Amendment imposing an asset freeze and visa ban on those supporting the M23 added to Defense Authorization bill
WASHINGTON – The United States Senate unanimously passed an
amendment Thursday night imposing sanctions on those providing
financial, material, or technological support to the M23 rebel group in
the Democratic Republic of Congo. Amendment 3199 to the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) was introduced by Senators Dick Durbin
(D-Ill.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), John Boozman
(R-Ark.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).
“M23 has demonstrated an unconscionable disregard for human life and
Congo's territorial integrity and seems determined to sink central
Africa in another deadly, devastating war that could set the region back
a generation,” Senator Coons said. “The actions of M23 rebels, as well
as those who aid and abet the M23, are deplorable and must be stopped
immediately. These sanctions are designed to stop the illicit and
dangerous support the M23 is receiving from those seeking to destabilize
the region. I applaud Senator Durbin for taking the lead on this
amendment, and am pleased the Senate spoke with one voice in unanimously
supporting its passage.” Senator Coons is chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs.
“The civil war in eastern Congo is the most lethal conflict since the
Second World War and its barbarism defies description,” Senator Durbin
said. “Last week, a well-armed rebel forces occupied the city of Goma
and have set their sights on Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. The rebels,
known for brutal violence and led by known war criminals, have the
potential to destabilize the entire nation. As the violence continues
to escalate, it is clear that the rebels are benefitting from strategic
and material support from outside forces. This amendment freezes the
assets and implements a visa ban for any person providing such troubling
support. Our goal is to hasten an end to the violence by starving the
rebels of their key lines of support.” Senator Durbin is a member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs.
Eastern Congo has been plagued by civil war for over the better part
of two decades. Fighting for control of the region’s vast mineral
resources, the fighting has killed millions and subjected innocent
civilians to unspeakable levels of violence, include rape as a weapon of
war. Known as the “Rape Capital of the World,” an estimated 1,000
women assaulted every day – nearly 12 percent of all women in Congo. The
conflict is also marred by the use of child soldiers and the bloody and
brutal violence inflicted on civilian populations.
M23 is a rebel group comprised largely of defectors from the
Congolese army. The group seized the eastern city of Goma in the
Democratic Republic of Congo last week and, despite reports of a planned
withdrawal yesterday, still occupies the important trading city.
According to a report by the U.N. Group of Experts, the group is
reported to be receiving significant assistance from neighboring Rwanda.
Last week, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling on
M23 to disarm, disband, and return control of Goma to the Congolese
government, and urging nations to impose sanctions on M23 and its
supporters. On Monday, the African Union said it was considering
deploying an international force from Tanzania to oversee the withdrawal
of M23.
The Democratic Republic of Congo was founded in 2003 at the
conclusion of Second Congo War — a five-year multi-lateral conflict
involving eight nations and two-dozen militia groups. The war and
lingering conflicts are reported to have claimed the lives of 5.4
million people. It was the deadliest war in modern African history.
Bill Clinton mastermind Holocaust In Congo, Susan Rice was one of his field soldiers during this time as well!!!
Why I said We must stop get involved about so called Israel and
Palestine issues we must deal with our issues??? Here's the quote from
Dr. John Henrik Clarke "Arabs always act as though they are not in
Africa. Once when I was visiting Egypt, I told my Egyptian Arab host to
get a cab ready for the next morning that I was going to Kenya. So you
are going to Africa to visit your people? We got no diseases here, why
are you leaving us?" the host asked. Even across the Red Sea, in Mecca,
Saudi Arabia, blacks are treated worse than animals, after using their
life´s savings to go there on pilgrimage. In Egypt, Tunisia,
Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Mauritania and the
rest of the Arab world, Africans are treated as the scum of the earth.
They are second-class citizens at the very best in their own Land.
Blacks in these countries cannot aspire to positions of respect or
authority. There are hardly Africans in high government positions in
Arab governed African countries. Like Brazil, which is just as racially
cruel against their blacknatives, there is no legislation favouring
slavery (except in Mauritania). It is simply a way of life that's all.
Blacks do not really exist or at best are not humans.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPldzhAKgk
inShare12America's potential next secretary of state was involved in a
major policy shift in Washington's approach toward Africa. But was it a
positive one?
Allison Joyce/Reuters
On
November 14, President Obama vigorously defended U.N. ambassador
Susan Rice during a press conference in the White House's Rose Garden, perhaps signaling
that he was unworried by the possibility of a drawn-out battle with Republicans
looking to block Rice's possible nomination as secretary of state. Rice, who
has been criticized for her promoting a now-disproven explanation for the
deadly attack on an American diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, apparently
has the full support of the president that could nominate her for the highest
diplomatic position in the land.
Things
are not quite as amicable at U.N. headquarters. As the conflict
in the Eastern DRC escalated,
and as two U.N. reports provided extensive evidence of official Rwandan and
Ugandan support for the M23 rebel group, Rice's
delegation blocked any mention of the conflict's most important state
actors in a Security Council statement. And in June, the U.S. attempted
to delay the release of a UN Group of Experts report alleging ties between Rwanda
and M23.
Peter
Rosenblum, a respected human rights lawyer and professor at Columbia Law
School, says that the U.S.'s reticence in singling out state actors is
significant, especially at the U.N. "It shows [Rice] is willing to expend
political capital to cast something of a shield over Rwanda and Uganda," he
says. "These are the things that in diplomatic settings, they are remarked
upon. People see that the U.S. is still there defending the leaders of these
countries at a time when many of their other closest allies have just grown
sort of increasingly weary and dismayed."
Sarah
Margon of Human Rights Watch agrees that the U.S. should be more active in
naming potential obstacles in resolving the eastern DRC conflict. "It's
unacceptable for Rwanda to be violating UN Security Council resolutions and meddling
in international peace and security," she says. "I think the U.S. government
has a very powerful voice and they need to use it."
For
some, Rice embodies a period in American policy in which U.S. influence was not
put to particularly effective use in Africa. Rice served as Assistant Secretary
of State for African Affairs during Bill Clinton's second term as president. As
Rosenblum explained in a 2002 article in Current
History [$], the second Clinton administration began with a full-fledged
pivot to Africa, with Madeline Albright undertaking a high-profile visit to the
continent early in her tenure as secretary of state. It was a substantive trip -- Albright
gathered some of Africa's most dynamic newly-installed heads of state in
Entebbe and Addis Ababa, where she articulated America's intention to change
its relationship with the continent.
But
Rosenblum explains that this approach meant embracing now-problematic leaders
like Rwanda's Paul Kagame, Ethiopia's
Meles Zenawi, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, and, to a lesser extent, DRC's
Laurent Kabila and Eritrea's Isais Afewerki. Under Clinton's Africa policy,
these leaders -- all of whom were former rebels who had taken power through
violent means -- would serve as a vanguard for the social and political transformation
of the continent.Above all, they
would
be treated as normal allies of the United States, regarded as equal
partners
and autonomous actors, rather than countries that were only important
insomuch
as they could be exploited or ignored. Redefining and strengthening
Washington's relationship to Africa was a laudable aim that arguably
presaged the much greater degree of engagement that followed under
George W. Bush and Obama.
Yet Rosenblum believes Rice helped usher
in a policy that counted
very few successes, even if he says that he has been "very impressed"
with her tenure as UN ambassador. "Rice was a major force in this new,
very personalized
engagement with a group of leaders who had come to power through
military means
but who represented, for the Clinton policy people, something new and
admirable," he says. "The group they bonded to included leaders who were
eventually at war with each other within a period of two or three
years." By the end
of Clinton's presidency, Afewerki and Zenawi had fought a war that
killed
between 70,000 and 100,000 people; Kagame and Museveni fought Kabila in
the
eastern DRC, and then turned their guns on each other.Many, including the author and former U.N.
investigator Jason Stearns, believe that Clinton's policy enabled
both Rwandan and Ugandan adventurism in Eastern Congo, prolonging a conflict
that still reverberates.
Perhaps
more jarring is this
anecdote in an essay by Howard French in the New York Review
of Books that directly relates to Rice:
In allowing the Rwandan invasion
of Zaire, the United States had two very different goals. The most immediate
was the clearing of over one million Hutu refugees from U.N. camps near the
Rwandan border, which had become bases for vengeful elements of the defeated
Hutu army and Interahamwe militia, the agents of the Rwandan genocide. In [Gerard]
Prunier's telling:
"When Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs Susan Rice came back from her first trip to the Great Lakes
region [of East Africa], a member of her staff said, 'Museveni [of Uganda] and
Kagame agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes is the danger of a
resurgence of genocide and they know how to deal with that. The only thing we
[i.e., the U.S.] have to do is look the other way.'"
The gist of Prunier's anecdote is correct,
except that participants have confirmed to me that it was Rice herself who
spoke these words.
Was
this actually a reflection of policy -- did the U.S. really expect
nothing of
their allies on the human rights front? This is debatable, but it is
clear that
the U.S. considered many of the biggest problems in the region to
emanate from Kinshasa. Jendayi Frazer, who held the assistant secretary
for African affairs
position during George W. Bush's second term, notes that "the Clinton
administration
had become very antagonistic with the Congolese government -- for many
good
reasons, but nevertheless, they had become very antagonistic."
Laurent
Kabila, whom the Clinton administration had pressured in response to massacres
of Hutu refugees in the eastern Congo in the years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide,
was assassinated just days before George W. Bush's inauguration in 2001.
Frazer says that the Bush administration used the elevation of his son Joseph
to the presidency as an opening for pursuing a regional peace agreement, which
was eventually signed in 2003. Because of the change in leadership, "we were
able to position ourselves in a more neutral fashion vis-a-vis Congo and Rwanda
and Uganda and not be painted as being on one side or another," she said. She emphasized
that this is not intended as a criticism of Clinton's policy, and adds that
there is nothing in Rice's record that she considers disqualifying for
secretary of state.
Frazer
was, however, critical of the Obama administration's current approach in Central
Africa. She says the U.S. could have pushed for MONUSCO, the U.N. peacekeeping
force based in the eastern DRC, to take a more active role in the conflict, or
it could have taken the lead on figuring out how or whether a multinational force
agreed toby regional governments in
July would be deployed. "I think the Obama team has been anemic in its Africa
policy," she said. "And that is also expressed in the DRC and the Great Lakes
region. They basically haven't been present. They haven't shaped events to the
point where these problems that they're seeing today wouldn't be there."
Frazer notes that Rice hasn't even been officially nominated yet. Because
Obama has strongly implied that she might
be nominated without officially committing to her as his choice for the next
secretary of state, Rice's candidacy has been debated among partisans and
pundits rather than by the members of the Senate who have to confirm her. "Susan
Rice finds herself getting vetted in public in the worst way," Frazer says, "without
even the benefit of a nomination."
* * *
The
past four years of American policy in Africa, and the larger tendency
toward trusting, cooperating with, and even shielding troublesome
governments, cannot
be pinned on Rice alone. And Clinton,
Albright and Rice were merely pursuing a policy that made sense at the
time,
and that might still make sense today. Since the outbreak of the
conflict in
the mid-1990s, American policymakers have assumed that it was impossible
to make
peace in the eastern Congo without the cooperation of Museveni and
Kagame, especially
given both Uganda and Rwanda's legitimate national security interests in
the region
(a heroes-and-villains-type dichotomy in a conflict as complex as the
eastern
DRC's would be counterproductive in any event). Frazer rejects the idea
that Clinton
should not have closely engaged with these governments. "I think the
Clinton administration
tried to structure regional approaches to address the peace and security
challenges in Africa," she said. "There are times where it advances
things, and
there are times where it doesn't advance things as much as we like."
The real-world results of any policy are inherently unknowable,
especially in a situation as dizzying as the eastern DRC in the late
1990s. This uncertainty should hardly exempt policymakers from
accountability, and
according to Rosenblum's article, it was unclear whether Rice really
understood
the consequences of the U.S.'s close relationship with Kagame, or the
impact of
running interference for a government that might have been working
against
regional stability and peace:
On
September 15 [1998], Susan Rice addressed the growing perception of complicity
in testimony before the Congress. "Mr. Chairman, let me be clear: the United
States in no way supported, encouraged, or condoned the intervention of Rwandan
or Ugandan forces in the Congo, as some have suggested. This is a specious and
ridiculous accusation that I want to lay to rest once and for all." But these
statements did little good. Nearly four years later, an official in the new
Colin Powell State Department told me, the United States had gotten to the point
where the French 'no longer believe that the United States is funding the war.' But that was about it.
Has anything changed since the early days of the 1998 crisis? Back then, Rosenblum notes, "The official State
Department statements ... show[ed] a new concern for human rights problems in Congo balanced
against tepid anti-war language." Today, the weeks since the escalation of the M23 crisis have played out
in an eerily similar fashion. On November 20 and 21, 2012, State
Department spokespeople wove their way through questions about Rwanda's role in
the M23 crisis, and made an apparently conscious effort to avoid singling out
Kagame's government. And there's the
Security Council statement on the escalating crisis, which obliquely calls for "an
end to any and all outside support" without saying whose support, exactly.
In 1998, the U.S. government believed it could use its existing close relations with Kagame's government to push
for a negotiated solution. There was none to be had for another three years,
and that was only after the leadership of the United States and the Congo had
changed. Despite the failure of this strategy, this seems to be the Obama
administration's plan of action today. The wars are broadly similar. The U.S.
policy approach to ending them is similar. And at least one of the people at
heart of American diplomacy in Africa is the same -- a gifted and respected diplomat
who might be the U.S.'s next secretary of state.
Le 10 novembre dernier, la jeune rwandaise Alice Muhirwa a été lauréate du prix Jeunesse engagée
édition 2012. Ce prix à l’initiative de la section Canada du Réseau
international des Femmes pour la Démocratie e la Paix (RifDP) est remis
tous les ans à un jeune qui se distingue par son action et son
engagement en faveur de la paix et de la démocratie. C’est lors de son
l’activité annuelle « La relève engagée » avec, cette fois-ci, comme
thème « Soyons maîtres de notre destin » que le prix a été remis à Alice
Muhirwa.
Jambonews s’est entretenu avec la lauréate. Elle nous explique les
raisons de son engagement au Rwanda, dresse un état des lieux sur
l’état actuel de la démocratie au Rwanda, et nous partage son point de
vue sur la place de la jeunesse dans la construction du leadership de
demain et ses espoirs pour le Rwanda.
Alice Muhirwa
Qui est Alice Muhirwa?
Je m’appelle Alice Muhirwa, j’ai 31 ans, je suis rwandaise, mère de deux enfants et trésorière du parti FDU-INKINGI.
Tu as été lauréate du prix » Jeunesse engagée » décerné par
le Réseau international des Femmes pour la Démocratie (RiFDP).
Qu’est-ce que ça représente pour toi ?
Premièrement, je remercie le Réseau international des Femmes pour
la Démocratie et la Paix pour ce prix, pour les activités et leur
engagement en faveur de la démocratie. Les mots ne suffisent pas pour
exprimer ma gratitude. Ce prix est une reconnaissance pour les jeunes,
un encouragement pour continuer à être engagé dans la résolution des
problématiques du pays. Ça représente pour moi la reconnaissance du
courage individuel ou collectif qui a un impact positif sur la
communauté notamment en termes de « processus de démocratisation ». Je
préfère parler de processus parce que ce n’est pas encore atteint. Nous
avons encore beaucoup de choses à faire et des buts à atteindre.
Tu milites en faveur de la promotion de la femme rwandaise
et tu es également engagée au sein du parti d’oppositionFDU-Inkingi au
Rwanda; d’où te viens ce sens de l’engagement?
Cela
me vient de mes propres valeurs : confiance, excellence, intégrité et
compassion. Je pense que la femme a la même capacité que l’homme à
exceller dans n’importe quelle situation. Je milite pour l’émancipation
de la femme et je compare le rôle de celle-ci à celui que joue l’élite
dans le processus de développement et de transformation d’un pays. Le
degré d’émancipation de la femme accélère ou freine l’atteinte des
objectifs du millénaire en matière de développement. La réussite des
objectifs nationaux demeurera une utopie si les femmes elles-mêmes
minimisent l’impact de leur rôle et s’il n’y a pas un changement des
mœurs. Mon engagement au sein des FDU-INKINGI va de pair avec mes
convictions politiques. Je crois qu’un pays dit développé est celui
dont les valeurs mènent au bien-être collectif, chacun participe au
progrès. J’accorde une grande valeur à la philosophie politique qui
vise à inclure l’égalité des chances, la liberté d’expression et la
démocratie dans la volonté politique. On ne peut pas dire qu’il y a la loi quand il n’y a pas de
liberté d’expression ; quand les gens ne peuvent pas exercer librement
leur droit de vote, d’association, de manifestation et de critique de
l’action gouvernementale et quand la justice est utilisée pour faire
taire les voix divergentes.
Est-ce facile pour les jeunes de s’engager en politique au Rwanda ?
Comment serait-il facile pour les jeunes quand c’est déjà assez
difficile pour leurs aînés ? L’opposition est confrontée à de sérieuses
menaces : Un pays qui a peur de demander des comptes au président
lorsque celui-ci change d’orientation politique, imaginez ce qu’il peut
faire à un simple citoyen motivé par le changement. Cette cause va bien au-delà de notre parti, nous avons des
raisons de demander une ouverture de l’espace politique. L’expérience
des autres pays démocratiques montre que le dialogue avec les
différents acteurs de la société et un débat politique libre permettent
l’accomplissement de la vision de la nation et la prospérité.
Autrement, Ce sont des conflits entre peuple, le sentiment et
l’expression du rejet qui demeurent sans fin.
Face aux arrestations quotidiennes d’opposants et de journalistes, est-ce que tu penses à arrêter ton combat ?
Nous n’arrêterons pas notre combat tant que l’objectif ne sera
pas atteint, nous avons besoin de changement et nous agissons pour cela.
Peu importe ce qui se passera, nous continuerons à lutter et nous
atteindrons notre but. C’est le combat d’une génération, nous devons
engager des actions responsables afin de transmettre un héritage positif
aux générations futures. Personne n’est super puissant, personne n’a le
droit d’opprimer les autres et personne n’est au-dessus de la loi.
Nous sommes tous égaux. Nous avons été témoins des actions engagées par les peuples
des pays arabes pour amorcer les changements qu’ils voulaient. La
démocratie n’est jamais offerte ; elle ne demeure pas pour autant un
rêve. La démocratie apportera le changement. On ne peut pas emprisonner
toute une nation.
Amnesty International et Human Rights Watch critiquent le
Rwanda à cause de sa politique répressive contre l’opposition. Comment
se manifeste cette répression au quotidien ?
Quand un pays dispose de plusieurs centres de détention illégaux
et de services de renseignement à travers tout le territoire, on est en
droit de se demander à quoi cela peut bien servir. C’est un arsenal
répressif contre l’opposition au même titre que la chasse à l’homme,
l’intimidation, le harcèlement, la détention, la torture, l’infiltration
des partis d’opposition……même durant le procès de notre présidente, les
co-accusés ont témoigné de ces détentions illégales, des
interrogatoires sans assistance juridique. Cet arsenal n’est pas seulement réservé à l’opposition ; il est
utilisé contre les couches populaires qui essaient de survivre grâce au
petit commerce de rue.
A quelles difficultés sont confrontées les militants et les sympathisants de l’opposition ?
Ils sont poursuivis dans le cadre d’une chasse à l’homme,
intimidés, licenciés de leur travail, forcés à s’exiler, condamnés au
silence, emprisonnés pour de longues années et battus.
Sur les campus, est ce que les étudiants parlent librement de politique ?
Si le parlement national ne peut pas exprimer librement la
volonté du peuple, imaginez ce que ça peut être pour les étudiants sur
les campus. Les murs des toilettes et les plateformes internet
restent les seuls lieux où les étudiants s’expriment derrière des
pseudonymes. Dans les universités, il n’y a jamais de débat politique
même entre étudiants. Les seules discussions politiques encouragées sont
celles qui sont favorables au parti actuellement au pouvoir (RPF/FPR).
Huit leaders d’opposition dont votre présidente Mme Victoire
Ingabire sont détenus dans des prisons de haute sécurité. Dans quelles
conditions sont-ils détenus ?
Je ne peux pas décrire les conditions de détention de tous ces
leaders ; ils ne sont pas seulement 8. Aujourd’hui, j’ai seulement le
contact avec Mme Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza ; beaucoup d’autres leaders
ont été transférés à la prison de Mpanga qui est à 4 heures de route de
Kigali. L’objectif est toujours le même : isoler les leaders de la
communauté et décourager les sympathisants d’aller les visiter et les
soutenir. Concernant Victoire, elle est détenue dans une cellule
individuelle, elle n’a pas le droit de participer aux activités
collectives telles que le sport, les réunions. Sa famille des Pays-Bas
n’a jamais été autorisée à lui rendre visite depuis qu’elle est en
détention.
En tant que trésorière du parti FDU, tu as fréquenté de
manière quotidienne Victoire Ingabire, même depuis qu’elle est en
prison, comment a t-elle accueilli sa condamnation? Comment vit-elle la
situation depuis cette condamnation? Garde t-elle le moral?
Elle est plus que jamais convaincue de la justesse de son combat.
C’est une femme forte de caractère et elle garde toujours le même
courage qu’elle avait en atterrissant à l’aéroport de Kigali en 2010. Ce
procès a été saboté afin de la retirer de la scène politique. C’est
parce qu’elle se sait innocente, qu’elle reste forte.
Récemment, le président du Sénégal Macky Sall déclarait: »
Il faut absolument donner un statut à l’opposition et ses droits dans la
république ». Penses-tu que cette idée est arrivée également dans la
classe politique rwandaise ?
Normalement dans un pays, l’opposition est une force par son
essence. Le rôle des partis d’opposition est d’engager un mouvement.
Lorsque des gens pensent de la même manière, il est très facile
d’échouer mais différents points de vue permettent d’obtenir différentes
objections, stratégies et différentes approches de gestion qui
maximisent les possibilités de réussite. Avoir une culture de la
similarité et de l’homogénéité est le plus court chemin vers l’échec. La
diversité et la pluralité d’opinions constituent des fondations solides
d’un pays. La faiblesse de beaucoup de leaders africains est de considérer
l’opposition comme un ennemi du pays, de se définir comme patriotes
parce qu’ils ont conquis le pouvoir par les armes et de penser que la
démocratie n’aurait pas une valeur importante comme l’économie et le
bien-être des citoyens.
Penses-tu que les Rwandais sont prêts et aspirent au changement ?
Bien-sûr qu’ils aspirent au changement et nous sommes venus
répondre à leur volonté. Nous voulons mettre fin à ce sentiment de peur,
à l’autocensure de la population. La population a besoin de s’exprimer,
de participer au processus de décision, d’être informée de leurs droits
et de pouvoir demander des comptes. Récemment, il y a eu une évaluation
des différentes agences gouvernementales et on a découvert qu’une
quantité importante de fonds avait été mal gérée ou juste détournée
mais justice n’a pas encore été faite et ce sont les Rwandais qui
devront payer par le biais de la hausse des impôts. Les gens veulent du
changement, ils veulent des leaders responsables et crédibles dans la
gestion des biens de l’Etat, les relations internationales et
l’implication des citoyens dans le développement de leur pays.
Le 19 octobre 2012, Paul Kagame exhortait les jeunes
rwandais à « être les leaders d’aujourd’hui, viser haut et prendre le
contrôle de leur destin ». Est-ce que le cadre politique actuel permet
aux jeunes rwandais d’être maitres de leur destin politique et d’être
des leaders du changement politique ?
Bien-sûr que non ! L’absence de liberté d’expression et la
fermeture de l’espace politique expliquent cette incapacité des jeunes
rwandais à être maîtres de leur destin politique et être des leaders du
changement. La seule manière de travailler ici est d’épouser les idées
véhiculées par les chaînes d’informations qui sont toutes contrôlées par
le Front Patriotique Rwandais. S’l y avait des sites d’information
libres comme ils le prétendent, le système politique rwandais ne serait
pas comparable à celui qui prévaut à Singapour. C’est le principe de
Lee Kua yew (le développement d’abord) qui domine. Cela se traduit par
le fait qu’une poignée d’individus décide du bien-être des millions
d’individus. C’est bien d’avoir et de mettre en place une vision mais c’est
également important que les citoyens sachent le bien-fondé de cette
vision. Il faut également créer un environnement favorable, permettant
aux citoyens d’accomplir cette vision ; c’est le rôle d’un leader
innovant. On ne dirige pas un peuple à l’aveugle en espérant une
réussite au final ; c’est ce qui a fait l’échec de certains pays à
atteindre leur vision ou à maintenir le cap sans changer de direction,
de stratégie. Normalement, la vision d’un pays ne devrait pas changer au rythme
des élections présidentielles, mais ici en Afrique chaque présidence
apporte sa propre vision. Au final, il n’y a pas de cohérence et on se
retrouve au bout de dix ans à tourner en rond. Je pense que la vision d’un pays devrait figurer dans les
chapitres de la constitution, elle serait inchangeable parce qu’elle
aurait été votée par les citoyens. Le parlement doit évaluer le mandat
de l’exécutif en se basant sur la vision. Ici, le leadership de
l’exécutif façonne la vision, définit et évalue les mandats. Un bon
leadership donne de la valeur à chaque détail de la volonté du citoyen
As-tu un dernier mot à adresser à la jeunesse rwandaise de l’étranger ?
Merci à tous ceux qui s’engagent pour le Rwanda et qui agissent
pour le changement qu’ils veulent voir. J’encourage ceux qui hésitent
encore à chercher dans quels domaines ils excellent et à utiliser leurs
compétences pour s’impliquer dans la recherche de solutions pour le
développement du pays. Nous sommes une force dynamique avec différents
talents ; nous sommes responsables de ce qui se passe maintenant et nous
devrons assumer cet héritage. Agissons de sorte que nos actions
reflètent nos idéaux pour un héritage démocratique réussi.
On se souvient de la lettre à la jeunesse où l’écrivain
français Emile Zola lança un appel qui resta célèbre : « ô jeunesse,
jeunesse ! Je t’en supplie, songe à la grande besogne qui t’attend. Tu
es l’ouvrière future, tu vas jeter les assises de ce siècle prochain,
qui nous en avons la foi profonde, résoudra les problèmes de vérité et
d’équité posés par le siècle finissant ».
U.S.
Senator Coons was on "ANDREA MITCHELL" today on MSNBC and condemned
M23's attack on Goma and called for sanctions and deplored the 5 million
Congolese killed in earlier wars. His have been the strongest remarks
so far. He also earlier released a very strong statement which is below.
People should call his office and thank him for "Doing The Right Thing"
by the women and children of Congo....unless many others whom we know
CALL SENATOR COONS (202) 224-5042 and THANK HIM
Statement from Senator Coons on the unrest in Eastern Congo
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), chair of the Senate
Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, issued the following
statement on Wednesday expressing deep concern about developments in
Eastern Congo, including the M23 takeover of the city of Goma.
“The unconscionable security and humanitarian crisis unfolding in
Eastern Congo, including the M23’s takeover of Goma, is of deep concern
to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa. I join the
U.N. Security Council in strongly condemning the M23 for their
deplorable attacks on women, children, peacekeepers and humanitarian
workers and in calling on the M23 to immediately stop all hostilities
and withdraw from Goma. I also call on the M23 to allow for immediate
humanitarian access and to facilitate the peaceful evacuation of
civilians and humanitarian workers. The actions of the M23 represent a
clear violation of international law and an affront to the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council calling on the M23
to disarm, disband and return control of Goma to the Congolese
government, as well as calling for additional sanctions on M23’s
leaders, reflects the global understanding that the campaign of violence
perpetrated by the M23 against the Congolese people must come to an
immediate end. It is now up to Council and U.N. member states to impose
those sanctions swiftly and comprehensively in order to increase
pressure on the M23 to restore government control of Goma and stabilize
the region. It is my hope that regional and international leaders will
engage in multilateral efforts to encourage a sustainable resolution to
this crisis as soon as possible.”
From the RWANDA NKUNDA NEWS
Are you a member of the Anglican Mission in America? Are you
aware of Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda? Have you donated to one of his many
causes? If so, there is a reason you should be worried.
PAUL KAGAME AND BISHOP RUCYAHANA
It is very rare that a bishop gets mentioned by an important
United Nation report for funding a murderous rebel group. But this is Rwanda where
there is a long history of the church being used to serve sinister political agendas.
Rucyahana has similarly failed to live up to expectations
and has betrayed the powerless—the very people he ought to support.
Thus, while this might come to you as a surprise, to many Rwandans
it is not. The history of the church in Rwanda is mired with the blood of the
innocent. In 1994, the Hutu church leaders joined hands with the government to
terminate a section of the Rwandan society. History continues to repeat.
For all the reconciliation talk, Dr. Philip Cantrell's work
has shown that Rucyahana and the leadership of the Anglican church of Rwanda have
continued to move toward an extremist Tutsi ideology—which believes that full control
of all state power is necessary for their survival. In the process, the church has
been relegated to an instrument for Tutsi power propaganda.
However, Rucyahana is accused of much more. The latest UN
report categorically identifies the bishop as one of the financiers of M23, a
notorious Rwanda-backed Tutsi rebel that is blamed for much of the havoc in
Eastern Congo. Rucyahana is also identified as a top leader in the Rwandan
ruling party.
For more than a decade now, Rwanda’s ruling regime has participated
in the open plunder of the Congo leaving behind a trail of innocent blood.
About 5 million people have died in the process and its eastern region—close to
Rwandan borders has never fully recovered. The suffering has been even more
devastating for children and women—the region has been called the rape capital
of the world!
So how does such a respected bishop who is supposed to be
enjoying a quiet retirement at home with his grandchildren get involved in such
carnage? This is a question that is difficult to answer and would require a
serious analysis of human nature. It is difficult to understand the motivations
that lead people into such blatant evil.
To be fair, Rucyahana boasts a number of impressive accomplishments
as well. For instance, he has built the Sonrise Academy, which is one of the
leading educational towers in Rwanda. It is also through him that Rwanda has
attracted a lot of direct investments—some of which has no doubt benefited the
people.
Most significantly, Rucyahana has been the link between mega-church
leader Rick Warren and the Rwandan government. Pastor Warren, on his part, has promised
to make Rwanda the first “purpose-driven” nation.
It is not clear whether Warren fully understands what he got
himself into or whether some of his money has been channeled to support M23
What we know for sure is that Warren continues to be an
active supporter of the Rwandan dictator, Paul Kagame, having conferred to him
his annual International Medal of Peace. Of course, the story cannot get any more
cynical! Warren also has a Rwandan passport, which was given to him some two
years ago.
Regardless of what path the members of the Anglican mission
in America will take, it is imperative for them to become aware of what kind of
people they are supporting in Rwanda. They should also try to get informed on
the escalating humanitarian situation in the Congo where the M23 is reportedly conducting
a revenge slaughter against local leaders who refused to support them.
In this interconnected world, there is no reason for lending
blind support to any criminal regardless of their credentials. Indeed,
Rucyahana's accomplishments mean nothing if the murder of millions of
people is the price to pay.
Lastly, it is important,
when helping, to keep in mind of how our aid will affect people. In this sad but
yet to be finished episode, your money might be causing murder, pillaging and
rape of the Congolese nation.
Around 3AM, I woke up to unusual calls from Rwanda. "The FDLR has attacked and Gisenyi is evacuating" the callers said.
A few minutes later, I logged into my Twitter account to seeking more
verification on this disturbing brief. In this day and age, if news is
not on Twitter then it might not exist. Indeed, I noticed that a number
of Twitter accounts had already started circulating it. What seemed
strange is that most of these Twitter accounts seemed to be the usual
suspects whose work is to regurgitate Rwanda's official propaganda. A
simple search using the #FDLR hashtag will reveal them!
However, several western journalists seemed to have bought the story--at
least initially. In fact, Phili Gourevitch might have been the first to
break the story. Below is a screenshot from his timeline some nine
hours ago.
At this point, I have no doubt that shots were fired around
Rwanda-Kibumba border. It is also true, as my sources allege, that
several Rwandans fled the areas of Bugeshi. The villagers also continue
to claim that the FDLR are the main attackers. But is there truth to
this?
FDLR is a rebel group in eastern Congo whose fighting elements include
some of the brutes who participated in the Rwandan genocide. However, according to Amnesty International,
the majority of its fighters are said to be too young to have
participated in the genocide. In other words, it is one among many rebel
groups in the region whose strategy seldom match their said objectives.
So why would FDLR attack Rwanda at this time? Is it even logistically feasible?
Without scrutiny, the fog of war tends to allow many rumors to pass as
truth. However, just a little brain exercise would show that this FDLR
attacks were actually stage managed by Rwanda. There are several reasons
behind my conclusion.
First, the attackers (Rwanda says close to 200 of them) are said to have
originated from Kibumba. The entire territory from Rutshuru to Goma is
under the direct control of the Rwandan aided M23 rebel group. Moreover,
since the M23 rebellion started, journalists have noted that Rwanda
reinforced deployments along its border with DRC. It would be suicidal
and strategically stupid for 200 rebels to risk entering the Rwandan
territory.
And even if they did, what would be the goal of sending in 200 troops to
face the super equipped Rwandan army? Rwandan government sources claim
that the "enemy was quickly liquidated?" Hardly unpredictable. The rest
of the rebels are said to have taken to the heels.
Everything does read like a well choreographed script. An enemy attacks
Rwanda to prove to the international community that Rwanda has genuine
security interests in DRC. This, they hope, will spin international
opinion to their favor. But can anyone fall for such an amateurism ploy?
Second, why would the FDLR attack at this time? Any observer knows that
FDLR hasn't launched any attacks on Rwandan territory for the last ten
years. The reason is, in part, because they lack the capacity to do
that. They also seem to believe that fighting against Rwanda would cause
so much of their kins (red: Hutu) to die. Hence, their strategy has
been to stay in the DRC forests where we are told they deal primarily in
the sell of Marijuana.
Third, the FDLR does not have a good working relationship with Joseph
Kabila's government. They believe Kabila betrayed them by allowing
Rwandan special forces to come in hunting for them. Moreover, the
Congolese army has been launching attacks against them for several years
now. Why would they agree to cooperate with Kabila? Who cooperates with
someone who wants them dead? This seems very unlikely.
In short, Rwanda is trying to resurrect an old script that has, in the
past, worked in their favor. The world tends to see the conflict as a
battle between good and evil. The Hutu forces, having participated in
genocide, are irredeemably evil. This is the script that has legitimized
Kagame's tyranny in Rwanda even to the embarrassment of his western
allies. Residents of this region haven't forgotten though. We know that
this is an excuse that Kagame has used to interfere in the Congo were he
has left with a huge loot of minerals, leaving behind a long trail of
blood.
The script is getting tired and old. To many people are suffering in
the process. The world must not allow Kagame to joke with our conscience
From Allafrica Online News Excerpt from the United States Department of State daily press briefing:
QUESTION: Congo?
MS. NULAND: Please.
QUESTION: Given the deteriorating humanitarian situation, could you detail what the diplomacy has been?
MS. NULAND: Thank you for that. Assistant Secretary for African
Affairs Johnnie Carson is currently in the region. He is joined there by
his UK and his French counterparts. They have met with President
Museveni. They are meeting with other regional leaders in an effort to
promote a peaceful, sustainable resolution to the conflict. They're
going to be going on later today. They were in Kinshasa today; they're
going on to Kigali. And they will obviously also be in the DRC. They're
going to meet with presidents in all countries and with other senior
officials.
The goals remains the goal that we outlined last Tuesday or Wednesday.
We want to see a ceasefire. We want to see a pullback to July lines.
We want to see a sustainable process of negotiation and discussion of
the status of the eastern Congo with all the stakeholders - Museveni,
Kagame, and Kabila - leading this process together along the lines of
the joint communique that they issued on November 21st and the ICGLR's
November 24th call for where to take this. So Assistant Secretary Carson
out there working this very hard this week.
QUESTION: Are you in support of changing the mandate of the UN mission (inaudible)?
MS. NULAND: I don't think we're there yet. We're at the stage of
trying to figure out among the regional leaders what it's going to take.
But clearly, MONUSCO was not able to do what it was mandated to do. So I
think among the things we need to understand better is how this
relatively modest group of rebels was able to grab and hold territory,
so - and what might be needed in terms of security and stabilization
going forward.
QUESTION: So given that we give roughly $400 million to MONUSCO or
one of the major supporters of the American taxpayer dollars, is there a
concern that our - that the dollars that we're spending are not being
used properly?
MS. NULAND: Well, certainly, there's a concern that we're going to
need an effective security force there, that that may require
adjustments to the way we're moving forward, but I just don't want to
predict where we're going to go with this, but you're not wrong that we
are a major supporter of MONUSCO and it needs to be able to be effective
in securing populations, which is not currently the case.
Please.
QUESTION: Hi. I'm (inaudible). I'm here for Jo and Nicolas, Agence
France Presse. Just on that issue, still on Congo, there's a perception
among many people of Human Rights Watch, the UN experts, some diplomats
I've spoken to privately, that the U.S. is dragging its feet about
blaming Rwanda directly for supporting the M23. Do you think it's not
the case or do you think it's not helpful to say it so publicly?
MS. NULAND: Again, we've been very clear that we do want to see all
outside support for M23 for any of these groups come to an end. That's
among the -
QUESTION: Where is that outside support coming from?
MS. NULAND: Again, that's among the issues that's being discussed in
this diplomacy that we're conducting this week. So I'm going to let
Assistant Secretary Carson take that forward, and then we'll go from
there, and we'll have a better sense when he finishes.
QUESTION: Sorry. A quick follow-up on that, but Kagame didn't even go
to the - Kagame wasn't even presence in the talks over the course of
the weekend. I mean, are there specific conversations that you're having
with Rwanda and Kagame to get Rwanda more engaged?
MS. NULAND: Yes. Assistant Secretary Carson will certainly see him, so that's part of the plan.
QUESTION: Didn't you take some step - public step against Rwanda in terms of arms sales a couple weeks or months ago?
MS. NULAND: Yeah, we did.
QUESTION: And has that been rescinded?
MS. NULAND: No. I mean, that's still -
QUESTION: So you have called the Rwandans out?
MS. NULAND: We had -
QUESTION: I mean, that was over M23.
MS. NULAND: -- suspended some of our support over M23 some time ago, yeah.
QUESTION: And that still exists?
MS. NULAND: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: So are you saying that right now you don't want to call the
Rwandans out? Because you have done it in the past publicly.
MS. NULAND: We have done it in the past.
QUESTION: Is there some reason not to do it right now?
MS. NULAND: There is no reason to do anything other than to call on
anybody who might be funding any of these guys to stop doing it and to
say that we are active now in the region seeing each of these leaders
and trying to get them to work together.
QUESTION: Who else do you think is funding them, though - is funding
M23? You said that we're calling on any outside groups. What other
outside groups does the United States suspect of funding besides Rwanda?
MS. NULAND: There are many options for outside funding for this kind
of stuff. That said, we have been clear about our concerns about
neighboring states.
Let's - here please. Go ahead.
So the International Conference on Great Lakes (ICGLR) summit in
Kampala is over, boycotted by the principal culprit in the tragedy,
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and presided over by President Museveni
of Uganda. Though it had been widely publicized that twelve Heads of
States would attend the summit, only President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya and
President
Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania
showed up. It has been established, credibly and compellingly by the UN
Group of Experts Report that Rwanda and Uganda are behind the so-called
M23 rebellion in DRC.
It is self-evident that the international
community is not interested in the plight of Congolese people. The
summit was notable in the absence of other Africans and African
institutions. The absence of concerned Africans and institutions was
compounded by the much expected absence of the rest of the international
community.
The so-called International Conference on the
Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) whose establishment Rwanda opposed until
Kagame was comforted that it would be an ineffectual body, is a largely
ignored body. Unless he can manipulate it and bend it to his wishes,
Kagame has no respect for it. Like Kagame, Museveni knows that ICGLR is a
toothless tool to be brandished to attract the attention of the western
powers and international community on the one hand, while keeping some
concerned Africans and international community from acting in response
to the endless crises in the Great lakes region on the other. "Leave it
to us, we shall handle it ourselves", Museveni tells Americans and
Europeans who are not about to shed their blood to defend Africans dying
in DRC. When asked by concerned constituencies as to what is being done
about the bleeding of DRC and Rwanda, western powers will say, " O, we
support Africans to solve their own problems through regional bodies
like ICGLR". This is a coded way of saying, " if Africans are butchering
themselves, let them put their house in order".
President
Kagame, the most notorious culprit in the DRC saga, decided to snub his
peers in the region, and did not show up. That is his typical arrogance
and disdain towards other Africans and sections of the international
community that increasingly look at him as a villain who presides over a
rogue state. What did the summit hope to achieve without the offending
party in the conflict? Could we assume that he knew so well that
President Museveni, with whom they have a history of adventure into DRC,
would take care of their mutual interests? Nothing of substance came
out of the summit. The whole diplomatic circus was a public relations
gimmick to mislead African and international opinion.
It is
indeed ridiculous that the summit decided that "one company of an
international neutral force, one company of the Congolese army (FARDC)
and one company of M23" would be deployed in Goma. Essentially, two
companies ( neutral force + Congolese army) and one company of enemy
forces (M23+ Rwanda+ Uganda) would be dancing together in Goma! Where
over 20, 000 UN peacekeepers with an annual budget of over 1.5 billion
US dollars have failed, how will the two penniless companies succeed?
The most outrageous outcome of the summit is the futile provision that
Rwandan and Ugandan generals are to oversee, supervise and lead the
cessation of hostilities and peace process in DRC. General Kabarebe (
Minister of Defence of Rwanda), General Kayonga ( Chief of Defence
Forces of Rwanda) and other Rwandan senior officers have been identified
by the UN Group of Experts Report as the architects and operational
leaders of the M23 war-making effort. Uganda's military officers,
notably General Salim Saleh ( President Museveni's young brother),
General Kale Kayihura ( Uganda's Chief of Police) and other Ugandan
officers have been mentioned by the same UN Report. If the international
community was interested in ending the conflict, there should be robust
sanctions against these individuals and their commanders-in-chief.
Museveni and Kagame sat and decided that they would supervise and lead
the sham process. The lions have decided they will baby-sit the lambs.
The Congolese people should set aside their differences and unite to
reject this latest Kagame aggression against the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Africans and
the rest of the international community should unite in support of the
Congolese and Rwandan brothers and sisters to get rid of the brutal
regime of President Kagame that has brought so much death and
destruction to Congolese and Rwandan people.
II. The challenges that faced Rwanda in the aftermath of the war and genocide
Rwanda endured destructive war during the period 1990–1994. The war
culminated in the 1994 genocide and massacres. The genocide was planned
and spearheaded by the government of the day. The war and genocide had
very devastating consequences for Rwandan society. The genocide not only
led to the suffering and death of a very large number of people (the
number of the dead alone exceeds a million); it also resulted in virtual
destruction of the country.
The war and genocide decimated
the country’s human capital. A significant part of the country’s work
force was killed during this period. Millions of citizens, including the
majority of the personnel of state institutions, fled to exile after
the fall of the rump government that had organised the genocide. Rooting
and wanton destruction of both public and private property was
widespread. Economic production ground to a halt. Institutions of the
state ceased to function both as a result of the massacres and exile of
their personnel as well as lack of infrastructure and equipment. By the
end of the genocide, the public had lost all confidence in the state and
its institutions as guarantors of public safety and security. By far
the worst damage that the genocide inflicted on the country was the
further destruction of of the already strained relations of mutual
trust, tolerance and peaceful co-existence among the country’s two major
communities. The genocide ruptured relations between the Hutu and Tutsi
communities at the individual, community and national level and left
Rwandan society deeply and bitterly polarised along lines of ethnicity.
Not only was Rwanda unstable internally, it also faced dangerous
external threats. The forces that had led to the implementation of the
genocide had re-grouped upon arrival in exile and were re-organising,
re-arming, and making preparations to invade Rwanda and re-capture
power.
As a result of the above and other challenges, the
reconstruction of Rwanda in the aftermath of the war and genocide was a
very difficult task. The principal challenges that faced the government
that took power in the aftermath of the war and genocide included the
following:
(a) Restoration of law and order; (b) Organising the provision of humanitarian assistance to the population; (c) Re-establishing and strengthening institutions of government to drive the reconstruction of the country; (d) Encouraging and facilitating the peaceful repatriation, resettlement and re-integration of refugees; (e) Laying a foundation for sound economic recovery and development; (f) Establishing democracy and the rule of law; and
(g) Identifying and implementing strategies to promote national unity
and reconciliation as foundations for sustainable peace and stability.
III. The status of political governance in Rwanda today
President Kagame has received numerous awards from foreign
organizations crediting him with success in many areas, including
fostering reconciliation in the aftermath of genocide, promoting peace,
and reform of government. This section discusses the status of
governance in Rwanda. The section seeks to prove that the image of
Rwanda as a democratising, reforming and stable post-conflict country
that President Kagame and his government and supporters portray it to be
does not reflect the real situation. Rwanda is a one-party
dictatorship under President Kagame. President Kagame has effectively
corrupted the founding ideals of the RPF. Through RPF, President Kagame
denies the people of Rwanda the opportunity to exercise their
fundamental human rights, particularly the right of political
participation. President Kagame is both corrupt and authoritarian. He
uses repression to ensure his continued monopoly of power. State
institutions violate the most fundamental human rights of the people,
including the right to life and the integrity of the person, to keep the
President Kagame in power. State security institutions enjoy impunity
for grave human rights violations against critics and opponents of the
government. President Kagame’s abuse of the institutions of the state
to support his quest for absolute power and economic gain is
criminalising the fabric of the Rwandan state.
a) Destruction of the RPF as a democratic people’s movement.
The state of governance in Rwanda cannot be discussed in isolation from
the character of the RPF and the quality of its leadership because of
the very dominant role that the RPF in general and President Paul Kagame
have played in the politics of post-genocide Rwanda. The RPF assumed
control of government at the end of the genocide and civil war because
it was the only opposition group with the military capacity to take on
the organisers and perpetuators of the genocide.
At the end
of the genocide, the RPF briefly cohabited in a coalition government
with other organizations that had opposed the Habyarimana dictatorship.
Since late 1995, the RPF has progressively assumed exclusive control of
the state.
The RPF was originally established as a people’s
movement whose goal was to bring together under one umbrella,
individuals and groups of different political backgrounds and
ideological beliefs that shared a minimum political platform to promote
democracy in Rwanda. From its founding in 1979 as the Rwandese Alliance
for National Union (RANU) to its capture of state power in 1994, the
RPF professed a commitment to the vision of a free, democratic order
under an accountable government. The organisation not only permitted but
encouraged open debate and inclusiveness in decision-making. As a
rebel movement in the opposition, RPF not only preached, but also
practiced internal unity, internal democracy, and a commitment to
reconciliation of the Rwandan people. During the 1990–1994 war, the RPF
reached out to and sought to build alliances with other like-minded
groups to broaden the political base of forces struggling to end
dictatorship in Rwanda.
The RPF is no longer the democratic,
inclusive and principled organization that its founders and early
leaders and members intended it to be. The organization has now become a
caricature of its former self. All major decisions affecting the
organization are made by the party leader, President Paul Kagame.
Organs of the party are merely rubber stamps that serve to legitimise
decisions already made by the party leader and his very few close
advisers behind the scenes. The party, like the rest of the country, is
engulfed by fear, held hostage to President Kagame’s arbitrary and
repressive rule. The culture of internal democracy and consensual
decision-making that were at the core of the philosophy of the RPF
before it came to power has ended. The concept of collective leadership
that was crucial to maintaining accountability and legitimacy within
the organization has ceased.
The RPF has, over time, been
transformed into a vehicle to serve the political and economic interests
of one person - the party president. President Kagame does not
tolerate dissenting views within the RPF. The RPF has ceased to be a
people’s movement led by a democratically minded leadership. President
Kagame has terrorised his peers and other members of RPF into submission
to his will. The RPF has become President Kagame’s fiefdom, a personal
instrument for perpetuating autocratic rule.
In
The 1960s some corporate media hostile to Congo's independence would
write that Congo is ungoverable -- and that was the rationale used to
justify Belgian and CIA intervention and murder of Patrice Lumumba.
Today in 2012, NY Times's Jeff Gettleman writes:
"The most realistic solution, said another Congo analyst, is not a
formal peace process driven by diplomats but 'a peace among all the
dons, like Don Corleone imposed in New York.'"
(My notes: As we all
know, writers can find an "analyst" to say exactly what they want to
hear. I wonder what millions of Congolese, victims of yet another war of
aggression from Rwanda and Uganda feel about this quote. Gen. Kagame
and Gen. Museveni must be salivating since they are the "Dons" in that
region)
And the Times' "reporter" who somehow forgot to mention
the damning UN report released last week saying that the M23 terrorists
are commanded by Rwanda's minister of defense, Gen. James Kabarebe,
today adds:
"The rebels, called the M23, are a heavily armed
paradox. On one hand, they are ruthless. Human rights groups have
documented how they have slaughtered civilians, pulling confused
villagers out of their huts in the middle of the night and shooting them
in the head. On the other hand, the M23 are able administrators —
seemingly far better than the Congolese government, evidenced by a visit
in recent days to their stronghold, Rutshuru, a small town about 45
miles from Goma.
In Rutshuru, there are none of those ubiquitous
plastic bags twisted in the trees, like in so many other parts of Congo.
The gravel roads have been swept clean and the government offices are
spotless. Hand-painted signs read: 'M23 Stop Corruption.' The rebels
even have green thumbs, planting thousands of trees in recent months to
fight soil erosion."
(My notes: In other words forget the mass rapes and executions documented by Human Rights Watch. http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/09/11/dr-congo-m23-rebels-committing-war-crimes
M23 will make sure all Congolese get to eat organic vegetables....The
coverage reminds of when in April 1994 Time magazine wrote that the
Rwanda massacres were being fueled by "tribal blood lust" and outside
intervention could not help)
BEWARE CONGO. The gold rush is on. ENDORSED by the "paper of record."
M23 may not even need to fire a single shot with this kind of pen-power.....
Channel 4 News plots the chronology of
major incidents in Rwanda since 2010. Many other attacks on democratic
freedoms and threats against individuals have taken place.
Channel 4 News plots the chronology of major
incidents in Rwanda since 2010. Many other attacks on democratic
freedoms and threats against individuals have taken place.
Jan-April 2010 Opposition politician Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza of FDU
repeatedly detained and interrogated over alleged links to
anti-government armed group and accusations that she promoted genocide
ideology. Jan-May 2010 Leader of opposition Democratic Green Party denied permission to hold meetings or register for election. 10 March 2010 Human Rights Watch researcher's work visa cancelled. 12 April 2010 President Paul Kagame announces in parliament that he would "kill flies with a hammer" - taken to mean critics in exile. 24 May 2010 Editor of Umuseso newspaper flees into exile after receiving repeated threats. 19 June 2010 Kayumba Nyamwasa, Rwanda's
exiled former army chief of staff - a critic of President Kagame -
shot in South Africa in apparent assassination attempt.
(Rwanda's President Kagame at the UN. Picture: Reuters) 24 June 2010 Bernard Ntaganda, oppositon politician from PS-Imberakuri arrested; in the months that followed, many party members arrested. 24 June 2010 Jean-Léonard Rugambage,
deputy editor of a newspaper that reported on the alleged involvement
of the Rwandan government in the attempted assassination of General
Nyamwasa in South Africa is shot dead in Kigali.
14 July 2010
André Kagwa Rwisereka, deputy president of the Democratic Green Party,
is found partially decapitated; his body dumped next to a river. 9 August 2010 Paul Kagame wins the
election with 93 per cent of the vote. An organisation funded by UK to
monitor the election, gives it a clean bill of health; Kagame
congratulated by Andrew Mitchell, Britain's former secretary for
international development on a visit to Rwanda. 4 February 2011 Journalists Agnes Nkusi
Uwimana and Saidaiti Mukakibibi are sentenced to 17 years and seven
years respectively for insulting President Kagame; Nkusi's 17 years was
later reduced to four on appeal. 11 February 2011 Bernard Ntaganda, opposition leader, is sentenced to four years in prison. 12 May 2011 Anti-terrorism branch of
the Metropolitan Police warn two London-based members of Rwandan
diaspora that the Rwandan government poses an imminent threat to your
life".
13 Nov 2011 Joseph Bideri, editor-in-chief of New Times newspaper is arrested. 30 Nov 2011 Charles Ingabire, critic of President Kagame and editor of Inyenyeri News, is fatally shot in Kampala. 12 Feb 2012 Senior Rwandan diplomat expelled by Sweden for espionage, allegedly among Rwandan refugees. 27 June 2012 Kagame government accused
by UN investigators of creating, arming and funding M23 rebel group in
Congo, led by indicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda.
28 July 2012 Britain suspends aid to
Rwanda, following similar decision by other major aid donors. Southern
African Development Community (SADC) condemns Rwanda's destabilisation
of Congo. 5 Sept 2012 Britain restores the suspended £16m tranche of aid. 13 October 2012 Theogene Turatsinze,
former director of Rwanda Development Bank is murdered in Mozambique
amid allegations of Rwandan government involvement. 17 Oct 2012 Prime Minister David Cameron hails Rwanda as a success story and role model for reform and development. 30 October 2012 Opposition leader Victoire Ingabire convicted on terror charges and genocide denial; sentenced to eight years in jail.
Ambassador Eugène-Richard Gasana. The New Times / File.
President Paul Kagame yesterday appointed
Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador
Eugène-Richard Gasana, as State Minister in Charge of Cooperation. The portfolio has not been in existence. Ambassador
Gasana will however remain the country’s envoy to the UN, Prime
Minister Pierre Damien Habumuremyi said in a statement last evening.
Gasana,
one of the country’s longest serving diplomats, becomes the first
Rwandan envoy to the UN to serve as cabinet minister at the same time.
Asked
about this unprecedented appointment, Foreign Affairs minister Louise
Mushikiwabo said Gasana’s promotion gives him the powers to represent
the country at the United Nations in matters that require ministerial
presence.
“For purposes of the United Nations Security Council
and Rwanda’s Non-Permanent seat over the next two years, it makes it
easy to have a Permanent Representative with Cabinet rank, so that for
matters that require ministerial presence, the Permanent Representative
has the right rank credentials,” she told The New Times.
Mushikiwabo
added, “It is also a fact that Ambassador Gasana, who has been in
diplomatic service for 18 years now, has performed very well in his
duties, so it’s also a well deserved promotion. We congratulate him.”
On
January 1, Rwanda will begin its two-year term on the United Nations
Security Council, a seat it won on October 18, replacing South Africa.
The
country last occupied a similar position in 1993-94 during which period
it experienced the Genocide against the Tutsi which claimed more than a
million people.
Gasana has risen through the ranks in diplomatic
circles having served as Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy Rwanda in
Bonn, Germany (1994 to 1995), and later (1996 and 1997) in the same
position in Bern, Switzerland.
He was later appointed Ambassador
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Federal Republic of Germany,
with concurrent accreditation to Austria, Bulgaria, Russian Federation,
Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania.
Gasana also
served as Permanent Representative for Rwanda to the UNO in Geneva and
other International Organisations, including World Trade Organisation,
WIPO, UNHCR, ITU, WHO.
In July 2009, he was appointed Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a post he holds to date.
In
January 2011, Ambassador Gasana was elected Chairman of the
Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), a UN platform that seeks to promote
sustainable peace in post-conflict countries.
Born on July 2,
1962 in Bujumbura, Burundi, the father of three studied banking and
business studies at the University of Applied Sciences of Cologne, and
an Executive M.B.A. course at the European Business School in
Maastricht, the Netherlands.
The newly appointed minister is scheduled to be sworn in today
Joseph
Kabila was in Kampala yesterday meeting with Rwanda's Gen. Paul Kagame
and Uganda's Gen. Yoweri Museveni as the Congo city of Goma fell. All
three will spin the outcome of the meeting to come out as "winners." Why would
Kabila be in Uganda when the United Nations in a report by a group of
experts found that M23, the army that seized Goma, was created, trained,
financed, and is sustained and commanded by Rwandan and Ugandan
officers? M23 had demanded direct negotiations with Kabila's government.
Kabila said he would only talk with Rwanda since Kigali was the
mastermind of M23. In the end, Gen. Kagame joined him in Uganda for the
meeting. According to the final version of the UN report by the group of
experts released today and reported on in The Black Staryesterday
--the interim version came out in June-- M23's direct chain of command
ends with Rwanda's Minister of Defense Gen. James Kabehere.
The Entebbe meeting was meant to accomplish a number of goals: Rwanda and Uganda hope to gain the most.
What's In It For Kabila? In
exchange for coming to Uganda to pose for a photo-op with Gen. Kagame
and Gen. Museveni, Kabila was promised that the two generals would order
M23 to stop fighting and to withdraw from Goma.
The withdrawal
could be accomplished within hours if Gen. Kagame gave the order. M23
is essentially a special unit of Rwanda's regular army. So Kabila had
incentive to attend if only to buy some breathing room while he
mobilizes other outside support; possibly from Angola which has the
region's most powerful army and in 1998 crushed an advance on Kinshasa
by Rwanda and Uganda.
Kabila is not highly regarded by a wide
segment of the Congolese nation. Many believe he's pliant to Kagame and
even question his nationality. By seeming to stand up to Gen. Kagame he
is hoping to gain some domestic political capital.
What's In It For Kagame And Museveni Gen.
Kagame and Gen. Museveni hope to win diplomatic points and to look like
statesmen by halting M23. They would ask: how can we be aiding and
abetting M23 when we're the ones stopping their advance?
M23 is
a bandit army commanded by Rwanda's Defense Minister and has committed
well-documented atrocities: massacres, beheadings, mass rapes of women,
men and children, mutilations of women's genitalia, and plunder of
resources. By taming M23, Gen. Kagame and Gen. Museveni end up looking
like the "good guys." The two generals can probably rely on the U.K.'s
propaganda mouthpiece the BBC to complete the spin cycle with an
accommodating story. CNN and The New York Times may also oblige. These establishment media usually go along with the program.
Masters Of Crocodile Tears Both
Gen. Museveni and Gen. Kagame have mastered the art of "spin." Gen.
Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) contributed to massacres of
civilians in Luwero region during Uganda's civil war in the 1980s.
Later, Gen. Museveni ordered the skulls of victims to be piled into a
mountain and claimed ousted president Milton Obote's army and people
from the northern part of Uganda in general were responsible for all the
atrocities. Gen. Museveni was received as Uganda's "savior."
Ugandans today know all his tricks.
In
Gen. Kagame's case, Jean-Louis Bruguière a French investigative
magistrate concluded that when he was leader of the Rwanda Patriotic
Front (RPF) insurgents, he ordered the April 6, 1994 shooting down of
Rwanda President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane. The accusation was
repeated in a South African court
by Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, Gen. Kagame's exiled former army
commander earlier this year in South Africa during a trial of alleged
killers hired by Kigali to kill him.
Habyarimana's
assassination sparked the ethnic killings that ensued, claiming hundreds
of thousands of lives as Kagame knew it would, his accusers contend.
Kagame then seized Kigali and was hailed by the outside world as
Rwanda's liberator.
Since 1994, Gen. Kagame's army's murderous
rampages in the Congo --documented in several UN reports, including the
"mapping" report -- have exposed his true colors.
Obstacle To Spin: The United Nations Report Can Gen. Kagame and Gen. Museveni pull of their bold diplomatic propaganda gamble?
The
United Nations report is so damning that Uganda sent a senior
government minister Ruhakana Rugunda to New York to try to get the
report changed. Uganda even threatened to withdraw its estimated 10,000
troops from peace-keeping operations in Somalia unless the UN buckled.
There's precedent for this Ugandan lobbying. According to The Wall Street Journal, in 2006, when the International Criminal Court (ICC) started investigating earlier alleged crimes by Uganda's army and allied militias in Congo, Gen. Museveni himself asked then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to block the probe.
After
the interim report of the group of experts was released this summer,
Rwanda officials met with members of the UN team of experts and
submitted a written response. In the end, the group of experts refused
to alter the final version of the UN report.
The report states
that M23's handlers in Uganda are: Gen. Salim Saleh, brother to Gen.
Museveni and Presidential Advisor on Military Affairs; and, Gen. Kale
Kayihura Uganda's Inspector General of Police.
M23's leaders,
including Bosco Ntaganda, have purchased homes in Uganda for residence
and meetings. According to the UN report the chain of command of M23
passes through Ntaganda, who has been indicted on war crimes charges,
and ends with Rwanda's minister of Defense Gen. Kabarebe.
M23's
nominal leaders such as Ntaganda receive "direct military orders" from
Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) "Chief of Defense Staff General Charles
Kayonga, who in turn acts on instructions from Minster of Defense
General James Kabarebe." Furthermore, the report says a Rwandan
general, Emmanuel Ruvusha, manages military ground support for M23,
while Permanent Secretary in the Defense Ministry, Gen. Jacques Nziza,
provides strategic advice and oversees logistical support.
To blunt the United Nations report Gen. Kagame and Gen. Museveni could offer to: >>"Disarm" M23 and demobilize them -- this could be achieved quickly since Rwanda and Uganda control M23.
>>Arrest
Bosco Ntaganda and other M23 leaders. Rwanda could even throw in
Laurent Nkunda, another wanted war criminal who once led murderous
rampages in Eastern Congo until he was succeeded by Ntaganda. He is now
harbored by Rwanda. Congo's Permanent State of Chaos If
the United Nations Security Council is serious about saving the
children and people of Congo then the logical conclusion of following
through with the report would be to indict on war crimes charges senior
Rwanda and Uganda military commanders named in the report.
The
UN report should have said M23's command chain ends with Rwanda's
President Gen. Kagame and Uganda's Gen. Museveni. After all, Rwanda's
defense minister reports to Gen. Kagame. In Uganda, Gen. Saleh reports
to Gen. Museveni.
After all, former Liberian president Charles Taylor was indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to 50 years in jail for indirectly supporting rebels fighting in Sierra Leone's civil war.
Here
the chain of command is clearly established and the evidence stronger
against the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda for creating, training, arming,
financing and commanding a murderous army in Congo.
Yet the
United States and Britain have always protected the Kagame and Museveni
regimes; in essence aiding and abetting the criminal activities of
Rwanda's and Uganda's proxy armies against the people of Congo. Human Rights Watch has called for the U.S. to publicly call for sanctions against M23's top leaders this time.
Today,
hiding in the Congo jungles, Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA) whose crimes pale miserably compared to M23's and
various other armies sponsored by Gen. Kagame and Gen. Museveni, must be
wondering what he's been doing wrong.
Will Gen. Kagame and
Gen. Museveni to throw M23 under the bus? Even If they did, it would be a
temporary tactical move. They would wait for things to die down one day
before creating yet a new "guerrilla" army. The pair will never take
their eyes off Congo's immense mineral and natural resource wealth.
What's
more, by maintaining a permanent state of chaos in Congo, Kagame and
Museveni are able to divert international attention from political
repression from their respective countries. Since their armies first
invaded Congo in 1997 estimates of Congolese who have perished exceed
seven million.
And, East and Central Africa will always be a war
zone so long as Gen. Kagame and Gen. Museveni remain in control of
Rwanda and Uganda, respectively.
Why