DRC: Political Activist Calls for International Tribunal On 'Congolese Genocide'

AFP: Kinshasa La Prosperite Online in French 13 Sep 10

[Article By Bent Francis Mboyo Ndombo, Leadership and Change Candidate: "Finally, the Truth About the Congolese Genocide and Plunder Comes to Light"]

Kagame and hIs Tutsi Army RPA

The recognition by the United Nations that crimes were committed in the DRC by the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo [AFDL] and the Rwandan Patriotic Front [FPR], ultimately constitutes a watershed for the Congolese nation; it offers the Congolese people an opportunity to sit down and reflect, so as to demonstrate to the world their political maturity and sense of responsibility as a component of the human race that is strongly united and ready to defend their identity, their dignity and their fatherland, far from squabbles and personal and selfish interests. As in the Chebeya Floribert affair, the Congolese people no longer have the right to display a short memory and to quickly forget everything as usual, as if we were completely thoughtless and afflicted by amnesia.

The Congolese people should henceforth stand on their feet and demand justice, and call on all the guilty parties to render account to the Congolese nation that has been so badly bruised by the atrocities, and to the entire world that was duped about another genocide which was nothing but an invention of the firemen-arsonist perpetrators, whose key actor, the same who misled the entire international community, has finally been identified as the guilty party for all these crimes by the United Nations. The Congolese people as a whole should also know that the West has heard their cries. However, the political regime in Kinshasa, should, on its part, make every effort to ensure respect for Chapter 4, Article 63 of our constitution, which confers on the government the powers to defend the interests of the Congolese nation, instead of betraying it.

In fact, tangible, continuous and tireless actions should be undertaken in an intensive and coordinated manner by Congolese citizens from all walks of life, because easy measures are surely being implemented for radical change in the DRC. Let us draw inspiration from the American Revolution (1775-1783) or the French Revolution (1789-1799), and bear in mind that when a people are united, no tyranny can resist them! It is over time that the great revolutions have borne fruit and brought real change to the world. However, we have to decide as from today to place ourselves in battle order, so as to reverse the culture of impunity, mediocrity and the tendency that some people have of thinking only of themselves and not about the people and the Congolese nation. As part of our strategies, we should set up lobbies, just as the Jews have done, within and outside the country, to serve as counter powers in our country or abroad. Such networks could also turn out to be useful even to the ruling government in the DRC.

Nothing or no one can stop an abused people from attaining self-determination. The Congolese genocide, that claimed over seven million lives, should be presented before all international bodies, until an international tribunal for the DRC is set up. That dream will soon come true. The ruling regime should break its eternal silence in the face of the atrocities visited on our population. Article 3, Part 3 of our constitution that enshrines the sacred character of human life should no longer be violated deliberately and with impunity by the persons who are supposed to protect it, because whether we like it or not, silence from any quarters is assimilated to unspoken complicity.

Moreover, all the detractors of the Congolese people cited in the draft report of the United Nations should know that by attacking the DRC or its interests, they are mortgaging their own future or that of their own peoples and their own countries. Admittedly, we want peace with all our neighbors, but it is necessary to consider that real peace between the DRC and its neighbors can only be effective if justice is fully reestablished and compensation paid. Our ideal is to forge bilateral relations based on trust and mutual respect with all the neighbors of the DRC. In fact, according to the United Nations document, the damage inflicted on the DRC reportedly runs into hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damages. Whether people like it or not, that amount should be considered as money owed the DRC.

Have French Jews and the Jewish community in France, who were despoiled of their property under Petain's Vichy Administration not started receiving restitution through their heirs? That precedent will be upheld! The Congolese government, which is playing the leading role, should file lawsuits claiming compensation for the suffering that its people have undergone and continue to undergo to this day, The question is whether this government will really demonstrate the will to embark on such a task, or whether it will gain the trust and credibility of third parties as to its transparent management of the compensation to be granted. Nonetheless, our government's silence or reservations on this issue prompt us to think otherwise.

However, according to the UN report and considering the fact that some of our leaders are involved in the matter, one may further doubt the willingness of our government to take legal action to claim what is due and what should be recovered for the Congolese people, for it is clearly difficult for this government to be both judge and contender in such a case. However, I would like to tell the Congolese people that the amounts owed could actually be paid to the Congolese nation if only the Congolese people and all Congolese associations in the Diaspora (United States, London, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Canada, France, Belgium, Japan and other countries) and those in the country file lawsuits, with sworn Congolese, American, Belgian lawyers...and others, demanding compensation for the damages suffered. Bear in mind that an association governed by American or French law (or that of any other country) has the right to brief counsel and file a lawsuit before the courts on a matter that falls within the remit of the association. That is why a lawsuit will be initiated by sons of this country under the banner of an association, before the American courts to ensure that the suspected perpetrators of the serious crimes against humanity, looting, rape and abuse of the Congolese people are arrested, tried and convicted.

The draft UN report is an international exhibit; it reveals what we already know on the public or hidden enemies of the DRC. In fact, the Congolese people should demand that the traitors to the nation as identified in the UN report, and who live in Congo, be stripped of their civic and political rights and any elective office in the DRC. Anyone found guilty in this serious issue should not be allowed to stand for elections or to represent the people or even to hope to exercise a political career in the DRC, given the crimes that they have committed against the same people. We should therefore refuse to see these assassins and plunderers of the Congolese people going around campaigning for the presidential and legislative elections (as MPs or Senators) or even for the council elections or at the level of chiefdoms or villages, as long as they have not been tried and convicted for high treason against the Congolese nation.

The officials of our country (the DRC) should also approve the findings of the investigations conducted by the UN, and they would thus be classified in the group of nationalists who love and defend their country, the DRC. They should also fight against the culture of impunity that has become entrenched in the DRC. Congolese leadership should be restored. The sense of responsibility should be based on faultless ethical values. In Proverbs 24:24, the Bible says: "Whoever says to the guilty, 'You are innocent'--peoples will curse him and nations denounce him." Let us do everything in our power to remain "true." That is why we denounce the culture of negative compromise and betrayal that has lasted for so long, and which consists in preserving personal interests at the expense of the general interest; it is the culture upheld by our former African village chiefs, who sold their brothers into slavery for bits of soap, salt a nd hunting powder. That is why we also denounce the culture of betrayal that "sold off" Patrice Emery Lumumba because he had an unselfish vision of selflessness and the collective good of the Congolese people. That is why we are saying loud and clear that all Congolese "collaborators" who continue to side with the enemies of our people will also be held responsible before that brave people and before history which, even after 200 years, should remain merciless towards these persons who embraced he wrong side of history. Their crimes should not come under the statute of limitations.

To conclude, we should bear in mind that the UN draft report describes in a serious and detailed manner, atrocities bearing on ethnic cleansing, extermination of a part of our country's population between 1993 and 2003 and which continues with impunity within our country. The United Nations and the entire world have admittedly taken some time to investigate these macabre crimes, and they have ended up identifying the perpetrators and sponsors of these horrible massacres described today as crimes against humanity and again as the "Congolese genocide."