Tonight a hush will fall over the national stadium in Kigali as, one by one, a sea of candles is lit to commemorate the 800,000 lives lost in the Rwandan genocide. A screen will fill with the faces of luminaries from the actress Sandra Bullock to David Cameron, the British Conservative leader, speaking of the candles they have lit for Rwanda's victims and survivors.
Presiding over it all will be Paul Kagame, the Rwandan President, self-styled liberator and darling of Western aid donors who rushed billions to the tiny nation in the guilty aftermath of foreign inaction to stop the killing.
But 15 years on, Mr Kagame finds himself cast more as a perpetrator than victim, with the unveiling of Rwanda's role in the plunder and killing in eastern Congo, a war that has claimed the lives of five times as many people as the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur combined. So why are British taxpayers still supporting him?
Since the genocide, Rwanda has relied on foreign aid for half its national budget. Britain is its single largest donor, committed to a disbursement of at least £46 million a year until 2015. The United States is close behind in direct contributions to Rwanda's budget, a form of aid-giving reserved for what the European Union calls a “privileged” few who have proved their transparency and good governance.
"The peace and prosperity of Europe was constructed on these bases," said the French president.
He said Patrice Lumumba dreamed of a Congo which would be like the brain and the nerve centre of Africa from where Africa's development would kick off from.
True, this is what is going to happen whether the Tutsi like it or not! However, we cannot rebuild such a Congo with impunity. The Tutsi have slaughtered 6 millions Congolese. It is like the Holocaust. Those responsible must be punished! Europeans did not reconcile after the Second World War until after Nuremberg. The establishement of a special tribunal for the DRC is now long overdue and France's support given to the people of Congo since they were inavaded in 1998 is still needed to that effect. Vying for Congo's uranium is not enough!
There is now a campaign in the anglo saxon world attempting to sweep this genocide under the carpet, as well as the denial that the Tutsi regimes of Rwanda and Uganda never looted any minerals in Congo and never killed anybody! We the people of Congo will never live with that!
We are sure if President Sarkozy visited Kigali today, the firt thing the protocole would arrange is his visit to the "The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre".
Whereas the BBC forecast that "Ghana are favourites to win the first African Nations Championship", it was the DR Congo beat Ghana 2-0 to win the inaugural African Nations Championship in Abidjan on Sunday8 March 2009.
The final - a repeat of the Group B game which Ghana easily won 3-0 - was settled by goals from Dioko Kaluyituka and Bedi Mbenza.
On a slippery pitch after pre-match rain, Kaluyitula gave the Congolese the lead after 46 minutes when his speculative header slipped past Ghanaian goalkeeper MACCARTHY Philemon Maccarthy.
Mbenza got the second goal 15 minutes from time when he controlled a cross from the left on his chest and gave Maccarthy no chance with a right-foot shot from inside the box.
After the independence, Patrice Lumumba, independent Congo's first elected charismatic leader was killed, replaced during the Cold War by Mobutu's 32 year-long dictatorship.
A recently declassified document in the CIA's archives, says that Sydney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of chemistry of the Agency Mind Control Program, is supposedly the person responsible for having made available the poison that was going to be used in the assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba.
"It is notable that the administration which has declassified the least information in the history of the United States, and which has even started a process of reclassifying information that was previously declassified, now makes the decision to make these revelations.
I believe that such an action could be an attempt to present an image of transparency when the government is at an all time low rate of acceptance and popularity, and to show that those methods belong to another era and are no longer in use.
When he announced the decision, General Hayden, current CIA Director, said: “The documents offer a look at very different times and at a very different Agency.
Needless to say that everything described here is still being done, only in a more brutal manner and all around the planet, including a growing number of illegal actions within the very United States."
The overthrow of Mobutu by Lumumba's disciple Laurent Kabila was followed by a war of invasion carried out by troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi and orchestrated by Britain, America and South Africa and with the complicity of the so-called Congolese of Tutsi origin in Rwanda and the so-called congolese rebels; and in which more than 5.4 million congolese have been massacred and Congo's natural and mineral resources systematically looted!
Is the Democratic Republic of Congo on the verge of bankruptcy? Reuters reported on 16 Februray 2008 that the DRC’s foreign reserves, which stood at over $225 million last April 2008, fell to just $36 million in early February 2009, adding that, that amounts to less than one day of import cover for a country which has little manufacturing or agricultural capacity and depends heavily upon goods brought in from outside.
The World Bank reacted quickly and Marie-Francoise Marie-Nelly, Congo's World Bank country director announced that the World Bank has proposed lending the Democratic Republic of Congo $100 million in emergency funds from early March to help offset the effects of dwindling mineral export revenues.
The World Bank proposal comes as Congo's government is accelerating efforts to secure another $200 million from the International Monetary Fund's Exogenous Shocks Facility to tide it over as it awaits a rebound in demand for its mineral exports.
How viable are these amounts to the $20 billion that China is proposing to the DRC, a post-conflict country? Who can explain to us how the World Bank’s $100 million loan and the IMF’s $200 million loan to the DRC not going to increase its debt burden? Why should we be worried about Chinese loans and not the Western ones?
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in September 2007 signed a historic mining agreement with China. The agreement was conducted between La Générale des Carrières des Mines (Gécamines), the DRC’s state-owned mining company on one hand, and a group of Chinese state-owned enterprises on the other (a king of public-private agreement). These include China’s Eximbank, the China Railway Engineering Company (CREC) and Sinohydro.
The agreement creates a mining joint-venture between Gecamines and the China Railway Engineering Company (CREC) and Sinohydro, in the form of a Beijing-based company called Socomin (a joint-venture), in which the Chinese hold 68% of the shares and Gecamines 32%. Eximbank comes in with an investment of $9 billion in Socomin, of which $3.25 billion will be mining investment and the remaining $6 billion is earmarked for infrastructure development.
The loan is only the first instalment of a $20 billion package of loans to be made available over the next three years. Of the $9 billion, a third will be pumped into Congo’s war-ravaged mines. The other $6 billion will take the form of a soft loan (backed by some of the country’s best mineral deposits) to finance new infrastructures (roads, railways, hospitals, hydro-electric dams, airports, vocational training centres), to be built by Chinese construction companies, primarily with Chinese labour but Congolese local companies must be sub-contracted.[i]
However, the Financial Times reported on 9 February 2009[ii] that China’s biggest investment deal in Africa is faltering as western donors create pressure to renegotiate a minerals-for-infrastructure contract in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In public statements the IMF has “urged the [Congolese] authorities to take all actions to ensure that the final agreement [with China] is consistent with debt sustainability”, according to the report.
In Kinshasa, the report said, government is keen to listen to the concerns of the Western donors at the same time it is eager to pursue the deal with the Chinese.
“Changes will come,” Victor Kasongo, Congo’s deputy minister of mines told Financial Times, adding that the government was awaiting the results of a feasibility study, due by June, on the “robustness” of the project. “Congo has chosen to carry on with the IMF and World Bank economic route and at the same time to pursue development with Chinese money,” he said.
Most western donors have said they support the deal “in principle” because it gives Congo access to capital on a scale it could not receive from anywhere else. But, led by the Paris Club of creditors and the IMF, they have raised objections to specific provisions.
The focus of concern, according to western diplomats in Kinshasa, is that the deal would give the Chinese consortium unprecedented state financial guarantees, including some that earmark government revenues and make China a privileged creditor.
But Wu Zexian, China’s ambassador to the DRC, indicated that it would not be so easy. “They [western institutions] are wrong to ask Congo to remove the state guarantee. That is blackmail,” he said. “This is a poor country that needs to develop. Why force the country to modify the clause? “We cannot accept that. It’s discriminatory.”
On this occasion I think the Chinese ambassador has a point. The DRC was not frogmarched into a deal with China. It signed the deal in complete independence as a sovereign country. If there are clauses that need to be revised, they must be done so in that same spirit. The Western world, the IMF and the World Bank bankrolled Mobutu’s kleptocratic regime for 32 years. They lent him a lot of money which he put in Swiss banks.
The DRC has inherited $14 billion worth of debt incurred by the Mobutu regime and various transitional governments after President Laurent Kabila was gunned down. During his short 44 month-long tenure of office, Kabila left the country with no debt, not even a penny!
One of the reasons Kabila was killed is because he refused to reimburse all the debts that Mobutu had incurred arguing that he did not see any works that that money has done in his country.
“If you lend money to a thief, expect not to be repaid one day,” Kabila told the IMF and the World Bank.
Now the same IMF and World Bank are putting pressure on the Congolese government to ditch the deal with China as a condition to get its huge debt forgiven as well as more loans! That is clearly blackmail. The $100 million the World Bank has proposed is just a drop in the ocean given huge challenges the DRC, a post-conflict country faces, but that drop in the ocean is just foretaste of the $1 billion loan it has promised the DRC provided, we can logically conclude, it ditches the deal with China! That is unacceptable.
At this age of globalisation, if the DRC has no freedom to diversify its trading partners, than it still is a Belgian colony, a “free trade zone area” as it was defined at the Berlin Conference under the trusteeship of King Leopold II! If the Congolese government tries to flex its muscles, then it invites trouble. Congo turned to China. After asking in vain the IMF and the World Bank to forgive Congo’s $14 billion debt inherited from Mobutu and various transitional governments, the DRC turned to China because Kinshasa was told that it must abide by “the principle of the continuity of the state” and pay its due! As a consequence, the government of Joseph Kabila is paying $800 million a year, just to service the debt! At the same time, the interim American government set up in Baghdad, trampled the same principle by its feet and refused to respect all the oil contracts Saddam Hussein signed with France, China and Russia… let alone recognize the debts that Saddam Hussein had contracted!
The DRC's deal with China, we believe, must go ahead. It will help us exercise our freedom of choice of our trading partners on the basis of the principle of the market economy in this age of globalisation. China is going to help the DRC break free from the stranglehold of neo-colonialism. The DRC is still a place where rules do not apply, let alone basic human rights!
How does one explain Rwanda’s cyclic wars in Eastern DR Congo? Simple! The Tutsi insurgents are encouraged by the “return of the white patronage” over the vast and rich-in-minerals central African country. We have Albrecht Conze, the former political chief of Monuc, the French acronym for the UN peacekeeping Mission in Congo and now the German Ambassador to Zimbabwe’s words for it! In an interview given to the Spiegel Online, on 17 August 2006,[iii] Conze predicted the return of the white patronage in a country that was a Belgian colony until 1960 in the following terms:
“It is like the West being Congo’s foster parents,” he said, “but it won’t be easy”. According to Conze’s theory, support will come from a black “council of advisors” – another idea hatched by Western governments. The plan is for well-known African politicians such as Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique’s former president, Nicephore Soglo, his colleague from Benin, to make policies crafted overseas more palatable to Congo’s citizens,” he said.
“The project’s success ultimately depends on ‘Western states and institutions acting in a unified way’. But that is somewhat shaky foundation. The US government’s interest in rebuilding Congo is limited, for example. After all, the deeply Catholic country “contains neither oil nor terrorists,” Conze pointed out.
“By contrast, Congo’s former colonial ruler Belgium fears losing lucrative business opportunities to European competitors the moment the situation in the country becomes more transparent. The rising world power China could cause trouble too – by providing billions of dollars in loan without imposing conditions or controls in return for access to the country’s valuable natural resources. Beijing has already used this method in neighbouring Angola, where it now controls much of the oil production,” he concluded.
Good heralding Mr Conze! That is one the reasons why, all of a sudden, we have another cycle of war in eastern Congo! In fact, the Financial Times reported on 31 October 2008 that the evangelical Christian Tutsi warlord, who has now grabbed all the headlines in the Credit-crunch hit western countries, is very much against the agreement the Democratic Republic of Congo signed with China which will provide $9 billion worth of investment in rebuilding infrastructure in exchange for the country’s natural resources. This is a clear sign that Nkundabatware is being used! Who gives him the mandate to veto an agreement signed by a sovereign, legitimate and democratically elected government with a partner of its free choice?
Nkundabatware is a proxy for Rwandan interests in the DRC and the West is using the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame to weaken the DRC completely.
At a recent meeting convened by the Royal Commonwealth Society to discuss whether Rwanda should admitted or not as a member of the Commonwealth, one of the speakers, Andrew Mitchell, a Conservative MP and former shadow minister for international development said that “he likes Kagame because he is a man of actions who has shown exceptional leadership and who is working with India to thwart China’s breakthrough in Africa”. He meant to say the DRC because Kagame has so far only invaded the DRC which has signed the biggest minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China valued at $9bn (€6.9bn, £6bn).
This is an “Infrastructure Development Resources backed Finance (IDRF)” deal, a kind of barter trade which will not leave the DRC saddled with debts. It will have an impact on the infrastructure sector as well as on the agriculture sector. It will benefit Western investors, especially in the mining sector. How can you kick-start the development of the DRC after 15 years of a war of aggression without basic infrastructures? Clearly, this is where you start. China is ready to put such an amount of money no other partner of the DRC is contemplating to invest there.
If you examine all the mining contracts the DRC had signed with its Western partners, they insist on keeping 75% of the stakes up! There is no single contract where the DRC gets more than 25%. Is that acceptable as well? Take Freeport MacMoran which wants to exploit the biggest reserve of copper and cobalt in the world situated in Tenke Fungurume, Katanga. It insists that the Congolese state should be content with 5% stake as originally agreed and should not revise it despite the fact that graft was involved during the initial agreement! Companies such as Banro hold private gold concessions – wholly owned - in South Kivu and Maniema[iv] and First Quantum wholly owned copper concessions in Lonshi and Frontier Project , formerly known as Lufua, Katanga.[v] "Ou est le sérieux" as the French say?
Moreover, the DRC has more or less adopted the liberal market economy whose fundamental principle is: you go where you get a better deal. If it gets a better deal from China, why not put China first? Similarly, if it gets a better deal from America, Belgium, France or Britain, why not privilege such partnerships first?
[i] “DRC Unveils Its $9 billion minerals-for-infrastructures with China, Government Press Release, Ministry of Public Works, 9 May 2008.
[ii] “Donors Press Congo Over $9 Bln China Minerals Deal”, Financial Times, London, 9 February 2009.
[iii] See, Keith Harmon Snow, “Over Five Million Dead in Congo? Fifteen Hundred People Daily? Behind the Numbers Redux: How Truth is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told”, Global Research, 30 January 2008.
[iv] “Banro closes US$14 million financing”, PRNewswire-FirstCall, Toronto, 19 February 2009.
[v] First Quantum Minerals Receives Court Approval for Plan of Arrangement With Scandinavian Minerals”, Market Wires, Vancouver, British Colombia, 17 June 2008; See also: “First Quantum Minerals Announces Resource At Lufua Project; One Million Tonnes of Contained Copper”, CCNMatthews via COMTEX, Vancouver, British Colombia, 1 June 2004.
The cosmetic arrest of Rwandan Tutsi warlord Nkundababtware in Rwanda by Rwandans is a smokescreen for the continuation of a yet "more quiet exploitation of Congo's natural and mineral resources by Anglosaxon powers through the Tutsi and the settelement and subtle colonisation of eastern Congo by the Tutsi.
The arrival of yet again some 2,000 Rwandan soldiers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to help the Army disarm Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Forces démocratique pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR) has prompted fears of a new wave of civilian suffering. Below are some reactions to the development.
Backed by the Obama Administration and its former Clinton allies, as American invetsigative journalist Keith Harmon Snow reveals, Rwandan troops have marched into Congo, ostensibly to save the day, yet again, barely a month after a scathing United Nations report revealed that they were already there.
The ’surprising’ arrest of General Laurent Nkunda, on January 22, 2009, by the troops of the joint FARDC and Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) operation is merely damage control, with General Laurent Nkunda being the latest Fall Guy arrested to recover some sense of credibility for the international police forces—the Pentagon and its proxy armies in Rwanda and Uganda—and to enable the Kagame military cabal to distance itself from the recent exposés documenting Rwanda’s machinations in eastern Congo.
In eastern Congo, it is clear that the goal is to create chaos, to mobilize and dispossess millions of people of their lands and their agency, to herd them and intern them in ‘refugee’ concentration camps, where they die of starvation and disease, where they become test populations for pharmaceutical corporations, where every justification is used—by the white people who serve them—before we go off to the swimming pool or take a vacation. Thank you Keith.
"The Rwandan government and its offshoot RCD-Goma had already occupied Congo for eight years and we never heard of a single clash between the Rwandan army and the FDLR. On the contrary, all the coltan and cassiterite exploited by the FDLR is sold in Rwanda. So it's a [complete] contradiction."
"The community wants the FDLR and all Rwandan refugees, who have become, rightly or wrongly, the key to the tension between our countries, to return home. To do so by force is not desirable because experience has taught us that not only are results slow in coming but that matters are made worse. There is a need to plan how to ensure the security of the populations of North and South Kivu before any military operation against the FDLR. Any other way would further endanger security."
"[We] condemn this treason and reserve the right to use all means at our disposal to scupper this diabolical plan whose clear aim is to bring about the Balkanisation of the country."
De Forges has been blocked because she denounced the responsibility of Tutsi President Paul Kagame and 40 of his closest senior officers in the terrorist assasination of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, the slaughter by Kagame's soldiers of Hutu refugees in eastern Congo, the dictatorship and the mono-ethnic character of the Tutsi regime in Rwanda, the abuses of human rights...
De Forges also repeatedly called for an immediate inter-rwandan dialogue as the only way to solve the crisis engulfing the region.
“It should be said that the situation wherein one group exercises, in an almost exclusive manner, all military, political and economic power, without tolerating any criticism or challenge to its authority cannot be acceptable”, says part of the message issued by Nigerian bishops yesterday at the end of a visit to Rwanda by a delegation from the Nigerian Episcopal Conference.
“Every segment of Rwandan society must participate and play an active role to promote national unity and reconciliation – say the bishops, addressing the Rwandan Episcopal conference. This must be based on an actual freedom of expression, association, movement and conscience. Rwandans must find the means and ways such that their leadership is accountable to the country. A neutral entity, such as civil liberties office should establish equitable norms for political competition and define the limits of freedom of expression and association, such as to avoid abuses which may create further tensions”.
Catholics’ commitment to peace remind the bishops in their message, also cited in part by today’s edition of Osservatore Romano, deriving from the “social doctrine of the Church obliges us to recognize the absolute value of the human person, created in the image of God and equipped with a defined system of rights and obligations which are directly derived from the very nature of the human being. As the guardian of public conscience, the Church must make an effort to be identified and to be considered as the agent of peace”.
In the message, the Nigerian bishops, also stress the Church’s responsibility to integrate “faith and action” such as to ensure its role as conscience of the people. “Our visit derives from the desire to strengthen the spirit of solidarity and reciprocal inter-dependence between the Church in Nigeria and the Church in Rwanda. We also hope to contribute to peace and to the reconciliation process in which you have committed yourselves with vigor. We come in order to underline the role and responsibility of the Catholic Church in favor of a policy of peace where it is non-existent and of consolidation where it exists” conclude the bishops.
Guess what the head of the 17,000men-strong UN Mission in Congo Alan Doss said: «It is not up to us to arrest criminals in Congo. "We came to this country as part of a peacekeeping operation, and I think that with the events of late August and late October, our presence on the grounds is no longer equal to task.
"I have warned the rebel leader Nkundabatware that ill-treatment of civilians could be classed as war crimes and I told him to stop.
"Exactions are continuing" in territory controlled by Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), Alan Doss told a press conference in Kinshasa.
"I have asked Nkunda to put an end to these exactions," Doss said, singling out the town of Kiwanja, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the regional capital of Goma.
"I have asked Nkunda to put an end" to the abuses, he added, singling out the town of Kiwanja, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the main eastern city of Goma.
"The rebels of the CNDP are in this zone and it is up to them to protect the civilians and prevent abuses being committed," said Doss.
The panel's draft report contradicts repeated denials by Rwanda's President Paul Kagame that his government has supported the Tutsi insurgents in neighbouring DR Congo in any way.
The report was drawn up by the panel of experts established to investigate breaches of an international arms embargo against Congo.
Among its findings were claims that 150 Rwandans, including 29 children, were repatriated to their home country between Jan 2007 and Oct 2008 by the UN's mission in Congo.
Most had been recruited in Rwanda and most had fought or served in Mr Nkunda's National Congress for the Liberation of the People (CNDP), the insurgent army whose recent advances have forced 250,000 Congolese civilians to flee their homes.
"According to the debriefing of a dozen of these recruits, there have been incidents indicating complicity by the Rwandan authorities in their recruitment," the draft report said.
It also stated that Rwanda had supplied military equipment to Mr Nkunda's forces and allowed his movement to deposit money in Rwandan banks.
A source close to the panel of experts told The Daily Telegraph that the report presented some "inconvenient truths" to UN member states including Britain.
"It will be interesting to see how they act," the source said.
The UN Security Council, which will debate the report on Monday 15.12.2008, can decide to place individuals alleged to have broken the arms embargo on targeted sanctions lists.
Rwanda's foreign minister, Rosemary Museminali, on Thursday again denied that her government, which has received more than £525 million of British aid over the last five years, the largest per capita amount in Africa, supported the Congolese rebel leader.
Human Rights Watch has accused United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo of doing nothing to stop civilians being massacred by Tutsi Insurgent forces at Kawanga last month.
The organisation says at least 150 people were killed during a battle for Kawanga between Tutsi insurgents led by Nkundabatware, and a pro-government militia.
It says most were civilians, summarily executed by the rebels within a few hundred metres of a UN base.
But it says the peacekeepers did nothing to stop the massacre.
The UN also failed to stop the rebels from destroying camps housing thousands of displaced people who were forced to move.
As a reminder, a Spanish anti-terrorist judge Fernando Andreu launched an international arrest warrant against Rwandan Tutsi President Paul Kagame and 40 of his most closest officiers on 6.02.2008 for having actively taken part in the "genocide".
Elsewhere, the UN Secretary General's emissary to Congo, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has ostensibly avoided to visit hospitals in Rwanda where Tutsi soldiers wounded in Congo are being treated!
"Evidence gathered by The Daily Telegraph contradicts Rwanda's official denial of any role in the war in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 250,000 people have endured months of suffering since they were forced to flee their homes.
Instead, fighters recruited from inside Rwanda's army have joined General Laurent Nkunda's rebels in Congo.
Rwanda is one of Britain's closest African allies, receiving £46 million of aid last year (to prepare the war).
A 27-year-old fighter in Gen Nkunda's movement said that he served as a platoon commander in Rwanda's army until last month.
"There are many former Rwandan soldiers with the CNDP [Gen Nkunda's rebels]. When I was still in the Rwandan army, I was in touch with them. They wanted me to join the CNDP," he said. "I decided to join them because fighting for the CNDP is like fighting for Rwanda."
"Great wealth is also at stake. Wealthy Rwandans, including members of the government, have farming and mining interests in eastern Congo.
They need Gen Nkunda to protect these assets. Meanwhile, the rebels must finance their campaign. Gen Nkunda's movement is believed to hold bank accounts in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. »
Despite all this evidence, British foreign minister "in charge of Africa", Mark Malloch-Brown, said in Kigali on 20.11.2008 that he would not "fall into the trap of believing that somehow this rebel group is just a puppet group whose strings are pulled from Kigali.
"One's got to get to the roots in the Congo itself, not believe that somehow the solution just lies in here in Kigali," he told the BBC.
Alan Doss, the Head of UN Mission in Congo has written to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda with detailed accusations of "odious crimes" committed by forces under his control, despite the fact that he and his second-in-command, Bosco Ntanganda are wanted for crimes against humanity. MONUC troops now number 20,000. Why don't they arrest them? Instead Mr Doss, was not ashamed to contradict himself when he said: "like et or not, Nkunda is still here and you have to deal with him!" What is the point of increasing UN troops from 17,000 to 20,000 then?
BREAKING NEWS: Former Nigerian President Obasanjo, the UN Secretary General's emissary in Congo - too many emissaries quite frankly - betrays Congo
All Obasanjo cares about is the money he will be paid for!
After arriving in Jomba, a village in eastern Congo still occupied by the Tutsi, Obasanjo had no shame to review the Rwandan troops under the command of Nkundabatware et his second in command Bosco Ntanganda, both wanted by the international criminal court for crimes against humanity committed in Congo!
Obasanjo proceeded to dance Tango with Nkundabatware, who had just committed a massacre of Congolese in Kiwanja and dismantled refugee camps, two days earlier and so the blood was still fresh in Nkundabatware's hands! Shockingly Obasanjo said that "Laurent Nkunda is not "a beast" and can be persuaded to take steps toward peace".
Obasanjo was asked by BBC radio whether he could put pressure on Nkunda to stop the advance.
"I don't like the word pressure, I like the word persuasion. I believe he's a reasonable man that can listen and react to persuasion," he said.
"From what I saw of him today, he's not a beast that people would want us to believe he is." Obasanjo said he agrees with all Nkunda's claims!
Meanwhile, it is a fallacy to believe that after the Obasanjo-Nkundabatware meeting, Rwandan soldiers have been pulled 40 km away from from the frontline. No! According to our source on the ground, they have now concentrated in mining areas, to loot as much minerals as possible which the British, American, German, Belgian, Ugandan, and Rwandan crdit-crunch hit economies need.
Nevertheless, Nkundabatware now also realises that the way to the Hague is inevitable for him!
BREAKING NEWS: Joseph Mutaboba, Great Lakes special envoy and a top aide to Rwanda's President Paul Kagame admits; «Demobilised Rwandan troops were fighting in Congo»
Photo below: Kagame with Rose Kibuye, recently arrested in Germany for having shot down Hut President Habyarimana's plane, which was a terrorist act which kic-strated the killing spree!
Before this admission, President Joseph Kabila sent a delegation to Kigali, asking to meet Kagame for talks.
Kagame refused, arguing that what was going on in eastern Congo was a "Congolese problem", that it has nothing to do with Rwanda.
Now, Angola (SADC) is poised to send troops to eastern Congo. The Western media is already talking about the "regionalisation of the conflict"! Nonsense! If it is a Congolese problem, Congo can choose to deal with it in the way it sees fit, including calling in for the support of its allies.
Those Rwandan troops are regular troops in the Rwandan army. They are not just demobilised one. Kagame always rotates his troops.
In 1998, Kagame vehemently denied Rwanda troops were in Congo, later he finally ended up admitting it before Nelson Mandela.
BREAKING NEWS: Angola has announced it will send troops into the Democratic Republic of Congo
Georges Chicoty, Angola's deputy foreign minister, announced on national radio Tuesday that Angolan forces would be mobilized for action in Congo, The Associated Press reported.
The forces would be overseen by the European Union and the Southern African Development Community, the agency reported the minister as saying.
There is no need for more UN troops in Congo. The UN has 17,000 troops in Congo. If they deployed along the border of Congo with Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, everybody would have felt secure and we would not have these recurrent invasions of Congo by Rwanda. But no, the UN deployed rather inside Congo to protect vital strategic interests of Anglosaxon powers who are paying for the UN Mission in Congo.
The Southern African Developmment Community (SADC) has announced it will deploy troops along the border of Congo with Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, something the UN has refused to do. Now there are no more pretextes for the UN, and particularly for Rwanda who must organise an inter-rwandan dialogue with the Hutu opposition.
BREAKING NEWS: Playing games? Rwandan president's aide arrested in Germany, AFP, 9.11.2008
BERLIN (AFP) – Rwandan President Paul Kagame's chief of protocol, Rose Kabuye, was arrested Sunday in Germany under an arrest warrant issued by France, Germany's foreign ministry said.
"She was arrested on her arrival at the Frankfurt airport. Germany was bound to arrest her by a European arrest warrant issued by France," a ministry spokesman said.
Kabuye is suspected of participating in the 1994 downing of a plane carrying Rwanda's former Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana.
A former deputy, Kabuye figured among nine arrest warrants issued by a French judge in 2006 against those close to Kagame whom he suspected of being implicated in Habyarimana's death.
Rwanda immediately severed its diplomatic ties with France.
Kabuye sparked controversy by visiting Germany in April as part of an official delegation headed by Kagame.
At the time, Berlin acknowledged the government was aware of the French arrest warrant, but said German law prevented it from taking action against representatives of foreign states or their delegations it had invited to visit.
This time Kabuye "was at the Frankfurt airport on a private basis," a diplomat told AFP.
BREAKING NEWS: Rwandan Tutsi troops, close allies of Britain and America commit a genocide in Kiwanja, slaughtering targeted 217 people in cold blood after dismantling all refugee camps in the area - Rigobert Kanduki, Goma, Beni-Lubero Online, 9.11.2008
The local defence groups known as the Mai-Mai controlled Kiwanja to protect their own from the advancing Tutsi troops commanded by Tutsi warlord Nkundabatware. The UN Mission in Congo fired on them to disperse them and drive them out of the town and let the Tutsi take the town on 5 November 2008. A massacre followed! The Tutsi went house to house and killed everybody they could find! Young and old, women and children. Every man aged between 13 and 34 was killed!
Once more Tutsi are responsible for crimes against humanity in Congo!
BREAKING NEWS: Rwandan Tutsi troops, close allies of Britain and America go on raping spree in Rutsuru! - Mike Pflanz in Rutshuru, Daily Telegraph, 5.11.2008
In the town of Rutshuru 4.11.2008, Constance, 45, was lying on a thin mattress in her two-room home. She was raped by a gunman from Laurent Nkunda's rebel army last week.
Two armed men forced open a window and shone torches inside the tiny home, shouting for Constance to open the door or they would break it down and kill everyone inside - including her husband, Jacques, 52, and their six children.
"What could I do?" she said, wincing in pain. "I opened the door, they forced us to the ground and put guns to our heads, asking where the money was. I went to the bedroom and gave them $50 which we had borrowed so we could run away from the fighting."
Constance's husband was taken out of the house and forced to lie down. Then a gunman returned. "He came back to the bedroom and raped me," said Constance.
Doctors have told Constance (not her real name) that she will recover - physically at least. By the terrible standards of Congo's war, she was comparatively lucky, said Joseph Ciza, the director of the HealAfrica hospital, which treats the victims of sexual violence. He said that women were often shot and mutilated after being raped.
BREAKING NEWS: While US Under-Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer denied it, UN Confirms Rwandan Tanks Attacked Congo Army from Rwandan Territory - Michelle Faul, AFP, 3 November 2008
Rwandan forces fired tank shells and other heavy artillery across the border at Congolese troops during fighting last week, the United Nations said Tuesday.
Congo's government had accused Rwanda of actively supporting Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, but the accusation marks the first time the U.N. has publicly said Rwanda was overtly involved in the latest fighting. Rwanda has repeatedly denied its military is involved in the conflict.
U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg told The Associated Press in Goma that Uruguayan peacekeepers saw Rwandan tanks and other heavy artillery fire into Congo on Wednesday as Nkunda's forces advanced toward the regional capital, Goma.
On Friday, Gen. Jorge Rosales, chief of Uruguay's army, said rebel troops "have tanks and heavy artillery" from Rwanda and that intelligence reports "indicate there are soldiers from that country integrated in the rebel forces."
Van Wildenberg said U.N. officials had asked the Rwandans about the firing and they denied it.
"But we saw it. We observed it," she said.
Alan Doss, the top U.N. envoy in Congo, said in a videoconference Monday that the "fire had come across the border from Rwanda near the Kibumba (displaced) camp where hostilities were under way."
Kibumba is located on a main road about 17 miles north of Goma. The Rwandan border is visible to the east, amid several volcanoes that straddle the frontier.
"We also had a unit in that area that was trying to stabilize the situation. ... I don't think it lasted any time," he said of the shooting. He said it had been documented when "our reports came in from our military observers on the ground that morning."
Rwanda invaded Congo twice in the late 1990s but initially denied its troops were there both times.
BREAKING NEWS: Quotes of the week - 01.11.2008
Tutsi are now committing a genocide in Congo!
1. «The eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo is right now the arena of massacres [by the Tutsi] never seen before in the history of Africa!» - Bernard Kouchner, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, AFP, 3110.2008. That says it all!
It is no longer a secret at all! Britain backs the invasion of Congo. Tutsi are its proxies!
2.«Congo's Kabila should talk to rebel Nkunda» - British Ambassador to the UN John Sawers. However, Nkunda is not a Congolese and what is happening in Congo is not a rebellion but a agression by Rwanda and Nkundabatware only commands Tutsi Rwandan troops backed by Anglosaxon private military companies (mercenaries).
3. « Far from being just another episode in a centuries-old ethnic conflict, the lightening advance by renegagde Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda on the provincial capital of Goma is a bold move in a broad strategy to secure Rwandan control of North Kivu Province and parts of South Kivu. A close British ally, Rwanda has made it clear that it will settle for a de facto control of the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, rich in every minerals known to man [now being systematically looted order to replenish the coffers in the West, devastated by the global financial crisis!].» - Jonathan Clayton, The Times, London, 31.10.2008.
Nkunda is not Congolese. In fact his real Tuti name which he had Congolecised is "Nkundabatware"
4. «General Nkunda whose militia is trained, organised and supllied by Kigali was born in Rwanda but raised on the Congolese side of the border. Without Kigali's support, he would not survive long!» - Jonathan Clayton, The Times, London, 31.10.2008.
Eastern Congo will never be a Tutsi colony!
5. «All the displaced Congolese people will be assisted and resettled back in their land» - President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 31.10.2008
BREAKING NEWS: Yet another Tutsi aggression against the DRC - 27.10.2008:
North Kivu, eastern Congo: Now that the international community's attention is focused elsewhere (elections in America, global financial crisis), the Tutsi regimes of Rwanda and Uganda, backed by anglo-saxon powers today fiercely attacked the territory of Congo, occupying both the Rumangabo barracks and the Virunga National Park (a world heritage). UN troops were there and never intervened.
The people of Congo's vented anger at the useless and treacherous presence of the UN Mission in Congo flared as they attacked the Mission's headquarters in Goma.
Western media lie yet again! What is going on in eastern Congo is not a rebellion as they put it! It is an aggression by the Tutsi regimes of Rwandan and Uganda whom anglo-saxon powers backed by their privaye military companies are using to loot Congo's minerals to solve the financial global crisis. The people of Congo are yet again a victim of the global financial crisis!
BREAKING NEWS - 17.10.2008:
BREAKING NEWS - 17.10.2008:
Rwandan and Uganda invade Congo yet again in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis et the electoral campaign in the US. They know the international community's attention is focused elsewhere now! Not at all! The West's hich tech economy still need those strategic minerals from Congo, so somereone has to do the looting. That someone is Museveni! That someone is Kagame!
After crossing into Congo, Ugandan troops completly loot the Nyakunde Hospital in Ituri, the only hospital left in the region were raped Congolese women were bein treated! How long will Congo have to put up with these kind barbaric razzias?
After the killing of 112 Rwandan troops in Tongo by the Congolese army, the UN Mission in Congo has now asked Congolese troops to withdraw from Tongo! Unbelievable!
BREAKING NEWS - 14.10.2008:
Congolese armed forces kill 112 Rwandan Tutsi soldiers in Tongo according to the Chinese News Agency Xinhua, citing the Operations Commander in that region, Colonel Delphin Kahimbi.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says more than 150,000 people have fled intense fighting in recent weeks.The French EU presidency warned Monday that "huge massacres" could once again take place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the situation is "murderous and untenable."
The Democratic Republic of Congo gave the U.N. Security Council nearly three dozen photographs which it said supported its accusation that Rwandan government soldiers invaded and attacked eastern Congo.
The 34 photographs, obtained by Reuters, showed weapons Congo says it recovered at the site of the attack, along with ammunition, Rwandan money, a Rwandan military medical insurance card, a military satchel labeled "RWANDA Defense FORCES" and other items.
In addition to the photographs, Congo's U.N. Ambassador Atoki Ileka sent a letter to Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yesui, the president of the Security Council this month, reiterating Kinshasa's fear that Rwanda may be planning a major attack and asking the council to pass a resolution condemning Rwanda.
BREAKING NEWS - 22.09.2008:
How come before everytime UN troops' mission is renewed or extended in Congo (the next one is in December 2008), war always breaks out in the east? Clearly the UN is there to protect powerful interests and not restore peace!
How with 17,000 Blue Helmets and a budget of $1 billion a year, the UN system does not restore peace in Congo?
Congolese armed forces make gain against Rwandan invading troops in North Kivu Province. 30 bodies of Rwandan Tutsi soldiers all wearing Rwandan military uniforms killed in Sake were presented to the press on 23.09.2008 by the Chief of satff. Rwanda's economy which relies on minerals looted in Congo is completely paralyzed.
Three commanders and seven captains were among those killed. These Rwandan soldiers had infiltrated Sake for months, posing as milk salesmen and housed by local Tutsi. They attacked from within.
Nkunda buries six people alive in latrines!
Meanwhile, Nkunda has buried six people alive in latrines in the locality of Bueza, in the sector of Tanda/Mwimbira, Rutshuru territory on 17 Septembre 2008, as reported by thge Kinshasa-based daily L'Observateur on 26.09.2008.
Massacres and tortures, including of babies, are a daily occurrence in the territories Nkunda controls.
Nkunda's men have raped and tortured tens of thousands of women they accused of supporting the army and Congolese local defence forces, hanging them upside down from trees and ripping apart their reproductive organs with machetes or guns.
More than 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes and forced to live in squalid camps with no help whatsoever. Meanwhile, Rwandan and Ugandan troops under the command of Nkunda are systematically pillaging strategic minerals in the territories under Nkunda's control.
BREAKING NEWS: 15.09.2008
Despite Western powers'overt support to the opposition in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe accepts to share power with Morgan Tsvangirai
The Kenyans have shared power, the Zimbabweans have done the same. On the contrary in Rwanda, there are no opposition parties and Kagame has just organised a parody of a parliamentary election, the outcome of which is known in advance. The RPF will win unopposed with 100%. No pressure exerted on Kagame at all by the old Western democraties. Kagame's crimes against humanity remain unpunished.
War flares yet again in eastern Congo as Ugandan and Rwandan troops under the command of Nkunda attacks Congolese government forces.
Hundreds of millions Congolese yet again displaced and living in sqaulid camps!
The new war coincides with the elections campaign in the US (...) as well the exacerbation of the credit crunch in the West. And Congo has minerals in plenty.
This is the time Global Witness, a group that campaign against exploitation of natural resources in war zones, chose to denounce the exploitation of minerals by Congolese government troops and the Hutu FDLR. This report made Museveni and Kagame very happy. The timing of the report said volume, although the government had already told Global Witness that it has closed all the comptoirs in the areas FDLR were operating.
But of the Tutsi who finance their war against the Congolese through exploitation of Congolese minerals, Global Witness said nothing! Surprisingly the first reaction to Global Witness's report came from Kigali!
Government troops opposed a fierce resistance and repulsed the enemy in several fronts, killing many despite the UN Mission in Congo's obvious complicity. Government forces recaptured Kirotshe, Minova and the 2nd and 6th brigades control the common border between Congo and Rwanda. They are poised to take the border post of Bunagana between Uganda and Congo. The most important thing is to neutralise Nkunda for ever!
Four principal zones were the theatre of confrontations in North and the South Kivu on Tuesday 9 Sept.2008. On the same day, also in North Kivu, in Ntamugenga, in Rutshuru territory north of Goma engagements between the CNDP troops and the regular army erupted early in the morning.
In North Kivu, in Kirotche, a locality 10km south of Sake, some 20km from Goma, elements of the Mayi-Mayi Cobra and Nkunda's Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) clashed,
It is only when the people rose up to denounce the UN Mission in Congo's complicity, blocking road and burning one MONUC vehicle (some Blue Helmets were slightly injured), that MONUC seemed to do somthing.
After intense negotiation the parties agreed to stop the gunfire around midday. In the surroundings of Kikuku, a locality 10 km north of Nyanzale, where confrontations were also announced between the same forces, the Blue helmets reportedly exerted a strong pressure on the CNDP troops, and prevented them from progressing towards Kanyabayonga in the north
In South Kivu, the intervention of MONUC forces on Tuesday also reportedly prevented the capture of the locality of Minova by CNDP troops.
HOW THE WEST PLANS THE RECOLONISATION AND THE PATRONAGE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO USING THE UN MISSION IN CONGO
"It is like being Congo's foster parents," Albrecht Conze, the political chief of the UN peacekeeping force told Spiegel Online Magazine on 17 August 2006, predicting the return of white patronage in a country that was a Belgian colony until 1960. "It won't be easy."
Support will come from a black "council of advisors" - another idea hatched by Western governments. The plan is for well-known African politicians such as Joaquím Chissano, Mozambique's former president, and Nicéphore Soglo, his colleague from Benin, to make policies crafted overseas more palatable to Congo's citizens.
The project's success ultimately depends on "Western states and institutions acting in a unified way," says Conze. But that's a somewhat shaky foundation. The US government's interest in rebuilding Congo is limited, for example. After all, the deeply Catholic country "contains neither oil [the DRC's massive oil wealth is still unexplored] nor terrorists [people become terrorists only if they are pushed to the limits. What about the Tutsi and what they are doing in Congo?]," Conze points out. By contrast, Congo's former colonial ruler Belgium fears losing lucrative business opportunities to European competitors the moment the situation in the country becomes more transparent.
The rising world power China could cause trouble too -- by providing billions of dollar in loans without imposing conditions or controls in return for access to the country's valuable natural resources. Beijing has already used this method in neighboring Angola, where it now controls much of the production.
QUOTE OF THE YEAR: BY PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE:
"We shall soon be setting up a government. The MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) does not want to come in apparently. This time they have been promised by the British that sanctions would be more devastating, that in six months' time the government will collapse. I do not know when that day will come. I wish (MDC leader Morgan) Tsvangirai well on that day."
Yet other crocodile's tears shed. Yet another British company that backed the Tutsi invasion and occupation of Congo denounced. No sanctions prescribed against it...
An invasion and occupation that is still continuing because Tutsi warlord Nkunda still control part of North Kivu province where he has raised the Rwandan flag!
A British government investigation has revealed that the activities of a minerals company supported armed conflict and forced labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The company in question, Afrimex, sourced minerals from an area of eastern DRC occupied by rebel troops until 2003. The firm has now been criticised for failing to make sure its trading activities were not contributing to conflict and human rights abuses.
The government investigation found that rebel soldiers extracted money from the firm's supply chain, helping them fund their campaign. Through its lack of diligence, the firm also failed to contribute towards ending the use of child labour and forced labour.
Gareth Thomas, UK trade minister, said: 'We are determined to promote the highest ethical standards and companies trading in conflict areas should take all possible steps to meet them.'
A complaint against Afrimex's activities between 1998 and 2007 was made last year by campaign organisation Global Witness, triggering an investigation by the UK National Contact Point (NCP).
Ex-US diplomat gets 20 years for child porn
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP, 25 August 2008) — An ex-U.S. diplomat who admitted taping his sexual encounters with teenage girls while stationed in Brazil and the Congo was sentenced Friday 22.08.2008 to 20 years, the maximum possible prison term.
Gons G. Nachman, 42, had sought leniency, claiming among other things that cultural differences in those countries made sex with teenage girls more acceptable.
But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee took the unusual step of imposing consecutive 10-year terms for the two counts on which Nachman was convicted.
"I reject out of hand completely the idea that I should take into account cultural differences," Lee said. He said even if such differences exist, Nachman was answerable to U.S. standards and U.S. law while working as a diplomat on embassy grounds.
Nachman pleaded guilty earlier this year to possessing child pornography after admitting he videotaped his sexual encounters while working as a consular officer. He also pleaded guilty to misuse of a diplomatic passport.
The case also included allegations that he pressured attractive female Brazilian visa applicants for sex, though he was not charged with that.
Nachman, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to the U.S. from Costa Rica when he was 17, admitted that he recorded his sexual encounters with a 17-year-old girl in 2004 and a 14-year-old girl in 2005 while stationed in Kinshasa. One of the tapes was labeled "Congo 2004 Sexual Adventures."
He also admitted recording his sex acts with a 16-year-old Brazilian girl while stationed in Rio de Janeiro in 2006.
His defense lawyers argued that Nachman documented all aspects of his life, and that the sex tapes should be viewed from that perspective.
"This gentleman is not a predatory, manipulative, child sex abuser," said defense attorney Lorilee Gates.
A second defense attorney, John Tran, said cultural norms in Brazil and Congo should be taken into account. He noted embassy officials were indifferent when Nachman brought a 17-year-old girl to the embassy as his date.
"As repugnant as it may be to us, in some parts of the world no one turns an eye when someone is walking around with someone who looks like his daughter as a date," Tran said.
Nachman's sister testified that their grandfather was 61 and their grandmother 16 when they married.
"We are a very different family, I guess," Patricia Gutierrez said.
Nachman wept after hearing the sentence. His attorneys had suggested the six months he has already spent in prison would be sufficient.
In court, Nachman apologized to his victims and the U.S. Foreign Service.
"I've had this self-centered streak that has caused me to be where I am," he said.
His apology stood in contrast to letters he wrote after his guilty plea to the Foreign Service director seeking intervention on his behalf. He said he was unfairly targeted because he had been active in the nudist community and threatened to take the story about the "injustice" of his case to the international press.
Nachman earned his law degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was president of the Naturist Student Association and led demonstrations involving public nudity in 1995.
Africa is suffering because of the West's polcy of "divide and rule"
Britain and America prepared the current Rwandan President Paul Kagame for the evil and deadly role that he has now and is still is playing in the region in a military academy, in Arkansas, Bill Clinton's home. Now the same Paul Kagame turns around and accuses France of having played an active role in the genocide of 1994, in which about 800,000 people were killed.
In a report published on 5 August 2008, Kagame says France backed Rwanda's Hutu government with political, military, diplomatic and logistical support. named in the report were the late former president, Francois Mitterrand, and two former prime ministers, Dominique de Villepin and Edouard Balladur. Also named was former Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.
And because the Tutsi killed many people in 1994, including 13 religious leaders, there are now two international arrest warrants issued against Paul Kagame and 40 of his close officers. More are still yet to be issued!
The British Mea Cupa" which means nothing! - A crocodile's tears basically!
The British Government has condemned Das Air Cargo, a British air freight company accused of knowingly transporting minerals out of conflict zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo but announced no sanctions agsint the company.
The Britsih Government ruled that the UK-based air cargo company violated OECD guidelines by transporting minerals out of Tutsi-occupied areas in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. DAS Air was first accused by a UN Panel in 2001. It has since ceased operations in the UK, and "gone into bankruptcy".
At the same time, Portuguese authorities have seized a yacht and a private plane belonging to a former Congolese rebel leader accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a AFP report said on 22 July 2008.
Other property confiscated from Jean-Pierre Bemba included a house in southern Portugal worth an estimated EUR2.5 million and two expensive cars, the Portuguese weekly Sol said.
All his bank accounts in Portugal, including one containing EUR1.75 million, had also been frozen, the report said.
Nkunda, the butcher Tutsi warlord from Rwanda 'Summarily' Executing Civilians! The UN is there. Yet he is not arrested simply because the Tutsi like the Israeli in the Middle East are untouchable!
Photo below: a Congolese woman, victim of rape by Tutsi insurgents in a rehabilitation centre. She is utterly broken!
According to Human Rights Watch after a 10-day mission in eastern Congo, General Nkunda's National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) combatants summarily executed civilians whom they accused of being supporters of various Congolese local-defense forces.
In Gashavu village on April 20, CNDP combatants arrested and tied up four men and a 12-year-old boy and then beat them to death with large sticks. Six other civilians were abducted, including a woman and a 15-year-old girl.
On June 11, with little warning, UN peacekeepers pulled out of Misinga, a crucial buffer zone between CNDP and Congolese local defense PARECO combatants, leaving hundreds of civilians unprotected who had sought safety around the UN base at the mercy of Tutsi killers.
Breaking News:
1. Zimbabweans must be "masters of their own destiny." Away from interference!
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe (L) shakes hands with Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai on 21 July 2008 after the signing of a deal paving the way for full-scale talks.
President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pledged a new chapter in their bitter relationship today as they agreed to hold fully-fledged talks on ending Zimbabwe's political crisis
"We sit here in order for us to chart a new way, a new way of political interaction," said President Mugabe, who won a run-off presidential election last June.
"We must act now ... as Zimbabweans, think as Zimbabweans and act as Zimbabweans," he added.
2. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir could be charged with crimes against humanity. An arrest warrant could be launched agsint him. Ah! When are the two arrest warrants against Paul Kagame going to be executed?
3. Zimbabwe says sanctions failure a victory over racism
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe on Saturday 12.07.2008 welcomed the failure of a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution to impose sanctions over its violent presidential elections, calling it a victory over racism and meddling in its affairs.
Russia and China on Friday 11.07.2008 vetoed the resolution, which would have imposed an arms embargo on the southern African country and financial and travel restrictions on President Robert Mugabe and 13 other officials.
United Nations approval for sanctions on Zimbabwe would have been a "dangerous precedent" for interference in countries' internal affairs, Russia said on Saturday, explaining its sanctions veto.
UN sanctions "would have created a dangerous precedent, opening the way for Security Council interference in the internal affairs of states in connection with one or another political event... which is a gross violation of the UN charter," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.
China said on Saturday that sanctions against Zimbabwe's government would "complicate," rather than ease, conflict in the troubled African country, defending its decision to veto a proposed U.N. resolution
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is one of Zimbabwe's major trading partners, expressed similar sentiments, saying Zimbabwe should be allowed to resolve the political crisis on its own.
"The development of the situation in Zimbabwe until now has not exceeded the context of domestic affairs," Wang said, adding that sanctions would "interfere with the negotiation process."
President Mugabe's government, meanwhile, thanked those countries that opposed the US draft resolution aimed at imposing an assets freeze and travel ban on Mugabe and 13 of his closest allies.
Harare reserved particular praise for South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been criticised for his policy of "quiet diplomacy" with Mugabe.
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described him as a "leader par excellence" for not yielding to "international pressure and to the machinations of the West led by Britain and United States."
So we told you. Indian peacekeeprs are backing the Tutsi occupation on North Kivu Province in Congo!
The UN Mission in Congo known as MONUC has been given "difficult to refute proof" of comments by Indian Colonel Chand Saroha during a ceremony shortly before his return to India following a one-year stint in the country.
In an audio recording of the ceremony the Indian officer allegedly calls Nkunda "brother."
He allegedly describes him as fighting for a "noble cause" and ready to make sacrifices following the example of "true revolutionaries."
In response, Nkunda thanks him for his friendship and his support telling him "you have helped us enormously."
Saroha says that he had not been officially authorised to meet the rebels but was impressed by their discipline and conduct.
The Indian officer commanded a unit of peacekeepers deployed near the provincial capital of Goma during a sensitive period.
Zimbabwe: Business Delegation to Tour DRC
The Herald (Harare), Harare, 2 July 2008
A team of local entrepreneurs and company executives will visit the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga province later this week to explore investment opportunities and to negotiate softer tax regimes in the area.
The business tour that will run from July 28 to August 2, is part of regional efforts to increase trading among states in southern Africa.
It also seeks to consolidate economic ties between members of the Common Market for East and Southern Africa and to increase the participation of African countries in exploiting vast resources in the DRC.
Speaking at the commemoration of the country's independence anniversary on 30 June 2008, DRC Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Mawampanga Mwana Nanga said there were vast investment opportunities that Zimbabwean businesspeople and their counterparts in the region could exploit for development.
Unlike in Kenya, there is no post-election violence in Zimbabwe.
For Prime Minister Raila Odinga to even suggest that Zimbabwe be kicjed out of the African Union is hot air! Why were Rwanda and Uganda not kicked out of the African Union when they invaded Congo?
The political solution that was found in Kenya after electoral ethic killings and massacres does not necessarily need to be apllied in Zimbabwe. A Kenya-style grand coalition government cannot be the Zimbabwe way!
"Kenya is Kenya. Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe. We have our own history of evolving dialogue and resolving political impasses the Zimbabwean way. The Zimbabwean way, not the Kenyan way. Not at all. "The way out is the way defined by the Zimbabwe people free from outside interference, and that is exactly what will resolve the matter," President Robert Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba told journalists at an African summit in Egypt.
Zanu-PF's Robert Mugabe won the vote, boycotted by the opposition. That is now a fait accompli and the world has to accept that! Those who don't, well...
"They can go and hang a thousand times, they have no basis, they have no claim on Zimbabwe politics at all," spokesman George Charamba said in answer to a question about Western criticism of Zimbabwe's election.
The government is open to talks with the opposition but Morgan Tsvangirai must come to the talks with his own ideas, not with an agenda dictated to him by Bush and Brown, he said.
Zimbabwe: overwhelming victory for Robert Mugabe
According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), President Mugabe took 85.5% of the votes cast in all 10 provinces - but there were many spoiled ballots.
Official Results:
Robert Mugabe: 2,150,269
Morgan Tsvangirai: 233,000
Spoiled ballots: 131,481
Voter turnout: 42.37%, similar to that of the disputed first-round vote in March
Source: Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
The official results confirmed President Mugabe's sixth term as president - extending his 28 years in power and was sworn in on 29 June 2008. A 21-gun salute and military jet fly-by greeted President Mugabe at the ceremony at his State House residence in Harare.
"I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe do swear that I will truly serve in the office of president, so help me God," President Mugabe said, to applause from the gathered dignitaries.
Zimbabwe: Second Round Presidential election turnout a record high in the history of the country! - The Heral Newspaper, Harare, 28 June 2008.
Contrary to international media reports that many Zimbabweans boycotted the ballot and statements by witnesses that government militias forced people to vote for the 84-year-old Mugabe, initial reports from polling stations countrywide indicate that this would be the biggest turnout Zimbabwe has ever had, which is a slap in the face for detractors who claimed this was a Mugabe election.
The election was peaceful. According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, counting had started adding that it hoped to begin announcing results on Saturday 28.06.2008.
After casting his vote, President Mugabe told the press that he felt "fit, upbeat and optmistic".
NELSON MANDELA deserves his place in history for defeating apartheid (the Boers). So does ROBERT MUGABE for liberating Zimbabwe from the Rhodies!
So, for Nelson Mandela to talk of "tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe" is a matter of bowing to Western pressure and those who pressurise African leaders, not Mandela, are to be denounced.
We in the Democratic Republic of Congo have not forgotten how the then President Nelson Mandela, still bowing to Western pressure, gave Tutsi President Paul Kagame Mandela who gave Kagame arms worth $100 million to kill, rape and llot in Congo in return for minerals! This is according to Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman in her book "Les Nouveaux Prédateurs", p.63.
No wonder why Congolese renamed the "Mandela Roundabout" in the capital Kinshasa into the "Makobola Roundabout" in reference to Makobola, avillage in South Kivu where the Tutsi committed a heinous massacre, killing hundreds of Native Congolese.
No playing gimmicks! Let the ballot box decide! Let the sovereign people of Zimbabwe decide! Mugabe is no Tsvangirai killer! Zimbabwe's government will honour safety assurances for the benefit of Tsvangirai. So Morgan, come out of the Boers'house and go to the poll!
Down with the idea of the so-called government of national unity. Let the ballot box decide. Is this how Tsvangirai is going to behave in a government of national unity? Pass all the state secrets to his backers in the West? Constitutionally, Tsvangirai should have confirmed his retreat in writing. Why has he not done so? If Tsvangirai had wanted to pull out of the race he should have done so 21 days before the first round of voting on March 29,in line with the Constitution. Tsvangirai's withdrawal had been filed too late to have any legal effect.
BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, who is in Harare, says critics of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader have been lambasting him for seeking refuge in a European embassy, rather than an African one.
He adds that Mr Mugabe is on course for a remarkable victory, when only three months ago he seemed to be on the ropes.
Zimbabwe's Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, labelled Mr Tsvangirai's move to the Dutch embassy as an "exhibitionist antic", intended to provoke international anger.
He said Mr Tsvangirai, who was detained briefly on five separate occasions during recent election campaigning, had been making a desperate attempt to besmirch the vote.
Zimbabwe's UN ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku told the BBC's Network Africa programme: "We have never prevented [Mr Tsvangirai] from campaigning.
"He's a cry baby... He has been free to move wherever he wanted to move."
"After its flag and anthem political independence, Africa must now wage the struggle for complete, full economic independence. And Robert Mugabe is today at the forefront of that struggle. Mugabe is right when he said:
"Never again shall this country come under the rule of the white man, direct or indirect. Not while we, who fought for its liberation, live."
President Mugabe was addressing thousands of supporters at the funeral of Lieutenant-General Amoth Norbert Chingombe, who made history by becoming the first person to raise the flag when Zimbabwe became independent in April 1980, and who heroically commanded Zimbabwean troops deployed in Congo in 1998 to help kick out Tutsi troops from Rwanda, Ugandan and Burundi right at the door of Kinshasa the capital.
As a journalist who is supposed to remain objective, I ask myself the following questions:
1. The Zimbabwean Ambassador to the UK was recently stopped (and searched?) at Heathrow Airport, London, very much against the Geneva Convention. The Media never said anything about it. Yet when some American diplomats went to visit opposition leaders in rural Zimbabwe, 70km away from their embassy, which is against the Geneva Convention, hell broke loose and it made headlines in the media.
2. The Western media reported that Zimbabwe is now ruled by the junta, that President Mugabe is just a fig-leaf. The same media said that it is the army that is campaigning for Mugabe. Is that not a contradiction?
3. Kagame won the last election with 100% of the votes in Rwanda which is ruled by one tribe, the Tutsi. Yet Kagame said that there cannot be free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. As a reminder, Zimbabwena troops came to the help of the people of Congo in August 1998 and kicked out Tutsi invaders from Rwanda and Uganda who had besieged Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC.
4. Raila Odinga, the Prime Minister of Kenya called on all African leaders to stand against Mugabe, so did Kofi Atta Annan. Well! Kenya is still reeling after the recent post-electoral violence and Odinga's Luo people kicked out the Kikuyu from their land vice-versa! Mugabe has sorted out the land issue despite a fierce counter-offensive against him by those... well, let us quote President Mugabe's own last speech at the UN General Assembly:
"Zimbabwe won its independence on 18th April, 1980, after a protracted war against British colonial imperialism which denied us human rights and democracy. That colonial system which suppressed and oppressed us enjoyed the support of many countries of the West who were signatories to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"Even after 1945, it would appear that the Berlin Conference of 1884, through which Africa was parcelled to colonial European powers, remained stronger than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is therefore clear that for the West, vested economic interests, racial and ethnocentric considerations proved stronger than their adherence to principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"The West still negates our sovereignties by way of control of our resources, in the process making us mere chattels in out own lands, mere minders of its trans-national interests. In my own country and other sister states in Southern Africa, the most visible form of this control has been over land despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism.
"That control largely persists, although it stands firmly challenged in Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and Britain, supported by her cousin states, most notably the United States and Australia. Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown's sense of human rights precludes our people's right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be controlled by their kith and kin.
"I am termed dictator because I have rejected this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists."
Simon Mann trial highlights role of mercenaries in Africa
(SAPA/AFP, 18 June 2008) - THE trial of Briton Simon Mann yesterday for allegedly plotting to oust Equatorial Guinea’s iron-fisted ruler serves as a reminder of the long- standing role of mercenaries on the African continent.
Mann was one of 62 alleged mercenaries arrested in 2004 at Harare’s international airport when their plane touched down en route to Equatorial Guinea.
Zimbabwean authorities accused them of trying to pick up arms before teaming up with a group led by a South African, Nick du Toit – who has been sentenced to 34 years in jail – to launch a coup against Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodor Obiang Nguema.
Former British soldier Mann and the alleged mercenaries, detained in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea, come, in a long internationalist tradition, from countries including Angola, Armenia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
They are accused of plotting to overthrow Nguema, who himself seized power in 1979 from his uncle, executing him later, and replace him with exiled opposition figure Severo Moto Nsa.
Also under suspicion is Mark Thatcher, the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
The heyday of mercenaries in Africa came after the independence of the then Belgian Congo in 1960, which became Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The likes of Frenchman Bob Denard and his affreux (the frightful ones), Belgian “Black Jack” Schramme and Briton “Mad Mike” Hoare fought in the secessionist province of Katanga.
Denard, who died last year, became notorious as a soldier for hire in a succession of post-colonial war theatres, including Congo, Angola and Nigeria.
He also took part in a succession of coups in the Comoros, a country he regarded as his second home after taking a Comoran wife.
In 2006 he was given a suspended five year jail term in Paris for a failed 1995 putsch in the Comoros.
Schramme, the chief mercenary in the former Belgian Congo, who died in 1988, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in his absence by Belgium for killing another mercenary he suspected of being a double agent.
The establishment in apartheid South Africa of Executive Outcomes in 1991 brought sudden order to the profession.
The company recruited battle-hardened and disciplined South Africans and Rhodesians, blacks as well as whites.
They received regular salaries, health insurance and pension plans among their benefits.
Those guarding VIPs pressed their uniforms and spit-shined their boots. They fought in Angola, Sierra Leone, even as far afield as Papua-New Guinea.
Media reports link at least one of the 67 men held in Zimbabwe to the London-based Sandline group, which absorbed Executive Outcomes in 1998, the year that South Africa’s Parliament first passed a law forbidding all mercenary activity.
Mercenaries arrived in Ivory Coast in September 2002 to support President Laurent Gbagbo against mutineers and former soldiers who seized half of that west African country.
Gbagbo’s government claimed the rebels had recruited their own mercenaries.
Two white mercenary units tried – and failed – to enter Madagascar in 2002, one to support the incumbent president, the other to back his predecessor. — Sapa-AFP
Belgium is preparing for a regime change in the Democratic Republic of Congo! They can always count on Congo's neighbours and Congolese traitors within the country and in the diaspora
Photo below: Karel de Gucht, the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs being booed by supporters of President Joseph Kabila
Bush has only seven months left in office. Lumumba and Laurent Kabila were assassinated when an American president was leaving office to give way to another! They were said to be "uncontrolable". Karel de Gucht, the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs has publicly and on record said that Joseph Kabila has become "uncontrolable". Lest we forget!
Belgium is very unhappy with the deals Kinshasa has signed with China to rebuild the infrastructures in Congo because Belgium still considers Congo as its colony!
In today's global economy, Congo a sovereign and independent country has the right to diversify its partners. After all, the market economy dictates that you give priority to the highest bidder!
For exemple, Belgium is very angry because it lost a deal to expand Congo's main port of Matadi in the Atlantic coast, now overcongested to the Arab Emirates because Belgium said it would use the money it gives to Congo in the form of development aid (a mere $200 millions a year) to rebuild the port! How long is that going to take and with that little money and how far is the port going to be expanded so that we can beat the congestion?
Karel de Gucht, the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs went right up to China to tell the Chinese to cancel the "minerals for infrastructures deal" that Congo had signed with China because that will leave Congo in debt if the money that Chinese banks are going to put in ($9 billion) to build infrastructure is not going to match the amount of copper and cobalt that will be digged out of Katanga since knowledge of reserves is scanty, he claimed.
The Chinese did not bite and recently two Chinese ships have arrived in Matadi with all the equipments needed to start the work.
Karel de Gucht went to Kinshasa, albeit univited officially (but with the complicity of the Belgian embassy in Kinshasa and some Congolese officials) and told President Joseph Kabila face to face that because Belgium gives Congo $200 million a year, Belgium had the right to tell Congo what it should do (at independence, Belgium stole all the money that Congo has in its state coffers and has not yet returned this money to this day. Lumumba denounced it, but was killed).
Karel de Gucht asked President Joseph Kabila to reshuffle his government or else and warned him that the deals with China will not materialise because it will never go through in the Congolese parliament! Shocking. Kabila felt insulted and immediately recalled the Congolese ambassador to Belgium and ordered the closure of the Belgian consulates in Goma and Lubumbashi.
Relations between Congo and Belgium are so strained that we would not be surprised if their diplomatic relations are severed in the near future. The Belgians are however playing with time to incur a regime change! Needless to repeat! Bush has only seven months left in office. Lumumba and Laurent Kabila were assassinated when an American president was leaving office to give way to another! Lest we forget!
Face to face with Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General. A question to Mr Ban by Antoine Roger Lokongo.
The UN Association of the UK welcomed Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 13 June 2008. Mr Ban made a speech on "Securing the Common Good: The United Nations and the Expanding Global Agenda", in which he outlined the four main global challenges facing the world today, including climate change (the N0.1. priority of his mandate), global health, the threat of terrorism which can be met by setting up a counterterrorism taskforce) and the radication of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including nuclear weapons.
Mr Ban was willing to take some questions at the end of his speech. Antoine Roger Lokongo, a London-based Congolese journalist took the opportunity to ask Mr Ban about the UN Mission in Congo, the biggest UN peacekeeping mission in the world today:
ARL: "Mr Secretary General,
"The DR Congo my country hosts the biggest UN peacekkeeping mission in the world today. I believe there are 17,000 UN troops there altogether. Yet they have not managed to put an end to sexual violence in the east, they have not managed to neutralise armed groups which are wrecking havoc there, including Tutsi warlord Nkunda's CNDP.
Instead, UN troops have been engaged in sexually abusing young girls and exchanging gold for arms with armed groups, according to a report by the BBC. How long more is the UN Mission in Congo going to stay there and what can they still achieve in the short time that they still have there?"
BIG APPLAUSE FROM THE AUDIENCE
UN Sec. Gen's answer:
"Shortly after my inauguration, the first mission I visited was the DRC. I visisited the peacekeepers who are serving there under MONUC, the largest mission, you are right we have in the world which we have deployed to date. Unfortunately there have been incidents whereby human rights were not properly protected and sexual abuses have taken place.
I declared "Zero tolerance" on such abuses and since then I have aseen a sharp decrease in them. The abuse had caused a sharp disatisfaction with MONUC.
I have repatriated whole contigents involved in such abuses, and because I cannot take (punitive) measures against the abusers, I have asked the sending countries to take those punitive measures against them.
I know that is not satisfactory for the international community but there is a strong commitment on our part not to see such abuses occurring again."
War errupts between the Tutsi regime in place in Kigali and the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The Tutsi killed many people during the genocide!
The ICTR categorically refuses to transfer two Hutu accused of genocide to Rwanda because it is certain they will not get a fair trial and they will be tortured and automatically get a life sentence.
ICTR's General Prosecutor Boubacar Jallow has now vowed to bring to justice four high ranking Tutsi military officials accused of having killed 13 religious leaders, including five bishops and two civilians in Gitarama in 1994.
This is just a tip of an iceberg. The Tutsi killed many people during the genocide!
Tutsi are responsible for crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing (Congolese autochtons are driven out of their land) and genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo. To see for yourself, please click on the link below:
http://Genocide committed by the Tutsi in Congo
Tusi warlord Nkunda's secret backers: click on the link below:
http://Global Research canada
Father Mario Perez, a Catholic Missionary serving in North Kivu told the BBC on 18 March 2008: "It seems clear to me that civilians are being driven from their homes by force. In the past, they were just running from the fighting between the armed groups, and they were able to go back as soon as things had settled down," he said.
"But now they're being pushed out with aggression, and humanitarian groups are being prevented from helping them. I think the militias are trying to clear the countryside and push people to Goma."
According to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Karel de Gucht, what is going on in eastern Congo is "sexual genocide".
The International Rescue Committee's recent report said 5.6 million Congolese have been killed since Rwandan and Ugandan Tutsi regimes invaded Congo in 1998. The Congolese people are systematically targeted, raped and killed by Tutsi militia in order to drive them out of their land. That is GENOCIDE! But what is the whole world waiting for to call it a GENOCIDE?!
Read about Congolese Women’s Campaign Against Sexual Violence, a weapon of war by Tutsi soldiers in the DRC, by clicking on the link below:
Sexual violence in Congo
Former DR Congo warlord and vice-president Jean Pierre Bemba arrested in Brussels
KINSHASA, 05/25- The former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been arrested in Belgium on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Jean-Pierre Bemba, who fled Congo last year, was detained near Brussels late on Saturday after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant.
Mr Bemba is wanted for alleged atrocities committed by his forces in the Central African Republic in 2002. He is also responsible ofr crimes against humanity in his own country the DRC, including cannibalism.
He went into exile after being accused of high treason in his home country. Intelligence reports say that he was preparing a coup upon return.
He was accused of refusing to disarm his militia after his defeat in presidential elections in 2006, and of unleashing violence in the capital, Kinshasa.
The successful businessman was one of four vice-presidents in a transitional government in the war-torn African nation between 2003 and 2006.
He was leader of the rebel group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, which later became a political party.
In 2002, his group was asked by the former president of the Central African Republic, Ange-Felix Patasse, to help put down a coup attempt.
While there, Mr Bemba`s forces were accused of widespread rights abuses.
After Mr Patasse was ousted the following year, his successor pressed charges against Mr Bemba of rape and murder.
The case was referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which announced his arrest on Saturday 24.05.2008.
EDITORIAL: What is this new heightened media and conference blitz on the Congo in London about? And now all of a sudden they love and care about Congo?! We know that each time there is heightened media hype, there is something up their sleeves.
There is a new trend now as the crunch begins to bite (I hope there will no new wars in Africa as a result) to organise meeting about Congo' energy sector like the one the World Energy Council organised a week ago and Congo's mining sector (diamond, copper, coltan, cobalt...) here in London, the financial capital of the world. That is unacceptable. Congo is a sovereign country - although it had been plundered by the West for centuries - no decisions regarding our natural and mineral resources should be made away from Congo.
That is why we organised a pararell meeting with our SADC friends to harness the power of Inga ourselves. That is why we are from now onward going to sell our diamond on the auctions so we can more values out of them because the money the West promised to help Congo, a post-conflict country is not coming!
Having said that, China will help us rebuild our country on the basis of a barter trade. Minerals for infrastructures. There is room for everybody in Congo, but no more plunder. Our true friends will share their technologies with us so that we can dig our minerals ourselves, transform them on the spot and thus create jobs for our people and improve their living standard. That is the way forward for Africa - long term.
Patrice Lumumba's Congo often offers you surprises! Now Britain and America and all other Western powers which back Nkunda and Kagame are really embarrassed!
The Internation Criminal Court now wants Bosco Ntangama, a Tutsi Rwandan to be tried for crimes against humanity. Ntangama Is Nkunda's chief of staff, Nkunda is supported by Kagame. Kagame and Nkunda say they will never hand over Ntangama. The powers that be that back them say there is nothing they can do about it! Well! If they are fighting terrorism, they must lead by example and have this terrorist arrested and sent to the Hague! No beating about the bush, no red herrings!
Moreover, a BBC investigation has just uncovered yet another scandal by the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC). The United Nations ignored or shelved serious allegations of misconduct by UN Pakistani and Indian peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), basically covering up trafficking in gold and arms by Indian and Pakistani peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including the rearming of Congolese murderous militia and involvement in gold trading.
The UN's Organization of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) did not follow up on information that DRC militia commanders themselves later publicly stated they had received weapons from Pakistani peacekeepers.
Second Round of voting in Zimbabwe:
MDC wants "international observers" deeming African observers "not international enough". Africa is not part of the international community according to MDC, meaning it has no weight in international affairs. MDC is therefore just a puppet party of imperialists, a sell out, which in power we can see whose interests it will serve.
World Exclusive: Zimbabwean Ambassador to the US Machivenyika Mapuranga explains the situation in his country as we have not heard it before. It is a real scoop. Watch his interviews on the links below:
Exclusive interview: Zimbabwean Ambassador to the US
2nd Exclusive: Zimbabwean Ambassador to the US
US President George Bush accuses President Mugabe of "failing" and now "intimidating" the people of Zimbabwe.
Now we ask: "Who won the 2002 presidential election in the US in general and in Florida in particular? Was it Mr Bush or Al Gore?" All we know is that the dispute went up to the Supreme Court which favoured Bush.
"The will of people needs to be respected in Zimbabwe.And it is clear that they voted for change [MDC] as they should have because President Mugabe has failed the country," Bush said. (BBC, 30 April 2008).
At the U.N. Security Council meeting on Tuesday 29.04.2008, Western powers pressed for a U.N. mission or envoy to visit Zimbabwe, where the results of a disputed presidential election four weeks ago have still not been released.Zimbabwe's opposition has failed in its bid to have the United Nations Security Council appoint a special envoy.
"For us, this (U.N. session) is a sign of desperation by the British and their MDC puppets. It is sinister, racist and colonial for Britain to try to rope in everyone to support its neo-colonial agenda here ... but it will fail," Zimbabwe's Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told Reuters.
Former colonial power Britain has been at the forefront of international pressure on Mugabe. It is seeking an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, an investigation into post-election violence, and has called for the election results to be issued immediately.
"While we condemn all these machinations, we are also sure that the larger international community are getting to understand that our main problems are with the British. They are behind all these moves against us, but we will stand our ground," Matonga said.
MDC is responsible for electoral violence in Zimbabwe. Read the following:
Zimbabwe's police chief has accused the opposition of trying to rig elections and stirring political violence.
Augustine Chihuri said more than 100 cases of fraud had been found following last month's elections, whose results have not yet been published, describing such fraud as "evil" and a new phenomenon".
"The old trick of claiming human rights violations when somebody steps on your toe, yet you yourself are poking out other people's eyes, will not work this time around," he said.
Mr Chihuri said that 108 suspects were helping the police over allegations of fraud.
"Placing wrong candidates in office who were not selected by the people is evil and should never be allowed at all cost," he said.
"This is a new phenomenon in the electoral history of Zimbabwe."
MDC should learn to tell the truth - Nyasha — Opinion in The Guardian, Harare, Wed, 16 Apr 2008
DEAR EDITOR — I voted the Movement for Democratic Change at the last election in my constituency of Warren Park here in Harare. I expected my vote to count and it did. That makes me really happy. I have a few concerns though about the party that I voted for.
Firstly, I was shocked that they would go on to illegally announce the results without giving an opportunity to electoral body mandated for that task to make that announcement. As much as we might all have doubts about the impartiality of that body, the announcememnt was still illegal and counter-productive. It also attracted reprisals from the ruling Zanu PF party, who it seems, were embarassed by the announcement.
I could not believe my ears when I heard Tendai Biti saying that Morgan Tsvangirai was the next President of Zimbabwe.
Even though I had voted Morgan, I felt ashamed and embarassed by this immature move.
Secondly, I have noticed that violence perpetrated by the MDC is covered up and made to look like it's caused by Zanu PF. Yesterday, MDC youths here in Warren Park D set alight a bus that was stationary and the MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa refused to make a statement regarding violence by their youths. I can tell you that it is very dangerous being a Zanu PF supporter here in Warren Park.
I have seen beatings of Zanu PF supporters who have gone into hospital unreported and sometimes the MDC has taken pictures of these people and claimed that they were MDC activists who had been beaten up by Zanu PF thugs.
Thirdly, I think the MDC has now gone into overdive about these violence claims and are peddling a lot of lies. They are claiming dead bodies that are not even politically motivated and sending pictures to international media. This is not to say that all pictures are not authentic; but some of them are not.
They should tell the truth about what is happening on the ground, because being in victim mode all the time is not going to do them any favours. We know MDC youths are some of the most dangerous and most violent in the country and to assume that all the skirmishes happening in the country are being perpetuated by Zanu PF is just not true.
If MDC wants to be respected by people, they should also learn to tell the truth and not peddle lies.
Nyasha, Warren Park
American singer, Pete Wentz, stages silent diamond protest at NME awards
By WENN world entertainment news, 25.04.2008
Fall Out Boy rocker Pete Wentz got political at the NME Awards in Los Angeles on Wednesday night by scribbling 'Coltan Is A Conflict Diamond' on his T-shirt.
The bass player was protesting the mining of coltan diamonds in Africa.
The gem, which is used in the manufacture of mobile phones, has become a massive commodity that some say is now more valuable than gold.
It's mining has led to warring rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo exploiting coltan to help finance war - an issue raised in Leonardo DiCaprio's hit film Blood Diamond.
Wentz told reporters, "People have got to be careful what they buy."
The rocker went on to state that the engagement ring he bought his new fiancee Ashlee Simpson was not made with conflict diamonds: "I trust the jeweller. He's a reputable person."
Breaking News: Zimbabwe police raid opposition HQ, scores held - 25.04.2008
Police said the raid targeted people who had sought refuge with the opposition after committing crimes outside Harare.
"Some of them are not office workers at all. We are busy screening them. There are some cases we are investigating and we will release those who have not committed any crime," said police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena.
Police also raided the offices of the local election observer group ZESN, but no arrests had been made.
No going back on land: President Robert Mugabe at the opening of Zimbabwe's international trade fair in Bulawayo on Friday 25.04.2008.
Addressing thousands of people at the official opening of the 49th edition of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo, Cde Mugabe said all land which was legally acquired and settled would never be returned to its white former owners.
"When the West — led by the British — shamelessly continue to denounce our country, what is our crime? We are simply claiming our birthright, defending our hard-won national sovereignty. ZITF grounds stand on that precious land. Most exhibits have a connection with the land. That’s why we love our land.
"Better all those who shake and quiver at every word of our colonial masters please know Zimbabwe will never be for sale. Zimbabwe is not for sale and will never be a colony again."
Before amending the Constitution to compulsorily acquire land, the Government had tried to get land through the willing buyer-willing seller concept but failed.
"Land was subsequently acquired in the national interest following the amendment to the Constitution. Land acquired and legally resettled will never revert to the previous racist owner settlers. It is our land, our treasure. Inhaka yedu, lilifa lethu.
"Let the colonist know this is the final solution," he said.
The President paid tribute to local business for its resilience in the face of illegal sanctions imposed on the country by the West that have resulted in local industry grappling with hyperinflation, a shortage of foreign currency and failure to access foreign lines of credit.
All these challenges had affected capacity utilisation.
He said the road to success was never easy except for those who used crooked ways to acquire wealth. But he said those who break the law to get rich quickly would eventually be caught, leaving them with an unforgettable lesson.
The President said only through perseverance could success come.
Celebrations marking 28 years of independence in Zimbabwe.
President Robert Mugabe, centre, is seen at the 28th Independence Celebrations in Harare, Friday, April, 18, 2008.
"You saw what happened when you heard the MDC was winning: those who ran away started coming back," Mugabe said Friday in an apparent reference to Rhodies.
"Down with the British. Down with thieves who want to steal our country. Today they are like thieves fronting their lackeys among us, which they give money to confuse our people. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again. Never shall we retreat."
"Beware. Be vigilant in the face of the vicious machinations of Britain and its other allies. Yesterday they ruled by brute force to subjugate our people and plunder our natural resources. Today they have perfected their tactics to be more subtle," Mugabe said. "They are literally buying people to turn against the government. We are being bought like sheep because they have money and because we are suffering."
Today we hear the British saying there's no democracy here, people are being oppressed, there's dictatorship, there's no observance of human rights, rule of law. We, not the British, established democracy based on one person one vote, democracy which rejected racial or gender discrimination and observed human rights. We are the ones who brought democracy to this country, we are the ones who removed the oppression which was here."
President Mugabe congratulated the people for taking part in what he called peaceful elections on March 29 but said the British were behind post-poll violence.
"There are a few of you who are engaged in fights. We want peace and stability to be maintained but we understand that there are some who have been planning political violence, burning buses, burning cars. These things that are being planned by these people have the support of the British," he said.
The Zimbabwean leader acknowledged that the country was facing hardships.
"We are not saying there's nothing we can do about our hardships. We are trying in all areas. We want the farmers to be able to produce so we have more food and less hunger -- that's why we gave them tractors and other farming equipment. We are trying even in the cities to alleviate the suffering. We know that the biggest problems is the prices," he said.
President Mugabe thanked southern African leaders "for clearly articulating our case over the ... elections."
"I want to thank South Africa in a special way for the role it has played in brokering our dialogue."
HEAR ME SAY:
Is the MDC really a "MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE" or "MOVEMENT FOR DISCARDED COLONIALISM"?
From now, expect a massive and sustained campaign of interference, blackmail and propaganda by western media to undermine electoral support for Zanu-PF in case of a second round, but there is still everything to play for.
Pour qui roule le MDC?
A leaked report from the Office of MDC's General Secretariat we obtained shows just that! Entitled "Addendum: The Transition Strategy, Critical Elements", the document was confidentially issued on 25 March 2008, and circulated among the new would be MDC cabinet.
In the document, we learn that election officials were bribed to the tune of Z$3 billion to $50 billion to ensure the victory of Morgan Tsvangirai.
The Secretary general admits: "We are under pressure from our internation partners to repeat that the conditions under which the lections were held were not free and fair..."
"Zanu-PF will probably decline to relinquish power...We must render the country ungovernable, even resorting to armed insurrection... We should not discount the possibility of a clear Zanu-PF win. It still enjoys substantial support inspite of economic strife..."
For Tsvangirai's swearing in ceremony, "we have already sent invitation to President Bush, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Prime Minister Kelvin Rudd, Chancellor Angela Merkel and our other international partners in the 'people's project'. They will guarantee our assumption to power including by force of arms if need be... We have also sent invitations to selected African and SADC leaders but we can expect little or no sympathy or help from these in the event of a contested transition because most them still support Mugabe."
"Under Scenario one, we expect our President Morgan Tsvangirai to be sworn in Monday or Tuesday (31 March or 1 April 2008). Our international partners in the people's project have advised us that his first act as president will be to go onto national television and radio and address the Nation... As soon as Morgan Tsvangirai is declared winner, we should take control... of strategic institutions: the Reserve Bank, the command centres for the security services (Intelligence, Army, Police and Air Force), the Ministry of Finance and Home Affairs. We can ignore the less strategic institutions unitli the cabinet is formed... The President has already instructed Retired Colonel DR AT Mudzingwa to go Army Headquarters next Tuesday morning, where he will confront the Army Commander, Lieutenant General PV Sibanda to discuss the modalities of his ejection from office and our take over of that institution."
About Mugabe:
"We are under pressure to fulfill the undertakings we made to our international partners in the People's Project regarding this evil man. Our partners, in particular, the Australian, the British and American governments, are united in their deterrmination to have Mugabe arrested and handed over to the Hague as soon as possible to face trials for crimes against humanity relating to "Gukurahundi", Operation "Murambatsivina", his looting of the mineral resources of the DRC during the war of 1998-2002 and, above all, his violation of property rights in the land reform and his other populist indigenisation policies. We agree with them unequivocably. Mugabe needlessly and disastrously enmeshed us in the war in the DRC in 1998 where he went on to preside over the looting of DRC's diamionds and to trample in the interests of many of our friends in the process.
We are determined, as our friendsare, to see him brought to justice for this and other crimes.
"His handover is a linchpin of our whole transitional strategy. The Australian, British and American governments have poured more money into our campaign for this election than ever before since 1999 specifically because of the undertakings our President made to them, on our behalf, to deliver to them this important defendant. Our credibility as aviable alternative to Zanu PF also rests on this single undertaking, since in return, it will unlock all the support from our friends that we promised our electorate during our electoral campaign. This includes a $1 billion that we have been promised for our 100-Day Economic Re-start Agenda, shipments of basic commodities from outside to immediately alleviate the current shortages, repeal of the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 and the lifting of the sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe by the USA, Britain, the EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Security sector transformation:
"It is paramount that new commanders of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Zimbabwe National Army and the Air Force of Zimbabwe, as well as a new Commissioner of Police, Director General of Central Intelligence Organisation and Commissioner of Prisons be selected ansd appointed immediately. We cannot risk having Mugabe's partisan war veterans in charge of thse institutions for a day longer than necessary (We must proceed immediately to the "De-Zanufication of the Civil Service and Zim Politics). Many of the current commanders have to be arrested and charged for various crimes ranging from corruption to war crimes. Any current members of the Cuban-trained security forces who which to join the new dispensation will have to re-apply and must first pass a rigorous vetting exercise to establish if they have any lingering loyalties to Zanu-PF.
"As an interim measure, we have secured the agreement of some selected reputable generals and senior officiers of the former Rhodesian Security Forces who are presently in Australia, Britain, South Africa and take charge of our Security Forces while we train our young leaders.The British government has kindly agreed to assist aus with our fast track security sector reorm programme.Under this arrengement, we will be sending our young officer cadets to Sandhurst and other British military training institutions soon after our inauguration.
"The British government has also undertaken to bring back home the 1,500 or so Zimbabweans who joined the Royal Army, Navy and Air Force in various capacities since 2000 as part of our long term preparation for this historical day, to become the nucleus of our new Zimbabwe Defence Forces. We are starting afresh on a clean slate.
Economic Recovery and Fiscal Management
Mugabe's so-called "Look East Policy" has brought nothing but disaster to Zimbabwe's economy.It is our intention to do away with zhing zhongs within the shortest possible time, and to re-orient our economy back to the West. We do not see the logic of looking east or anywhere else when our whole financial system and the technology that drives our industry and our armed forces is from the West. Our partners expect us to set this paradigm shift as one of our top priorities projects soon after assuming power. As an interim measure, we will appoint the current Deputy Governor of the Central Bank as Acting Governor and bring in two specialists from thje German central Bank who must be put on standby this week.
"The German Ambassador has kindly accepted our formal request for this and has assured us that the individuals selected have already been put on standby to come at 48 hours notice."
The Land Question
"Our international cooperating partners also expect our new government, as soon as possible after entering office, to return at least 200 farms illegally seized to Mugabe's chaotic, violent ans self-serving land grab back to their former owners. In order to send the correct political signals to both the illegally resettled new farmers and our intyernational partners, all our white farmers who are still in the country have been instructed and encouraged to visit their former farms during the week leading to the election and soon thereafter to assess the level of vandalism and disuse they have been subjected to, and therefore, to give us some idea of the amount of money required for their resettlement.
"We are also reaching out to our good and competent farmers who were forced to stray to Zambia, Nigeria, Mozambique and as far as Australia and New Zealand, with a view of persuading them to come back to their farms.
President Tsvangirai has personally made contact with many of the farmers in Nampula (Mozambique), the Nicols in Zambia and their counterparts in the Kora State Project in Nigeria. The beneficiaries of Mugabe's land grab should quickly be made to understand that their number is up. Their honeymoon of chaos is over. Everything must be done to drive this point home. We have also directed some of the the remaining white farmers in the country to mobilise their workers to poison cattle, slash or burn crops in the fields and carry out many other acts of sabotage on the resettled farms."
"We will want to accord the heroes of our liberation struggle theb decent and honourable place they deserve at the National Heroes Acre in the shortest possible time after we enter office. We will also, of course, exhume most of the chefs'girfriends and cronies who are presently buriend at the Heroes Acre and hand them over to their relatives for their properly deserved burial at their villages.
De-Zanufication of the Civil Service and Zim Politics
"We will purge the civil service, parastatals and government institutions of all so-called war veterans and other ZANU PF zealots as amatter of priority. We will immediately stop the undeserved pensions that are being paid to the war veterans, including school fees that are being paid for their children and the medical benefits they have been given by the regime as a bribe for their allegiance."
"Our international partners have asked us to ensure that ZANU PF as a political party and all that it represents must be eliminated both physically and ideologically during our tenure, never to rear its head again in Zimbabwean politics [in Congo, it the opposite! MDC's partners, the same, ensured that Mobutu's cronies must be maintained in office]. This is because ZANU PF's ideology, attitude and policies are injurious to their interests. They are determined, with our help, to ensure that Mugabe's land nad private property grab must be discredited and should never be allowed to set an example to such countries as South Africa and Namibia where there similar land tenure problems to Zimbabwe's." YOU HAVE HEARD IT FROM THE HORSE'S OWN MOUTH!
Conclusion
Clearly there are those in Zimbabwe who haven’t understood that the carrots being put in front of them by imperialism will only benefit a few and will be accompanied by the complete pauperisation of the masses of Zimbabweans. If Tsvangirai wins, public spending will be massively reduced, agriculture will be re-focussed on export crops, and the people of Zimbabwe will be subjected to the iniquities of the IMF’s ‘severe austerity’ programme.
It’s not possible to say at this point exactly what the next government of Zimbabwe will look like; however, it is our sincere hope that the Zimbabwean people will not be tricked by the honeyed words of imperialism, and that they will hold true to their slogan: Zimbabwe will never be a colony again!
Zim govt exposes Tsvangirai, Brown letter - By Floyd Nkomo
http://talkzimbabwe.com/ - Thu, 17 Apr 2008
THE Movement for Democratic Change and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown’s office plotted to bring the issue of Zimbabwe elections onto the Southern African Development Community’s agenda in an extra-ordinary meeting, outside the normal working mechanisms of the southern African body, according to a confidential letter obtained by the government of Zimbabwe.
THE Movement for Democratic Change and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown’s office plotted to bring the issue of Zimbabwe elections onto the Southern African Development Community’s agenda in an extra-ordinary meeting, outside the normal working mechanisms of the southern African body, according to a confidential letter obtained by the government of Zimbabwe.
The letter, allegedly written by Prime Minister Brown, on 9 April 2008, to Morgan Tsvangirai proves that the extra-ordinary summit called by Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa was a brainchild of the British government and the MDC; not an initiative of Sadc.
The letter, republished here was written by Gordon Brown, apparently in response to earlier communication by Morgan Tsvangirai.
Brown says in the letter: “Thank you very much for your letter dated 3 April 2008. We have noted all your concerns and try and use diplomatic means to ensure that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is more directly involved in this crisis in Zimbabwe.”
The letter added, “The British Government is supportive of change in Zimbabwe…” confirming President Robert Mugabe’s concerns that change in Zimbabwe was being orchestrated by ‘outside forces’.
“The UK Government believes that the situation is now untenable and a Zanu PF Government is no longer relevant to the people of Zimbabwe.”
In the letter Gordon Brown also promises the MDC leader that he will try and push the ‘Zimbabwe crisis’ onto the United Nations Security Council adding that the “only alternative left is to lobby for more direct sanctions against President Robert Mugabe’s illegitimate government.”
An email sent by the Zimbabwe Guardian to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office early Thursday morning had not been responded to at the time of going to press.
The Zimbabwean government has responded to the letter.
Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa said "The UK has imposed comprehensive sanctions against Zimbabwe in contravention of international law. The correspondence confirms that Tsvangirai is not his own man and that he is working for the British interests to recolonise Zimbabwe.”
He added: "The British are driving an agenda to put their puppet at the helm of this country so that the gains of the revolution which they opposed throughout the liberation struggle can be reversed. The people of Zimbabwe will not allow this country to be taken over by a British surrogate."
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu also claimed the letter confirmed Tsvangirai was a puppet of the British, from whom Zimbabwe gained independence on April 18, 1980.
"This is all what we have always said that MDC is a creation of the British and Tsvangirai a puppet of the British. So Tsvangirai is a puppet of Gordon Brown," said Ndlovu.
In a speech at the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, Brown said "no one thinks" Mugabe won the March 29 presidential election against Tsvangirai, the results of which are still to be announced.
"A stolen election would not be a democratic election at all," he added.
Efforts to get hold of MDC spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, proved fruitless as his cellphone went unanswered.
SPECIAL ELECTIONS IN ZIMBABWE:
The Issue is not the departure of Mugabe. What is at stake in these elections is the fact that foreign forces in cahoot with the MDC want to reverse the land reform program in order to take back the land from Africans. Zanu-PF: Our land! Our sovereignty!
There have been 3 candidates in this election: (1) Candidate one: Robert Mugabe. (2) Candidate Morgan Tsvangirai + British money + illegall western sanctions. (3) Simba Makoni.
MDC, Britain, America and their kith and kin state of Australia panick. This is shown by contradictory messages they issue over the elections results in Zimba. Let them relax. Whatever the outcome, what will be will be! Let the democratic game take its course!
Why are they worried? Is it because they invested so much money in bankrolling the MDC that if Zanu-PF convincingly wins yet again - and this remains a strong possibility because unlike the MDC, Zanu-PF is very much rooted in the rural areas with the grassroots - it represent a great loss?!
We know that in February 2008, The British Government increased its funding towards "civil society" in Zimbabwe (doctors, lawyers, NGOs) "that are working for democratic change" - READ MDC - from £2.5 million to £3.3 million. The Britsih Government pledged: "We will continue to support them just as we will continue to make representations to the Government of Zimbabwe when those who advocate reform are beaten and arrested by the state police." - Source: http://talkzimbabwe.com
Are the confusion sown ahead of the announcement of the final official results aimed at engineering chaos, let us say a coup, if it happen that Mugabe and Zanu-PF are elected again by the masses?
Suppose the MDC wins, will Tshangirai give jobs to all these MDC city youths in Harare and Bulawayo as if by magic? Even an economically-strong South Africa is struggling to deliver after the demise of apartheid. Do the Westerners love MDC black supporters so much that they will open their purses instantly and solve all problems? No! 80% of South Africa's wealth is still in the hand of 5% white. Westerners have no permanent friends, they have only permanent interests. Soon the illusions will turn into reality.
MDC Cheated by bribing election officials. Zanu-PF party would contest the results of 16 parliamentary seats
If successfully contested, these would be enough for the party to regain the majority it lost for the first time since 1980 in Saturday's poll.
Zanu-PF party has given its backing to President Robert Mugabe's participation in a possible run-off vote.
Hundreds of Zanu-PF supporters - some of them veterans from the war against white rule that led to independence - marched through the capital, Harare.
Jabulani Sibanda, head of the Zimbabwe War Veterans' Association, which has been associated with past election violence, said Zanu-PF had lost the elections because "people were pushed by hunger and illegal sanctions".
"Under current circumstances the spirit of our people is being provoked," he said.
"We will be forced to defend our sovereignty."
Kagame is a liar! Through and Through!
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame has said Fernando Andreu, a Spanish judge who issued arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan army officers can "go to hell". Kagame said Judge Andreu had not distinguished between genocide perpetrators, and those who stopped it, such as his own forces (BBC 2.04.2008).
Well! General Romeo Dallaire - an incontrovertible eye witness of the tragedy in Rwanda in 1994 because he led the UN forces - gave an interview to the French daily le Monde on 10 December 2003 in which he said: "Kagame and his RPF were not interested in stopping the genocide. What interested them most and first of all was to get to power."
This writer challenged General Dallaire in London at the War Museum to repeat his assertions in front of everybody. It was during the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the genocide. General Dallaire said he was on his way to Rwanda and that was exactly one the questions he was going to discuss with President Kagame.
Because of that question, this writer received warnings and death threats from the then Rwandan Ambassador to the UK Rosemary Museminali.
Mining deals cancelled in Congo, Full report on www.miningcongo.cd
But will Congo now keep 75% out of each new renegotiated mining or timber contract? Doing otherwise is a farse and the looting goes on!
Many Congolese work sometimes illegally as artisanal miners, while the profits go abroad!
(BBC News, 20 March 2008) - The Democratic Republic of Congo has cancelled at least 60 mining contracts after a review into the deals.
The government said it wanted to ensure that the country's vast mineral wealth was used to benefit its people.
Many Congolese suspect that mining deals are often corrupt and campaign group Global Witness says the review was hit by a lack of transparency.
DR Congo has huge reserves of gold, diamonds, copper and more than a third of coltan, used in mobile phones.
Correspondents say these riches have been a key factor in the wars of inavsion by neighnours, instability and bad government the country has known since independence.
'Tragedy'
DR Congo's Deputy Mines Minister Victor Kasongo said it is clear "that none of the contracts met international standards of contracts".
"Many of them need to be re-negotiated and some of them have to be terminated, because when you do business every partner must be remunerated proportionate to their input," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
"The state assets were undervalued, making our contribution seem smaller. In essence we are contributing too much. This creates some unfairness."
The enquiry into the mining deals has not been made public, sparking condemnation by Global Witness.
The campaign group said a government task force had been set up to start renegotiating the contracts.
"We're calling on the government to make sure this process of re-negotiation is transparent and open," Global Witnesses' Carina Tertsakian told the BBC.
"The task force is composed entirely of government ministers and we're worried about what this might mean a lack of independence in view."
President Joseph Kabila won the country's first democratic elections in 40 years in 2006.
His critics accuse him of agreeing deals with foreign mining companies which do not benefit local people.
Professor Peter Rosenblum from the US-based Carter Center, a consultant to the commission, said mining deals lie at the heart of DR Congo's problems.
"The tragedy of the many tragedies in the Congo was that the people woke up after years of war and found that the family wealth had been given away, or sold off, or at least as far as people knew, it seemed to have just flitted away."
For wars to end in the DRC...
Jonathan Powell, who served as Tony Blair's chief of staff from 1995 to 2007 and is widely regarded as having been instrumental in negotiating a settlement in Northern Ireland with the IRA, said his experience in the province convinced him that it was essential Western governments talk to terror groups including al-Qaida and the Taliban if they hope to secure a long-term halt to their campaigns of violence (Interview, The Guardian, London, Saturday March 15 2008).
Tony Blair has become Paul Kagame's special adviser. He must therefore push him to talk to the Interahamwe/FDLR for war to end in Congo.
They now dare to speak out openly in Rwanda...
Kagame has launched a witchhunt against the editor of the Rwandan daily Umuco Jason Mukasa, for comparing Kagame to Hitler and the FPR to the Nazis on the basis of the latest international arrest warrant against Kagame and 40 of his most close acolytes. Kagame is like Hitler. There is no doubt about it.
That is why in the article, the journalist urged Kagame to and hung himself because he does not see how, after two international arrest warrants against (more are still in the pipeline), he will escape justice!
Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF poised to win the 29 March 2008 elections and win convincingly by a landslide and thus humble the opposition!
Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi has announced that African countries would be allowed to send monitors, as would allies such as China, Iran and Venezuela.
"Clearly, those [who do not invite Africans to monitor their elections] and who believe that the only free and fair election is where the opposition wins have been excluded since the ruling party, Zanu-PF, is poised to score yet another triumph," Mr Mumbengegwi told the state-owned Herald newspaper.
Comrade Mumbengegwi said the electoral commission would not be partisan and the talks with the opposition had resulted in the relaxing of tough security and media laws, the Herald reports.
He also urged diplomats to be wary of allegations of electoral fraud.
"All those who do not expect to win the election would want to discredit the process. Therefore, you will come across all sorts of allegations in volumes and volumes," he said.
"My appeal to you is please try your best to ensure that any allegation that is made is verified."
Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni was expelled from ZANU-PF after registering to run as an independent in March 29 presidential, parliamentary and council elections.
"What has happened now is absolutely disgraceful. I didn't think that Makoni, after all this experience, would behave like this," Mugabe said in an interview broadcast on state television late on Thursday to mark his 84th birthday.
"I compared him to a prostitute. A prostitute could have done better than Makoni, because she has clients. Don't you think so?" said President Mugabe.
President Robert Mugabe warned the opposition against Kenyan-style violence if they lose the 29 March 2008, saying security forces stood ready to crush such protests.
Mugabe said security forces would put down any violence similar to clashes in Kenya that killed more than 1,200 people after the opposition challenged the results of an election in December.
"If Tsvangirai and his (MDC) group have such plans, they must stand warned," Mugabe told about 20,000 cheering supporters in his rural home area of Zvimba, 100 km north-west of Harare.
"That will never happen here, never, never. We will never allow it. We have enough security forces to handle that."
Just dare try it," said the 84-year-old leader at one of his final campaign rallies. "We don't play around while you try to please your British allies."
"When you join a political fight by way of an election, you must be prepared to lose. If Zanu-PF [ruling party] wins, you must accept it, if you win we will accept," he said, in comments quoted by the state-owned Herald newspaper.
The minister for indigenisation and economic empowerment, Paul Mangwana, told the BBC that reports alleging that they had printed millions of surplus ballot papers were false.
"There's nothing this government has done to cheat on the electoral process."
He added that Zimbabweans wanted him to continue leading them.
"People know the contribution he has made to the well-being of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans in particular. So they love him and they want him to continue leading them until he completes the goals of the revolution."
Mugabe said he would romp to a landslide victory to shame former colonial power Britain, which he accuses of funding the MDC and Makoni.
The veteran leader threatened that his government could in future retaliate against British interests in Zimbabwe, saying sanctions -- designed to target Zimbabwe's leaders -- were hurting his country.
"To the British, your sanctions will demand that in future we retaliate and when we reciprocate, we will hit your businesses," Mugabe told his supporters.
He said he was disappointed that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had taken over from predecessor Tony Blair by pursuing a hostile policy against Zimbabwe.
Mugabe also rejected comments by British officials casting doubt on 29 March 2008 presidential, parliamentary and council polls would be free and fair. The European Union has also raised doubts over the process.
"We had hoped for a repair of relations but Blair and Brown are both blooming fools."
"They have already rejected our elections and prejudged the process, these devilish liars" said Mugabe.
The only way forward for Africa!
President Mugabe has approved the "Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill", a legislation giving local owners the right to take a majority share of foreign companies.
Under the legislation, every company must have at least 51% of their shares owned by black Zimbabweans. If not, the government will block new investment, mergers or restructuring.
The bill will give black Zimbabweans the power to share in the wealth of their country, according to Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, Mr Mugabe's information minister.
"It is an historic economic empowerment bill that has been signed," Mr Ndlovu told the BBC.
"It is the first of its kind in the whole of Africa."
'Merchant of Death' Viktor Bout Is Arrested in Thailand
A Russian arms dealer thought to have inspired the lead character in the blockbuster film Lord of War was arrested in Bangkok on 6 March 2008.
Viktor Bout, 41, was detained while allegedly attempting to buy weapons for Colombian rebels.
Dubbed "the merchant of death", he has been accused of breaking UN embargoes since the early 1990s by selling arms to conflict-torn regions in Africa and around the world.
In the DRC, he sold arms to RCD-Goma. a Rwanda masterminded rebel movement during the war of aggression there, killing 5.4 million Congolese and systematically looting Congo's mineral wealth.
Now it is Museveni and Kagame's turn!
In kenya, President Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga accept to share power. In Congo, Kabila accepted to share power with criminals. Now for a lasting peace in the region, Museveni must accpet to share power with LRA and Kagame must accept to share power with the Hutu. Why is the international community not exerting pressure on Museveni and Kagame to do so?
Kagame is avoiding the very much needed inter-rwandan dialogue. In a rare interview with the BBC (30 January 2007), Mr Kagame angrily said: "Would I care that bloody Habyarimana died? I don't give a damn." He killed him and thus kick started the inter-ethnic killing spree in 1994!
The US government backed Rwanda and Uganda to invade the DRC, killing 5.4 million Congolese and systematically looting Congo's mineral wealth.
Now Amériacns in Denvers are organising afund raising to collect money and save gorillas "threatened by war" in East Congo! Judge for yourselves!
Punish buyers of rebel DRC ore, UN panel says. Behind Tutsi inusrgents you find American, British, Belgian, Swiss, Rwandan, South African and Ugandan mineral dealers! Rwanda even launched a stock exchange sure of continuing to loot minerals in Congo! Those days are soon over!
By Joe Bavier | Rueters, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, 29 February 2008
Buyers of minerals from rebel areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be punished under a United Nations arms embargo, a group of experts has told the Security Council.
A five-year war in the vast Central African nation that ended in 2003 has left much of DRC's eastern borderlands a volatile patchwork of rebel fiefdoms and militia-controlled zones.
The panel, investigating breaches of a weapons embargo aimed at illegal armed groups, found they were continuing to buy arms with revenues from mines and illegal taxation of minerals.
Mineral buyers are complicit in the process by not verifying the origins of the ore they buy, the independent experts said in their report, which was commissioned by the UN Security Council.
"The group considers that individuals and entities buying mineral output from areas ... with a strong rebel presence are violating the sanctions regime when they do not exercise due diligence," the report said.
Many of the mines in the DRC's violent eastern provinces of North and South Kivu are either under the direct control of illegal armed groups or are taxed by them.
The two provinces produce the bulk of the country's cassiterite, the primary tin ore used by the electronics and computer industries.
The report cited renegade General Laurent Nkunda's Tutsi insurgency and the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) as two groups using mineral revenues to buy arms.
Nkunda and the FDLR have been at the centre of fighting in North Kivu that forced about 450 000 civilians to flee their homes in the year leading up to a January 23 ceasefire deal.
Watchdog groups say mineral buyers make little effort to ensure the ore they buy does not help fund the conflict.
"Because the traders know that no one else is doing it, they don't do it either," said Carina Tertsakian, lead campaigner for the London-based Global Witness, an independent group that aims to expose the corrupt exploitation of natural resources.
"And they know that, if they did insist, the acceptable sources that comply with these standards are few and far between."
Embargo vote: The Security Council is expected to vote in late March on whether to renew the arms embargo. If it heeds the panel's recommendations, it will also tighten the embargo resolution to enforce sanctions on those buying ore from rebel-held mines.
To avoid breaking the embargo, the report said companies must be able to trace the precise origins of mineral desposits from which they buy, and refuse to buy ore originating from mines controlled or taxed by illegal groups.
Failure to do so constitutes a "violation of the arms embargo for provision of assistance to armed groups", it said.
"Quite a lot of purchasers would fall into that category ... I don't get the impression that anyone doesn't buy material because it comes from rebel-held areas," Tertsakian said.
Brian Christophers, managing director of Mining Processing Congo, one of North Kivu's largest cassiterite exporters, said his company had its own verification process and had done nothing wrong. He said he could not vouch for other buyers.
"We do that anyway. We know exactly where our minerals come from. For the others who don't, that's their problem," he said.
Other mineral exporting companies could not be reached.
Three-month tin prices hit a record high on Monday, a day after the DRC's mines ministry announced the suspension of all mining in the tin-rich Walikale district of North Kivu. The move aimed to restore order to a local mining sector long plagued by the presence of rebels, militia and the government's own army. – Reuters
Might is right: when international law means a different thing to different people!
Jeremy Scahill writes in AlterNet: "News Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as international law. But, predictably, it is not being invoked to address the US prison camps at Guantanamo, the wide use of torture, the invasion and occupation of sovereign countries (including Irak and Congo, in the latter case by proxi using Tutsi soldiers), the extraordinary rendition program.
No, it is being thrown out forcefully as a condemnation of the Serbian government in the wake of Thursday's attack by protesters on the US embassy in Belgrade following the Bush administration's swift recognition of the declaration of independence by the southern Serbian province of Kosovo."
Note that after Bush, Tony Blair is in Kigali to lend his moral support to Kagame after a Spanish judge has issued yet another arrest warrant against the Rwandan terrorist leader. And what is the focus of their talks with Kagame? The threats of FDLR coming from Congo. What a diversion! It does not bite anymore!
Rwandan prisons or hell on earth!
This is according to a new book published by Carina Tertsakian of Global Witness and entiltled: "Le Château: the lives of prisoners in Rwanda". Kagame uses prisons asa political tool after the inter-ethnic killing of 1994. Innocent people languish in jails in Rwanda under the pretext that they committed "genocide"!
Yet another massacre of at least 30 Congolese civilians by Rwandan Tutsi troops under the command of Nkunda in North Kivu. Yet another crime by the Tutsi that goes unpunished!
The massacre took place in the Kalonge area in North Kivu in January of this year. The UN Mission in Congo, MONUC's investigation of these killings was conducted with professional care and its findings reflect credible information received from a number of eye witnesses and other sources. The Mission believes that any other independent and impartial enquiry will confirm the outcome of the investigation and MONUC is ready to cooperate with such an enquiry.
This investigation was carried out in accordance with MONUC's mandate to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence and to assist the fight against impunity. MONUC has conducted similar investigations several times in the past when serious allegations have been made against armed groups or the national forces and has subsequently made the findings public.
How American president George Bush, the most powerful man on earth, by choosing to visit Rwanda at the end of his mandate, has no shame to contradict himself.
Delivering his remarks to the 85th American Legion Convention on 26 August 2003, President Bush said:"We've sent a message that is understood throughout the world: if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists."
Or Bush support Museveni and Kagame, two greatest terrorists in the region financially, politically and militarily. Therefore Bush is just as guilty as the Tutsi terrorists.
The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte was right after all when he called George W. Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” in Caracas on 8 Janvier 2006?
Moreover, the UN Security Council has renewed an arms embargo against the Democratic Republic of Congo which has to pacify its eastern parts where armed groups backed by Rwanda and Uganda are murdering and looting there. That is what you call disarming Congo in the face of its bellicose neighbours whom Bush supports in every way! The UN Security Council only follows America's orders anyway!
After the French anti-terroriste judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, another Spanish judge issues an international arrest warrant against Paul Kagame and his entourage.
A Congolese proverb says: "Truth is like daylight. The night might seem to be too long but daylight will always break.
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A Spanish judge Wednesday indicted 40 current or former Rwandan military officers for several counts of genocide and human rights abuses during the 1990s when several million Rwandans died or disappeared.
General James Kabarebe, left, is one of the 40 indicted for several counts of genocide and human rights abuses.
The judge issued international arrest warrants against the 40, including Gen. James Kabarebe, whom the judge said is believed to be the chief of staff of Rwanda's military; Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, whom the judge said is believed to be Rwanda's ambassador to India; and Lt. Col. Rugumya Gacinya, whom the judge said is believed to be a military attaches at Rwanda's embassy in Washington, according to court documents viewed by CNN
Rwanda does not have an extradition treaty with Spain, a court spokeswoman told CNN.
The indictments against the 40 are for "crimes of genocide, human rights abuses and terrorism," during the 1990s in Rwanda, "when more than four million Rwandans were killed or disappeared under an extermination plan for ethnic and/or political reasons," the court documents said.
The judge, Fernando Andreu, named nine Spaniards who died or disappeared during those tumultuous years in Rwanda. Their plight prompted his investigation at Spain's National Court in Madrid, which previously has investigated human rights violations against Spaniards during past military regimes in Chile, Argentina and elsewhere.
Six of the Spanish victims were missionaries. The bodies of five of them were found in late 1996 after they were tortured, and shot or hacked to death with machetes, the documents said, while a sixth is still missing.
Three other Spaniards were shot to death in early 1997 while working for a non-profit medical group providing aid to Hutu refugees in Rwanda, the documents said.
The majority of the victims during the wave of terror, the documents said, were Hutu Rwandan refugees or Congolese civilians, mainly Hutus as well.
The judge did not indict Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, because he has immunity as head of state, the documents said. But the judge also found evidence of criminal activity by Kagame, based on the testimony of an informant who told the judge he previously worked on Kagame's security detail, the documents said.
In preparing the indictments, the judge heard testimony from 22 people who said they witnessed the horrors in Rwanda in the 1990s. All of them live in exile, mainly in Europe, and all have changed their identity for security reasons, except Maria Beatrice Umutesi, who lives in Belgium and has written a book about the killings, the documents said.
The documents included a 182-page indictment and two accompanying summary documents.
An earthquake adds to the woes of the people of Congo!
While still under the yoke of some superpowers who had used the Tutsi to invade the DRC, rape, kill and loot, the Congolese people in South Kivu stricken by an earth quake!
AT least nine people were killed and almost 200 injured when a powerful quake struck the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, hospital sources said.
The quake, which measured six on the Richter scale, shook several countries in the Great Lakes region.
One of the victims, a young man, died when his home collapsed in Bukavu, capital of South-Kivu province. Another victim died in Bukavu's general hospital.
Several dozen injured were admitted to the general hospital and at least another 12 casualties to Panzi hospital, Bukavu's two biggest hospitals, medical sources said.
In Kabare, north of Bukavu, the walls of a church collapsed on the congregation during the mass and there were "a large number of casualties" taken to hospital in Mukongola, according to hospital workers contacted by AFP.
"We don't know if there are any dead. But there are a lot of injured at the hospital, several of them are in a coma," a nurse, who asked not to be named, said.
The epicentre of the quake, which struck at 0735 GMT (1835 AEDT) was 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Bukavu.
It was also felt in the bordering countries of Rwanda and Burundi, Francois Lukaya, a scientific official at the Goma observatory in North Kivu told AFP.
UN confirms what we already knew and reveals its own complicity with the Tutsi!
UN evidence suggests Rwanda role in Congo - By Andrew England in Kinshasa
Financial Times, 3 February 2008
Renegade soldiers fighting the Congolese army have received weapons and support from neighbouring countries, United Nations officials said on Thursday, suggesting that Rwanda is fuelling the conflict in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
The clashes in Congo's North Kivu province, which began at the weekend, present the latest in a long line of threats to a shaky peace process that ended a five-year war in Congo.
Rwanda denied the allegations, but last month warned that it would send its troops back into its western neighbour to attack Rwandan rebels based in eastern Congo. "Clearly weapons have come into that area," William Swing, head of the UN mission in Congo, told the Financial Times.
"Obviously supplies are coming from somewhere, probably from the east, and we are looking to continue to investigate."
Mr Swing said there was also "clear evidence" that foreign troops had entered Congo after Rwanda made its threats about sending soldiers back into the country on November 23.
He declined to give details. But Mamadou Bah, a spokesman for the UN mission (Monuc), said: "It's no secret any more, we are talking about Rwanda," in reference to the foreign troops' incursion and the weapons supply.
A UN report into separate attacks on a group of villages in North Kivu from November 24 to the end of the month says that witnesses "unanimously described the assailants as Rwanda Tutsis".
"It appears that the assailants were more intent on sending a warning signal to Interahamwe [Rwandan rebels] in the area as well as the local inhabitants and on gathering intelligence for a future attack," says the report, a copy of which was obtained by the FT.
"It appears to the Monuc team that Rwandan troops were responsible for these operations."
Witnesses told Monuc that 66 people were killed in the attacks, but the UN team was only able to corroborate 13 deaths, the report said. Richard Sezibera, an adviser to Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president, said Rwanda had not supplied weapons to any Congolese groups nor did it have troops in Congo.
"When it comes, everybody will know," Mr Sezibera said.
"We hope it does not come," he added, arguing that more had to be done to disarm the Interahamwe.
Rwanda invaded Congo in 1996 and 1998, accusing Kinshasa of not doing enough to disarm Rwandan rebels who took part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide before fleeing into eastern Congo. On both occasions civil war then erupted in Congo.
The 1998 conflict - which formally ended in June 2003 when the Congolese government and rebel groups set up a transitional government - drew in at least six countries. Rwanda backed rebels, known as the RCD-G, sought to oust the government in Kinshasa during the war.
The foreign forces formally withdrew in 2002 but there have been previous unconfirmed reports of Rwandan troops re-entering Congo.
A contigent of British marines to be stationed in Brazzaville to intervene in the DRC, just in case...
There is no smoke without fire! Is there something sinister being cooked up in the West against the Congolese people, yet again?
The British army and the government of Congo Brazzaville (on the other side of the river Congo) have signed a convention to have a contigent of British marines stationed in Brazzaville to intervene immediately in neighbouring Kinshasa to evacuate British nationals in case war errupts there. Is there something being prepared that only London and Brazzaville know that we don't know?
Elsewhere, after a new american american consulate in Goma, the French have announced that they will open two more consulates in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Democratic Republic of Congo appears to be kind of sandwished currently, between Tutsi regimes in the east and now western troops in the west (...).
FLASH NEWS: After backing Kagame to invade the DRC when he was Prime Minister, during which 5.4 million Congolese were killed (see International Rescue Committee's latest report), Congo's natural and mineral wealth systematically looted, Tony Blair self-appoint himself a "special adviser" to the Rwandan government!
Rwanda get an extra $7 million from the United States to boost its military budget. So we told you. They have not abandonned the idea of carving a buffer state out of eastern Congo, which justifies the Tutsi's war of agression still going on there!
If Tony Blair, then prime minister engaged in dialogue with the "Terrorists IRA", and Paul Kagame is Britain's beloved at theis moment, Britain must push Paul Kagame to talk to his Hutu opposition whom he always brands as "terrorist", "Genocidist" and "divisionist", to conceal his own "terrorism", "divisionism" and "genocidism" in Rwanda and in Congo. Simple logic Mr Blair! Kagme must give Congo the list of the "genocidists" that are hiding in Congo to make Congo's work in tracking them down easy. Why is Kagame not providing the list? Do we have to wait until cows come home?
Yet another "peace accord"
According to the latest news, the government of Congo has signed yet another peace agreement with Rwanda's Nkunda (Rwanda signed another agreement with Congo not to aide Nkunda. It was not worth the paper it was signed on). This will not put an end to killing, raping, kidnapping and looting, especially the fraud of minerals from Congo into Rwanda!
UNLESS KAGAME CONCEDE TO TALK TO THE HUTU (REBELS/OPPOSITION) NOW, THE SAME CONCESSIONS THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS ASKED CONGO TO MAKE. TIME HAS COME FOR AN INTER-RWANDAN DIALOGUE NOW MR BLAIR, NOT A TUTSI-LED BUFFER STATE OUT OF EASTERN CONGO, RICH IN MINERALS!
DRC-RWANDA: IT IS WAR: Rwanda planning to attack the Democratic Republic of Congo as the "International Community" turns a blind eye!
Proof, just when the DRC is setting up a peace conference to try to resolve the conflict in its volatile eastern region, seven Tutsi soldiers were arrested on 9 January 2008, by the Congolese Naval Forces when they were trying to ferry arms to Congo's South Kivu volatile province using two boats. Six escaped and one is under interrogation!
Rwanda has been caught red-handed. How come there no reaction from Paris, Brussels, Washington and London?
A question: were Ugandan and Rwandan special forces involved in the post-electoral massacres in Kenya?
Possibly! Raila Odinga's campaign was: "equal redistribution of natural rssources". Or the main natural resource Kenya boasts is its fertile land vastly occupied by majority tribes and descendent of British settlers. Like in Zimbabwe, there is need for land reform. Who were not happy with Raila Odinga's "equal natural resources redistribution"? And who used who "to stop him"?!
On 7 January 2008, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki wrote to President Paul Kagame explaining the general situation in his country and particularly the ongoing post-election violence that has rocked the East African nation following a widely disputed presidential poll held over a week ago. Why does Kagame of all people need Kibaki's explanation?
North Kivu: Tutsi armed militia led by Nkunda, backed by Kigali and Kampala, responsible for crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of Congo
It is the World upside down. The United States of America which lock up "terrorists", including innocent people in Guantanamo have urged the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to talk to Nkunda, wanted for crimes against humanity! The dialogue will take place soon. Kinshasa of course obliged!
The Pentagon is behind warlord Laurent Nkunda. He is protecting the mines where the slave-master is feverishly digging for tantalum, Niobium, and all manner of strategic minerals in Eastern Congo.
In fact, even the so-called United Nations not only pays a fee to Nkunda whenever UN planes land on airstrips in that area, but UN medical personnel have been treating Nkunda's fighters who get injured while fighting the DRC army.
Recently President Joseph Kabila deployed troops and 'drove' Nkunda's Tutsi forces from near the mines that produce these strategic minerals.
When the DRC forces arrived at Nkunda's HQs they found that every human being in that small town had 'fled'. It was a big trap.
Behind Nkunda is Bechtel, Harliburton, the Pentagon etc.... A few days ago in Addis Ababa, Kabila refused to turn up for a meeting with Museveni and Condoleezza Rice. Now Museveni, Kagame and the West are teaching him a lesson ?!
The latest outbreak of violence began with an army offensive against the rebels and has fed U.N. fears for the welfare of tens of thousands of people already displaced by months of unrest.
Less than a week ago the government described its capture of Mushake as a "great victory" in the fight against Nkunda's estimated 4,000 loyalists, who claim to be defending Tutsis against Hutu rebels from neighbouring Rwanda.
UN sources in DR Congo confirmed the rebels were back in control of Mushake and Karuba, while army troops were pulling back to the nearby village of Kingi.
MONUC has established mobile bases at Kirolirwe which houses about 14,000 displaced, the majority of them Tutsis, and at Kitchanga where another 18,000 refugees are eking out an existence.
Along with Congolese officials and humanitarian organizations, the peacekeepers are now drafting evacuation scenarios for civilians caught in the war zone.
The roughly 25,000-strong army vastly outnumbers the estimated 4,000 Nkunda loyalists. But the rebel general has so far rejected demands by Kinshasa and the UN to disarm -- and by Washington to surrender and go into exile. Exile? He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity! He sould be sent to Guantanamo instead!
Zimbabwe ruling party endorses Mugabe for 2008 poll
Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF endorsed veteran leader Robert Mugabe as its candidate in next year's presidential polls at a congress in the capital Harare, the party's chairman said Thursday.
"I did not hear any dissenting voices," John Nkomo, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) national chairman after representatives of various party wings read their declarations in favour of Mugabe's candidature.
"It means this congress has fully and unreservedly declared Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe as the presidential candidate for next year's presidential elections."
Mugabe told his party faithful in the opening ceremony broadcast on state television and radio he would not abandon them or the people in hard times.
"Every one of them matters to me. Can I let them down? No. Their welfare is my welfare. Their suffering is my suffering," he said.
However he also appealed to his supporters to refrain from violence and felt the need to issue a rare plea for unity within the ranks of ZANU-PF.
"We don't want any violence during campaigns. Campaign peacefully," said Mugabe of the joint parliamentary and presidential elections expected in March.
Referring to his Western critics, Mugabe said he would only accept the involvement of fellow African nations in Zimbabwean affairs.
"We are an independent state. If we need any assistance, we have our own neighbours to turn to," he said.
Mugabe criticised the British no-show, saying dialogue would have been useful if not welcome.
"We don't desire to talk to them but there is an issue between us and them. How do they expect the issue to be resolved?," Mugabe told thousands of party members who were decked in T-shirts bearing his image.
Mugabe hits back at 'arrogant' critics
Lisbon, 9.12.2007 - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Sunday hit back at a group of four "arrogant" European countries for criticising his human rights record, saying democracy only came to Africa in the post-colonial era.
"It is important that people keep in mind that Africans fought for human rights from oppressive rule," Mugabe said in a speech at an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon.
"There was no democracy in Zimbabwe for nearly a hundred years and we had to fight for one person, one vote."
Mugabe criticised the "arrogance from the EU side", saying a so-called gang of four - Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden - had no right to claim a better understanding of the situation in Zimbabwe than the African Union and the Southern African Developments Community.
President Mugabe's comments came the day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel slammed Mugabe for "harming the image of the new Africa" with his human rights record, oblivious to what the Germans did in Namibia.
Mugabe said the four countries' leaders who had spoken out earlier against his rule were acting as puppets for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who boycotted the summit over the Zimbabwean leader's presence.
"Why is the prime minister of Britain not here? Because he has his spokespeople here." - Photo below: Herero people of Namibia, victims of genocide committed by German troops against them on their ancetral land in 1904!
Mugabe was attending the summit despite an EU travel ban and said "Europe simply could not accept the democratic will of the Zimbabwean people".
"Europe will not accept (the results of elections) that are properly held in our countries because they don't like the winner," he said.
He also defended his programme of land reform saying Zimbabwe had the right to deal with its "heritage". - Sapa-AFP
DR Congo army makes ground against Rwandan troops commanded by Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda, a refugee in Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo army claimed fresh gains Thursday 6.12.2007 in heavy fighting against demobilised troops from Rwanda fighting along side Nkunda, on the fourth day of a major offensive in the east of the country.
Army commanders and UN military sources confirmed that fighting raged throughout the day as troops advanced north from Mushake, a hillside village in Nord-Kivu province that fell to government forces on Wednesday 5.12.2007.
No casualty figures were immediately available but commanders said at least 13 troops had died in the battle for Mushake, scene of some of the heaviest combat since the government launched its campaign on Monday 3.12.2007.
Armed forces Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, second in command in Nord-Kivu, said "several dozen" demobilised troops from Rwanda commanded by general Laurent Nkunda were also killed when government troops overran Mushake.
President Joseph Kabila paid homage to the "bravery" of his troops, who are aiming to crush a rebellion that has sowed insecurity across a swathe of the DR Congo and created a humanitarian crisis.
"The government is determined to put everything in place to quickly re-establish a sustainable peace and security," Kabila said in his annual state of the nation address to both houses of parliament.
Troops encountered strong resistance again Thursday as they advanced from Mushake towards Kirolirwe, another Nkunda stronghold around 10 kilometres (six miles) to the northeast, a UN military source said.
Fighting was intense around Kingi, a village which controls the access routes to Kirolirwe, but the rebels were eventually overcome, he said.
"The FARDC (army) have taken Kingi but it's difficult to get information because there's no telephone network in that zone," he said.
Troops also recaptured positions they had been forced to abandon on the weekend at Kikuku and Nyanzale, Colonel Joseph Tokolonga said.
Mugabe hails Zimbabwe 'new dawn'
Negotiations have continued for six months between Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
They are aimed at paving the way for free and fair elections next year.
BBC correspondent Peter Biles says the talks have been conducted in conditions of secrecy but a surprising degree of consensus now appears to be emerging.
In his annual state of the nation address to parliament in the capital, Harare, Mr Mugabe thanked South Africa's Thabo Mbeki for mediating.
He said the dialogue represents constructive engagement across the political divide and a narrowing of differences.
With presidential and parliamentary elections expected in March 2008, Mr Mugabe said Zimbabwe would invite "friendly and objective" members of the international community to observe the polls.
Foreign relations
Mr Mugabe said "a sinister campaign" by former colonial power Britain to isolate Zimbabwe, and bar the country from the forthcoming Europe/Africa summit in Lisbon, was disintegrating.
He said the problems between the UK and Zimbabwe should be addressed bilaterally.
Mr Mugabe told parliament that the country continued to defy predictions of economic collapse and social upheaval.
He said in the past year Zimbabwe has moved towards "sustained economic recovery notwithstanding the suffering endured by many of our people."
Long live the China-Africa Cooperation!
I was struck by an opinion piece in the November 2007 issue of New African magazine, published in London, penned by Femi Akomolafe, probably a Nigerian by the sound of it. The piece epitomised the common thinking of Africans on the Sino-African relations:
“The Chinese, as history records, were on the African shores long before Europeans could navigate outside their waters; yet the Chinese didn’t think of conquest, slavery or colonisation. They engaged in honourable trade and went back home… Today, the children of those Europeans who came to Africa to rob, plunder and settle are telling me that I should be afraid of the Chinese. I ask: What the hell for?”, Femi Akomolafe wrote.
Ian Smith would be remembered for his racism and the deaths of many people - Zimbabwe National Radio.
"We offered him the hand of reconciliation which he never accepted - good riddance - Bright Matonga, Zimbabwe Deputy Information Minister.
Mr Smith died in South Africa aged 88. He had been ill for some time.
Mr Smith declared unilateral independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965, and led the country for 14 years amid international scorn and sanctions.
Following a bitter bush war with black nationalists, the Smith government gave way to a new administration in 1979, leading to the creation of Zimbabwe.
The former premier remained active in Zimbabwean politics until the abolition of seats reserved for whites in 1987.
The BBC's James Robbins says that to the end of his days Ian Smith was convinced that Rhodesians, black and white, would have fared better under his leadership than that of Mr Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.
Zimbabwe's Information Minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovhu, told the BBC's Network Africa programme that Mr Smith did well under President Mugabe.
"He had a good life here in Zimbabwe after independence, just living on his farm and walking in the streets freely, and doing shopping in a free Zimbabwe," he said.
"He enjoyed a better Zimbabwe after independence, after his rule - or after his misrule, because during his rule, there was no democracy in this country."
Mr Ndlovhu's deputy, Bright Matonga, described Mr Smith as a man who brought untold suffering to millions of Zimbabweans.
"We offered him the hand of reconciliation which he never accepted," Mr Matonga told the AFP news agency. "Good riddance."
Congo army has green light to disarm Nkunda - President Kabila
At the same time UN Sec. Gen. Banki Moon says the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC)'s mandate must be prolonged by one year. Well, each prolongation has always coincided with new wars by the Tutsi in eastern Congo (to justify MONUC's new mandates?) which MONUC can stop! Noe we know the game we are in!
GOMA, Congo, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Congo's army has orders to forcibly disarm soldiers loyal to TUtsi renegade General Laurent Nkunda, President Joseph Kabila said on Wednesday, but he declined to say when the offensive would begin.
"The armed forces ... have received the green light to begin or rather to prepare the forced disarmament of Mr. Nkunda and those who remain with him," Kabila told a news conference in Goma, capital of the eastern province of North Kivu.
"I won't give you the date for these operations to start but the army has already been given its mission to disarm these people," he said.
Kabila said the operation would not necessarily begin immediately but made clear he hoped to definitively pacify the violence-torn province on Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern border with Uganda and Rwanda by the end of the year.
Nkunda's forces have battled government troops in North Kivu since August, forcing thousands of civilians from their homes.
The United Nations made a last-ditch appeal on Monday for the renegade soldiers to rejoin the national army after Nkunda ignored a government deadline to disband his forces in the east.
The West still continues to employ its "divide and rule" tactics in Africa!
After a Scottish University, the Edinburgh University withdrew a degree it awarded to President Mugabe after he launched the land reform, another Scottish univeristy, the University of Glasgow has confered an honorary degree on Kagame who killed millions in Rwanda and in Congo. Kagame invaded Congo and Mugabe sent troops to defend Congo's national sovereignty and its territorial integrity!
On 6.11.2007, Kagame received a Doctor of Laws in recognition of the role he played in "putting an end to the genocide and for promoting women's rights as well as in the development of his country".
Well! Well! Just because Rwanda is joining the Commonwealth, it does not make Kagame its leader a lesser terrorist! Mind you President Bush said "if you praise a terrorist, you are also a terrorist!". So...!
FACE TO FACE WITH THE BUTCHER OF KIGALI
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, responsible for crimes against humanity in Rwanda his own country and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, paradoxically was invited on 4.10.2007 by the London School of Economics’Centre for the Study of Human Rights to give a public lecture on “The Challenges of Development and Environmental Sustainability in Africa: The case of Rwanda”.
Kagame of course repeated the same mantra of the “1994 genocide” in Rwanda, 14 years after which he had strived to rebuild a “prosperous and reconciled Rwanda after bad leadership (under a Hutu government) and a genocide during which one million Tutsi were killed; building democratic institutions, boosting the private sector, so that Rwanda can play an effective role in the regional, African and global level.
Kagame also said that his government has enacted environmental and conservation laws to protect Rwanda’s biodiversity and natural resources and will host an international conference on this subject in Kigali next year.
Let us note first of all that Rwandan President Paul Kagame is a manipulator who is using the 1994 genocide as a trump card!
1. Kagame goes to the Western powers and tell them: where were you when the Hutu nearly exterminated us, and they feel guilty, apologise and keep quiet, give him all the means possible (money and arms) to loot the mineral wealth of Congo.
2. Kagame goes to the Tutsi survivors of the genocide and tell them that they owe their lives and survival to him because he saved them from the Interahamwe, the Hutu genocidaires. And they keep quiet, vote for him, no opposition. But we know that Kagame was only interested in taking power, not saving the Tutsi, as General Dalaire revealed. Under President Kagame’s “Imidugu” policy or the “Politics of villagisation”, most of the villagers have been forced to built their huts along the main roads so that the notorious Local Defense Forces will keep a vigilant eye on them and to wield off infiltrators. The countryside is therefore deserted and Catholic missions there forced to close. Survivors of the genocide feel abandoned to themselves.
Ordinary Rwandans say their leaders all returned from exile do not identify with them. In fact the new regime keeps a grudge against Tutsi who stayed behind and never went into exile, accusing them of having collaborated with the former Hutu regime.
3. Kagame goes to the Hutu in Rwanda and say, it was me who restrained my men from exterminating all of you in a gush of revenge, and they keep quiet and dare not oppose him. Yet we know that when accompanying Laurent Kabila to power, Kagame ordered his men to exterminate all the Hutu in refugee camps in eastern Congo, which they did.
Nick Gordon, a BBC reporter investigated and reported that the Kigali regime has built crematorium at Bugasira, Ruhengeri, Byumba, Kibungo, Inyungwe and other locations where thousands of Hutus and Congolese deportees (80 Congolese youth were deported from Uvira, South Kivu into Rwanda in January 2001 and are unaccounted for today, according to the Missionary News Agency MISNA), were killed daily and their bodies are incinerated under the program called "MANPOWER DUTIES" while US officials are looking the other way (do you beleive that all thse skulls in memorial sites in Rwanda are all Tutsi's? How do you scientifically verify it?. The Tutsi regime is conducting genocide in Rwanda to reduce the Hutu population to a “manageable level”. Any Tutsi minister or politician who disagreed with the policy is either in exile or has been assassinated.
4. Kagame goes to the Tutsi living in Congo and say, if you do not do anything for yourself, the Congolese will exterminate you. You know what happened in 1994 in Rwanda. It is not a surprise that The Economist in London called the Tutsi, the Jews of Africa. Bolstered by western support, Kagame branded the Congolese “the Ibicucu” in his native Kinyarwanda language – which means, the “nobodies, good for nothing, therefore kill them as many as you like”. Hence the a war of invasion (1998-2003) carried out by troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi and orchestrated by Britain, America and South Africa and with the complicity of the so-called Congolese of Tutsi origin in Rwanda and the so-called congolese rebels; and in which more than 5 million congolese have been massacred and Congo's natural and mineral resources systematically looted!
Ando so you have Tutsi warlords like Nkunda, a so-called Tutsi congolese killing, raping and looting under the pretext of protecting his own Tutsi community in Congo, you see! Where does he get guns from? From top Business people in Europe and America with the tacit blessing of their governments in return for looted minerals.
Kagame and Museveni should be tried for crimes against humanity in the region.
Secondly, Rwanda and Uganda invaded Congo with the full backing of Britain and America, raped millions of women, killed 5 millions Congolese and systematically looted Congo’s natural and mineral resources. Rwandan elite’s money is blood money looted in Congo and it does not benefit the ordinary Rwandans, let alone the victims of “the genocide” who are left to fend for themselves.
Kagame systematically looted Congo’s fauna and flora. And now to portray himself as an environmentalist is foolish but Kagame will only fool those who choose to be fooled.
I gathered the courage to go and to sit in the same room with the butcher of my people instead of demonstrating outside to prove that I was more civilised than he is and so "I gave him back his humanity", as Mugabe would say.
I was the second person to be given the microphone by he chair Professor Conor Gearty.
I began by saying how interesting it was, if not a paradox that Kagame of all people should be the first person to address the first lecture of the Centre for the study of Human Rights!
I reminded the audience that I stood day and night outside the London School of Economics (LSE) to campaign against “this man” whom you have invited here to talk about human rights, development, peace and environment .
“There will never be peace and development in the Great Lakes Regon, in Rwanda, in Congo or anywhere else in the world without justice,” I said, “devastated by the crimes of Museveni and Kagame.
Then I turned to Kagame and asked him:
“When are you going to apologise to your own people for putting them through what you have put them through? You invaded Rwanda from Uganda and killed millions of people. Then you shot down Habyarimana’s plane [at this point the chair intervenes and ask me to as my question straight away otherwise he will stop me and pass on the microphone to another person. I tell him to hold on just a minute and I pursue my charge], by shooting down Habyarimana’s plane, you kick-started the killing spree during which many Hutu and Tutsi lost their lives.
“My question is: do you sleep easy at night after killing so many people? [the audience laughed!] And when you no longer enjoy presidential immunity as well as the support of Britain and American, you will have to be tried for crimes against humanity Are you prepared for that?”
Kagame replied to me that my question deserved a simple answer.
“If there is one thing I enjoy, it is my sleep. Yes I sleep at ease at night and because of me that sleep is now enjoyed by many in Rwanda. The speaker compensated his biases for a lot of vigour but he must know that the history of our region is not sacred. Rwanda and Congo share the same colonial history and despite the arbitrary colonial borders that separates us, there are blood relationships still intact on both sides of the border.
“Our recent history is dominated by the event of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and bad leaders. Congo’s problems date from colonial days and after because of bad leaders, especially under Mobutu since the 1960s. Congo s a wealthy, rich country, but since colonial days, independence and even up to this moment, Congo has never developed and the people of Congo have never benefited from that wealth. The problem of Congo is not Rwanda, the problem of Congo is not Kagame. Congo is rich in natural resources, but despite this wealth, there are no roads, no clinics, nothing! There is nothing! And the gentleman could have helped the situation by being there and doing something about it, raising these issues!
“The 1994 genocide is not blamed on Congo but after, the genocidists went there and benefited from Mobutu’s support. The whole genocidist army and government settled in refugee camps, benefiting from Mobutu, organising and preparing themselves to go back to Rwanda. I became a refugee when I was three years old. I was able to go back to Rwanda when we organised ourselves. My life is a struggle. We associated with the people leading Congo today and they are there today because of us. It is better Rwanda and Congo work together to address development issues. If there were Congolese who understood these issues, we would not have come to where we came.
“The FDLR are still in Congo. They are terrorising the Congolese citizens. Our armed forces went to Congo and killed and displaced many of them. We and the Congolese government estimate that there remain 8,000 FDLR in Congo.
We have tried to solve this problem in the last 14 years. The problem has subsided but it can only be eliminated by the Kinshasa government and the UN Mission in Congo, otherwise we will deal with it.”
Kagame said that in response to other questions put to him by other people in the audience that he was ready to welcome all the Rwandan refugees back to their country of origin (from Tanzania and Uganda especially) if they are not responsible for the genocide in one way or the other and if they don’t harbour that genocidist ideology, but they prefer to remain there because they have more land there to farm.
“That is their choice. I am not responsible for making Rwanda small in the size that it is today. There are parts of Rwanda that today belong to Congo and to Uganda especially the Kisoro region [where Museveni a Tutsi from Rwanda grew up) where you can identify people by their way of life as Rwandans”, said Kagame,in other words, there is a problem with living space in Rwanda.
When I interjected that that is not true, Kagame looked at me and said: "He is saying that is not true. What does he know. He was born only yesterday!"
Kagame hinted here at the Tutsi Hima Empire ideology (expansionism Tutsi) and his rhetoric for the “Need for a second Berlin Conference rhetoric” but he added that Rwandans’way of life was more attuned to the people of East Africa, that is why Rwanda is a member of the East African Community and Rwanda has its own reasons why it wants to join the Commonwealth.
“It is ourselves to make it work. We have to look at how this coming together will serve us and how we will also bring our own contribution to it, which will make it easier for our citizens to join the London School of Economics for instance.”
On Zimbabwe, Kagame said in reply to a question:
“There are African institutions such as Nepad, the Peer Review, African Union and son on, which encourage African leaders to do the right thing and remind all of us of such a collective responsibility. So there’s forum where we talk to each other frankly. Where we take collective and corrective measures. In the case of Zimbabwe, efforts have been deployed by the SADC and the EU to address the situation. President Thabo Mbeki has been designated by the SADC to mediate. But change will have to come from within Zimbabwe itself. I know I have not satisfied you (the question was asked by a young white Zimbabwean woman) but for the time being we leave it like that (…)” Beware! THEY may use Kagame to invade Zimbabwe like they used him to invade Congo. But Zimbabwe is not a walk over and is prepared.
After the lecture, I stood outside the building and addressed some of the people who made up the audience that Kagame had just addressed and to put the record straight after Kagame’s so many lies.
I was surrounded by so many people and the police was called by the university security officers at one point. I saw them but they did not talk to me because I was not doing anything illegal.
I told my audience not to be fooled by Kagame, a terrorist that Britain and America were protecting because he was doing their bidding at the expense of the people of Congo. Despite Kagame’s criminal record, he can just easily walk here and meet the Queen. At the same time Britain is roaring about Mugabe. Kagame is worse than Mugabe And if Mugabe did not send troops to Congo when we were invaded, we would not be talking about a country called Congo today.
I said what happened in Rwanda was a civil war and Kagame is cooperating with the FDLR whom he releases from prisons in Rwanda and uses them in the mines in Congo. The UN Mission in Congo recently repatriated an FDLR man who was fighting with Nkunda. That tells it all.
Kagame said that there is nothing in Congo. I explained to my audience that just when we wanted to rebuild our country under Laurent Kabila, Britain and America fretted his determination to safeguard Congolese interests first and used Tutsi troops from Rwanda and Uganda to clog our wheels through a barbaric and unjust war.
Kagame claims that our leaders in Congo now were out there by him Well, we have just had elections in Congo and during the AFDL, Laurent Kabila hd 47,000 Congolese men and there were 3,000 Rwandan and Ugandan officers masterminding them. How could they liberate the big Congo from Mobutu’s dictatorship just with 3,000 men? I said that I have set the record straight in my web site www.congopanorama.info
and a process to have Kagame tried for crimes against humanity has already been launched and well under way in Spain.
I saw Kagame with his delegation leaving the LSE. I shouted "Kagame killer! Kagame terroriste! Kagame Hitler!" They turned and looked at me, smiled and went.
"Zimbabwe will never be a colony again! Never!" - President Robert Médard Mugabe's speech at the 2007 UN General Assembly. Drink it for yourselves, dear Africans!
Mr. President,
Once again we reiterate our position that the Security Council as presently constituted is not democratic. In its present configuration, the Council has shown that it is not in a position to protect the weaker states who find themselves at loggerheads with a marauding super-power. Most importantly, justice demands that any Security Council reform redresses the fact that Africa is the only continent without a permanent seat and veto power in the Security Council. Africa's demands are known and enunciated in the Ezulwini consensus.
Mr. President,
We further call for the U.N. system to refrain from interfering in matters that are clearly the domain of member states and are not a threat to international peace and security. Development at country level should continue to be country-led, and not subject to the whims of powerful donor states.
Mr. President,
Zimbabwe won its independence on 18th April, 1980, after a protracted war against British colonial imperialism which denied us human rights and democracy. That colonial system which suppressed and oppressed us enjoyed the support of many countries of the West who were signatories to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Even after 1945, it would appear that the Berlin Conference of 1884, through which Africa was parcelled to colonial European powers, remained stronger than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is therefore clear that for the West, vested economic interests, racial and ethnocentric considerations proved stronger than their adherence to principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The West still negates our sovereignties by way of control of our resources, in the process making us mere chattels in out own lands, mere minders of its trans-national interests. In my own country and other sister states in Southern Africa, the most visible form of this control has been over land despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism.
That control largely persists, although it stands firmly challenged in Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and Britain, supported by her cousin states, most notably the United States and Australia. Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown's sense of human rights precludes our people's right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be controlled by their kith and kin. I am termed dictator because I have rejected this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists.
Mr. President,
Clearly the history of the struggle for our own national and people's rights is unknown to the president of the United States of America. He thinks the Declaration of Human Rights starts with his last term in office! He thinks he can introduce to us, who bore the brunt of fighting for the freedoms of our peoples, the virtues of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What rank hypocrisy!
Mr. President,
I lost eleven precious years of my life in the jail of a white man whose freedom and well- being I have assured from the first day of Zimbabwe's Independence. I lost a further fifteen years fighting white injustice in my country.
Ian Smith is responsible for the death of well over 50 000 of my people. I bear scars of his tyranny which Britain and America condoned. I meet his victims everyday. Yet he walks free. He farms free. He talks freely, associates freely under a black Government. We taught him democracy. We gave him back his humanity.
He would have faced a different fate here and in Europe if the 50 000 he killed were Europeans. Africa has not called for a Nuremberg trial against the white world which committed heinous crimes against its own humanity. It has not hunted perpetrators of this genocide, many of whom live to this day, nor has it got reparations from those who offended against it. Instead it is Africa which is in the dock, facing trial from the same world that persecuted it for centuries.
Let Mr. Bush read history correctly. Let him realise that both personally and in his representative capacity as the current President of the United States, he stands for this "civilisation" which occupied, which colonised, which incarcerated, which killed. He has much to atone for and very little to lecture us on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His hands drip with innocent blood of many nationalities.
He still kills. He kills in Iraq. He kills in Afghanistan. And this is supposed to be out master on human rights?
He imprisons. He imprisons and tortures at Guantanamo. He imprisoned and tortured at Abu Ghraib. He has secret torture chambers in Europe. Yes, he imprisons even here in the United States, with his jails carrying more blacks than his universities can ever enroll. He even suspends the provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Take Guantanamo for example; at that concentration camp international law does not apply. The national laws of the people there do not apply. Laws of the United States of America do not apply. Only Bush's law applies. Can the international community accept being lectured by this man on the provisions of the universal declaration of human rights? Definitely not!
Mr. President,
We are alarmed that under his leadership, basic rights of his own people and those of the rest of the world have summarily been rolled back. America is primarily responsible for rewriting core tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We seem all guilty for 9/11. Mr. Bush thinks he stands above all structures of governance, whether national or international.
At home, he apparently does not need the Congress. Abroad, he does not need the UN, international law and opinion. This forum did not sanction Blair and Bush's misadventures in Iraq. The two rode roughshod over the UN and international opinion. Almighty Bush is now coming back to the UN for a rescue package because his nose is bloodied! Yet he dares lecture us on tyranny. Indeed, he wants us to pray him! We say No to him and encourage him to get out of Iraq. Indeed he should mend his ways before he clambers up the pulpit to deliver pieties of democracy.
Mr. President,
The British and the Americans have gone on a relentless campaign of destabilising and vilifying my country. They have sponsored surrogate forces to challenge lawful authority in my country. They seek regime change, placing themselves in the role of the Zimbabwean people in whose collective will democracy places the right to define and change regimes.
Let these sinister governments be told here and now that Zimbabwe will not allow a regime change authored by outsiders. We do not interfere with their own systems in America and Britain. Mr Bush and Mr Brown have no role to play in our national affairs. They are outsiders and mischievous outsiders and should therefore keep out! The colonial sun set a long time ago; in 1980in the case of Zimbabwe, and hence Zimbabwe will never be a colony again. Never!
We do not deserve sanctions. We are Zimbabweans and we know how to deal with our problems. We have done so in the past, well before Bush and Brown were known politically. We have our own regional and continental organizations and communities.
In that vein, I wish to express my country's gratitude to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa who, on behalf of SADC, successfully facilitated the dialogue between the Ruling Party and the Opposition Parties, which yielded the agreement that has now resulted in the constitutional provisions being finally adopted. Consequently, we will be holding multiple democratic elections in March 2008. Indeed we have always had timeous general and presidential elections since our independence.
Mr. President,
In conclusion, let me stress once more that the strength of the United Nations lies in its universality and impartiality as it implements its mandate to promote peace and security, economic and social development, human rights and international law as outlined in the Charter. Zimbabwe stands ready to play its part in all efforts and programmes aimed at achieving these noble goals.
LOOKING EAST: China loans DR Congo five billion dollars - right after a brand new chinese-built hospital is inaugurated in Kinshasa. The IMF wants a copy of the agreement. Is Congo not a sovereign country which has the right to diversify its investors?
China Development Bank loans Lumumba's country another $14 billions for agricultural, health and environmental projects.
KINSHASA (AFP) - China signed a deal here Monday to loan the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo five billion dollars (3.6 billion euros) to build up infrastructure and develop its mining industry.
Three billion dollars will build 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometres) of railway between Sakania in the south and Matadi in the west, as well as a 2,000 mile road linking Kisangani in the northeast and Kasumbalesa in the south.
A motorway will also be built between Lubumbashi, capital of southern Katanga province, and Kasumbalesa, a major customs point on the border with Zambia, within 36 months, Congolese Infrastructure Minister Pierre Lumbi said.
Beijing's money will also pay for 31 hospitals, 145 health centres, two large international-standard universities and 5,000 government housing units.
The remaining two billion dollars will be put towards the vast African country's mining industry and creating joint Chinese-Congolese firms, Lumbi said.
"Our cooperation is founded on a number of principles, notably allowing the two parties to ... make sure that all the projects carried out by Chinese and Congolese companies bring employment to Congolese," Lumbi said. "They should also include in each project an environmental dimension."
China's ambassador, Wu Xexuan, said that the accord did not mean that other countries would be prevented from investing in Congo.
China is keen to get its hands on raw materials from around the world to feed its fast-growing economy, and in recent years has been on a diplomatic offensive to secure what it needs. A major focus has been on Africa.
In an initial phase, the Chinese would be repaid in copper and cobalt, Viktor Kasongo, Congo’s Deputy Mines Minister told the FT. But the deal, a draft of which was signed on Monday, also envisages concessions in nickel and gold, and repayment from tolls on railways and roads yet to be built.
Existing mining contracts and concessions held by foreign groups would not be affected, Kasongo said. …If the funds are disbursed, they would make Congo one of the top recipients of Chinese investment in Africa as Beijing drives to secure mineral and other commodities to fuel its booming domestic economy. …” [The Financial Times (UK)]
Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu - It is a case of double standard!
Since we are in a democracy, this is what I think about the Most Rev Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu's statement about the situation in Zimbabwe:
The Anglican Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu (originally from Uganda) attacks Mugabe as "the worst kind of racist dictator like Idi Amin" and called for Britain to lead sanctions against his government.
But when Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni violated the constitution of his country and stood for a third term, we heard no condemnation from the Archbishop of York.
When Museveni sent mainly HIV postive-troops to Congo to invade that country, looting Congo's natural and mineral wealth, killing 5 million people and raping scores of women, not forgetting the genocide of the Acholi in Northern Uganda, we heard no condemnation from the Archbishop of York. So, it is a case of double standard!
Prime Minister Gordon Brown will not attend summit if Mugabe will. But Zimbabwe is part of Africa and the summit is about Africa
President Robert Mugabe will defy Prime Minister Gordon Brown's boycott threat if invited to attend a Europe-Africa summit, says Zimbabwe's UN Ambassador.
Boniface Chidyausiku said Mr Brown had "no right to dictate" who should be at the meeting in Portugal in December.
It follows Mr Brown's threat that he will not attend the summit of African and EU leaders if Mr Mugabe is there.
He claims Mr Mugabe's presence will "divert attention" from big issues such as poverty, climate change and health.
But Mr Chidyausiku accused Mr Brown of seeking to "multilateralise" an argument between the UK and Zimbabwe.
The leader of one of Zimbabwe's neighbours, Zambia, who is also chairman of the regional Southern Africa body, SADC, has alsow warned that if Mr Mugabe is not allowed to attend the summit, then neither will he.
"I will not go to Portugal if Mugabe is not allowed. I don't know how many of us [African leaders] will be prepared to go to Portugal without Mugabe," said President Levy Mwanawasa.
Dr Gertrude Mongella, the Tanzanian president of the Pan-African Parliament, said Mr Brown's threat would not help Zimbabwe.
"We do know there are some problems, but if somebody wants to arm-twist Zimbabwe, that's not the best way to solve the problems," she said.
"I think this is again another way of manipulating Africa. Zimbabwe is a nation which got independence," she added.
'Part of Africa'
In an interview with BBC2's Newsnight, Mr Chidyausiku said Mr Mugabe had a "sovereign right" to attend.
"Gordon Brown has no right to dictate who should come to Lisbon," he said.
"Definitely we are going if we are invited because we are part of Africa."
LEST WE FORGET: The strongest and fiercest critic of President Robert Mugabe, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube resigns after an adultery scandal.
Zimbabwe's state media in July 2007 published photographs of adulterous Pius Ncube in bed with a married woman who worked for his parish.
The woman's husband has sued him for 20bn Zimbabwe dollars (about $160,000, or £80,000, on the black market exchange rate) over the affair.
A brief statement from the Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI had accepted Bishop Ncube's resignation under the article of church law that says a bishop should retire if he is ill or if "some other grave reason" had made him unsuitable for office.
The secretary general of one faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change told the BBC News website it was a "sad" day for Zimbabwe.
"He fought the regime and the regime fought back," said Tendai Biti.
Mr Mugabe - who like the cleric was educated in a Jesuit school – took to publicly joking about the archbishop, adding that he would pray for him.
The former archbishop has not directly denied the alleged affair. Pictures of a man believed to be Pius Ncube climbing naked on top of a woman were printed in the state-run press, which described them as coming from "the archbishop's love nest". Video of the former archbishop apparently having sex was shown on Zimbabwean television several nights in a row.
QUOTES OF THE MONTH:
President Joseph Kabila (Uganda-DRC Summit, Arusha, Tanzania):
"How come Black Africans are always at each other's throats? We are determined to see long-term peace reign among Congo and Bur. Next time [President Museveni and I] meet, [I hope] we won't discuss about border problems, but we will be discussing developmental issues."
Democratic Republic of Congo Defence Minister Tshikez Djemu said that "if soldiers allied to Tutsi General Nkunda refused to lay down their arms, they would be considered bandits and be dealt with accordingly by the army."
What we know is that Nkunda has no army. All the soldiers under his command are sent to him by Paul kagame.
And they threaten to slaughter the 700 critically endangered mountain gorillas in the Virunga park. They attacked Jomba and Bikenge patrol posts in the Virunga National Park, Wildlife Direct said, looting weapons, ammunition and communication equipment. Conservationists had to flee leaving the rare primates exposed to massacres.
UN accuses Rwanda of arming a former Tutsi refugee in Congo now turned rebel leader
Ugandan troops are still occupying certain areas in the gold-rich area of Mahagi, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Ituri, Oriental Province!
The Guardian's Chris McGreal in Goma, Thursday September 6, 2007
Rwanda is supplying a rebel Tutsi general in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with ammunition and fighters as he seizes control of parts of the region and attacks government forces, according to UN security officials.
General Laurent Nkunda's troops have occupied an area along the border with Rwanda and Uganda. Men and equipment have been observed crossing into Congo, which has already suffered from a decade of war during which about 4 million people have died.
UN officials said Gen Nkunda's forces appeared to be strengthening their control around the border to secure their supply lines. They have also moved their families to the area.
Gen Nkunda has also attacked the areas around three towns east of the regional capital, Goma, but the army said it had killed more than 50 of his men in a helicopter gunship assault on Tuesday.
His forces in Rutshuru, 45 miles north of Goma, left their headquarters there this week, destroying power lines and mobile phone transmitters on the way, and moved into the Virunga national park and towards the border area. They also seized the transmitters of a local radio station.
Aya Shneerson, the head of the World Food Programme in the region, said thousands of people had been forced from their homes by the renewed conflict.
"There's an overwhelming movement of people all over North Kivu province with new [refugee] sites created almost every day. We estimate that the new fighting has displaced over 30,000 people on top of the 200,000 displaced by fighting in February. These people are constantly on the move and they're very vulnerable," she said.
The fighting has also raised concerns about the safety of endangered mountain gorillas in the Virunga national park in the Rutshuru area. Half of the world's 700 mountain gorillas live in the park. Nine have been killed this year. Gen Nkunda's forces have been blamed for eating two of them, poachers and illegal tree fellers for killing the others.
Rangers have also been targeted. Gen Nkunda's forces raided ranger stations in the park, seizing weapons and uniforms.
The Democratic Republic of Congo revokes Central African Mining & Exploration Co.’s copper and cobalt mining licences.
Moreover, the civil society of the Democratic Republic of Congo says it has uncovered 12 other illegal and fraudulent mining contrats and exploitations licences to the benefit of certain international mining companies which should be cancelled. It has published the list. We don't have it.
St. LOUIS (ResourceInvestor.com, 30.08.2007) -- The Democratic Republic of Congo has revoked Central African Mining & Exploration Co.’s copper and cobalt mining licences - essentially knocking out CAMEC’s $1.4 billion takeover bid for Katanga Mining Ltd [TSX:KAT].
CAMEC’s [AIM:CFM] shares plummeted on news of the DRC’s decision, hitting a low of 30.5 pence on London’s AIM exchange Thursday morning. At that share price, CAMEC’s offer of 17 shares for each Katanga share - originally valued at $1.4 billion based on CAMEC’s closing price of 52 pence on Aug. 28, the day before the offer was made - drops the value of the bid to just 399 million pounds, or $804 million, leaving CAMEC unable to complete the takeover successfully.
The DRC announced late Wednesday that it is stripping London-based CAMEC of its copper and cobalt mining rights to the C19 concession in the country’s Katanga province due to “serious irregularities in the original issuing of the licences,” according to the DRC’s Justice Ministry press release.
“The judicial decision has been taken to revoke and cancel the licences held for the area known as C19,” the press release read. “The rights to mine the C19 area revert to Gecamines, the state-owned mining company.”
According to Reuters news agency, CAMEC said the revocation was linked to the bid, which is opposed by Katanga Chief Executive Arthur Ditto.
"The company believes there is no valid basis for this rumored action. The leaking is clearly timed to impact CAMEC's offer for Katanga, and the manner in which it is processed is highly irregular," CAMEC said in a statement.
"The management of CAMEC is totally confident that the company will successfully refute any allegations or attempts made against its license," it added.
Antoine Lokongo, spokesman for the Congolese government in London, denied that the revocation had anything to do with the Katanga bid, but added that he was surprised CAMEC had made its move during a wide-ranging mining review in the country.
"We are surprised that while the review process is still going on, Camec launches a bid for Katanga. Why is Camec jumping the gun? ... it's pushing us to put our case first," he said.
Victor Kasongo, deputy mines minister of the DRC, told Reuters that the move was to be taken seriously.
"Their procedures for obtaining the license were fraudulent. So the license was never legitimate according to the mining code. They can come and state their case, but for now they don't have that license," he said.
The DRC launched a review of around 60 mining contracts in June aimed at ensuring the deals are legal and fair.
At that time, Peter Rosenblum, a lawyer with U.S.-based Carter Center brought in to advise and monitor the process, said some cancellation of contracts could be unavoidable.
Most of the DRC's mining contracts were agreed during a 1998-2003 war or under a three-year transitional government, which included the various factions from the six-year conflict.
CAMEC in its statement said there needed to be a genuine and valid reason under DRC law to challenge the license and that the company should be given the opportunity to rectify the alleged problem.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy insults Africa and South African President Thabo Mbeki praises him!
What the rightwing French leader said during an address to a university audience in Senegal last month:
"The tragedy of Africa is that the African has never really entered into history ... They have never really launched themselves into the future," Mr Sarkozy said. "The African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time ... In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and over again, there is room neither for human endeavour, nor for the idea of progress.
"The problem of Africa ... is to be found here. Africa's challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history ... It is to realise that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return, because it has never existed." Mr Sarkozy also defended France's past role in Africa by saying that while it may have made "mistakes", it "did not exploit anybody".
What President Thabo Mbeki wrote to Sarkozy in praise of him:
"What you have said in Dakar, Mr President, has indicated to me that we are fortunate to count on you as a citizen of Africa, as a partner in the protracted struggle to achieve the renaissance of Africa within the context of a European renaissance and the rest of the world," Mr Mbeki wrote.
The speech was widely condemned, including by the head of the African Union commission, Alpha Oumar Konare.
"This speech was not the kind of break we were hoping for," he told Radio France Internationale. "It reminded us of another age, especially his comments about peasants." Other critics said that while Mr Sarkozy asked younger Africans if they wanted an end to corruption and violence, he failed to acknowledge the role of France in propping up abusive regimes.
We remind Mr Sarkozy that playwright Yasmina Reza's portrait painted him recently "as a vain, childlike egotist and cruel". We also remind him that Africa is not only the craddle of humanity, of civilisation and therefore of progress, but Africans built pyramids and citadels, such as the Zimbabwe citadel, far before the jews built the Temple in Jerusalem. If the Bible is historical, jews were in slavery in Egypt. The first world's university was established in Timbuktu. The Greeks came to learn science, astronomy, arts and philosophy in Egypt. In the 14th century, Africa traded with the rest of the world on equal terms... and we can go on and on... These are historical facts.
Africa's evolution was cut short by the slave trade, colonialism and neocolinism, which have made France and other westerns nations what they are today!
The deputy commander of the Darfur Force reponsible for war crimes.
- By Julian Borger, diplomatic editor, The Guardian, London, 18.08.2007.
The United Democratic Force-Inkingi, A Rwandan opposition group, accused Major General Karenzi Karake, a Tutsi, of responsibility for carrying out political assassinations and ordering reprisal killings against Hutus in Rwanda and Zaire in the years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when he was the country's chief of military intelligence.
Gen Karake has been nominated as the deputy commander of a joint UN and African Union (AU) force established by a security council resolution engineered by Gordon Brown and French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The resolution, which was approved unanimously last month, was seen as the prime minister's first foreign policy success.
A foreign office spokeswoman said that the appointment of force commanders was a job for the UN department of peacekeeping operations. But British officials are concerned that if there was any substance to the allegations it could discredit the Darfur mission.
UN officials were taken by surprise by the allegations against Gen Karake, having been assured there were no significant allegations against him on record. They have demanded an explanation from the head of the Rwandan delegation to the UN.
Meanwhile, the AU confirmed the general's appointment without consulting the UN - a sign of possible coordination problems to come in deploying the world's biggest peacekeeping force.
Jordi Palou-Loverdos, a lawyer who is taking Rwandan military leaders to court in Spain for the murder of nine Spanish missionaries and humanitarian workers, argued that Gen Karake had questions to answer as he was in a senior military position when the killings took place.
"I would say that for a senior Rwandan officer under suspicion to be nominated at this point may not be a prudent decision for the UN," Mr Palou-Loverdos said.
Robert Mugabe given a hero's welcome
Daily Telegraph, London. By Sebastien Berger, 17/08/2007
President Robert Mugabe has received a hero's welcome at the opening of an African summit.
As he was introduced to the Southern African Development Community gathering in the Zambian capital Lusaka, dignitaries gave him thunderous applause in contrast to polite claps for other leaders.
Mr Mugabe stood and smiled in acknowledgement before sitting down next to South Africa's Thabo Mbeki.
After the conference Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa, who has previously compared Zimbabwe to a "sinking Titanic", played down the crisis facing the country.
"We also feel that the problems in Zimbabwe have been exaggerated. We feel they will solve their economic problems," he said.
He added that Zimbabwe's current voting laws were "valid to enable free and fair elections".
Earlier, Zimbabwe's justice minister had told the summit that no political reforms were needed in Zimbabwe.
"Political reform is not necessary in my country because we are a democracy like any other democracy in the world," Patrick Chinamasa said, Reuters news agency reports.
Zimbabwe bill to hit foreign firms
HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- Zimbabwe's government introduced a bill Thursday to give Zimbabweans majority ownership of foreign companies, a move critics say will deepen the economic crisis.
Critics of the Zimbabwe government fear a bill against foreign companies will worsen the economic crisis.
If passed it would give the government sweeping powers over how foreign companies, including mines, operate in Zimbabwe.
Critics accuse veteran leader President Robert Mugabe of trying to push through the empowerment bill to extend his patronage and focus attention from Zimbabwe's economic turmoil. Mugabe is seeking another five-year term in presidential elections next year.
Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Paul Mangwana told parliament the bill would create an environment that would increase the "participation of indigenous people in Zimbabwe".
The draft was passed to a parliamentary legal committee shortly after it was introduced. It is likely to pass because Mugabe's ZANU-PF party dominates parliament,
Photo above: Democratic Republic of the Congo's President Joseph Kabila and his Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe attend a parade at Zambia's Air force base in Lusaka on the 2nd day of the 27th SADC Ordinary Summit of The Heads of State and Government.(AFP/Alexander Joe)
The hidden agenda of Tutsi living in Congo: to annex North Kivu and South Kivu to Rwanda and Ituri to Uganda, which explain the military activity of Tutsi renegade, Laurent Nkunda.
Rwanda via Nkunda is behind some most despicable atrocities in Masisi, Rutsuru and Walikale in North Kivu, under pthe pretext that the FDLR who committed genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago are hiding there and therefore Tutsi minority should be protected. The annexation of eastern Congo to Rwanda is the objective and some powerful people in Britain and America are supporting such a project.
Beside the looting of minerals, in Masisi, Rutsuru and Walikale, there are villages patrolled by Nkunda's police and checkpoints where Nkunda's soldiers demand that truck drivers pay a tax to support their leader's cause. Local residents can settle disputes these days in Nkunda's courts or attend church with a priest appointed by Nkunda, who is wanted on war crimes charges but lately has been wearing a button that reads "Rebels for Christ." What amounts to Radio Free Nkunda broadcasts from a mountaintop around here.
Villagers said that earlier this year Nkunda hoisted a flag in Kitchanga, a old plantation during Belgian time he has transformed inti his headquarters and declared his mountain fiefdom a new country: Land of the Volcanoes.
UN officials blame the general for forcing an estimated 230,000 people from their homes since January and creating a humanitarian disaster that is the worst Congo has experienced since the peak of its decade of civil war. Displacement camps filled with sick, hungry, and injured people are scattered across the east again, and UN officials warn that Congo is on the brink of another all-out conflict.
For a while, Nkunda had the support of Rwanda, which considered his forces a necessary bulwark against Hutu militiamen. Though Rwanda says it no longer supports him, its sympathy for Nkunda's activities borders on justification.
"Rwanda cannot establish a relationship with such a person, but we can understand why Nkunda is Nkunda," said Charles Murigande, Rwanda's foreign minister. "We can understand his argument."
Armed with a sense of righteousness fortified by visiting American evangelical Christian groups, Nkunda has in recent months been carrying out attacks against village after village.
Eastern Congo is a sordid tangle of violence, but even within that context, villagers say, Nkunda's men have distinguished themselves.
In one forsaken camp of banana-leaf huts sprawled across volcanic rocks near the provincial capital of Goma(same policy Museveni is implemeting in Northern Uganda), people who had run for their lives told different versions of the same story: that before attacking with machetes and guns, Nkunda's soldiers had accused them of harboring Hutu militiamen.
"They consider us like the Interahamwe," said Nayino Faraziya, 70, referring to the Hutu militia that she said had taken up residence around her village, Bufamando.
Faraziya said Nkunda's soldiers burned down houses and called about two dozen people, including her, to a "meeting" at the local Catholic parish.
Then, she said, they set the building on fire.
"People were crying and screaming," said Faraziya, who escaped through a window and has fresh burns across her back, neck, and arms.
More than 2,000 people have arrived at the camp since January, said the camp's chief, Mahoro Faustin, and more are arriving daily, some missing legs and arms and most with little more than the torn clothes on their backs.
The notion that Nkunda is offering people some kind of protection from Hutu militias, he said, is "a masquerade."
"He wants everyone to join him against the government," said Faustin. "His people were preaching that we need to liberate ourselves and make our own country. He even put his flag in our village.", as reported by the Boston-based Globe Newspaper Company on 13.08.2007.
In recent months, Nkunda has forcefully recruited soldiers, including children, inside Rwanda, according to UN officials who repatriated at least 500 of them.
Nkunda is Congo's latest nightmare and well-armed megalomaniac but whose days are numbered.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame is a manipulator who is using the 1994 genocide as a trump card!
1. Kagame goes to the Western powers and tell them: where were you when the Hutu nearly exterminated us, and they feel guilty, apologise and keep quiet, give him all the means possible (money and arms) to loot the mineral wealth of Congo.
2. Kagame goes to the Tutsi survivors of the genocide and tell them that they owe their lives and survival to him because he saved them from the Interahamwe, the Hutu genocidaires. And they keep quiet, vote for him, no opposition. But we know that Kagame was only interested in taking power, not saving the Tutsi, as General Dalaire revealed. Under President Kagame’s “Imidugu” policy or the “Politics of villagisation”, most of the villagers have been forced to built their huts along the main roads so that the notorious Local Defense Forces will keep a vigilant eye on them and to wield off infiltrators.
The countryside is therefore deserted and Catholic missions there forced to close. Survivors of the genocide feel abandoned to themselves.
Ordinary Rwandans say their leaders all returned from exile do not identify with them. In fact the new regime keeps a grudge against Tutsi who stayed behind and never went into exile, accusing them of having collaborated with the former Hutu regime.
3. Kagame goes to the Hutu in Rwanda and say, it was me who restrained my men from exterminating all of you in a gush of revenge, and they keep quiet and dare not oppose him. Yet we know that when accompanying Laurent Kabila to power, Kagame ordered his men to exterminate all the Hutu in refugee camps in eastern Congo, which they did.
Nick Gordon, a BBC reporter investigated and reported that the Kigali regime has built crematorium at Bugasira, Ruhengeri, Byumba, Kibungo, Inyungwe and other locations where thousands of Hutus and Congolese deportees (80 Congolese youth were deported from Uvira, South Kivu into Rwanda in January 2001 and are unaacounted for today, according to the Missionary News Agency MISNA), were killed daily and their bodies are incinerated under the program called "MANPOWER DUTIES" while US officials are looking the other way.
The Tutsi regime is conducting genocide in Rwanda to reduce the Hutu population to a “manageable level”. Any Tutsi minister or politician who disagreed with the policy is either in exile or has been assassinated.
4. Kagame goes to the Tutsi living in Congo and say, if you do not do anything for yourself, the Congolese will exterminate you. You know what happened in 1994 in Rwanda. It is not a surprise that The Economist in London called the Tutsi, the Jews of Africa. Bolstered by western support, Kagame branded the Congolese “the Ibicucu” in his native Kinyarwanda language – which means, the “nobodies, good for nothing, therefore kill them as many as you like”.
Hence the a war of invasion (1998-2003) carried out by troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi and orchestrated by Britain, America and South Africa and with the complicity of the so-called Congolese of Tutsi origin in Rwanda and the so-called congolese rebels; and in which more than 5 million congolese have been massacred and Congo's natural and mineral resources systematically looted!
Ando so you have Tutsi warlords like Nkunda, a so-called Tutsi congolese killing, raping and looting under the pretext of protecting his own Tutsi community in Congo, you see! Where does he get guns from? From top Business people in Europe and America with the tacit blessing of their governments in return for looted minerals.
Kagame and Museveni should be tried for crimes against humanity in the region.
Hotel Rwanda hero urges justice - BBC
Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, says unless the term of the UN tribunal on the genocide is extended it will be a failure. He has written to the UN chief asking for some governing Rwandan Patriotic Front members to face justice.
"If the Arusha tribunal ends its functions having only considered one side of the problem, most of us (Rwandese) would see it as a biased tribunal, and instead of resolving the Rwandan unity problem, it would have worsened it," Mr Rusesabagina told the BBC's Great Lakes service.
Crimes committed by the RPF in 1994 are still under investigation and there have been no public indictments, he says.
"If this tribunal doesn't deal with guilty RPF members, it means their cases will be transferred to Rwanda," said Mr Rusesabagina, who wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about his concerns on 22 June 2007.
"But those who would be in charge of these cases may have been involved in criminal acts, in which case they wouldn't rule against themselves," he said.
In 1994, Mr Rusesabagina - a middle-class Hutu married to a Tutsi with whom he shared four children - sheltered some 1,200 refugees at a hotel in the capital, Kigali, where he was the manager.
The film Hotel Rwanda told the story of how he used his influence to bribe military officials to secure a safe escape for refugees.
"I'm just a normal person. But as I've always defended human rights," he said about his letter to Mr Ban.
"I'm trying to be the voice of millions of Rwandese who have no-one to speak out for them."
Hidden War, Massive Suffering; White People's War For Oil and Minerals.
SHOULD NEW MINING CONTRACTS BE AWARDED TO MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES WHICH LOOTED CONGO'S WEALTH DURING THE INVASION AND NAMED THE UN REPORT ON THE ILLEGAL LOOTING OF CONGO'S WEALTH? THAT IS THE QUESTION!
By Keith Harmon Snow: www.allthingspass.com.
Museveni, Kagame, NKunda, Bemba (like Charles Taylor, they should be prosecuted) and their military allies, the United States, Britain and Israel and their open policy of depopulation, the elimination of large numbers of human beings, as policy, to make way for resource extraction to benefit multinational corporations in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa.
Yet Museveni who has manipulated the Constitution and got himself a third term in office, by so doing has so pleased Britain so much so that he is soon hosting the Commonwealth Summit in Kampala! this is not only a form of obstruction of justice, by tacitly sending a message to the ICC not to pursue its investigation vigorously or return indictments if warranted, but it also amounts to abetting genocide, by deflecting focus away from the crimes and exonerating suspects before investigations on grave allegations are completed.
First of all, it is about oil. It is also about gold, and if I look into it I assure you I will find other resources up for grabs. The oil concessions stretch along the border with Congo from the North Kivu Province, under Lake Albert—the Semliki basin—and up into northern Uganda. Note the involvement of companies like Bechtel, for example—whose subsidiary Nexant is part of the consortium of corporations building a massive oil pipeline across Uganda and Kenya.
The companies involved in exploiting the oil include Tullow Oil, whose subsidiaries include Hardman Resources and whose partners include Heritage Oil and Gas HARDMAN and HERITAGE OIL & GAS. The Heritage connection is a guy named Tony Buckingham, who also is notable for his mercenary companies like SANDLINE INTERNATIONAL, and another nasty firm—BRANCH ENERGY. The oil concessions stretch from near the Rwanda border to the Red Sea—right smack through Darfur. You can see the oil maps on my web site www.allthingspass.com. You can also search on HERITAGE—Uganda.
The U.S. is very close with Uganda, and ships in military equipment—paid for with AID and DEVELOPMENT funds—through Entebbe, an airbase [Uganda] refurbished by the U.S. Weapons and logistics and training go for the secret U.S. war in Sudan—DARFUR—and in Congo and, now, in Somalia. There are at least 2000 UPDF—UGANDA PEOPLES DEFENSE FORCES—in Somalia today prosecuting the war [there] with U.S. backing.
Anyone who claims that U.S. troops if they got involved would end up dead—what a bunch of nonsense. First of all, the Lords Resistance Army is not the main problem here it is the UPDF—as with their criminal operations looting Congo, killing more than 5 million people and backing the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army and now other factions in the war for Darfur. These are not in any sense “tribal” conflicts. Someone in the U.S. has deep ties to Joseph Kony and the LRA, and if they wanted this guy dead he would be dead long ago.
There are LRA agents in Washington connected at the highest levels. As long as Museveni—perhaps the worlds leading terrorist and war criminal today—right up there with his pal Paul Kagame from Rwanda—has these so-called ‘rebel’ so-called ‘enemies’ on its borders, like the ADF [Alliance of Democratic Forces] and LRA—then the Uganda government can continue to scream bloody murder “we need help” and continue to get AID, which is turned into weapons in what may be the world’s largest AID for ARMS scandal after the AID for ARMS scandal in Ethiopia.
In the mid-1980’s today’s President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, seized power in a bloody conflict. Fighting alongside Museveni were Tutsi soldiers who would later go on to overthrow the government of Rwanda, in a low-intensity conflict that began in October 1990, and culminated in the spectacle of the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Powerful corporate, intelligence and defense interests from the United States backed both insurgencies.
Museveni also sent his bloodthirsty troops into Congo. Millions of innocent people died under Ugandan occupation, while Museveni and his gang plundered Congo’s natural resources, raped women and whipped up killing fields scattered with skeletons.
The ICC started its investigation of the Ugandan civilian and military leadership on war crimes and crimes against humanity allegations after a complaint was referred by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government under Joseph Kabila according to a front page article in the June 8th, 2006 edition of The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper with almost 2 million circulation. Did Don McKinnon, and separately all the officials mentioned above, not read this Wall Street Journal article?
The allegations include mass civilian murders, rapes, kidnappings, mutilations, the recruitment and training of child soldiers, burning of villages, and theft of natural resources, by the Ugandan army and allied militias during Uganda’s occupation of Eastern Congo; these are the similar allegations that have landed former Liberian president Charles Taylor at his current location; the Hague, facing trial.
Separately, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2005, ruled in favor of the Congo on the civil aspect, based on similar set of allegations of mass civilian murders, rapes, kidnappings, mutilations, the recruitment and training of child soldiers, burning of villages, and theft of natural resources, and subsequently ordered Uganda to pay Congo $10 billion dollars
This suggests the likelihood of a verdict favoring Congo on the war crimes allegations now being investigated by the ICC. Surely, the US was aware of this when it asked Uganda to send troops to Somalia; how can the Bush Administration blatantly continue to cozy up to suspects on such serious crimes as war crimes and crimes against humanity?
But Museveni is someone’s “Golden Boy,” just like Uganda was always Britain’s “Pearl of Africa.”
President Yoweri Museveni has controlled Uganda for more than 20 years in a one-party dictatorship friendly to powerful corporate interests predominantly from the United States, Britain and Israel.
But years ago, up in the north of Uganda, the Museveni government herded the minority Acholi people into forced settlements—they called them “refugee” camps—under the claim that the government was providing protection from rebel forces supposedly hostile to the Museveni government. They became death camps, and they are death camps still.
For years Museveni’s low-intensity war against the Acholi people has waged on, completely out of sight, while the army of Joseph Kony—the evil Christian forces of the Lord’s resistance Army—was the only party ever accused of anything. The LRA is purported to be a rebel army opposed to the Museveni regime, but this is a convenient ruse that serves the dictates of a permanent warfare economy.
Like Somalia and eastern Congo, the wars in Darfur and Northern Uganda are actually prosecuted for the same reasons: petroleum, gold, land—and other natural resources. There is money to be made, indeed, and the Uganda government is depopulating the land to make it easier. But this has been going on for years. Out of sight, out of mind. But absence makes the heart grow fonder.
While the war in Darfur is always described as a genocide by Arabs against Black Africans—and never a “war” by competing factions—the war in Northern Uganda is almost never described at all. This is also true of the multiple fangs of conflict in Ethiopia, where the U.S.-backed government of Meles Zenawi is committing genocide against indigenous people, the Anuak minority and others—but it’s completely out of the Western news. The AID for ARMS scandal in Ethiopia has seen hundreds of millions of dollars of weaponry purchased—and used—by AID dollars.
This is a country where there is widespread starvation, drought, and famine—and now the largest standing military in Africa, serving the interests of the Pentagon. The United Nations, UNICEF, everyone is silent.
South Africa blames UK for Zimbabwe crisis. Report attacks Britain as main protagonist
Chris McGreal, Africa correspondent, The Guardian, Monday August 13, 2007
South Africa has blamed Britain for the deepening crisis in Zimbabwe by accusing the UK of leading a campaign to "strangle" the beleaguered African state's economy and saying it has a "death wish" against a negotiated settlement that might leave Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF in power.
According to a South African government document circulating among diplomats ahead of a regional summit in late August, President Thabo Mbeki will paint an optimistic picture of his efforts to broker an agreement between Mr Mugabe and the Zimbabwean opposition.
But the document, a draft of the report the South African president is expected to present at the meeting, says Britain remains a significant obstacle by spearheading sanctions that Mr Mugabe blames for his country's economic collapse.
"The most worrisome thing is that the UK continues to deny its role as the principal protagonist in the Zimbabwean issue and is persisting with its activities to isolate Zimbabwe," the report says.
"None of the western countries that have imposed the sanctions that are strangling Zimbabwe's economy have shown any willingness to lift them."
Britain pressed the European Union to impose "targeted sanctions" against Zimbabwe's leadership by refusing visas, freezing bank accounts and other measures that the UK said were aimed at individuals without harming Zimbabweans.
But Mr Mugabe has blamed what he describes as the "illegal sanctions" for the economic collapse and said his government is a victim of British imperialism because it seized white-owned farms for redistribution to poor blacks.
The South African report describes the crisis as "Zimbabwe's bilateral dispute with Britain". However, the focus of Mr Mbeki's efforts is to reach an agreement between Mr Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change ahead of elections next year.
The document says some issues, including constitutional reforms, have been "worked out". "There are strong indications that the two sides are sliding towards an agreement," it says.
FOR THOSE IN THE KNOW (by W.D.):
FOREIGN WESTERN COUNTRIES (I CALL NO NAME)
1. TRIED A MILITARY COUP
2. FUND & CONTINUE TO FUND THE ZIMBABWE OPPOSITION
3. TRIED TO FLOOD ZIMBABWE WITH COUNTERFEIT ZIMBABWE NOTES
5. BRIBE THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY WITH FOREIGN ACCOUNTS TO PUSH UP PRICES IN THE COUNTRY
6. CONTINUE TO SABOTAGUE THE ZIMBABWE ECONOMY SO THE PEOPLE CAN BLAME MUGABE FOR THEIR POVERTY
7. ZIMBABWE IS THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WHICH DOES NOT BUY THINGS CREDIT - WHEN IT FLIES ITS PLANES TO GATWICK THE CRWEW CARRIES FOREIGN EXCHANGE TO PAY FOR LANDING CHARGES - STILL THEY FLY WEEKLY WITH THE SAME AMOUNT OF FLIGHTS.
8. I COULD TELL YOU MORE BUT MY TIME LIKE URS IS PRECIOUS. ONE LAST THING - ZIMBABWE IS A RICH COUNTRY DONT LET THE MEDIA FOOL YOU. IT IS JUST THAT WESTERN COUNTRIES DONT WANT IT TO WORK BECAUSE THEY FEAR WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES MIGHT DO!
"I will never wash that shirt tainted with blood!"
The Independent Police Complaint Commission (IPCC) apologises for a six month delay in considering my charges against the police.
The officers apologise for not letting me see the inspector immediately after release
They waited until one month went by before checking CCTV footage
After six months of fight for justice,the IPCC decides that the police were right in detaining me illegally. The officers have denied all the allegations, including verbal racial abuse, illegal detention, physical assault, and beside, they did their job.
Having reviewed all the evidences, I agree with the officers, says the case manager and this decision is final! No further actions is required of the force/authorities against Mr Lokongo.
Crazy laws! But I will never wash that shirt tainted with blood, the day I was beaten by the police in this country! Human rights, magna carta, fair play... does all this mean anything to people like us?
THIS IS WHAT MY FRIEND SAYS:
Antoine,
I am very disappointed to hear the final outcome of your court case.
I wish I could say that I was surprised, but unfortunately, I think that the judicial system is stacked against the rights of minorities and foreign nationals, even permanent residents. Racial abuse is tolerated, perhaps even encouraged, by the police and the court system, safe in the knowledge that they are in a position of strength.
It is only because of your perseverance that you were able to secure a judgement at all. Imagine how many others simply could not afford to press charges or wait for their case to be heard?
I hope that now you can turn your attention on strengthening your own position, and work to put this episode firmly behind you. Let me know if I can help.
Best, J.M.
Forget the demonisation of Robert Mugabe in the western media. This is what ordinary Africans think about Mugabe. And suprisingly their comments are brought to us by the BBC.
Outside the church hall reggae music is playing and there are a few men and one woman wearing orange T-shirts with pictures of Robert Mugabe and Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's independence leader and pan-Africanist. They tell me the BBC's coverage of Zimbabwe is biased but agree to talk.
"Robert Mugabe represents freedom for Africa. You can't have a very small percentage of white people, westerners, owning 90% of the land - that's not on. Africa is for the Africans.
"White people are always welcome here, don't get me wrong. We don't hate anybody but the percentage of our land has to belong to us."
Robert Mugabe has had close ties with Ghana - his late first wife was Ghanaian.
A woman at the church hall is from the same town, Sekondi, and tells me she got to know the Zimbabwean president as he visited the area every year.
"The world is misrepresenting him. We need a leader like Mugabe to lead Africa because Africa is for Africans.
"The land belongs to us. He is the right man to fight for us. We need Mugabe, we need him forever."
Another man tells me he has been living in Ghana since 1999 and before that lived in the UK for 38 years so he tells me he knows and understands British behaviour very well.
"Whenever Europeans give praise to a black leader then we realise that black man is not doing his job concerning his people. The very fact that the white world is against Mr Mugabe is a plus for us.
"AU is a good thing but I have one concern. Will Africa be united as a neo-colonialist block or will it be united as a free Africa."
"No African owns vast amounts of farmland in Europe or America. No African can, so I don't see why Europeans should come and take our gold, our bauxite, our rubber, our timber, our oil."
After he tells me the sanctions against Mugabe should be lifted, I mention that on the car radio I had just heard an interview with a Zimbabwean man saying he was trained by the security forces in Zimbabwe to torture people including locking somebody in a truck and dumping the truck in a lake.
"Mr Mugabe is fighting for his people - therefore the white world will concoct any kind of story. I would not believe that Mr Mugabe himself sanctioned it."
We wait to see if Robert Mugabe attends the meeting. He has already spoken here of the need for better African unity, stating that aid will never allow Africa to prosper.
The Congo Panorama Congratulates Gordon Brown following his appointement as new British Prime Minister
But we have not forgotten that when Mr Brown was Chancellor of the Exchecquer, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi invaded Congo with the full backing of Britain and America. More than 5 millions Congolese have been killed and Congo's natural and mineral resources systematically looted. We call upon Mr Brown to launch an investigation into the involvement of British multinationals mining companies in that looting as revealed in the report by a UN Panel of Experts in 2001.
So, what will Gordon's Africa policies be like? Oh we know something! In an article published in the Guardian on 20.08.2005, Richard Drayton quoted Mr Brown, then Chancellor, as telling journalists in Mozambique early 2005 that "Britain should stop apologising for colonialism". The truth is, though, that Britain has never even faced up to the dark side of its imperial history, let alone begun to apologise, concluded Drayton.
Richard Drayton is a senior lecturer in imperial and extra-European history since 1500 at Cambridge University. His book "The Caribbean and the Making of the Modern World" was published last year.
Superpowers are backing a Tutsi-led mini-state in North Kivu or the annexion of eastern Congo to Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
They are using Tutsi genenal Nkunda wanted for crimes against humanity at the Hague, Tutsi General Masunzu, Tutsi Ugandan president Museveni et Tutsi Rwandan president Paul Kagame with, South African mercenaries, and as usual with the complicity of some Congolese such as Katebe Katoto, Patient Mwendanga, Ciribanya, Baramoto, Bemba... The UN Mission in Congo is part of this satanic plan! The people of Congo will never allow such a plan to materialise.
Belgian and American officials, including military officials, have officially visited Nkundan ( a former Tutsi refugee from Rwanda) in his "fiefdom" of Nyamitaba, in Masisi, north Goma. Nkunda collects taxes, is systematically massacring Congolese autochtons and replacing them with Tutsi from Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania.
At the same time, a UN Security Council delegation has just held talks with the Government of Kinshasa to strictly discourage the military option to neutralise Nkunda. We shall overcome!
ZIMBABWE PROPOSES BLACK-RUN FIRMS, THUS SPEARHEADING THE ECONOMIC LIBERATION OF AFRICA!
Remember what Patrice Lumumba said: "We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom"
At the same time, Africa is united in rejecting US request for military HQ. The Libyan and Algerian governments reportedly told George Bush that they would play no part in hosting Africom: the Pentagon's plan to create a US military command based in Africa. Despite recently improved relations with the US, both said they would urge their neighbours not to do so, either. Even Morocco, considered Washington's closest north African ally, indicated it did not welcome a permanent military presence on its soil.
Taking our destiny into our own hands and managing our own wealth. We have been empoverished too long!
President Robert Mugabe's government has published a bill to move majority control of "public companies and any other business" to black Zimbabweans.
The goal is to ensure at least a 51% shareholding by indigenous black people in the majority of businesses.
The bill to be approved by Parliament, stipulates that no company restructuring, merger or acquisition can be approved unless 51% of the firm goes to indigenous Zimbabweans.
The empowerment bill says that "indigenous Zimbabwean" is anyone disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on race grounds before independence in 1980.
It also provides for the establishment of an empowerment fund which will offer assistance to the "financing of share acquisitions" from the public-owned firms or assist in "management buy-ins and buy-outs."
And all government departments and statutory bodies will be asked to obtain 51% of their goods and services from businesses in which controlling interest is held by indigenous Zimbabweans.
Princess Maxima of the Netherlands: "Congole must stand up for their rights"
Her Royal Highness Princess Maxima addressed the "International Finance Conference to Help One Billion People Get Access to Banking Services", held in London on 19.06.2007 and organised by the British Government.
After her inaugural address, we greeted the Princess who congratulated us for a question we had asked earlier about the DRC during a session chaired by the Rwandan Donald Kaberuka, current President of the African Development Bank. We took the opportunity to explain the situation in the DRC to Her Royal Highness, characterised by the war, looting, massacres and rapes in eastern Congo where many are still in refugees camps and therefore cannot and will not benefit from this initiative. We explained that eastern Congo was still somehow under Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian occupation.
The Princess was clearly moved and said that "Congole must stand up for their rights".
Earlier, during a session chaired by the Rwandan Donald Kaberuka, current President of the African Development Bank, we asked the panel that given the facts still fresh a UN report had published a list of all multinational mining companies which were involved in the looting of Congo's natural and mineral resources during the invasion of Congo by troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi (during which Congo's natural and mineral resources were systematically looted and 5 millions Congolese killed), given the fact that no single G8 country has launched an investigation into that involvement, how do pass from this situation (the looting) into the kind of partnership between poor and rich countries that is the subject matter of this conference in such a short space of time?
One of the panelists, Dr Dr Manfred Konukiewitz, the German Director of Globaland Sectoral Policies, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, in his reply deplored the situation I had described in the Democratic Republic of Congo but stressed that multinationals companies were small players compared to local stakeholders in whose hands the wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo still lies. He stressed the need to implement the "Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative" (NEITI), so that the wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo may benefit the Congolese people.
He added that "the international community, the international financial community for that matter, has a role to play in the national reconstruction and national reconciliation in the Democratic Republic of Congo".
Political opposition from now onward has acquired a legal status in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi must now follow suit!
The leader of the opposition is even treated like a minister and he is entitled to a ministerial salary). Tutsi regimes in Rwanda and Uganda must equally democratise for a lasting peace in the region.
Hutu and Tutsi must accept to live together and share power in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. An inter-rwandan dialogue, just like we had an inter-congolese dialogue is necessary so that Hutu and Tutsi refugees whom we welcomed in eastern Congo but who are now looting, raping and killing us, may go home.
The democratisation of Tutsi regimes in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi is key to lasting peace in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa. The Congolese people have paid a heavy price for their hospitality because Tutsi and Hutu refugees in eastern Congo brought their culture of inter-ethnic massacres, of genocide and of kiling which they were fleeing from but which they did not leave behind. Congolese people have had enough!
Museveni and Kagame are responsible for crimes against humanity in the Great Lakes Region! Outgoing Belgian Minister of Defence, André Flahaut spills the beans.
As an international conference on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reisertion of ex-combatants (DDR) opened in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo on 12.06.2007, outgoing Belgian Minister of Defence, André Flahaut made some revelations that took the conferenciers by surprise.
Responding to criticism from the opposition party CDH that Belgian policies vis-à-vis Congo were a failure, because impunity in Congo was still the order of the day, and no special tribunal for Congo has been set up to try those responsible for crimes against humanity since 1997, Mr Flahaut hit back by saying first of all that Western ambassadors in the Democratic Republic of Congo were behaving like little kings and lecturers who were issuing marks to Congolese ministers and strongly criticising President Joseph Kabila, when , democracy wise, the Democratic Republic of Congo has achieved in a short space of time, what Belgian did in many years. Belgians, should there fore learn lessons from the Congolese.
Mr Flahaut rejected accusations that the military brigades he helped train in the Democratic Republic of Congo were no match to battle hardened Rwandan troops.
“We prefer not to give money to demobilized soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise they would use it to buy new guns and use them as a means of survival by terrorizing the civilians. We prefer to teach them skills that will help them settle unto civilian life.
“The Great Lakes Region remain a trouble spot because of the arms factory that Chinese [Chinese or British?] have built for Museveni in Uganda from where there goes a proliferation of arms in the region. The international community has chosen to turn a blind eye to what is going on in that factory [in Nakasongola] and to Museveni’s arms trafficking in the region with untold consequences for the Congolese people.
“It is very unbelievable that an arms embargo is imposed and maintained against the Democratic Republic of Congo while at the same time, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi are provided with arms and munitions, but it is forbidden to the Democratic Republic of Congo to purchase arms.
“All the arms purchased by the Democratic Republic of Congo [like all the oil Zimbabwe purchases abroad] are blocked , forbidden to be shipped to Kinshasa.»
By the international community, Mr Flahaut certainly meant Britain and America. Understand who may!
President Robert Mugabe has acquired no less than seven degrees on his own. He will not lose sleep over being stripped of an honorary degree by Edinburgh University - which is a childish thing to do!
This childish act is like you take a girl out, you buy her a drink, then you ask her to sleep with you. She says NO (the land is ours). Then you ask her to give you your drink back?!
We remind the Scotish University that it was IMF and Worl bank so-called structural adjustment programs tha recked Zimbabwe's then excellent education and health care system, the best in Africa.
Edinburgh University announced on Wednesday 6.06.2007 that it would withdraw the degree it awarded to President Mugabe in 1984 for his services to education in Africa. The university cited human rights violations by the Zimbabwe government for its decision.
But Comrade Bright Matonga, Zimbabwe's deputy information minister, strongly and rightly hit back when he said that although the "politically-motivated and hypocritical move" was meant to embarrass President Mugabe, he will not loose sleep over it. It was a big blow for Edinburgh University.
"The president will not lose any sleep over this. He has acquired no less than seven degrees on his own. He's a well-read president, better than their (Tony) Blair and (George W.) Bush.
"They can keep their degrees and we'll keep our Zimbabwe. Even the so-called knighthood he does not need," Comrade Matonga said.
Comrade Matonga added: "If they are basing this decision on humanitarian grounds, they should look at their history during slavery.
"They should also look at their prime minister - 600,000 people have died in Iraq [and 5 millions in Cong] as a consequence of his actions in aiding and abetting Bush and Blair's wars."
Meanwhile, strong demand from foreign companies and individuals that are keen to invest in Zimbabwe has prompted Lonrho Africa plc to double its planned investment fund to £100 million.
Mugabe is not starving his people
Senior MDC members were among those to have received farm equipment, such as tractors from the Government recently.
The Herald newspaper quoted President Robert Mugabe as saying: "No politics can ever make them alien... after all we eat together, don't we?"
"It's a national event... that realisation is important that there must be occasions when we must be together," he said at a ceremony to distribute farm equipment.
Lord David Triesman, a mad man - Mugabe
"It was wrong for Britain to organise the world into tarnishing us, completely disregarding the area of our difference which was the land issue," Mr Mugabe said, according to Reuters news agency.
"But we knew we were right in what we were doing, we knew we were right in our politics, we knew we were right in taking our land, and indeed right is becoming our might."
He also called UK Minister for Africa Lord Triesman "a madman", Reuters reports. Lord David Triesman said recently that Mugabe may stand trila at the Hague, just like Charles Taylor, for crimes against humanity (What about Tony Blair et George Bush in Irak, Afghansitan, Guantanamo, and their allies Museveni and Kagame in the Democratic Republic of Congo? What about Ian Smith the genocide in what was the Souhtern Rhodesia?).
Senegal film-making pioneer dies - BBC
One of the pioneers of African film-making - Senegalese writer Sembene Ousmane - has died after a long illness at the age of 84.
Ousmane is credited with making the first feature film by a director from sub-Saharan Africa, 'The black girl from....' in 1966.
His latest work, Moolaade, won awards at the Cannes and Ouagadougou festivals and he has won two prizes at Venice.
He was born in the Casamance region of Senegal and went to an Islamic school.
Later he fought for the Free French forces in World War II.
Before the publication of his first novel, The Black Docker, in 1956, he worked in a car plant in Paris and was a trade union activist.
He made a total of 10 films during his career.
Much of his work focused on the effects of colonialism and religion, as well as the rise of the African middle class.
He was also a co-founder of the biennial Pan-African festival of film and television of Ouagadougou (Fespaco).
Every 25th of May of each year is "Africa Day"
But we ask:
1. How come the African Union (AU) never issued a single resolution condemning the invasion and aggression of the Democratic Republic of Congo by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi in which 5 millions Congolese have been massacred and Congo's natural and mineral resources ystematically looted?!
2. How come Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi's AU membership was never suspended until their troops left Congo?!
UN troops 'traded gold for guns', according to the BBC published on 23.05.2007. Too late! In 2005 we denounced the involvementof British mercenaries in Congo, disguised as UN troops!
Before reading the BBC report below, read ours firt here about "What you need to know about the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC by its French acronym)"
Read more...
"Keeping Congo bleeding: How British mercenaries are ‘fuelling Africa’s First World War'
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On the looting of gold by UN troops in Congo and an interview with the BBC of Laurent Nkunda, a former Tutsi refugee from Rwanda turned out warlord wanted for crimes against humanity committed in Congo. Watch it here:
Watch the video here.
Martin Plaut, BBC News, eastern DR Congo, 23.05.2007
Although Pakistan is the biggest contributor to the UN peacekeeping force in Congo, Pakistani UN peacekeeping troops have traded in gold and sold weapons to Congolese militia groups they were meant to disarm, the BBC has learnt.
These militia groups were guilty of some of the worst human rights abuses during the Democratic Republic of Congo's long civil war.
The trading went on in 2005. A UN investigative team sent to gather evidence was obstructed and threatened.
The team's report was buried by the UN itself to "avoid political fallout".
These events took place in and around the mining town of Mongbwalu, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Pakistani battalion of the UN peacekeeping mission deployed there two years ago and helped bring peace to an area that had previously seen bitter fighting between the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups.
Locals welcomed them, but the lure of the rich alluvial gold mines proved too much to resist for some, recalls the head of the miners' association, Liki Likambo.
"I saw a UN Pakistani soldier who came to buy gold from one of the gold negotiators here in Mongbwalu. I was there in the shop. I saw it with my own eyes."
Deals
Soon the Pakistani officers were doing deals directly with the FNI militia.
The gold from mines run by militias went to Pakistani peacekeepers
Evarista Anjasubu - a local businessman said he had known of transactions between Pakistani officers and two of the most notorious militia leaders called Kung Fu and Dragon who controlled the gold mines.
"They were already friends. I knew well. It was gold that was the basis of their friendship. So the gold extracted from the mines went directly to the Pakistanis. They used to meet in the UN camp in Mongbwalu, in a thatched house."
As the trade developed the Pakistani officers brought in the Congolese army and then Indian traders from Kenya.
Richard Ndilu, in charge of immigration at Mongbwalu airstrip, became suspicious in late 2005 when an Indian businessman arrived there and went to stay at the camp of the Pakistani peacekeepers.
Scandal
Alerted to this illegal trade by her officials, the District Commissioner of Ituri, Petronille Vaweka, went to Bunia airport to intercept a plane from Mongbwalu.
She said her way was blocked by Congolese army officers, who refused to allow her to inspect the cargo.
"I knew they had gold because the price of gold increased when the Indians went to Mongwalu," she said.
"When we wanted to verify what was inside the plane the pilot refused to allow us to enter the plane - me who was the chief, he refused! It was a big scandal."
When the UN was alerted to the allegations of gold trading by Human Rights Watch in late 2005, they instituted a major investigation by the Office for Internal Oversight Services.
What they uncovered was even more explosive.
Rearming
This is from a witness statement given to the UN by a Congolese officer engaged in the disarming of the militia in the nearby town of Nizi:
The battle for mining concessions has cost countless lives
"The officer expressed his regrets over the malpractices of a Pakistani battalion under the auspices of Major Zanfar. He revealed the arms surrendered by ex-combatants were secretly returned to them by Major Zanfar thereby compromising the work they had collectively done earlier.
"Repeatedly he saw militia who had been disarmed one day, but the next day would become re-armed again. The information he could obtain was always the same, that it would be the Pakistani battalion giving arms back to the militia."
This evidence was backed up by an interpreter working with the Pakistani battalion at Mongbwalu.
On arriving at the Officer's Mess, the interpreter found two militia leaders - known as Kung Fu and Dragon.
The interpreter said that the first question from Major Ali was to Kung Fu - asking him: 'What about the weapons I gave you? What about the weapons Monuc gave you?'
Stand-off
A UN investigation team arrived in Mongbwalu in August 2006.
At first the Pakistani battalion there cooperated with them. But when they attempted to seize a computer with apparently incriminating documents on it a stand-off ensued.
The UN-found weapons were returned to militias in Mongbwalu
The Pakistanis surrounded the UN police accompanying the investigators with barbed wire and put two armoured personnel carriers outside their living quarters at a nearby Christian mission.
Thoroughly intimidated, the investigators were airlifted out of Mongbwalu.
The Pakistani troops are replaced every six months and the BBC investigation concerns events that took place prior to the deployment of the current Pakistani battalion.
When we put the allegations of weapons trading to the head of the UN in Congo, Ambassador William Swing, he denied emphatically that peacekeepers had been rearming the militia.
"This I can categorically deny. What we have done is just the opposite. We have demobilised more than 20,000. We have taken in caches of arms. We have destroyed arms. We have done public burnings of these arms. And there is absolutely nothing to that allegation."
He says that the investigation into gold trading has yet to be completed.
The UN in New York has refused to explain what took place or why, nearly two years after the allegations first surfaced, the Congolese people have no idea what action - if any - has been taken to discipline the Pakistani soldiers concerned.
King KONG: Primate Worship? Or Depo-Privations? Conservation or Corruption? The Monkey Smuggler, the Mwami, and the Hanged Man
COA News: Article By Keith Harmon Snow and Georgianne Nienaber - May 17 2007 (166 reads)
In his 2007 State of the Union message, U.S. President George Bush said "To whom much is given, much is required,” when referring to aid for Africa.
Certainly unknowingly, Bush precisely defined the problems inherent in foreign aid with those eight words. The American taxpayer has contributed billions to the African continent, but has been betrayed in the bargain with conservation and humanitarian organizations that have become self-serving cottage industries in black Africa, while expanding and exploding into corporate behemoths in the white world.
These organizations are accountable to no one but their own pockets and governed by boards of directors with personal and business interests in the success or failure of third world ventures. NGOs spread like weeds in the fertile plains of graft and opportunity that define the landscape of foreign aid.
American zoos and animal laboratories form unholy alliances with conservationists and sanctuary operations that bet their prestige on the charisma of mega-fauna such as the great apes, while poor, illiterate African women are forced into sterilization programs so that humans do not intrude upon gorilla habitat.
This is a systematic campaign—Professor Betsy Hartmann of Hampshire College calls it “the Greening of Hate.”
Consider this--African conservation efforts are creating a growing class of refugees that are strategically positioned into refugee camps which “protect” foreign borders. In addition, the world’s remaining great apes have become pawns in what amounts to sanctioned smuggling. In 1999 Congressman Jim Jeffords (VT) introduced legislation known as the Great Apes Conservation Act, which appropriated $5,000,000 A YEAR from 2000 through 2004 to “assist in the conservation of great apes.”
As a result, the competition has become intense to acquire gorillas, orangutans, bonobos and chimpanzees in order to obtain a piece of the funding pie. When the bill came up for renewal in 2005, the “expert witness” called before Congress to testify on behalf of this bill was Clare Richardson, CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI), which stood to gain significantly from its renewal.
760 gorillas live in over 140 zoos worldwide. Of these, 300 western gorillas live in U.S. zoological institutions. 74 gorillas live in African sanctuaries which are shrouded in secrecy and zealous protection by British and American veterinarians and “researchers.” The Holy Grail, the endangered mountain gorilla, is represented by an orphan hoarded by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International and the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project—American organizations based in Rwanda.
This orphan has acquired a significance which rivals that of the Christ-child in the halls of primatology. If she cannot be released into the wild, which will almost certainly become the case, who gets the prize and the millions of tax dollars which will certainly follow? Certainly not the Rwandan people, who will ultimately see this orphan crucified upon the cross of conservation interests. Most Rwandans have never seen a mountain gorilla.
Please read more by clicking on the links below:
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Europeans fret new African diamond cartel. But African wealth will no longer be like a milking cow for foreigners!
"We will form united diamond policies, so that we have more power in the international arena."
Government ministers and representatives from Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe are discussing the need for an African Diamond Producers Association (ADPA) and how they can increase their influence on the US$13,1 billion (around N$92 billion) world market for rough gems, The Namibian reported on 27.04.2007.
These countries produce more than half of the world's diamonds by value.
Bloomberg quoted the DRC Deputy Mines Minister, Victor Kasongo, as saying the notion to form an association was initiated by producers last year.
"We will establish the Opec of diamonds," Kasongo was quoted as saying.
"We will form united diamond policies, so that we have more power in the international arena."
The 12-member Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), influences oil prices by regulating the production of over 40 per cent of the world's supply.
Kasongo's views highlight speculations of frustration among African diamond producers who believe they are reaping the fruits of their resources, while countries like India, Israel and Belgium are getting most of the cake as the masters of the diamond trade.
Namibian minister of Mines and Energy, Erkki Nghimtina, and Namibian Diamond Commissioner Kennedy Hamutenya said Namibian Cabinet had sanctioned that Namibia should become part of ADPA, saying the country was way ahead of its counterparts when it came to beneficiation, regulating, monitoring and controlling the diamond industry, and would assist fellow members on a number of issues.
The Parliament has ratified the statutes of the ADPA, proving Namibia's willingness to be part of this watershed group.
"With regards to forming a syndicate, the attitude of many African producers today is that we want to be in control of our destiny.
We know that other people from other countries want our diamonds for their own growth and development agendas, and that some of their interests and our interests diverge," he said.
He went on to say pricing was a sensitive matter that affected all stakeholders, from the miners to retailers.
"Today price is no longer artificial and supply driven as in the days when De Beers had a huge stockpile and could dictate price...
That is why driving consumer demand is a major element in influencing price today."
This association does not come without its problems.
Hamutenya indicated that some diamond bigwigs in Belgium did not want to see the establishment of ADPA, but added that Africans were not fazed by this attitude.
"Many ADPA members are now averse to dictates from people with vested interests in our diamond industry.
At plenary in Luanda, we can talk about anything we want under the sun, as long as it has to do with our diamonds.
What members agree on is limited by the mandates they bring along from their capitals," said Hamutenya.
The Diamond Commissioner also noted that South Africa's new laws for the diamond mining sector would not affect the region negatively, but instead benefit diamond producers as they were a precedent in maximising benefits from SADC's natural resources.
"They (SA) are not in conflict with us.
Some of the things they want to do there are things we are doing here in Namibia.
That is why in our ADPA objectives we talk about harmonisation of our policies and legislation.
Our interests are very much aligned," he said.
ADPA's objectives include promoting cooperation among members in policies concerning exploration, mining, cutting and polishing, developing human resources, exchanging information between member states, trading and transforming conflict diamonds into diamonds of peace.
The Luanda meeting will also look into issues that continue to plague the industry such as conflict diamonds, beneficiation, the threat posed by synthetics and smuggling.
Angola, Botswana, DRC, Namibia and South Africa are said to have accounted for 60 per cent of last year's world diamond output.
Great News: Zimbabwe has been elected to head the UN's commission on Sustainable Economic Development (CSD) despite strong objections and insults from Western diplomats.
This position traditionally rotates through the regions of the world, with Africa next in line.
Africans unite! Don't let anybody push you around! Zimbabwe's candidacy is reported to have broad support within Africa. Zimbabwe's land reform ought to be emulated throughout Africa because without self-sufficiency, Africans will ever be condemned to roam around the world with their begging bowl!
Zimbabwe's Environment Minister Francis Nheme will now become chairman of the CSD, after being elected to the post on Friday 11.05.2007.
Zimbabwe orders extradition of Briton to Equatorial Guinea. The extradition will not violate international law.
A Zimbabwe court agreed on Wednesday 9.05.2007 to extradite a Briton to Equatorial Guinea to face coup plot charges, rejecting defence arguments he would not receive a fair trial and could be tortured.
Simon Mann, a former British special forces officer, has been held at a Zimbabwe prison since he was convicted in September 2004 of attempting to purchase weapons without a licence as part of a broader coup plot against Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
“WE WERE SIMPLY EN ROUTE, THAT IS, ON OUR WAY TO GUARD MINING OPERATIONS IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO.”
In March 2004, 70 men accused of plotting to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea pleaded guilty to security offences in a Zimbabwe court. Their ring leader was no other than Simon Mann, a former member of Britain'’ elite Special Air Service commando force who holds British and South African citizenship.
Mann actually purchased the weapons but admitted trying to procure dangerous weapons - a charge which carries a possible 10-year jail sentence. The men’s plane was impounded in March, when they picked up weapons bought from the Zimbabwe state arms supplier. All but three pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Simon Mann also entered a limited guilty plea to a second charge of purchasing weapons, but insisted that the deal never went through, Reuters news agency reported.
When prosecutors called Hope Mutize, the marketing manager at Zimbabwe’s state arms manufacturer to testify, he told the court that Mr Mann had said he wanted to buy some weapons - and had put a deposit down.
“According to him, he wanted to use the weapons to guard mines in the DR Congo,” Mr Mutize said, according to AFP news agency. The group have maintained all along they were going to the Democratic Republic of Congo to provide security for mining operations. The governments of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea believe they were heading to the small, oil-rich country to overthrow the government.
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Newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he wants to help Africa!
Or is it Africa that is going to help him fulfill his mandate to create jobs and build a strong economy?
"We want to help Africa overcome diseases, hunger, poverty. We want Africa to live in peace," said the former xenophobe French interior minister and son of an immigrant himself, who deported millions of Africans to Africa from France and who as president wants to put a ceiling to the number of Africans who should emigrate to France.
"We want to help Africa...!" We have heard this mantra before from all kinds of do-gooders, Bob Geldorf and many others... So, there is nothing new under the sun!
The truth is, without the wealth of Africa, we know life would be very difficult in the West.
Sarkozy wants also to create a kind of Mediterranean Union between Northern African countries and the European Union to divide Sub-Saharan Africa from the Mahgreb. Divide and rule as usual!
"WE DON'T WANT THIS MAN TO BE OUR AMBASSADOR!
WHO APPOINTED HIM AS OUR AMBASSADOR AND HOW CAN HE BECOME OUR AMBASSADOR WITHOUT CONSULTING US FIRST? AND EVEN IF HE CONSULTED US, WE WOULDN'T WANT A WAR CRIMINAL TO BE OUR AMBASSADOR!
We read that Tony Blair is to become a roving ambassador in Africa and the Middle East when he leaves Downing Street in an attempt to rebuild his tarnished reputation (Daily Telegraph, London, 4.05.2007).
The Daily Telegraph discloseD that the Prime Minister is to spurn the chance to earn up to £10 million a year ($20 million) on the international lecture circuit by concentrating on raising money for his new Blair Foundation, which will fund humanitarian work in Africa.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Mr Blair has also agreed to a request from President George W Bush that he will fly in to the Middle East when requested as a special envoy to try to revive the stalled peace process.
This article is revealing about Blair status as Bush's poodle. Tony Blair has been requested by George Bush, his boss, to fly in to the Middle East when requested as a special envoy to try to revive the stalled peace process. Britain and America however have always backed the Zionist state of Israel, armed with weapons of mass destruction, to the detriment of the Palestinian people. Even Cheryl Blair said that she understood young Palestinian suicide bombers who strapp bombed around their bellies et blow themselves to death.
Blair who said recently that the rising China and India represented stratégic threats for the West wants to devote the rest of his political life to "helping Africa and the Middle East", sorry "wants to keep Africa and the Middle East in checks". Is the scramble for Africa not over?
How can a war criminal be our ambassador? The fact that Bush and Blair invaded Iraq for no valid reason - except to get the oil and get rich - is a crime against humanity, because more than one million Iraqis have died as a result.
What about Blair and Bush's African wars fought on the basis of the "divide and rule policy", the sale of arms to Africans to kill each other, the military bases thay are building in Africa to control Africa's land and African resources, the corruption of African leaders so that they can bring African people's money to Western banks...? Western imperialists are behind the wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Démocratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia... you name it.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo particularly, Blair fully masterminded Rwanda and Uganda's invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1998 onward... a war aof aggression during which 5 millions Congolese were massacred, and Congo's natural and mineral resources systematically looted, especially colatn for mobile phones, computers and so on! Up to now Museveni and Kagame enjoy complete impunity! Up to now, not Britain, not America, not Germany, Belgium... or any other Westerns countries have dared to launch an investigation into the involvement of their multinationals in the looting of Congo's natural and mineral resources, a war which has made them very rich in the 21st century. Who said slavery is over! Who said Africa needs the doubling of aid? It is Africa's wealth that keeps rich countries going!
KIGALI FEELS THE HEAT!
BUT JUST HANG ON THERE NOW KAGAME! YOU HAVE NOT ANSWERED FOR THE OTHER GENOCIDE, THAT IS, THE 5 MILLIONS CONGOLESE YOU MASSACRED BETWEEN 1998-2003! TIME WILL COME FOR THAT!
"The government cannot function properly, as officials like the army chief-of-staff are unable to travel abroad", lamented Rwanda's justice minister recently.
Rwanda has therefore asked the International Court of Justice to quash French arrest warrants issued against nine associates of President Paul Kagame.
The warrants were issued in November after anti-terrorist French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere implicated Mr Kagame in his predecessor's killing.
Judge Bruguiere has said that only Mr Kagame's Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forces had missiles capable of downing President Habyarimana's plane. He said the attack was carefully planned by the RPF.
Very Important: Keith Harmon Snow talks with Paul Rusesabagina, the ordinary man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda. You can read the interview by consulting the following link: www.towardfreedom.com
Corruption: Americans lead the way! Not just Americans, the cash-for-peerages affair is still talk of the day in Britain.
Just after the Enron scandal, former Pentagon N02 Chief and World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz apologized today for his role in granting raises to a bank staffer with whom he was romantically involved, saying he should have stayed out of the matter.
Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz apologized today for his role in getting his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, a job with the Bush administration that gave her more than $60,000 a year in raises and a salary greater than that of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that he would accept any decision the bank's board makes, including forced resignation.
'I made a mistake, for which I am sorry,' Wolfowitz told reporters at a press conference.
The bank's is due to meet to decide his fate. It is unclear when a decision will be made, but already his staff have already distanced themselves from him, leaving him isolated!
Meanwhile the bank ethics committee, citing conflict of interest regulations, ruled that she had to leave the institution. It agreed to give her a pre-departure promotion to compensate for the career disruption
What is shocking is the fact that President Bush says he still has confidence in Wolfowitz! What does that mean?
THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO HOLDS "THE KEY TO WESTERN CIVILISATION"
The USA and Britain want the lion's share of Congo's natural and mineral resources.
It was Joseph Robinson, an american mercenary arrested and freed in Congo before the first round of elections there who spelled it out when he said on his arrival to Orlando: "Congo holds the key to the whole western civilisation, politically and geopolitically."
"With changes on the international scene actually and the state of world markets, I think that Africa - most specifically the central african part - holds the key, geologically and politically," said Robinson.
You have heard it from the horse's own mouth! Remember the first atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki months after the Japanese have surrendered? It was made out of uranium from Congo.
Moreover, "in terms of natural and mineral resources, Congo's potential is enormous", said the US Ambassador to Kinshasa, américain à Kinshasa, Roger Meece, in an interview accorded to Washington File on 31.05.2006. And so...?
The IMF, the World Bank's relationaship with Congo is warming up again and Congo's foreign debt has quadrupled from $12 billions. What people need to know is that the people of Congo want to deal with the rest of the world only on its own terms. It's time Congo dictated its own terms.
Please read an excellent report by Black Agenda Report, the journal of African American political though and action, titled: "Africa – Where the Next US Oil Wars Will Be?!"
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Order in DR Congo had to be restored at 'any cost': President Kabila
KINSHASA (AFP) - Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila on Monday defended the use of force to quash what he described as an armed rebellion by militia loyal to former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba.
"Order had to be restored at any cost," Kabil said after deadly clashes last week in the capital Kinshasa that left 120 dead and 150 seriously wounded.
In his first statement since the fighting, Kabila said that Bemba's fighters had been intent on seizing control of the capital, and that the dispute was military rather than political.
"You do not guarantee security through negotiation," he told reporters, in an apparent response to calls from the United Nations, the African Union and various countries for a dialogue between the two sides.
About 2,000 troops had fought Bemba's 700 fighters in the Gombe district of the capital on Thursday and Friday.
Bemba, who lost the presidential election in October to Kabila, had refused to have his vice-presidential bodyguard integrated into the regular army, arguing that his personal security could not be guaranteed.
The former rebel leader took refuge in the South African embassy in Kinshasa on Thursday.
Kabila accused Bemba of trying to put himself above the law. "It was totally unacceptable ... and the law has put him in his place," he added.
But he refused to say what would happen to his former vice-president, saying that a "judicial procedure" had been launched.
The government on Friday said that Bemba was being charged with high treason. Most of his fighters have fled or agreed to join government forces, but 107 took refuge at the United Nations mission here, the UN said.
Kabila also denied any intention to make DR Congo a one-party state.
"I would be the last person to violate the constitution. Setting up a single party smacks of high treason," he said.
He reassured elected members of Bemba's opposition Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), some of whom claimed to have been threatened.
"The constitution will be respected," Kabila said, referring to guarantees of expression, assembly and demonstration. "The deputies of the MLC can rest easy."
Kabila added, "I am the guarantor of the constitution. I must ensure the security of 60 million Congolese."
The Western media and Zimbabwe
Take what the western media say about Zimbabwe and Mugabe with a pinch of salt. Not long ago, Britsish media reported that Mugabe's daughter who is studying at the University of London should be deported. But there is no Mugabe's daughter at the University of London. How can you deport a ghost person?
Mugabe gets backing of party for five more years
The Times, London, 31.03.2007: Jan Raath in Harare
Zimbabwe’s ruling party last night endorsed Robert Mugabe as its presidential candidate in next year’s elections, despite fierce opposition within its own ranks and mounting public discontent fuelled by a collapsing economy.
State radio said that the central committee of President Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party had decided to hold the presidential, parliamentary and local government elections simultaneously. Thus MPs and senators elected in 2005 for a five-year term have had their tenure cut by two years so that Mr Mugabe can stand for another five-year term. If he wins, he could rule the country until he is 89.
Addressing the central committee meeting, Mr Mugabe declared that his Southern African neighbours had given him “full backing” at their summit this week for his handling of the Zimbabwean crisis. He also scorned declarations around the world that his 27-year rule, which has brought the country to its knees, was now “at a tipping point”. In recent weeks one man has been shot dead by police and hundreds savagely beaten, including Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, as the Government has stamped on a growing surge of discontent.
After an extraordinary summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on Thursday night, Mr Mugabe emerged asserting that it had been “an excellent meeting”. The leaders appointed Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, to negotiate between Zanu (PF) and Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change. They also called on Europe to lift its sanctions, and for Britain to compensate white farmers for land seized from them in Mr Mugabe’s lawless “revolutionary land reform programme” and to ift sanctions.
Zimbabwe blames “illegal Western sanctions” for the country’s economic collapse, although they are exclusively personal, restricted to a ban on travel to and investment in most Western countries by little more than 100 senior officials of Mr Mugabe’s Government and ruling party.
“The matter [SADC’s discussion of Zimbabwe] was simple,” he said. “We got full backing of the leaders. Not even one of them criticised our actions. There is no one in SADC that can stand up and fault Zimbabwe, because there we have full friendship and cooperation.”
He said that had been “truthful” about Mr Tsvangirai’s assault on March 11 as police violently broke up a planned prayer rally by pro-democracy groups.
“I told them, ‘Yes, he was beaten’. I told them the truth, that he went to police after hearing that some of his people had been arrested. He was beaten because, earlier, police had been attacked by MDC supporters. I told the police beat him a lot. He asked for it.”
Of remarks by the US and Britain, Mr Mugabe said: “Both the Governments of Bush and Blair think that we have reached what they term a ‘tipping point’. We will emerge stronger.” The Mugabe Government has been accused of imposing illegal curfews, banning meetings and arresting hundreds of pro-democracy activists in its clampdown. The country is in the grip of the world’s worst inflation — of 1,700 per cent — and the situation is worsened by food shortages as agricultural output sinks towards precolonial levels.
In contrast to Mr Mugabe’s claim of full backing from SADC, independent press reports said that he had run into hostility in the closed session when only the leaders were present. The weekly Zimbabwe Independent, quoting unnamed diplomatic sources, said the leaders were “brutally frank behind closed doors, but stick together for solidarity purposes” in public.
Please read an excellent report of the situation in Zimbabwe, by Gregory Elich of the Global Research/Centre for Research on Globalisation, published on 13.04.2007 and titled: The Battle over Zimbabwe’s Future!
Stephen Gowan also writes about "Zimbabwe's Lonely Fight for Justice"
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Sunday 25 March 2007 marks 200 years - to the day - that a Parliamentary Bill was passed to begin the abolition of the slave trade in the then (‘so Called’) British Empire. 1807 was the beginning of the long road to the eventual abolition of Capture, Inhuman Treatment, Slave labour, Torture, Rape, Murder, Psychological brainwashing, altering of true history (where it became his-story) leading to exclusion, disillusion & the inevitable erosion of the black people’s historic cultural & the destruction of the blessed Motherland.
Please remember: slavery itself continued after 1807 and the Caribbean slaves had to literally continue the fight and did not gain their final freedom until 1838, after many more lives were lost.
If there is one thing we all do – it must be to educate our children of their rich heritage (without excuse), and teach them that killing their brothers & sisters is a continuation of the implanted slave mentality!
The commemoration coincides with the 50th anniversary of the European Union. European powers met in Berlin for a big party. In Berlin of all places, where the Europeans at the Berlin Conference sheared Africa like a lamb! What have they planned for Africa in the next 200 years this time? But Africa will not be a casualty forever.
New Book: "A Short History of Slavery" by James Walvin: Slavery at the heart of Britain’s wealth!
On the occasuion of the 200th anniversary of the official abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, James Walvin suggests that the economic viability of newly-colonised parts of North America was due to the use of slaves working on plantations. Indigenous “Indians” lacked the immunity to survive the infections brought by the white colonisers, and those who did, refused to work for the invaders of their lands.
James Walvin's book is published by Penguin books.
The 8th of March is the International Women's day. Congo Panorama calls for a special tribunal for Congo to try those responsible of crimes against humanity, especially Museveni and Kagame who used rape as a weapon of war in Congo.
Rape has become a defining characteristic of the five-year war in the DRC, according to Anneke Van Woudenberg, the Congo specialist for Human Rights Watch. So, too, has mutilation of the victims.
"Last year, I was stunned when a 30-year-old woman in North Kivu had her lips and ears cut off and eyes gouged out after she was raped, so she couldn't identify or testify against her attackers. Now, we are seeing more and more such cases," she says.
As the troops of coccupation from Rwanda and Uganda constantly sought new ways to terrorize, their barbarity became more frenzied.
I, too, was sickened by what I saw and heard. In three decades of covering war, I had never before come across the cases described to me by Congolese doctors, such as gang-rape victims having their labia pierced and then padlocked.
"They usually die of massive infection," I was told.
Based on personal testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch, it is estimated that as many as 30 percent of rape victims are sexually tortured and mutilated during the assaults, usually with spears, machetes, sticks or gun barrels thrust into their vaginas.
Increasingly, the trigger is being pulled. About 40 percent of rape victims, usually the younger ones, aged 8 to 19, are abducted and forced to become sex slaves.
"The country is in an utter state of lawlessness; it's complete anarchy," says Woudenberg. "In this culture of impunity, people know they can get away with anything. Every armed group is equally culpable."
In the Congo, rape is a cheaper weapon of war than bullets. Experts estimate that some 60 percent of all combatants in the DRC are infected with HIV/AIDS. As women rarely have access to expensive antiretroviral drugs, sexual assaults all too often become automatic death sentences.
Médecins Sans Frontières operates five health clinics offering antiretrovirals in the conflict zone of northeastern DRC, but many women don't know about the drugs and cannot travel safely to the centers. Moreover, according to Helen O'Neill, a nurse who set up MSF's sexual-violence treatment program, such drugs must be taken within forty-eight to seventy-two hours of the rape to prevent infection.
If a woman has been exposed to the virus, the treatment is 80 percent effective. But in the Congo, rape victims who are not captive sex slaves must walk for days or weeks, often with massive injuries, and risk new capture by roving rebel bands, before reaching assistance.
"So far, 30 percent of rape victims being treated at our hospital are infected with HIV/AIDS," says Dr. Denis Mukwege, the French-trained medical director of the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. "And nearly 50 percent are infected with venereal diseases like syphilis that greatly increase their chances of contracting HIV."
Rape as a weapon of war is as old as war itself. What has changed recently is that sexual violence is no longer considered just a byproduct of conflict but is being viewed as a war crime, says Jessica Neuwirth, president of Equality Now, a New York-based international women's human rights organization. "Rape as a violation of war was codified in the Geneva Convention, but only now is it being taken seriously. But it is still not effectively prosecuted, not proportional to the extent that sexual violence takes place," she says. Armed forces now have a legal obligation to stop rape and hold the offenders accountable. "This is a major shift in consciousness. But it needs to be followed by a major shift in conduct," says Neuwirth.
In the DRC, rape is used to terrorize, humiliate and punish the enemy. Frequently husbands, fathers and children are forced to watch and even participate. Women sexually assaulted by members of one rebel organization are accused of being the wives of that group and raped again as punishment when a new militia takes over the area. "It's happened repeatedly to the women of Shabunda in the far east of the Congo, every time the region has changed hands," says Woudenberg.
Blood Diamond: Africa is the battle ground between Lebanese and Israeli diamond dealers
In Sierra Leone, Congo and elsewhere, Israeli and Lebanese are outdoing each other for diamond concessions!
Blood Diamond! A must see! Set against the backdrop of civil war and chaos in 1990's Sierra Leone, Danny Archer, a South African mercenary, and Solomon Vandy, a Mende fisherman are joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives.
While in prison for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon--who was taken from his family and forced to work in the diamond fields--has found and hidden the extraordinary rough stone. With the help of Maddy Bowen, an American journalist whose idealism is tempered by a deepening connection with Archer, the two men embark on a trek through rebel territory--a journey that could save Solomon's family and give Archer the second chance he thought he would never have.
Ghana, the first african country to shake off the yoke of colonialism celebrates this year its 50th anniversary of Independence.
The Congopanorama will take part in all the celebrations in London because we see in this anniversary the celebration of panafricanism and African Unity of which Nkrumah was an architect. We see the hand of Kwame Nkrumah who memtored Patrice Lumumba.
"Today, a new Africa is born," Nkrumah said on the day of independence. " But the independence of Ghana is meaningless without the independence of the whole of the African continent" - Kwame Nkrumah
"History will one day have its say; it will not be the history taught in the United Nations, Washington, Paris, or Brussels, however, but the history taught in the countries that have rid themselves of colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and both north and south of the Sahara it will be a history full of glory and dignity" - Patrice Lumumba
"Congo's been bleeding to death for five centuries," John le Carré has a character declare in his new Africa novel, The Mission Song:
"Fucked by the Arab slavers, fucked by their fellow Africans, fucked by the United Nations, the CIA, the Christians, the Belgians, the French, the Brits, the Rwandans, the diamond companies, the gold companies, the mineral companies, half the world's carpetbaggers, their own government in Kinshasa, and any minute now they're going to be fucked by the oil companies. Time they had a break . . ."
Time they had a break, indeed.
But no way! According to the latest report of the UN Experts on the illégal exploitation of Congo's natural and mineral resources, 95% of gold produced in Congo go to Kampala. 30.000 Congolese work in gold mines for $5 a day. 7 to 10 cargo planes, full of gold, diamond, coltan and tin (10 tons per plane) fly daily from Goma airport to Rwanda and Uganda> Congo's gold from South Kivu goes to Burundi. What a shame!
New book: "CHIEF OF STATION, CONGO: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone by LAWRENCE DEVLIN
Former CIA officer who masterminded Lumumba's terrrosist and savage assassination writes a blagging book about his victim.
After killing Patrice Lumumba, this is what Larry Devlin (Larry who? Larry Devilish?), has to say by way of presentation of his book:
Note Mobutu's picture on the cover of the book. But a new book about Mobutu has just come out, titled: "In Beyond the Storm: Treating the Powerless and the
Powerful in Mobutu's Congo/Zaire", by Dr. William T. Close, an American surgeon.
A Note from LARRY DEVLIN
I was once asked why I wrote about my life and experiences in the Congo to the exclusion of other areas and assignments that were of importance and certainly of considerable interest. The Congo experience was unique in that it began in the relatively early days of the Cold War. It was also unique and particularly challenging as it was an area little known or understood in Washington.
The United States generally depended upon the colonial powers prior to 1960 to provide information on the area and to prevent the Soviets and Bloc nations from infiltrating Africa. All of this changed within a few days in the summer of 1960. We suddenly found ourselves in a face-to-face showdown with the Soviet Union.
We were not prepared, but we had to block their efforts to infiltrate, subvert, influence or dominate key areas of Africa. This had to be accomplished rapidly, but, even more important, this had to be done with the weapons of the Cold War.
It was to achieve our national objectives and yet avoid a Hot War that we were forced to use the intelligence techniques and operations that I recommended and employed in the Congo, but not those recommended by Washington in the PROP operation. I realize full well that persons who have not borne such a responsibility may find it difficult to accept some of my methods. My generation had seen Hitler in action. We regarded Stalin and those who followed him to be just as dangerous as Hitler. We had to defeat this new threat.
The new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on a five-day tour of Africa - his first official foreign trip since taking office - says In Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC: "There could be no democracy without justice."
The UN Secretary General just repeated what we were saying for a very long time now: there is need for a special criminal tribunal for Congo to try those responsible for crimes against humanity following a genocide of 5 millions Congolese by Tutsi troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi with the complicity of former Rwandan refugees, the so-called Tutsi Congolese of Rwandan origin and some so-called Congolese rebel puppets; as well as those responsible for looting Congo's natural and mineral resources. The UN must invest itself in this endeavour because "there is no democracy without justice".
A VERY PAINFUL DOUBLE ANNIVERSARY
16th January and 17th January: A very painful double anniversary in Congo when we commemorate the assassinations of Laurent Désiré Kabila and Patrice Lumumba respectively. Americans still have a "big package" for Congo (...).
For refusing to sell their potentially rich country to the UN, IMF, to the World Bank, to well-known superpowers and multinationals for a song, Kabila and Lumumba were assassinated almost in exactly the same date by the same «agency» using African hands and almost exactly in the same scenario: orchestrated wars by proxi against the people of Congo.
In their footsteps, we will always walk till the complete liberation of the Congolese and African people from imperialism.
Multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank will offer no reprieve to the Congo, as they have been equally culpable in facilitating the exploitation of the riches of the Congo.
In the November 26, 2006 Financial Times article by Dino Mahtani entitled “World Bank faces questions over Congo mining contracts”, it is reported that the bank ran the risk of "perceived complicity and/or tacit approval" of mining deals signed with a "complete lack of transparency."
These deals are worth billions of dollars and account for 75 percent of Gecamines assets, which contain some of the world’s richest deposits of copper. After decades of working with the IMF and World Bank during the Mobutu era, the Congo was saddled with a $14 billion debt; currently at $10 billion.
If these institutions were not complicit in the kleptocratic practices of Mobutu they were at the very least grossly negligent. These institutions’ own reports illustrate that their track record produces more impoverishment than empowerment. Yet they are still proffered as part of the solution to the Congo’s woes. The best that the Congo can hope for when dealing with these institutions is continued indebtedness and the acceleration of the selling off of the country’s assets under the guise of privatization.
No fundamental change has taken place in the Congo since Lumumba’s slaying and none will occur until the Congolese people truly control their resources and freely utilize them for their own benefit and that of Africa at-large.
Lumumba said in his last letter to his wife “I know, and feel in my heart, that sooner or later my people will shake off all enemies, inside and outside our land, and they will rise as one man to say "no" to the shame and degradation of colonialism and to assume once again their dignity under clear skies.”
A bit of history: Africa is not only the cradle of humanity, it the cradle of all civilisations. The Pharaons of Egypt were both kings and priests.
See these pictures and compare who gave what to who!
Ancient Egypt has bequeathed to us a number of monuments. There are the popes of the Catholic Church who were mummified, not forgetting the influence of the new science of Egyptology on biblical chronology.
Rwandan Tutsi refugees now granted Congolese citizenship slaughter the last rare mountain gorillas in eastern Congo - Conservationsits.
Rwandan Tutsi refugees now granted Congolese citizenship but still launching a rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have killed and eaten two silverback mountain gorillas, conservationists have said, warning that they fear more of the endangered animals may have been slaughtered in the Virunga Park.
Only about 700 mountain gorillas remain in the world, 380 of them spread across a range of volcanic mountains straddling the borders of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda in Central Africa.
One dismembered gorilla corpse was found Tuesday in a pit latrine in Congo's Virunga National Park, a few hundred yards from a park patrol post that was abandoned because of rebel attacks, according to the London-based Africa Conservation Fund. Another was killed in the area Jan. 5, said the group, which based its report on conservationists in the field.
The group blamed rebels loyal to Rwandan Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda for the latest killing.
Nkunda is a renegade soldier who infilitrated the Congolese army and commands thousands of fighters in the vast country's east who have in recent years assaulted cities and clashed with government forces.
Silverbacks are older adult males and usually group leaders, though some are loners.
Black South Africans grow impatient over pace of change: Is Robert Mugabe right after all?
By Caroline Southey in Johannesburg, Published: Financial Times, January 5 2007.
“You can’t trust the white men any more,” says South African businessman Peter Vundla. “They’ve been behaving badly for years. This is why the country needs a set of rules that tells white business, ‘This is how you need to behave’.”
Mr Vundla’s bluntness is symptomatic of a growing impatience among black South Africans at the slow pace of economic change in a country still bedevilled by large wealth disparities between black and white.
More than 12 years after the African National Congress took political power, big business still remains largely in white hands, with just over 3 per cent of the market capitilisation of the Johannesburg stock exchange owned directly by black South Africans...
RWANDA AND UGANDA UNDER TUTSI REGIMES ARE ROGUE STATES, BUT THEY NEVER APPEARED ON PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH’S “AXIS OF EVIL” LIST.
THIS DESPITE THE FACT THAT RWANDA'S KAGAME’S LINKS WITH AL-QAEDA WERE PROVEN.
Report by AfroAmerica Network, Washington, DC. USA. August 10, 2002.
Read more...
Holed up in Garamba Park, Northeastern Congo, the LRA slautering rare rhinos and gorillas.
Apple unveils its long-awaited iPhone, pledging to revolutionise the mobile phone market.
1. Mobile phones are made out of coltan, short for columbite-tantalite: a valuable black mineral combining niobite and tantalite; used in cell phones and computer chips.
2. The Democratic Republic of Congo boasts 80% of the world’s reserves of coltan.
3. From 1998-2003, more than 5 million people have been massacred in a silent genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian Tutsi troops with the complicity of some Congolese rebel puppets, who carried out this genocide as proxies of well known superpowers and multinationals in order to loot Congo's tremendous natural and mineral resources, which outsiders are try.ing to get their hands on, especially the mineral coltan, which is essential to the mobile phone industry.
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda is the only African president who does not know what Francophonie and the Commonwealth have in common.
For Kagame, Francophonie is more «anti-african» than the Commonwealth (which Rwanda is joining soon) and Africans should form a coalition against it. But both organisations are the legacy of Western colonialism in Africa, aren't they?!
Kagame who orchestrated the genocide in Rwanda to seize power as an international arrest warrant against him has just been issued by French anti-terrorist judge Jean Louis Bruguière has proven; as well as his reponsibility in the genocide of 5 millions Congolese, told Ivorian journalists on a visit to Rwanda that, and I quote:
"We must form a coalition to be be able to counteract against every anti-african adversaries to which we are confronted, be it France or any other. France, evidently come first on the list of those who display an anti-african attitude."
Rwanda, a former French-speaking belgian colony will soon join the British Commonwealth (Algeria is also applying), an association of former British colonies that provides a forum for international cooperation and promotion of democracy.
Rwanda, like Mozambique a former Portuguese colony, is joining three years after Zimbabwe pulled out of the Commonwealth, citing ""the racist and colonial" politics that had come to dominate the decision-making process within it".
Ugandan Tutsi troops on the ready to go and rape, loot and kill in Somalia as they are doing in Congo! Beware!
Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president said on Thursday 4.01.2007, at a joint news conference in Addis Ababa with Meles Zenawi, Ethiopian prime minister, that Uganda is ready to provide 2,000 peacekeepers for the force.
“The troops are ready but I have to consult the speaker of parliament. As soon as parliament approves, they will be sent to Somalia,” he said.
Beware! They may come as wolf in sheep’s clothing. They have just raped score of women in Congo leaving 60% of them infected with HIV, massacred 5 millions Congolese and looted Congo's natural and mineral resources with the blessing of well known multinationals and superpowers!
Without dealing with Congo's recent past, democracy will mean nothing!
If there is no special tribunal set up to try all responsible for crimes against humanity in Congo and the looting of Congo's natural and mineral resources, Congo's recent past will come back to haunt us!
For instance the Congolese government cannot negotiate with renegate General Laurent Nkunda, a former Tutsi refugee in Congo from Rwanda now wanted for crimes against humanity at the Hague, at the same same time the international Court of Justice keeps Thomas Lubanga, another criminal in jail. One criminal is not different from another.
If Nkunda is Congolese, why would Rwandan President Paul Kagame interfere in a Congolese affair and propose his mediation?
George W. Bush plays Father Christmas in Congo
At least $52 million annually for fiscal years 2006 and 2007 will be provided to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) under legislation signed December 22 by President Bush. These funds are intended to enhance the United States' and international organizations' efforts to fight political, social and economic challenges facing the African nation.
What we say is that it is not enough for the EU, Belgium, Germany, the USA, Great Britain... to dish out handouts to Congo. What these countries need to do first of all is to launch investigations into the involvement of their multinationals in the looting of Congo's natural and mineral resources during the war of invasion. Why have they refused to do so, so far? Why are they sweeping it under the carpet?
The questions that need to be answered:
Who sent Museveni and Kagame to murder 5 million people in Congo? The Answer is Britain and America. Is a special criminal tribunal for Congo going to be set up so that crimes against humnaity in Congo do not go unpunished?
In this photo, you can see Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein. Who armed Saddam Hussein, the now hanged cruel and brutal dictator (just like Mobutu was) ? The answer is: Britain and America. Are they going to have Museveni and Kagame hanged for the evil job they did in Congo on their behalf?
It all went sawer when Saddam nationalised oil in 1972 and consencrated revenues for thye development of his country which earned three medals from Unesco for eradicating anaphalbetism.
Robert Fisk revisits the circumstances that resulted in Saddam Hussein's rise to power, and asks, "Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability."
According to Information ClearingHouse.Info:
1. Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's Rape Of Iraq - At Least 655,000 + +
2. Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's Rape Of Iraq 3,004
3. Cost of America's War in Iraq: $355,386,170,678
Good News: Four men, Vincent Bajinya, Charles Munyaneza, Célestin Ugirashebuja et Emmanuel Nteziryayo, accused of taking part in the Rwanda genocide in 1994 have been remanded in custody by UK magistrates.
Bad news: The British government is shielding the Tutsi governments in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi from accountability, knowing well that they, since 2.08.1998, invaded Congo, killing 5 millions Congolese and looting Congo’s natural and mineral resources.
The British government refuses to acknowledge that the International Court of Justice ruled on 19.12.2005 that Uganda must pay compensation to the Democratic Republic of Congo for invading, raping and looting during the 1998-2003 war. Congo must be compensated and Ugandans agents responsible for crimes against humanity in Congo will soon appear in court at the Hague.
The British government also refuses to acknowledge that French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere recently signed an international arrest warrants for President of Kagme of Rwanda and nine of Mr Kagame's close aides who should stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), set up to try those responsible for the 1994 genocide. Kagame freely travelled to Britain recently.
Rwanda's two most senior generals - armed forces chief James Kabarebe and army chief-of-staff Charles Kayonga - are among the nine aides acused by the judge of involvement in the downing of the plane carrying Habyarimana and his Burundi counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira on 6 April 1994, a terrorist act which kick started the genocide. John Grang, First vice President of Sudan died recently in similar circumstances after meeting Museveni.
The French judge is preparing a similar international arrest warrant against Museveni who supplied Kagame and other terrorists responsible for a genocide of 5 million Congolese, with the missile that was used to down the presidential plane.
16.12.2006: The Great Lakes summit: Joseph Kabila’s Congo begins to re-affirm itself in the concert of the nations.
Joseph Kabila is rightly walking in the footsteps of Patrice Lumumba, Pierre Mulele and Laurent Désiré Kabila.
Joseph Kabila’s retort to Museveni. We analyse his speech. The Tutsification of power in the Great Lakes Region has failed! For a lasting peace and development in the region, the "detutsification of power" is an absolute necessity.
1. Subtle as he is, Ugandan president Museveni wanted to insert a clause in the pact that would allow countries to pursue rebels based in neighbouring states, after a request from Uganda's leader. Yoweri Museveni has said the roots of the bloodshed are rebel groups based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The clause was rejected by other Heads of State.
That is not true!
Analysing his speech, Joseph Kabila indirectly retorted to Museveni saying that "the root of the problem in the region is the lack of democratisation of political life in Rwanda (Hutu and Tutsi should share power together there and not always slaughter each other and it always spill over in Congo) and in Uganda like the DRC and Burundi. Democratisation in Rwanda and Uganda is the key solution to the region’s woes".
Moreover, the whole international community knows that Rwanda and Uganda are still looting Congo’s natural and mineral resources by proxi, arming militia in eastern Congo to do the job. They also harbour criminals such as the so-called Congolese Tutsi of Rwandan origin Nkunda and Mutebusi even if they are wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity they have committed.
Joseph Kabila said that “a platform has instead now been created which will enable all of us to find solutions to our immediate and future problems”.
As a reminder, the International Court of Justice ruled on 19.12.2005 that Uganda must pay compensation to the Democratic Republic of Congo for invading, raping and looting during the 1998-2003 war. Congo must be compensated and Ugandans agents responsible for crimes against humanity in Congo will soon appear in court at the Hague.
French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere recently signed an international arrest warrants for President of Kagme of Rwanda and nine of Mr Kagame's close aides who should stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), set up to try those responsible for the 1994 genocide.
Rwanda's two most senior generals - armed forces chief James Kabarebe and army chief-of-staff Charles Kayonga - are among the nine aides acused by the judge of involvement in the downing of the plane carrying Habyarimana and his Burundi counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira on 6 April 1994, a terrorist act which kick started the genocide. John Grang, First vice President of Sudan died recently in similar circumstances after meeting Museveni.
The French judge is preparing a similar international arrest warrant against Museveni who supplied Kagame and other terrorists responsible for a genocide of 5 million Congolese, with the missile that was used to down the presidential plane.
2. Joseph Kabila condemned the politics of plunder used by Tutsi governments in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi who since 2.08.1998, invaded Congo, killing 5 millions Congolese and looting Congo’s natural and mineral resources.
“This pact must inaugurate a new era: an era of the end of every illegal exploitation of Congo’s natural and mineral resources and replaced with a genuine exchange between nations on the basis of the respect of principles of international law,” Kabila said.
3. Joseph Kabila stressed that Congo is now set to play its role as "the economic engine of Africa (Congo’s contribution to the new development fund for the region was the biggest, $1 million).
“We would like to affirm that we are determined to consolidate peace and security in the region and implement the politics of true economic development and regional integration in a way that will enable Congo to play the role conferred to it by its geographic position and its natural resources,” said Kabila.
4. Joseph Kabila, like Patrice Lumumba and his late father and predecessor Laurent Désiré Kabila, stressed that the Congolese will count on their own efforts first, take their destiny into their own hands.
“We must not think that this Pact will provide magic solutions to our preoccupations,” said newly elected and youngest head of state in the region, Joseph Kabila.
6.12.2006: Joseph Kabila is sworn in as first democratically elected leader in 45 years after the savage assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's only elected leader since independence! The New Congo Order begins here...
Congo is set to be the economic engine of the Africa continent. Africa is sick because Congo, its heart has been sick, it has not been beating well! And we all know why Congo has not been allowed to play its role as "the economic engine of Africa" since the slave trade,King Leopold's State terrorism and looting under the pretext of bringing christina civilisation to the people of Congo, the Arab slave trade, belgian colonisation, the murder of Lumumba, Mobutu's bloody and kleptocratic regime, a war of agression against Congo by Tutsi troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, supported by well known superpowers and multinationals with the complicity of South Africa and the so-called Congolese rebels and the so-called Congolese Tutsi, those former refugees from Rwanda who betrayed our hospitality!
The Congolese people are now able to write a new chapter in their history, take their destiny into their own hand, fulfilling what Patrice Lumumba and Laurent Désiré Kabila said:
The Republic of the Congo has been proclaimed, and our country is now in the hands of its children. Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.Together, we are going to establish social justice and make sure everyone has just remuneration for his labor [applause].
We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of the Congo the center of the sun's radiance for all of Africa. We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children. We are going to restore ancient laws and make new ones which will be just and noble.
We are going to put an end to suppression of free thought and see to it that all our citizens enjoy to the full the fundamental liberties foreseen in the Declaration of the Rights of Man [applause]. We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and will [applause]. And for all that, dear fellow countrymen, be sure that we will count not only on our enormous strength and immense riches but on the assistance of numerous foreign countries whose collaboration we will accept if it is offered freely and with no attempt to impose on us an alien culture of no matter what nature [applause].
The Lion roars again!
28.11.2006: Joseph Kabila officially declared president of Congo by the Supreme Court, which rejected an appeal by rival candidate Jean Pierre Bemba. The people of Congo must celebrate. Lumumba, Laurent Désiré Kabila must be dancing in their graves (sorry! Lumumba has no grave as you know!)
The new government is due under accords among political parties to be headed by Antoine Gizenga, an 80-year-old political veteran who served under the first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, after independence 41 years ago.
Lumumba's name still counted for something in the vote this year. The first prime minister was murdered in a power struggle that paved the way for decades of increasingly corrupt rule under Mobutu Sese Seko, who was ousted by Kabila's father in 1997.
25.11.2006: The Tutsi test the nerves of the New Congo army. Bemba and Ruberwa (a Tutsi now a vice president in Congo, although no longer because the interim government is over) fail to condemn the attack!
Still wanted at the international Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Congo and after campaigning for Bemba during the recent elections, Laurent Nkunda, a general of the Tutsi tribe's loyalists backed by Rwandan and Ugandan troops and foreign mercenaries, on November 25 attacked the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Sake area, North Kivu Province, killing three soldiers. Nkunda and his men have since this morning been repulsed, the localities of Tongo and Bambu in Rutshuru territory recaptured and the Congolese army is advancing to retake Sake and Kitchanga, Nkunda's headquarters. UN troops have deployed between the two frontlines.
In October 2005, soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo inspect a mass grave in Rutshuru, in the eastern Nord-Kivu province, where Nkunda operates. Now investigators have unearthed mass graves in the Democratic Republic of Congo containing the remains of around 30 civilians who went missing earlier in the year, a military prosecutor has said.
There is no reverse gear for Bemba, Ruberwa and all other criminals who were used for a genocide of 5 million people in Congo.
By putting the supreme court on fire, Bemba is just adding crimes upon crimes. Who has forgotten what he did during Mobutu's time and during the war of agression, including cannibalism?
The people have rejected them through the ballots, now the international justice is going to let the people of Congo down yet again by not prosecuting their killers.
It is unlikely that the Tutsi dogs of war will be prosecuted
Multinationals, superpowers, the Tutsi Museveni and Kagame planned the genocide in Rwanda and in Congo, executed it and are laughing about it after enriching themselves through the crime. The arrest warrants against them make survivors in Congo and Rwanda suffer even more because it is unlikely that the well protected Tutsi dogs of war will be prosecuted.
23.11.2006: A top French judge has called for Rwandan President Paul Kagame to be brought before a U.N. court for having been directly responsible for the 1994 plane crash that killed the country's president Juvenal Habyarima and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira and sparked a genocide.
Anti-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere is also seeking international arrest warrants for nine Kagame associates, including the current military's chief of staff, James Kabarebe who launched the invasion of Congo.
Paul Kagame and members of his military staff devised the operation" to destroy Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane.
The Hutu leader's aircraft was hit by a missile as he returned to the capital Kigali from a summit and his death triggered a genocide of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Graphic showing the results of the presidential election in the the Democratic Republic of Congo , won on Wednesday, 15.11.2006, by incumbent Joseph Kabila who took 58.05 percent of the votes.
The incumbent Joseph Kabila has therefore won the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo , the Independent Electoral Commission said, announcing provisional results.
Kabila's challenger, former rebel leader and Mobutuist Jean Pierre Bemba took 49.1%. He lost and he has a case to answer at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity committed by his rebel movement.
Ruberwa, leader of Rwandan masterminded RCD rebel movement and a Tutsi who came to Congo as a refugee, has also to answer for crimes against humanity during the war of invasion.
Bemba says he has rejected presidential election results that saw him defeated by Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo and said he would "use all legal channels" to contest them. Let us wait and see!
Kabila said that this was the victory of the people of Congo as a whole for a national reconstruction of all corners of Congo, making of Congo "the China of Africa by 2010".
Kabila said in his address that the Congolese army and authorities had been instructed to assure peace across the country.
FREDERIC ETSOU, THE CATHOLIC CARDINAL IN CONGO SAYS HE DOES NOT ACCEPT THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTIONS.
ABBE MALU MALU, A CATHOLIC PRIEST WHO PRESIDES OVER THE INDEPENDENT ELECTORAL COMMISSION, SAYS THE ELECTIONS WERE FREE AND FAIR AND KABILA IS IN THE LEAD. JUST BECAUSE HE COMES FROM MOBUTU'S TRIBE AND THEREFORE SUPPORTS BEMBA, CARDINAL ETSOU WANTS EVERYBODY IN CONGO TO SWALLOW HIS GOSPEL, WHICH IS NOT A CATHOLIC GOSPEL BUT A TRIBALISTIC GOSPEL!
There is no political capital and support for another post-electoral war internally in Congo, unless external forces yet again pull the strings behind the enemies of the State in Congo: Bemba abd the so-called Tutsi of Congolese origin. The international community is a witness.
Saturday 11.11.2006: Clashes have erupted between security forces and supporters of Bemba (photo, one of them wounded above), a presidential candidate in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa.
Police said two civilians were killed in cross-fire after gunfire and explosions were heard near the offices of Vice President Jean Pierre Bemba.
Saturday's violence is said to have started when Mr Bemba's armed supporters took to the streets near his offices.
Police reportedly fired in the air to disperse the group, who had placed burning tyres in the streets to disrupt traffic.
Gun and heavy artillery fire has been heard, and reports say Mr Bemba's supporters are armed with mortars and rocket launchers.
According to the BBC's Arnaud Zajtman, many of them are high on drugs and half-naked, with a piece of red tissue on their head or their shoulder to differentiate them from the other soldiers.
According to the Reuters news agency, the government has threatened to despatch the army to quell the unrest.
"If this continues, the army will have to intervene to restore order," Interior Minister Denis Kalume told the agency.
UN and EU peacekeeping troops stationed in the city are also on alert
Fucked up by everybody, it is time the Congolese people had a break!!!
"Congo's been bleeding to death for five centuries,"
John le Carré has a character declare in his new
Africa novel, The Mission Song.
"Fucked by the Arab slavers, fucked by their fellow Africans, fucked by
the United Nations, the CIA, the Christians, The Belgians, the French, the Brits, the Rwandans, the
diamond companies, the gold companies, the mineral
companies, half the world's carpetbaggers, their own
government in Kinshasa, and any minute now they're
going to be fucked by the oil companies.
Time they had a break . . ."
About the Congo Panorama/A propos du
Congo Panorama:
We at The Congo Panorama aim to be the messengers of a new
consciousness that the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo
have reached. ~ Le Panorama Congolais se veut un instrument
efficace, la plate forme d’une nouvelle conscience que le
peuple Africain en général et le peuple Congolais
en particulier ont atteint.
Read more about the Congo Panorama/A
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