2 In DRC, I investigated numerous cites of atrocities committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front (RPA/F) and Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF) as they marched across Zaire (DRC), calling themselves the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire/Congo (ADFL), and hunted down and slaughtered perhaps as many as 600,000 unarmed refugees, 1996-1997, mostly women and children under 15 years old.3
I have also interviewed European expatriates who are direct witnesses regarding massacres and/or the creation of mass graves, and the destruction of evidence (including the collection, removal and incineration of bodies and/or skeletons).4
My early reportage on Rwanda (1995-1997) unknowingly advanced false narratives about victims v. killers, and the nature of and culpability for atrocities, including 'genocide' in Rwanda. The established narrative remains overly simplified and the truth has been hijacked and suppressed by the mass media. My work has been very high profile, and I have been warned to stay out of Rwanda by Rwandan insiders. A few years ago the Government of Rwanda (GOR) labeled me a 'genocide denier' and I consider myself persona non grata in Rwanda (and Ethiopia).
On February 24, 2010 a communiqué was received by email from a Rwandan human rights organization in Belgium, written in Kinyarwanda and allegedly leaked, listing alleged directives from the Rwandan intelligence services to members of Rwanda's Annual Ambassadors and High Commissioners Retreat. The closed-doors meeting of February 17-18, 2010--'officially' organized by Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Communications (MINAFFET) Minister Ms. Louis Mushikiwabo, and 'officially' held at MINAFFET headquarters in Kigali, Rwanda--was actually held in Gisenyi. The topic was: "Failure to implement Kigali's orders: crack down the on opposition and other people tarnishing the current RPF government image."
The document circulated coincident with the late February 2010 defection and flight of Rwanda's ambassadors to Holland and India (see below). While its origin remains unverified, this document exemplifies the GOR's modus operandi on public and international relations.
***************
Some Conclusions of the Ambassadors' Meeting in Kigali
During an in camera meeting between the Rwandan ambassadors and President Kagame in February 2010, many issues were discussed.
The ambassadors have been criticized of failing to fulfill their mission of representing Rwanda abroad. They were reminded the instructions they failed to fulfill, with the consequences of tarnishing the Rwanda image following the negative propaganda by the Rwandan refugees.
They were given a report from the Intelligence Services revealing the enemies of the country who should be fought by all means possible and if necessary by assassination. The following are names of foreigners and organizations that need to be fought urgently.
Foreigners to target: Robin Philpot5; C. Peter Erlinder; Keith Harmon Snow; Jordi Palou-Loverdos; Peter Verlinden; Pierre Péan; Charles Onana; Filip Reyntjens; Luc de Temmerman.
Also target Rwandan refugees representing the FDLR [Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Congo] in Africa; Europe; America; and elsewhere.
Organizations to target, starting by their leaders (CLIIR; COSAR; FEDA; AJIIR; AGPJR; OPJDR).
Political parties that are active abroad, starting with their leaders (FDU/UDF; Intwari Partnership; PDR-Ihumure; PDP-Imanzi).
We are still collecting information about the list of the Rwandese people to be hunted specifically because they are sabotaging the Kigali regime. This list is long and it keeps growing, as enemies are getting more numerous.
The ambassadors were given all authority to have these people eliminated or discredited. Each ambassador would request, as needed, the government to provide all capabilities to attain his objectives. Whoever gets more information would kindly share with other group members.
Wishing you all the best.
***********
The westerners listed above (a few key 'enemies' names do not appear, including Christopher Black, Wayne Madsen, Cynthia McKinney, Luc Marchal, Mick Collins and Helmut Strizek) have pressed against public opinion and propaganda to expose the lies, disinformation and terrorism victimizing innocent people and shielding the true perpetrators of the crimes in Central Africa.
While we are led to believe that the perpetrators are those nasty genocidaires, the extremist Hutus, their Interahamwe militias, the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in Congo, and other undesirables, the primary responsible perpetrators are always protected. These are:
[1] Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front: the elite, extremist Tutsi network that has committed massive atrocities and widespread terrorism in Central Africa as far back as 1980, and primarily responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Rwanda (1990-present) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1996-present);
[2] Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and the Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF): the elite, extremist Hema networks operating out of Uganda and the source of the RPA/F Tutsi networks, who together perpetrated massive war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, in Uganda (1980-present), Rwanda (1990-1998) the DRC (1996-present);6
[3] The backers, partners, allies and propagandists of the Kagame and Museveni regimes who are from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Europe.
How do these terrorist networks maintain and spread their ideology and terrorism worldwide, even as into the United States?
ABOVE: Map from the petroleum sector showing petroleum concessions (green) under Lake Albert and in northern Uganda areas where the Ugandan government has interned Acholi people in death cames, leading to one of the greatest unacknowledged genocides of the current era, and the Barrick Gold (Bau) concessions in Congo and Tanzania.
The Dehumanization of Hutu People
Any person of Rwandan, Ugandan or Burundian origin, no matter their sex, age or ethnicity, or their civilian or military status, who has sought asylum from or in any way annoyed the Government of Rwanda (GOR), will be persecuted, subject to intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and detention without trial, if not torture, forced labor, extrajudicial execution, or being 'disappeared'.
Rwandans inside and outside Rwanda are accused of 'genocide' or 'complicity in genocide' through fabricated evidence, coerced testimonies, bribery, and petty jealousies. There is no possibility of any kind of fair trial procedure in Rwanda and no possibility of freely investigating facts, or identifying and securing witnesses.
The categories 'extremist Hutu' and 'moderate Hutu', like the general categories of 'Hutu' and 'Tutsi,' are complex and not easily negotiated in the context of 'genocide', 'terrorism' and other violence in Rwanda from 1990 to the present. The labels 'genocidaire' and 'Interahamwe' are freely applied by the RPA/F regime to demonize anyone they see fit, no matter the veracity or falseness of the claims against those they accuse.7
The GOR under the one-party control of Paul Kagame projects a shiny veneer of tourism, development and 'entrepreneurism', but submerged barely under the surface of this veneer there exists a climate of absolute terror and there are profound ethnic divisions leading towards war. We are beginning to see this more openly with the approach of the 2010 elections.8
Rwanda (and Uganda) is run by a secretive criminal military organization in parallel with formal government structures, responsible for the systematic and intentional deaths of: scores of thousands of persons in Rwanda from Oct 1, 1990 to April 5, 1994; hundreds of thousands of persons in Rwanda from April 6, 1994 to December 31, 1995; tens of thousands of persons in Rwanda between January 1, 1995 and January 1, 2010; between 200,000 and 700,000 Rwandan refugees in DRC and for the deaths of between 100,000 and 300,000 Burundian refugees in DRC between September 1996 and September 1997; and millions of persons of Rwandan, Congolese, Burundian and Ugandan origin in DRC between September 1996 and the present day.9
Language has also been manipulated for the dehumanization of all Hutu people. For example, the label 'Interahamwe' has come to stand for 'extremist murderous Hutu militias' and has usually been translated from Kinyarwanda to mean "those who attack together." Yet President Paul Kagame and the RPA/F military-intelligence apparatus applies this terminology to mean "anyone who is in opposition to the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front movement, its government, or its elite clandestine networks," and in the case of Paul Kagame, even to "anyone I don't like," and the labels 'Interahamwe' and genocidaire are used to dehumanize all Hutu people everywhere, just as the Jews were dehumanized by National Socialism in Germany prior to and during World War II. This has created the political, social and economic conditions for the perpetration of genocide by the RPA/F government, and its collaborators, and this dehumanization has been perpetuated through the international mass media, human rights institutions, think tanks, non-government organizations, and foreign governments everywhere.
ABOVE: Hutu people in the DR Congo, as everywhere, have become the scapegoats for the international organized crime and its white collar war criminals, and their porxy agents, in Central Africa. This is the dehumanization of innocent men, women and children, and even babies have been massacred by the RPA in Rwanda and through the RPA's invaders in Congo (RCD, CNDP) masquerading as Congolese. The FDLR -- Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda -- are some of the most misunderstood and legitimate fighters in Central Africa. Comprisd of soldiers who fled the murderous US -RPA coup d'etat, these people are not Central Africa's nightmare, as they are everywhere portrayed. War is peace. Victims are klillers, teh supposed killers are the victims.
The dehumanization of all Hutu people, and the persecution of anyone in opposition to the RPA/F, was supported as early as 1988 by certain international 'legal' and 'human rights' institutions working as clandestine agents and/or accomplices to the RPA/F agenda.
The terms 'genocidaire' and 'Interahamwe' are meaningless due to the constituency and fluidity of these terms. For example, the President of the Interahamwe, presented to the world as an extremist Hutu killing organization, was Robert Kajuga, a Tutsi businessman. Similarly, the treasurer of the Interahamwe was Dieudonne Niyitegaka, a Hutu businessman resettled in Canada in reward for his collaboration to accuse and frame other Hutus with 'genocide'. The RPA/F had infiltrated and controlled the Interahamwe, and this renders the terminology, and its ideological force, meaningless.
The criminal parallel structure behind the Rwandan government has been identified by numerous experts and investigations, including more than seven United Nations Panels of Experts between 2000 and 2009;10 the high court indictments of Spain11 and France12; the exhaustive analyses by eminent Rwandan experts, including Dr. Filip Reyntjens13; the work of investigative journalists like Charles Onana, Wayne Madsen and myself14; the Michael Hourigan report assessing blame for the presidential assassinations of April 6, 1994; the Robert Gersony report documenting RPF/A atrocities against tens of thousands of Rwandans in Rwanda in 1994; the Helmut Strizek report to the ICTR titled Discredit the Hutu Population Forever;15 ICTR defense attorneys Chris Black, Peter Erlinder, John Philpot, Phil Taylor and others; the McKinney hearings; and research by academics; and by many credible sources, human rights documents, testimonies and other examples in the public record.
Even Tutsis--the supposed victims (of the supposed Hutu conspiracy)--have been persecuted by the victorious and extremist RPA/F Tutsi regime in Rwanda. We all know the standard story about 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsis killed. Well, these numbers are wrong, and the constituency of the dead is wrong. It cannot be denied that hundreds of thousands of Tutis were killed in Rwanda, especially if we confine our discussion to the 100 days of genocide from April 6 to July 1994.
Clearly, there is evidence of persecution and threats of persecution against Tutsis based on the established realities about acts of genocide committed by members of the Hutu ethnic group in Rwanda between April 6, 1994 and July 1994, and there has also been retaliatory violence, post-1994, against Tutsis. However, there is substantial documentation about the RPF/A regime killing Tutsis, because this elite Tutsi rebel force did not trust any members of the Tutsi minority who stayed in Rwanda after President Juvenal Habyarimana came to power in 1973: Rwandan Tutsis were generally eliminated, internally displaced, assassinated and/or forced to flee Rwanda.
The Genodynamics Project of academic researchers Dr. Christian Davenport and Dr. Alan Stam, both U.S. citizens, has seriously challenged the Rwanda genocide mythology. Stam and Davenport were labeled 'genocide deniers' by the mass media and the Tutsi expatriate community after publishing their interim research on 'genocide' in Rwanda and they are persona non grata in Rwanda today.16
ABOVE: Pro-RPF propaganda in the New York Times Magazine takes many forms but all leads to the dehumanization of the Hutu people en masse, and lays the groundwork for the ongoing genocide against them.
There is overwhelming evidence establishing that crimes defined, prosecuted and/or punished as 'genocide' in Rwanda, whether before 1994, in 1994, or after 1994, were for reasons other than ethnicity. The GOR itself admits that both 'Tutsis and moderate Hutus' were victims of the violence in 1994. Thus while these acts of violence may constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other crimes--including acts of genocide--the allegation that Hutus were both the victims and the perpetrators of the 1994 violence does not on its face meet the specific intent required of 'genocide' as defined by the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.17 The current regime is responsible for massive bloodshed against all ethnic groups in Rwanda, and the façade is supported internationally due to the economic, political and military interests at stake.18 The International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) also supported the façade, as confirmed by Carla Del Ponte, the former Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR, in her memoirs.19
People accused of 'genocide' in Rwanda have been brought before the so-called 'community-based' Gacaca tribunals repeatedly, compelled by the GOR to revisit their cases until a guilty verdict is established; many innocent civilians have been tried and retried until they were found guilty. After one Gacaca tribunal found the accused persons innocent the citizen judges fled for their lives, were captured, returned to their Gacaca and 'compelled' to retry the case, and returned a guilty verdict. Human rights experts have criticized the Gacaca system as a mechanism of terror used to silence critics.20
(Photo credit unknown.)
ABOVE: The murderous Rwandan RPF-aligned military (RCD, CNDP, etc etc) are the primary problem for eastern Congo, with Ugandan military (UPDF) a close second, and with the Penntagon, and now AFFRICOM, behind them.
Apologists for the Regime
The London-based 'non-government organization' African Rights was co-founded by Rakiya Omaar, a woman of Somali origin who has worked since 1990-1991 as a paid agent of the RPA/F regime, always casting the Hutus as perpetrators and Tutsis, and especially the RPA/F Tutsi extremists, as the victims of the violence, creating a positive image for the RPA/F.21
African Rights has generated false accusations against Rwandans that have led to their arrest and imprisonment and its 'human rights investigations' have whitewashed the RPA/F terrorism. African Rights has petitioned governments, the ICTR and other legal bodies, even Pope John Paul II, and it spreads disinformation in international media (only to happy to comply), and accused and secured the arrest and prosecution of RPA/F 'dissidents'.22 For example, African Rights helped frame Monsignor Augustin Misago, the Bishop of Gikongoro, who was subsequently arrested and jailed in 1999, but cleared by the Rwandan Court in 2000.23 They have produced disinformation targeting Rwandan opposition in DRC24 (used by ICTR prosecutors25).
A Rwandan agent working for African Rights for the past 8-10 years, first in Kigali and then in Zambia, fled to seek asylum in Belgium in February 2010. Felicien Bahizi recently testified in a court of law (Scandinavia) about African Rights' clandestine ties to the RPA/F, the falsification of documents and allegations used to accuse, indict and imprison 'enemies' of the regime.
An extension of the RPA/F network into the 'human rights' sector, African Rights is on the payroll of the RPA/F government, as evidenced by a letter from Rakiya Omaar requesting payment of an "outstanding $100,159" for their production of a propaganda book benefiting the regime.26 Rakiya Omaar works freely in Rwanda, where she has a special office.
There are other rights bodies and 'experts' on 'genocide in Rwanda' who have protected the killers and criminalized the victims, including the pro-RPA/F International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda Since October 1, 1990, early reports by Africa Watch and Human Rights Watch, and others.27
The 1993 International Commission of Inquiry [ICI] on Rwanda included the Human Rights Watch expert on Rwanda, Alison Des Forges, and Canadian law professor William Schabas, both of whom have provided expert testimony used to convict Rwandans of genocide or related crimes, and both have been discredited in law courts. Schabas has been one of the U.S. government's witnesses of choice for hunting refugees28 and travels free in Rwanda.
William Schabas and French human rights activist Jean Carbonare, both members of the ICI, were amongst the first to apply the term 'genocide' to Rwanda and against the Hutu government of Juvenal Habyarimana.
"On 22 January 1993, in a press statement published in Paris after returning from Kigali [as a member of the ICI], they accused President Habyarimana of having already committed Genocide against the Tutsis under the pretext of the RPF war launched on 1 October 1990. In a television broadcast with Bruno Masure on 28 January 1993, Jean Carbonare was given the opportunity to repeat the accusation to an audience of millions."29
The ICTR has not prosecuted any suspects of the RPA/F, no matter the evidence of crimes, including: the assassinations of the presidents of Rwanda (Juvenal Habyarimana) and Burundi (Cyprien Ntaryamira), their chiefs of staff, several aides, and the French pilots of the Dassault Falcon 50 aircraft (a gift from French President Mitterand) on April 6, 1994, the pivotal event which sparked the 1994 genocide;30 or the massive crimes described in the indictments issued by the judiciaries of France and Spain.31
In December 2008, the Trial Chamber-1 at the ICTR acquitted the four highest-ranking senior military officers of the former government army, the ex-Forces Armee Rwandaise (ex-FAR), including General Theoneste Bagosora (the supposed 'genocide mastermind'), of conspiracy to commit genocide.32
In November, 2009, the Appeals Chambers of the ICTR acquitted Protais Zigiranyirazo, brother-in-law of President Juvenal Habyarimana, of all charges of 'genocide planning', following seven years of trial at the ICTR, where the court found that the Prosecutor's evidence was explained by normal military planning in the course of the four year Rwandan civil war (1990-1994).
In November, 2009, the Appeals Chambers of the ICTR acquitted, and ordered the immediate release of, Hormistas Nsengimana, charged with genocide and crimes against humanity committed in Rwanda in 1994.
The above ICTR judgments destroy the 'conspiracy to commit genocide' conspiracy universally charged to the former Hutu government and responsible for the total dehumanization of Hutu people everywhere.
ABOVE: Kagame's comrades at the US Army's Fort Levenworth, Kansas, 1990.
Vigilante Journalism
The current regime in Rwanda is aggressively hunting down any perceived threat, including dissidents, refugees, political opposition, former soldiers of the Habyarimana government (ex-FAR) and former RPF/A, regardless of ethnicity.
Goucher College (Md.) professor Dr. Leopold Munyakazi is one of their latest targets, falsely accused of being a genocidaire merely because he has been an outspoken critic of the regime. Dr. Munyakazi was unjustly framed--in support of the RPA/F agenda to neutralize him--by a short-lived NBC News television program that sought to gain high prime time ratings (read: corporate profits) by tracking down and 'exposing' supposed genocidaires. The program was titled THE WANTED, and the morality of 'good versus evil' was subliminally underscored by the choice of the show's commentator, Scott Tyler, an ex-Navy Seal, who by moral implication embodies saintliness, while the wanted man, Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, embodies the devil. The zealous NBC News team acted as accuser, judge and jury against Dr. Munyakazi.33
The U.S. Embassy in Kigali allegedly assisted the criminal RPA/F regime in framing Dr. Munyakazi and, from August to December 2009, the U.S. Embassy collaborated in the RPA/F campaign of intimidation, bribery, detention and punishment of hundreds of people acquainted with Dr. Munyakazi, in order to fabricate evidence and coerce witnesses against him.
At Goucher College "a swirling retinue of about ten cameramen, technicians, and professional interrogators" descended on Dr. Munyakazi as he finished teaching a French class.34 Leading the pack was NBC Producer Adam Ciralsky: when contacted by other journalists, Ciralsky hid behind NBC's corporate PR department.35 Prejudged by journalists and mass media, whether acting overzealously or in collaboration with the RPA/F regime, Rwanda's critics, refugees and survivors have been falsely accused and, through the mass media, publicly branded as genocidaires.
Just as the NBC News television team targeted Dr. Leopold Munyakazi at Goucher College in February 2009, mass media sensationalism and genocidaire branding to advance the criminal aims of the GOR has been used before.
In Laredo, Texas in 1998, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a Hutu pastor, was accosted by New Yorker magazine writer Philip Gourevitch, an RPA/F supporter and personal friend of Paul Kagame, whose book was one of the earliest propaganda tracts espousing the now entrenched narrative about Hutus (killers) v. Tutsis (victims) and the so-called '100 days of genocide' in Rwanda.36 Ntakirutimana was extradited, tried and cionvicted by the ICTR; his story--sensationalized and fictionalized by Philip Gourevitch--was published in the award-winning non-fiction' book whose title takes it's name from a letter written by Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, but one which Gourevitch misconstrued and criminalized.37
ABOVE: More of Philip Gourevitch's pro-RPF propaganda in the The New Yorker ("The Life After," 4 May 2009) manufactures concepts of justice, if problematic, at so-called "community-based" Gacaca tribunals in Rwandan villages. Gourevitch is cranking out one-sided propaganda: see, e.g., The New Yorker: "The Arrest of Madame Agathe," March 2, 2010, and "The Mutsinzi report on the Rwandan Genocide," January 8, 2010.
The British Broadcasting Corporation in 2006 publicly branded as genocidaire Dr. Vincent Bajinya, a Hutu physician and U.K. citizen who lived and worked in London for years. Similar to the NBC camera crew's unannounced confrontation with Dr. Leopold Munyakazi in Maryland, without any appointment or prior warning, a BBC team showed up on the street in London and shoved a television camera in Dr. Bajinya's face and began interrogating him about his alleged role as a 'mastermind' of the Rwandan Genocide.38
Within days of the first BBC report, the Dr. Vincent Bajinya story was everywhere in the news and was combined with defamatory stories branding three other Rwandan refugees (Charles Munyaneza, Emmanuel Nteziryayo, and Celestin Ugirashebuja) supposedly 'hiding' in the U.K. The BBC framed all four refugees as 'Most Wanted' criminals and 'masterminds' of 'genocide in Rwanda in 1994'. After confronting Bajinya in London the BBC team traveled to Rwanda and, escorted by GOR agents, filmed the places and people who testified on camera to the alleged crimes.
The four Rwandans were jailed for 28 months and the case was supported by RPA/F intelligence agent Jean Bosco Mutangana, the head of Rwanda's genocide fugitives tracking unit, who also turned up with the NBC News crew and confronted the President of Goucher College (MD) and Dr. Leopold Munyakazi.39
The City of Westminster Magistrates' Court ordered the extradition of all four Rwandans but an appeals court on April 8, 2009, ruled that there was no freedom or justice in Rwanda ordered their release.40, 41
Enemies of the State
Who are Paul Kagame and the RPA/F regime's 'enemies'?
Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu, Hutu, opponent of the previous Hutu (Habyarimana) government, later the first Prime Minister appointed by the RPF/A in 1994, who fled to exile 1995 after he challenged the RPF/A massacres of thousands of Hutu civilians at Kibeho refugee camp in April 1995;
Seth Sendashonga, Hutu, member of RPF/A, forced into exile in Kenya, 1995, after challenging the Kibeho massacres, assassinated in Kenya in 1998;
Pierre Celestin Rwigema, Hutu, Prime minister (circa 1995-2000), who fell out with the regime and went into exile in the US, and afterwards he was accused on 'genocide' charges (because he owned a gun in Kigali prior to 1994);
Alfred Mukezamfura, Hutu, Speaker of Rwanda's National Assembly, who fled Rwanda to exile in Belgium (2008-2009), and who was afterwards accused of 'genocide', tried by the Gacaca courts in abstentia, and sentenced to 30 years in prison, who lives in exile, under the threat of an international arrest warrant issued by Kigali;
Stanley Safari, Hutu, civil servant under the Habayrimana government, who later became a Member of Parliament under the RPF government, a position held until 2009, who was forced to flee Rwanda in 2009, and was subsequently tried in abstentia by the Gacaca courts, on 'genocide' charges, and sentenced to 30 years in prison (Mr. Safari, who currently resides in the U.S., is accused by Rwandans in exile of denouncing innocent people who were subsequently imprisoned by the Kagame regime, and sentenced to harsh prison terms, between 1994 and 2009);
General Emmanuel Habyarimana, Hutu, ex-Forces Armee Rwandaise (ex-FAR), the RPF/A Minister of Defense after 1994, now residing in Switzerland, subject to threats of assassination to this day;
Theobald Gabwaya Rwaka, Hutu, founder of the Rwandan League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LIPRODHOR), Minister of the Interior under the RPA/F, fled Rwanda April 2002, lives in the U.S.;
Claudine Mazimpaka, Hutu, wife of Jean-Baptise Mberabahizi, Hutu, Secretary General of Unified Democratic Forces (FDU) opposition party, attacked in Belgium on October 24, 2009 by unidentified assailants (presumed to be sent by Kagame;
Joseph Ntawangundi, Hutu, aide to FDU opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, convicted in abstentia by Gacaca courts in 2007, beaten and jailed on 'genocide' charges in Kigali in February, 2010, after returning from exile to Rwanda in January 2010, to register an opposition party for the national elections of 2011; Mr. Ntawangundi was reportedly in Sweden (International Federation of Trade Unions) during the 1994 genocide, and returned after several months to Kenya, where he stayed in exile, and who remains in prison in Rwanda today;
Colonel Theoneste Lizinde, Hutu, FAR, Director General of Intelligence; imprisoned by the Habyarimana regime for an attempted coup d'etat; freed from a Ruhengeri prison by the RPA in a military raid in 1992; joined the RPA/F high military command: reportedly provided critical information about Kigali International Airport for the April 6, 1994 attack on the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. Fled to Zaire after becoming disenchanted with the RPA/F (1994-1995): assassinated by the RPA/F in Nairobi, 1995;
Jean-Pierre Bizimana, Hutu, former RPF/A intelligence agent, later the RPF government Minister of Education, most recently (2009-2010) Ambassador to the Netherlands, fled Rwanda into exile in late February 2010, after threats against him, allegedly due to his ties to the Rwandan opposition FUD party, and who is at this time seeking asylum in the Republic of Ireland;
Victoire Ingabire, Hutu, leader of the FDU opposition party, formerly exiled in Holland since 1994, threatened and attacked in Rwanda after taking the opposition struggle back to Rwanda, under investigation by the RPA/F for espousing 'genocide ideology' today because she publicly raised questions about massacres of Hutus (and Tutsis) in Rwanda;
Joseph Sebarinzi, Tutsi, went into exile from Rwanda in 1979, returned to Rwanda under the Habyarimana government prior to 1990, but fled to Burundi in 1994, and returned to Rwanda after July 1994 to become Speaker of the National Assembly under the RPF/A government, and then fled (circa 2000) Rwanda after falling out of favor with the Kagame regime, and is now a United States citizen accused by the Kagame regime of treason for supporting the 1959 King of Rwanda;
Col. Balthazar Ndengeyinka, Hutu, member of the RPF/A, in exile in Switzerland after falling out with the Kagame regime;
General Kayumba Nyamwasa, Tutsi, RPF/A commander, more recently the Rwandan Ambassador to India (2001-2010), who was indicted by the Spanish Court (February 2009) 42, along with 40 other top RPF/A military officials, for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and was indicted by the French Court (December 2006)43, along with nine other RPF officials, for his participation in double presidential assassinations of April 6, 1994, who fled Rwanda to exile in Uganda in late February 2010, and escaped the Rwandan military-intelligence networks to exile in South Africa on March 2, 2010;
Journalist Godwin Agaba, previously imprisoned for courageous reporting from inside Rwanda, who was forced into hiding in early March 2010 and is on the run for his life, with an arrest warrant issued by the kagame regime;
Madame Agathe Habyarimana, Hutu wife of the assassinated President Juvenal Habayrimana, who tops Rwanda's 'most wanted' list, falsely accused and arrested in Paris on March 2, 2010, the day after President Sarkozy made a deal with Kagame in Kigali;
The many other Hutu victims of the unjust ICTR court and the Kagame regime it protects.
(Photo credit unknown.)
ABOVE: Military strategist Kagame with his junior officer Hypolitte Kanambe, alias Joseph Kabila, now President of the DRC, behind him, circa 1995, in the RPA in Rwanda--before the RPA and UPDF marched across Congo murdering inncoent Hutu men, women and children by the hundreds of thousands.
Since August 2009 the Kagame regime has been intimidating, bribing and forcing 'witnesses' to fabricate evidence of Dr. Munyakazi's guilt in order to attempt to substantiate these charges and convince the U.S. and public opinion that there are grounds for Dr. Munyakazi's extradition. Some 200-300 people have been terrorized by the RPA/F regime in order to compel witness testimonies out of fear, and to frame Dr. Leopold Munyakazi.
In 2002, two of Dr. Munyakazi's children were threatened and forced to flee to Europe where they were granted refugee status. In 2006 Dr. Munyakazi's wife fled to the United States and applied for asylum after being threatened with imprisonment by local Rwandan authorities and blamed with "being married to a Hutu Interahamwe" because she refused to give false testimonies against the former neighbors of the Munyakazis. Between October and December 2006, three children of Dr. Munyakazi were systematically harassed and terrified, often through unannounced middle of the night visits, by the RPF/A Directorate of Military Intelligence and Local Defense Force agents; the family members fled to Uganda.
On August 3rd 2009, the chairperson of the Gacaca tribunal in Dr. Munyakazi's native area reportedly confirmed that a dozen persons were put in jail because they had refused to give false accusations against Dr. Munyakazi. On September 2, 2009, she again informed Dr. Munyakazi that some 200 people had their cases revised before the Gacaca tribunal mainly to get a 'legal reason' to incarcerate them. From October 12-30, 2009, the Gacaca tribunal condemned 15 of these people to lengthy prison terms based on these fabricated crimes.
In seeking to fabricate evidence and extort or coerce testimonies against Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, the GOR has reportedly forced hundreds (minimum) of civilians from their homes in Dr. Leopold Munyakazi's native and neighboring areas (Gitarama Prefecture), taken them to Kigali, and 'interviewed' them inside the U.S. Embassy, and with the collaboration of U.S. Embassy officials. Many refused to testify against Dr. Munyakazi and were subsequently, while some have accepted bribes to testify against Dr. Munyakazi, and some have later changed their minds when threatened with being brought before a Gacaca court on charges of 'complicity in genocide', while others have had their Gacaca hearings 're-done,' with the understanding that no one is innocent, on penalty of violence from the GOR.
When Victims Become Killers
One of the latest pro-RPA/F vigilante refugee hunters on the Rwanda 'genocidaire' trail is Jason Stearns, a former U.N. (MONUC) and International Crises Group 'analyst' (the ICG and its clone groups ENOUGH and Raise Hope for Congo are front for the U.S. National Security apparatus funded by the Center for American Progress).
Stearns also worked on several U.N. panels of experts on the illegal exploitation in the DR Congo, including the U.N. 'experts' report of November 2009, which launched a smear campaign against Fundacio S'Olivar and Inshuti, Spanish charities affiliated with Juan Carrero Seralegui, Jordi Palou-Loverdos (named on Rwanda's 'Hit List' above) and Joan Casoliva Barcons, accusing them of backing terrorists in Congo. (A key 'confidential source' for the U.N. Panel of Experts [sic] has been the RPA/F front group African Rights: the November 'experts' report was fed information through RPA/F agents Theodore Nyilinkawaya in Brussels and Rakiya Omaar in Kigali. It appears that African Rights has maintained a tight connection to previous U.N. Panel of Expert's as well.) This is the U.N.'s failed attempt to discredit the Spanish indictments against the RPA/F.44, 45
Working out of Yale University grad school, Stearns has been zealously gunning for Rwandans connected to the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an organization also targeted on Rwanda's 'Hit List' (above) and Kagame's disingenuous excuse, over and over, for RPA/F terrorism in DRC. "For an excellent review of the FDLR Diaspora," Stearns wrote, citing the RPA/F front African Rights, "see Rakiya Omaar's recent report: 'The end in sight?'"46
The Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)--until 2000 known as the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALIR)--are not the evil genocidaires respondible for every war crime in Central Africa, as they are billed by western flak organizations like ENOUGH, Raise Hope for Congo, the U.N. panels of experts, Jason Stearns and their benefactors in the Kagame muilitary regime. FDLR include ex-FAR soldiers forced out of Rwanda during the illegal RPA/F invasion and coup d'etat. Being in the losing side does not automatically make these soldiers genocidaires or war criminals: their cuilpability in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide is far less evident than the culpability of the RPA/F regime. So-called "FDLR" in Congo also include innocent women and children who have been subject to war crimes by the RPA/F and its factions (RCD, CNDP, etc.) and their artners, including the FARDC, and the United Nations Observers Mission for DR Congo (MONUC). To add insult to injury, the organized crime networks of the Kagame government, and even Canadian BANRO Ciorporation (illegally occupying and terrorizing South Kivu) have alliances and realtyionships with FDLR and other Hutu groups in eastern Congo.
The criminalized genocidaire label of 'FDLR' offers the ready made sound bite utilized by the media, by white skinned propagandists like Nicholas Kristof and Jeffrey Gettleman, by actorvists like Ben Affleck and George Clooney, and by western institutions like the United Nations, and US Government, to whitewash their own involvement in criminal exploitation of one stripe or another. The ultimate goal is western corporatte control achieved with through such supposedly 'progressive' legislation as the U.S. Congress bills in Blood Minerals. The situation with the Lord's resistance Army--the scapegoat for which to excuse President Yoweri Museveni--and the LRA Disarmanent Act is identical, but different, but only to serve wetsren militarization and expropriation of African people's lives and lands and loves.
U.N. 'expert' Jason Stearns never mentions the western corporations, intelligence agents or U.S. officials involved in the Great Lakes plunder. Instead, Stearns is on crusade against Dr. Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Dr. Felicien Kanyamibwa, two Rwandan intellectuals living in the U.S.A. named as leaders or former leaders of the FDLR. Stearns has lobbied the U.S. State Department to arrest and charge the Rwandan opposition leaders, by any means necessary, to "get them for material support to a terrorist organization" or "for having committed fraud on their immigration documents." 47
Dr. Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro was director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINOFOR) under the Habyarimana government: Dr. Higiro was a member of the MDR (Mouvement Démocratique Républicain), a political party opposed to the Habyarimana regime. He is one of very few intellectuals left alive with an insider's understanding of the genocide propaganda leading up to April 6, 1994, and what scares the U.S. and their RPA/F proxy is his understanding of the genocidal media of the RPA/F.48
Dr. Higiro's daughter was born in the USA, and Dr. Higiro and his family were evacuated from Rwanda to Burundi by the U.S. Embassy on April 9, 1994, was flown on a U.S. military Hercules C-130 to Nairobi (the USAF billed him for the flight). He was appointed Minister of Information to the RPF/A government on July 19, 1994, the day he flew to the U.S. He declined to return after reports of the RPF/A's "unmistakable patterns of killings" of scores of thousands of Hutus.49, 50
Dr. Higiro has lived under constant threats and accusations--and assumptions of his 'complicity in genocide'--to the present day, teaching at Western New England College in Springfield, Ma, a U.S. citizen since 2000. A photo that Dr. Higiro (his child in his arms) sent to his aged father in Rwanda was confiscated when African Rights investigators intimidated Dr. Higiro's father at his home village in Rushaki, Rwanda; the photo identifies Dr. Higiro (one of the FDLR terrorists) in an African Rights document authored by Rakiya Omaar.51
Dr. Felicien Kanyamibwa left Rwanda in 1991 and was a Ph.D student in the U.S. in 1994. Funneled disinformation from African Rights, the Rwandan state media accused him of being a Hutu 'hardliner' tied to the Interahamwe and ex-FAR, casting him as a genocidaire.52 Dr. Kanyamibwa lives in New Jersey. As with most Rwandans being hunted by the RPA/F, the Department of Homeland Security is constantly harassing him.
The Christian Science Monitor has also been practicing vigilante journalism for the RPA/F through Max Delany and Scott Baldauf.53 The CSM advances U.S. State propaganda through the International Crises Group intelligence agents John Prendergast, former National Security Council under William Jefferson Clinton, and Guillaume Lacaille, former U.N. Political Affairs Officer and U.S. Embassy Attaché, and they protect western corporations plundering eastern Congo (Banro Resources, Cabot, Moto Gold, Anglo-Ashanti, etc.). Of course, the U.S. military's AFRICOM is all over Central Africa, backing, training and funding the RPA/F and UPDF, building bases in Rwanda, Uganda, Congo and South Sudan, and force missions are run by the Pentagon's Special Operations Command--SOCOM: covert operations, death squads, snatch-and-grab black ops, psychological warfare, other terrorism of the kind that first brought the RPA/F to power.54
Max Delany is working on a hit piece about Dr. Higiro and Dr. Kanyamibwa, expected to appear on April 6, 2010--the anniversary of the 'plane crash' [sic] that sparked the '100 days of genocide' [sic]. "I hope that North America will do something about the FDLR leaders on their soil too," the CSM quotes the ICG's Lacaille to say. "Because when you go against the [Hutu] genocidaires of 1994, you are doing it because of justice. When you go against someone like Ignace Murwanashyaka"55--or Dr. Higiro, or Dr. Munyakazi--"it's not only justice, it's about security in the Democratic Republic of Congo."56
The end to impunity for war and terrorism in Central Africa begins with the arrest of the 40 extremist Tutsi RPA/F war criminals indicted by the Spanish court, and with the arrest and indictment of His Excellency, Paul Kagame, the man they call 'the Butcher of Kigali'--one of AFRICOM's leading men in Central Africa.
ABOVE: The Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations all supported war crimes and genocide in Central Africa by backing the guerrila warfare of Yoweri Museveni (now President in Uganda) and his National Resistance Army/Movement and then Paul Kagame (Museveni's former Director of Military Intelligence) and the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front in Rwanda. (Photo credit: some photographer serving the propaganda system.)
______________
Footnotes:
1 Jim Lyons, former Commander of Investigations for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, also provided expert testimony at this hearing.
2 See, e.g.: keith harmon snow: "Three Cheers for Eve Ensler?" ZNet, October 24, 2007; "Merchant's of Death: Exposing Corporate Financed Holocaust in Africa," Dissident Voice, December 8, 2008; "Over Five Million Dead in Congo? Fifteen hundred People Daily?" February 4, 2008.
3 The ADFL (RPF/A + UPDF + U.S. & U.K. & Israel backing) war crimes and genocide against Rwandan and Burundian refugees is well documented. In August 1996 there were an estimated 1.5 million refugees in eastern Zaire, and by November the estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Rwandan refugees that did not return to Rwanda under the illegal forced repatriation became the targets of a systematic manhunt by ADFL forces. See, e.g., Roberto Garreton, Special Rapporteur of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Zaire No. E/CN.4/1996/66, June 29, 1996; Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage Books, 2005; and Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Gerard Prunier, Africa's World War, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 120-128; Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999; and International Non-governmental Commission of Inquiry into the Massive Violations of Human Rights Committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaire) 1996-1997, Int'l Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 1998; DRC: What Kabila is Hiding: Civilian Killings and Impunity in Congo, Human Rights Watch, Vol. 9, No. 5(A), October 1997.
4 E.g., [1] [name withheld] former Manager for David Blattner SAFBOIS logging corporation in Bosondjo, Equateur Province, DRC; [2] [name withheld] businessman in Kisangani, Orientale, DRC, whose bulldozers were confiscated by the RPF/A and UPDF for excavation and covering of mass graves.
5 See: Robin Philpot, Ça ne s'est pas passé comme ça à Kigali, (That's Not What Happened in Kigali), published in English by the (Phil) Taylor Report: Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard, 2004, http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/.
6 Although Rwandan and Ugandan troops warred against each other in Kisangani, DRC, in 2000, and their leaders hate each other, these criminal networks have links, common interests, and equal culpability for ongoing terrorism in Central Africa, Sudan and Somalia.
7 The French term genocidaire has universally been used to castigate innocent Hutus as deeply sinister and evil.
8 This double reality--economic advances and political regression--has been seen before in cases, for example, such as Chile, backed by western powers, under General Augusto Pinochet.
9 The question of mortality statistics by ethnic category have been addressed by Filip Reyntjens, Christian Davenport, Alan Stam and others, leading to the conclusion that the number of Hutu deaths in Rwanda during the so-called "100 days of genocide" of 1994 exceed the possible numbers of Tutsi deaths, a complete inversion of the claims by the GOR, and its supporters and allies, who have always maintained some 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsis killed in the "Rwanda genocide".
10 E.g., Final report of the Group of Experts on the DRC submitted in accordance with paragraph 8 of Security Council resolution 1857 (2008); e.g., Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DRC, October 2003; Final report of the Group of Experts on the DRC submitted in accordance with paragraph 18(d) of Security Council resolution 1807 (2008); Final report of the Group of Experts on the DRC submitted in accordance with paragraph 8 of Security Council resolution 1857 (2008).
11 Spanish Indictment (Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles), February 2008. The 182 pp. Spanish indictment charges President Kagame and forty members of the RPF/A regime with the deaths of more than 300,000 civilians, detailed in Prefecture-by-Prefecture totals.
12 French Indictments (Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere), December 2006.
13 Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
14 E.g., Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999; Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage Books, 2005; and International Non-governmental Commission of Inquiry into the Massive Violations of Human Rights Committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaire) 1996-1997, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 1998.
15 Dr. Helmut Strizek, Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Expert Witness in "The Prosecutor v. Innocent Sagahutu," Before the International Criminal tribunal For Rwanda, (Case No. ICTR 2000-56-I), entered into ICTR records October 30, 2008.
16 See, e.g., Christian Davenport and Alan C. Stam, "What Really Happened in Rwanda," Miller McCune, 2009.
17 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Approved by the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 260 A (III) of December 9, 1948, came into effect on January 12, 1951.
18 See, e.g., the conclusions of the Genodynamics Project of Dr. Christian Davenport and Dr. Alan Stam or the countless human rights reports documenting RPA/F atrocities, e.g., Rwanda: Civilians Trapped in Armed Conflict: The Dead Can No Longer Be Counted, Amnesty International, December 19, 1997.
19 Carla Del Ponte and Chuck Sudetic, Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity's Worst War Criminals, and the Culture of Impunity, The Other Press (NY), 2009.
20 Kenneth Roth, "The Power of Horror in Rwanda," Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2009.
21 See, e.g., Rakiya Omaar, The Leadership of Rwandan Armed Groups Abroad With a Focus on the FDLR and RUD-URUNANA, December 2008: p. 8.
22 See, e.g.: [1] Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, Death, Despair and Defiance, African Rights, November 1994; [2] Rakiya Omaar, Rwanda: Insurgency in the Northwest, African Rights, 1998; [3] Rakiya Omaar, Letter to Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc, President of the United Nations Security Council, African Rights, October 19, 2005; [4] Rakiya Omaar, An Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, African Rights, May 13, 1998.
23 See, e.g., An Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, African Rights, May 13, 1998.
24 African Rights, A Welcome Expression of Intent: The Nairobi Communique and the Ex-FAR/Interahamwe, December 2007.
25 International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, Minutes of Proceedings, Hategekimana: ICTR-00-55-T, July 1, 2009.
26 See: Delivery of the Murambi Book and African Rights outstanding $100,159, Letters from the GOR's National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide to Rakiya Omaar, Director of African Rights, dated June 6, 2008, and June 22, 2008, stamped with an official seal, and copied to H.E. The President of the Republic, the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, The Minister of Sports and Culture, and the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning (Kigali).
27 See, e.g., Report of the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda Since October 1, 1990, Final Report, Federation Internationale Des Droits de L'Homme (FIDH) (Paris), Africa Watch (New York, Washington, London), Union Interafricaine Des Droits de L'Homme et des Peuples (UIDH)(Ouagadougou), Centre Internationale des Droits De La Personne et du Developpement Democratique (CIDPDD/ICHRDD) (Montreal), March, 1993. Notable members of this Commission included Alison Des Forges and William Schabas.
28 See, e.g., Munyaneza & Ors v. Government of Rwanda, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, April 8, 2009; and Dr. Helmut Strizek, The Influence of the International Background on the Creation of the International Tribunal for Rwanda: An Historian's View, October 24, 2009.
29 Dr. Helmut Strizek, The Influence of the International Background on the Creation of the International Tribunal for Rwanda: An Historian's View, October 24, 2009.
30 French indictment Judge Bruguiere, November 2006.
31 Spanish Indictment (Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles), February 2008.
32 Prosecutor v. Bagosora, 98-41-T, Judgment of 12/18/08, published in full February 9, 2009 (www.ictr.org).
33 While the article and the framework for the article are in many ways flawed, displaying the same tendencies toward a priori assumptions of guilt, please see, e.g.: Andrew Rice, "Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC's Quest for a Prime Time Hit," The New Republic, August 12, 2009.
34 Andrew Rice, "Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC's Quest for a Prime Time Hit," The New Republic, August 12, 2009.
35 Jack Shafer, "To Catch a War Criminal? Why is NBC Being so Cagey about it's New Series?" Slate, February 10, 2009.
36 Notably, a U.S. immigration judge in St. Paul Minnesota imposed Gourevitch's book as compulsory reading for all attorneys dealing with Rwandan refugees requesting political asylum. Similarly, the International human Rights Law Clinic at American University for several years (at least) asked students to read Philip Gourevitch on genocide in Rwanda, in preparation for legal work with the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda. Professor Melissa Crow, who worked with the Law Clinic, followed her term at Human Rights Watch (1994-1995) working for the Office of the ICTR Prosecutor from Kigali, Rwanda, under the RPA/F regime.
37 Philip Gourevitch, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998.
38 Fergal Keane, "Rwanda Genocide Suspect in UK" and Fergal Keane, "Rwanda Suspect Worked at UK Trust," BBC News, November 6, 2006.
39 The Government of the Republic of Rwanda v. Vincent Bajinya, Charles Munyaneza, Emmanuel Nteziryayo, and Celestin Ugirashebuja, Decision by Anthony Evans, Designated District Judge, June 6, 2008.
40 Munyaneza & Ors v. Government of Rwanda, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, April 8, 2009.
41 The BBC article reporting their release was highly biased, citing, for example, how the Rwandan "president died in a plane crash," and not an act of terrorism--being the double presidential assassinations--and another example of language used to skew perceptions about violence, victims, and killers in Rwanda. See: Unsigned, "Rwanda Accused Win UK Court Case," BBC News, April 8, 2009.
42 Spanish Indictment (Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles), February 2008.
43 French Indictments (Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere), December 2006.
44 See: "The UN in Congo: Watchdog of the Great Mining Interests," Save Rwanda (.org), November 11, 2009.
45 The latest 'Panel of Experts' report on Congo revealed the true pro-RPA/F bias of the United Nations, and discredited the report, which has some solid information in it about certain western criminals, such as, for example, Philippe de Moerloose, whom this author has previously cited for war crimes.
46 Jason Stearns: Congo Siasa (.blogspot.com) [1] "Are We Really Serious About Getting Rid of the FDLR?" October 27, 2009;
47 Jason Stearns: Congo Siasa (.blogspot.com) [1] "Are We Really Serious About Getting Rid of the FDLR?" October 27, 2009; [2] "Ignace in Handcuffs," November 18, 2009
48 Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, "Rwandan Private Print Media on the Eve of the Genocide," in Thompson, Ed., The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, Pluto Press, 2007.
49 U.N. High Commission for Refugees investigator Robert Gersony reported in September 1994 on the RPA/F's killing of more than 30,000 ethnic Hutus--in a period of two months--and gave a detailed account of locations, dates and nature of crimes, as well as the methods used to kill and to make the bodies disappear. Gersony also identified RPF leaders responsible for the killings. The classified U.N. "Gersony Report" has never been released. Sections of the 'Gersony Report' were referenced in other documents, and the conclusions were similar in a declassified Refugees International Situation Report of 1994 (begging questions about why refugees Inetrenationals SITREP are classified by the U.S. State Department...).
50 Raymond Bonner: "Rwandans Say the Victors Kill Many Who Go Back," New York Times, August 5, 1994; and "UN Stops returning Rwandan Refugees," New York Times, September 28,1994.
51 Rakiya Omaar, The Leadership of Rwandan Armed Groups Abroad With a Focus on the FDLR and RUD-URUNANA, December 2008: p. 8.
52 RNA reporter, "U.S. Government Investigating FDLR Official," Rwanda News Agency, December 12, 2008.
53 Max Delany & Scott Baldauf, "Germany Arrests Congo Rebel Leaders," Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2009; Scott Baldauf, "The Legacy of Rwanda's Genocide: More Assertive International Justice," Christian Science Monitor, April 7, 2009; Scott Baldauf, "Rwanda Rebel Leaders: US, French, Spanish and Congo Business Links," Christian Science Monitor, December 2, 2009.
54 See, e.g., Nicole Dalyrimple, "U.S. and DRC in Partnership to Train Model Congolese Battalion," U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs, February 18, 2010, http://www.africom.mil/printStory.asp?art=4032; and Kenneth Fiddler, "Ward Leads Africa Command Delegation to Rwanda," U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs, April 22, 2009, http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=2931.
55 FDLR leader Ignace Murwanashyaka was arrested in Germany in November 2009.
56 Scott Baldauf, "Rwanda Rebel Leaders: US, French, Spanish and Congo Business Links," Christian Science Monitor, December 2, 2009(
Labels: KEITH HARMON SNOW, RWANDA
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LiberalPro - Interview.
Keith Harmon Snow who spent 5 Years in the DRC (Congo) will be our guest.
Labels: INTERVIEW, KEITH HARMON SNOW
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AFRICOM Backs Bloodshed in Central Africa
by Keith Harmon Snow
Kimpa Vita readings
April 15th, 2010
The eastern Congo remains awash in bloodshed due to western mining companies and their proxy armies, the military regimes of Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), and Joseph Kabila (DRC), all hidden behind reams of western newsprint blaming Congolese victims for their own suffering. Across the continent a new rebellion in western Congo has reportedly engaged Belgian paratroopers and UN “peacekeepers” in alliance with the DRC government.
With massive casualties and more than 200,000 civilians forced to flee western Congo the United Nations and western media have covered up the new rebellion. Meanwhile, AFRICOM under the Obama administration has major base constructions and secret deployments across Central Africa, with NATO, Dyncorp and Special Operations Command shipping Ugandan grunts to the U.S. wars in Somalia, Afghanistan, Darfur and Iraq.
With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has received support from Belgium and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in far Western Congo. But the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) has downplayed the new rebellion and hidden massive military and civilian casualties.
*Are Belgian Paratroopers Fighting in Western Congo?*
A rising alliance calling themselves “The Resistance Patriots of Dongo” (Patriotes-Résistants de Dongo) spread in western Congo over the past six months after Congolese people learned that Congolese resistance forces tired of the corrupt regime of Joseph Kabila were fighting against Rwandan troops in the little frontier town of Dongo.
Sources in Congo’s capital Kinshasa reported that an emergency “crisis” meeting was convened in Brussels on Nov. 28, 2009, after a distress call was sent by Congo-Kinshasa President Hypolitté Kanambe, known to the Western world by his alias, Joseph Kabila Kabange, and the Belgian military attaché in Kinshasa was instructed to deploy a detachment of elite Belgian Armed Forces (BAF) paratroopers to Congo.1
Sources in DRC claimed that Belgian troops joined the Kabila COALITION forces, backed by AFRICOM and allied with Rwanda, and engaged the RESISTANCE forces in Equateur province in January.
Interests competing with President Joseph Kabila’s Congo (including U.S. and Israeli minerals cartels, weapons dealers and money-laundering operations) support the new western Congo RESISTANCE forces. These interests operate through regional power brokers, e.g., in Gabon, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa.
In mid-November President Joseph Kabila secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) across Congo to crush the rebellion. Comprised of former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels who overthrew the government of Juvenal Habyarimana in Rwanda (1990-1994), the RDF joined Kabila’s COALITION, which includes MONUC troops from the international “peacekeeping” mission and Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Kabila government’s support, into Congo’s national army, the FARDC. RDF forces, moved to Congo from Rwanda exclusively for the operation, were uniformed as Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC).2
Thus western Congo is awash in bloodshed involving COALITION forces backed by AFRICOM, Belgium and Israel Amongst the biggest Kabila supporters are the U.S.-Israeli Dan Gertler, Moshe Schnitzer and Benny Steinmetz families, also holders to Congo’s most lucrative (copper/cobalt) mines.
*MONUC Hides Equateur Conflict*
The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF, formerly Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) and “ex-”CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces but is heavily backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis.
The secret infiltration and official integration of Rwandan forces into Congo was a strategic maneuver championed by Rwandan general James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame, both wanted for war crimes by the Spanish and French courts. Rwanda’s Kagame is the primary cause of the massive destabilization of Eastern Congo.
The leaders of the rebellion in western Equateur Province have reportedly forged an alliance with General Dunia, a Mai Mai leader operating against the joint operations of the Kabila COALITION in South Kivu, eastern Congo, and site of Canadian BANRO Gold Corporation’s massive illegal gold concessions. Mai-Mai forces in Congo are highly nationalist Congolese. In late 2009, Mai-Mai leaders issued a communiqué and declaration of war against Joseph Kabila and his foreign and corporate allies.
South Kivu human rights groups have documented BANRO’s links to local terrorism, yet not one mainstream western media source has reported or even named the pivotal western mining interests—including BANRO, Moto Gold (Walter Kansteiner), Mwana Africa, Heritage Oil & Gas—behind the war and plunder in blood-drenched eastern Congo.
Many Congolese people have long since known that the president of their country has supported a secret extremist “Tutsi” alliance that seeks to dominate Central Africa. His real name is Hypolitté Kanambe, formerly a junior Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) officer plucked from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) forces.
It is widely supported that Joseph Kabila reported directly to RPF/A commanders James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame in the Pentagon-backed AFDL “rebellion” that overthrew President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (Congo); there are also claims that Kabila was a soldier in the RPF/A during the multiple genocides orchestrated by Kagame’s extremist Tutsi RPF/A in Rwanda (1990-1994).
The term “extremist Tutsi” applies only to the elite secretive organization, formerly the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A), which exists in parallel with the parliamentary government of Rwanda.3 ,4 ,5 ,6 RDF are not exclusively Tutsi, but are controlled by the extremist Tutsi network maintained by Paul Kagame, General James Kabarebe and others of the 40 top war criminals indicted by the Spanish court on Feb. 6, 2008.
After seizing power in July of 1994, the extremist Tutsi network continued to perpetrate atrocities, including massacres, assassinations, tortures and disappearances, and the network moved into Congo-Zaire in 1996. The modus operandi of the Kagame terrorist network is to perpetrate crimes and blame them on victim populations (Hutus, FDLR, Mai Mai, Congolese civilians, even Tutsi dissidents). The western media plays along.
A major source of ongoing conflict in the DRC’s Kivu provinces, Rwandan Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, was rewarded in January 2009 for playing along with the Kabila COALITION charade of “arresting” Rwandan war criminal Gen. Laurent Nkunda, another perpetrator of war crimes who received Washington’s blessings for several years. One of few points to their credit, the U.N. Panel of Experts, in their report of November 2009, exposed the appointment of Gen. Bosco Ntaganda as CNDP-FARDC commander, which Kagame and Kabila officially denied.
The International Criminal Court indicted General Bosco Ntaganda for war crimes committed in DRC in May 2008. The ICC is a political instrument used to selectively target certain individuals and militias, while ignoring more substantial state sanctioned actors like Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Yoweri Museveni, Maurice Templesman, or former U.S. National Security Council member Walter Kansteiner, all deeply behind the war and plunder in DRC.
Gen. Ntaganda commanded CNDP-FARDC units responsible for massive war crimes under the joint “Kimia” operations launched with MONUC backing in eastern Congo in January 2009. Ntaganda’s role is to work from the inside to destabilize eastern Congo in exchange for Kabila and Kagame protecting him from the ICC.
The current death toll in the eastern provinces of Congo alone stands at some 1,000 people per day, with at least ten million dead in Congo since the U.S. invasion of 1996, with millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states. Rwandan allied forces in DRC are perpetrating genocide at present in North Kivu, and the western media and “humanitarian” agencies have remained silent. More than 15,000 IDPs were registered between December 2009 and January 2010, with thousands more IDPs reported hiding in North Kivu forests.
Violence in eastern Congo is universally and falsely blamed on the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), but in fact violence is primarily due to Rwandan allied forces. Additionally, more than 168,000 people have been uprooted due to recent fighting in Western Congo.7
Congo-Brazzaville has harbored the ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) since the overthrow of President Mobutu in 1997, and it harbors Rwandans that fled the AFDL genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire (1996-1997).8 There may be some 300 ex-MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo) rebels and more than 10,000 ex-FAZ involved in the western rebellion.
Equateur Province is the site of major untapped petroleum reserves. Belgian, French, Portuguese, German and U.S. families and corporations control vast tracts under attack by industrial logging. There are also Western-owned plantations with modern day slavery involving tens of thousands of Congolese people subject to terrorism by state paramilitary services.9
*Resistance Patriots of Dongo*
In March 2009 the Western press reported a “tribal dispute” and “ethnic clash over fishing rights” in the little Western Congo outback town of Dongo. The dispute reportedly began between two different ethnic groups. However, the “Resistance Patriots of Dongo” claim that government agents manipulated the parties of the dispute and escalated armed hostilities.
In October 2009 President Kabila and top military adviser John Numbi dispatched FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Benjamin Alongaboni to Dongo to negotiate peace with resistance forces. Gen. Alongaboni, a Congolese son hailing from Equateur Province and the first FARDC officer on the scene, secured a negotiated peace with Dongo area combatants.
Soon after, however, President Kabila sent RDF forces—in FARDC uniforms—who enraged Congolese in the region and provoked hostilities by killing some local people and undermining peace negotiations. The Resistance Patriots of Dongo retaliated and Congolese FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Alongaboni defected.
Meanwhile, the “Dongo Crisis” blossomed into a full-blown Congolese rebellion against international occupation forces and the powerful Kabila-Kagame clique. Hundreds of Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC)—of ethnic Congolese origin—reportedly deserted and joined rebellion ranks with Congolese civilians and various military elements of past rebellions.
Bound for the Dongo rebellion in mid-November, Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) crossed Lake Kivu from Gisenyi to Goma, DRC, and were then flown from Goma to Kamina Air Base in Katanga, a military transport hub used for the Belgo-American-U.N. mercenary occupations during the Katanga secession (1960-63) and “Congo Crises” (1964–67). The RDF battalion was next flown to Bandundu Province.
The RDF troops were reportedly next moved onto the 42-acre campus of the U.S. Embassy-affiliated American School in Kinshasa (TASOK), near the notorious Camp Tshatshi military base, and then flown to Gemena airport in Equateur. The Colonel Tshatshi Military Camp in Kinshasa is the FARDC military command headquarters. The TASOK campus was used for RDF troops because Rwandans would not be welcome amongst Congolese-FARDC at Camp Tshatshi.
There were at least three round trips in some legs of the RDF flight plan reportedly using both MONUC and Hewa Bora Airlines, an airline 70 percent owned by Belgian arms trafficker Philippe de Moerloose. In the “leaked” November 2009 U.N. Panel of Experts Report on Illegal Exploitation in the Congo, Philippe De Moerloose and Hewa Bora Airlines were named for weapons shipments from Sudan to Congo in violation of the International Arms Embargo on the DRC.10 De Moerloose supplies Kabila with presidential jets and other war toys.
Attempting to discredit the High Court in Spain for its issuing of international war crimes indictments against 40 top Rwandan military officials, the U.N. Panel of Experts Report also falsely accused Spanish non-government organizations affiliated with the judicial war crimes investigations of backing “terrorist” groups in eastern Congo.
The Resistance Patriots of Dongo have inflicted high casualties on the Kabila Coalition forces dispatched to Equateur. MONUC issued one tiny press report on Nov. 26, after resistance forces shot up a MONUC helicopter that flew to Dongo to resupply the Coalition ground troops. Some 2000 of the coalition troops were reported killed in February and March.
A short Western media propaganda blurb titled “Armed group claims firing at UN chopper in DRC,” Agence France-Presse attempted to discredit the rebellion and cover for MONUC’s involvement in open military aggression against Congolese people.
The AFP described the conflict as purely tribal and framed it as ruthless savage Africans killing with machetes. The MONUC chopper apparently was attacked on Nov. 26.11
*Dongo War Not Connected to Eastern Congo?*
“The fighting is not related to the simmering conflict in the mineral-rich eastern borderlands,” Reuters wrote, “where the army – backed by thousands of peacekeepers – are attempting to stamp out local, Rwandan, and Ugandan rebels.”12
On Dec. 3, 2009, Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and RTLM reported that Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere and Defense Minister Pieter De Crem had responded to the communiqué of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo, circulated on the Internet on Dec. 1, which warned Belgium and Kinshasa that the resistance knew of the secret plan to dispatch paratroopers to Kisangani. The two Belgian ministries issued a joint communiqué denying denying the secret plan.13
According to Kinshasa sources, the MONUC-uniformed Belgians would be flown from Kisangani, Orientale Province, to Equateur Province’s northwestern frontier city of Gbadolite — the stronghold of former President Mobutu and rebel warlord Jean Pierre Bemba — and then to Gemena airport near Dongo.14
Soon after the Resistance Patriots of Dongo forces occupied the frontier city of Libenge, President Kabila dispatched 600 elite FARDC commandos trained by 60 Belgian Armed Forces instructors at Kamina Air base.
Sources in Kinshasa on Dec. 5 reported: “massive violent fighting in Libenge and Gemena areas,” involving 1,000 Congolese National Police (PNC) and 100 Ghanaian MONUC troops and two MONUC helicopter gunships.15
The MONUC “peacekeeping” enterprise in Congo is a $1 billion a year operation involving contracts with Lockheed Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE).
On December 14, 2009, the Spanish Press Agency SAPA and Agence France-Presse reported that DRC government troops fighting against ‘tribal forces’ had taken back the town of Dongo, with the tribal forces being “led by the animist priest Udjani.”16 The article maintained the ongoing silence about high casualties.
The international news media was completely silent after government forces that had reentered Dongo by December 14 suffered a crushing defeat when resistance forces sprang a trap: scores of Kabila Coalition troops (allegedly including ‘white’ mercenaries) were massacred.
On December 16, 2009, the MONUC spokesman in Kinshasa DRC announced that MONUC troops were deployed in Dongo in Equateur province “to sustain the joint PNC/FARDC operations aimed at re-establishing order [sic] and state authority…”17
MONUC transferred some 500 regular MONUC Ghanaian, Tunisian and Egyptian “peacekeepers” to Equateur province from the eastern Congo’s conflict areas in Orientale and the Kivus, along with Armored Personnel Carriers, weapons, and transport and combat helicopters. MONUC also deployed Guatemalan Special Forces to the Equateur region.
On December 22, New York’s *Bloomberg News* reported with a news brief deepening the racist mythology portraying this as African savagery and superstition.
“The Enyele leader is a mystic named Udjani,” wrote Michael J. Kavanagh, reporting for *Bloomberg* from Kinshasa (DRC) and Impfondo (Republic of Congo), referring to the Enyele tribe, “who claims to have a magical sword that can poison people and pass its powers to the curved machetes wielded by many of his followers, witnesses said.”18
Sources working for MONUC in Kisangani confirm that there are Belgian troops in Kisangani, with “one or two” Hercules C-130 Belgian military aircraft.
Resistance forces and Kabila’s Coalition forces engaged in major battles since January with many top military officers of the Kabila Coalition killed. Sources claim that Kabila Coalition forces have used incendiary bombs causing huge civilian casualties. A key intelligence source in Kinshasa insists that Belgian paratroopers were on the ground in Equateur and, unprepared for the organized resistance they encountered, were forced to retreat after some (unknown) number were wounded and killed. MONUC troops have also been engaged in the fighting, in continued violation of the U.N. “peacekeeping” mandate.
*Election Slogans and Empty Promises (Sound Familiar?)*
In the beginning, many Congolese supported President Kanambe, alias Kabila, ignoring his origins, hoping that he would share power, that he would develop the Congo, build roads and schools and, especially, that he would forestall and evict Ugandan and Rwandan agents, provocateurs, mining cartels and war criminals from the 1996-2001 war years. They were the usual empty promises made by the usual empty politicians.
The plan has all along been to colonize Congo through Rwanda. This involves eliminating as many Congolese people as possible to control their land, balkanizing the Congo and creating a “Republic of the Volcanoes” (Republique des Volcans) as Clinton-Bush official Herman Cohen has repeatedly called for since the U.S.-backed invasion of 1996.
For years now several high visibility Western intelligence organizations, in particular the groups ENOUGH, STAND, Genocide Intervention Network, and the RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO—created and funded by the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress—have lobbied college students and Western governments to action. Legislation backed by these intelligence fronts includes the “LRA Disarmament Act” (Lord’s Resistance Army), the so-called ‘Blood Minerals’ legislation, and the “Violence Against Women Act” (Resolution 1888). The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is blamed for all terrorism in the northern Uganda region, which is awash in oil, thus shielding the organized war crimes of Ugandan President Museveni and his western allies, just as the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are blamed to shield the Kagame terror networks.
William Jefferson Clinton’s former national security insider John Prendergast is the leading cheerleader for these groups, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s help, and with John Podesta, Tom Daschle and Madeleine Albright, behind the scenes. John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS *60 Minutes*’ “Blood Minerals” broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on Nov. 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the International Rescue Committee and so-called “humanitarian” organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grassroots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden Western interests; they also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.
The Western media perpetually broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the Western “news”-consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime. These include diamonds, gold, columbium-tantalite, cobalt, copper, petroleum, germanium, tin, tungsten, palm oil, coffee and chocolate (sold in Whole Foods groceries stores). But the value of Congo’s greatest natural “resource” exceeds the value of all the above resources combined: the biggest western moneymaker in Congo is humanitarian aid, charity and international relief—Save the Children, CARE, UNICEF, UNHCR—a.k.a., and the misery industry.
In mid-March actorvist Ben Affleck launched yet the latest western “humanitarian” enterprise in eastern Congo. Affleck’s ‘humanitarianism’ operates behind the western disinformation campaign that charges Congolese men with using ‘rape as a weapon of war’—an agenda also pushed by Eve Ensler (of *Vagina Monologues* fame)—but fails to address the true perpetrators of crimes, including the many mining, private military, intelligence and other military interests involved in bloodshed and plunder. The ‘rape as a weapon of war’ framework facilitates western ignorance of the true perpetrators of war, including western agents, weapons brokers, mercenary companies, proxy forces, NATO and AFRICOM, and U.S. brokered military hardware (AK-47s, rockets, armored personnel carriers, tanks, grenades, surface-to-air missiles). Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of “rape as a weapon of war” in July 2009 covered up her negotiations with Joseph Kabila regarding the Clinton aligned diamond interests in DRC.
Affleck’s new Congo initiative is funded by Howard Buffet, whose powerful holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has diverse business interests involved in the Great Lakes. Berkshire Hathaway has an 18.2% stake in the*Washington Post* and the Buffet’s agribusinesses in Africa are entrenching Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) crops. The Buffets are tight with Bill and Melinda Gates, all close business partners with the Clinton’s in Rwanda and Uganda. In September 2008, Bill Gates, Howard Buffet, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni met at the United Nations headquarters to launch their GMO partnership “Purchase for Progress” with the UN’s World Food Program. Affleck also has his own private business interests facilitated by the Kagame regime in Kigali, and like Gates and Buffet he comes and goes from Kigali on a private jet. *Washington Post* reportage on Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan is a complete whitewash of western interests.
Rwanda has become the Pentagon’s main base and center of military operations in Africa, and this partnership involves Israel.
On January 28, 2009, sources in Congo reported that Joseph Kabila narrowly survived another assassination attempt, the third this year, with his bodyguard taking the bullet. Meanwhile, violent fighting continued in Equateur province into March, with Kabila coalition troops allegedly arresting and torturing civilians and accusing them of being rebels, including boys as young as 10, and widely committing summary executions. This is a massive violation of international law; AFRICOM and MONUC officials know it is happening; United Nations officials in New York know it is happening;19 and the western press is silent.
In Mid-March, at an exclusive United States Institute for Peace meeting in Washington, DC, AFRICOM spokesman Mark Swayne dismissed any AFRICOM involvement in these covert operations by responding that such reports are “irrelevant.” The USIP has funded pro-Kagame disinformation campaigns since the early 1990’s, shielding U.S. involvement in Central African war crimes and genocide. AFRICOM information campaigns exclusively project an image of U.S. troops being only involved in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.
Curiously, at the same USIP meeting, Mark Swayne reportedly “apologized” for AFRICOM’s use of Ugandans in building the new AFRICOM base under construction in Kisangani, Congo. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni—through his wife and brother Salim Saleh’s organized crime networks and the Ugandan military—are hated for more than a decade of plunder and terror in Congo. The Pentagon’s own web site identifies the elite U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as ‘training’ Congolese troops in Kisangani, DRC, and Swayne did not reveal that the Ugandans are mercenaries likely affiliated to the western mercenary-linked oil companies (Heritage Oil & Gas, Hardman Resources, H Oil) operating in the Lake Albert basin on the DRC-Uganda border.
AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have also been training and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the U.S.-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans in Darfur.
In December 2009, a group of Congolese chiefs sent an open letter to U.S. President Barrack Obama proclaiming a “categorical refusal of your AFRICOM Project in the Congo.”
AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have been ‘training’ and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the US-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans reported to be in Darfur. An unknown number of Rwandan soldiers are also in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are allegations that “peacekeeping” sorties sent to Darfur, Sudan, may actually serve as cover for military personnel and hardware actually bound from Rwanda to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Sudan is exploding as you read this, and the huge Rwandan deployments might be behind new violence. These are Rwandan and Ugandan troops responsible for the most egregious war crimes in all the Great Lakes countries.
On April 4, 2010, rebellion insurgents crossed the Congo river and attacked the provincial capital of Mbandaka. Two MONUC troops were killed, and many more wounded after insurgents attacked the governor’s residence and took the Mbandaka airport. By April 9 the government FARDC forces and MONUC had regained the airport leaving three MONUC troops dead. The story finally broke onto the pages of the BBC, *New York Times*, *Washington Post* and other mainstream press, but all continue to hide deeper interests and distort the realities. The heavily populated city of Mbandaka was described as a “ghost town” and reporting ignored civilian casualties.20 ,21 ,22
1. See Keith Harmon Snow, “Congo’s President Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty? ”*Toward Freedom*, Nov. 13, 2007. [↩ ] 2. For this report these RDF-disguised troops will be designated “RDF” (Rwandan Defense Forces) to separate them from other FARDC troops with Rwandan allegiances. [↩ ] 3. See, e.g., Spain’s Feb. 6, 2008, indictments issued by High Court Judge Andreu Merelles charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group. [↩ ] 4. See, e.g., Davenport and Stam, “What Really Happened in Rwanda? ” *Miller-McCun*e, Oct. 6, 2009. [↩ ] 5. See, e.g., Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Genocide Fabrications ,” *Dissident Voice*, April 13, 2009. [↩ ] 6. See, e.g., Christopher Black, “The Truth About Rwanda,” SaveRwanda.org, December 29, 2010. [↩ ] 7. United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and OCHA. [↩ ] 8. Private investigations, Democratic Republic of Congo, July-August 2006 and February-March 2007. [↩ ] 9. The Elwyn Blattner Groupe plantation holdings are revealed in the 2008 documentary film *Episode III: Enjoy Poverty * by Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens. [↩ ] 10. United Nations: Letter dated Nov. 9, 2009, from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1533 (2004), “leaked” November 2009. [↩ ] 11. Unsigned, “Armed group claims firing at U.N. chopper in DR Congo,” AFP, Nov. 26, 2009. [↩ ] 12. Joe Bavier, “Congo gunmen fire at U.N. helicopter, five wounded,” Reuters, Nov. 26, 2009. [↩ ] 13. Belga, “La Belgique dément tout projet d’envoi de troupes en RDC,” RTBF, Dec. 3, 2009. ["Belgium denies all project of sending of troops to DRC."] [↩ ] 14. Bemba Saolona’s company, Scibe CMMJ, was implicated by the U.N. in smuggling weapons to UNITA during the Angolan Civil War: Johan Peleman, “ The logistics of sanctions busting: the airborne component,” (PDF file), p. 303. [↩ ] 15. In 2006-07, Police Nationale Congolaise were outfitted with high-tech radio communications, funded by the United Nations Development Program, purchased from New Zealand. [↩ ] 16. “DR Congo troops take back town from tribal forces: Govt.” SAPA-AFP, December 14, 2009. [↩ ] 17. “Equateur [DRC]: An extra 500 MONUC troops being deployed to Dongo,” MONUC Press Briefing, December 16,2009. [↩ ] 18. Michael J. Kavanagh, “Thousands Flee Northern Congo Insurgency Inspired by Mystic,” Blomberg.com. [↩ ] 19. Direct communications with high-level United Nations officials in New York confirmed in late January 2010 that UN officials in New York were discussing the Equateur conflict, but that there were (paraphrased) “conflicting interpretations of the facts.” [↩ ] 20. Unsigned, “Troops Retake Mbandaka Airport,” BBC, April 5, 2010. [↩ ] 21. Reuters, “Fighters Kill Peacekeeper in North Congo Attack ,” *Washington Post*, April 4, 2010. [↩ ] 22. Katrina Mansen & David Lewis, “UN Failed Civilians During Rebel Attack ,”*Washington Post*, April 9, 2010. [↩ ]
Keith Harmon Snow is an independent human rights investigator and war correspondent who worked with Survivors Rights International (2005-2006), Genocide Watch (2005-2006) and the United Nations (2006) to document and expose genocide and crimes against humanity in Sudan and Ethiopia. He has worked in 17 countries in Africa, and he recently worked in Afghanistan. Read other articles by Keith , or visit Keith’s website .
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Post Published: 14 April 2010 Author: Kimpavitapress Found in section: Activism , articles , news
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