Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

DRC: Manhunt against innocent civilian populations of North Kivu

By Callixte Mbarushimana
Paris
January 30, 2009

The Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) inform the public and the International Community that the coalition of Rwandan and Congolese armies began to pursue the Rwandan refugee population in the DRC and the Congolese populations of North Kivu pushing them to flee and hide in forests.

Information reaching us indicates a plan to exterminate the populations of the Kivu region by the armed coalition and to put the responsibility on the FDLR shoulders.

The FDLR urge the African Union, the European Union and the International Community at large to take all necessary urgent measures to ensure the protection of populations threatened with extinction and prevent the repetition of the humanitarian disaster of 1996/1997 which took place in the forests of the DRC in their eyes.

Moreover, the FDLR strongly condemn acts of rape which are being committed by the armies of the RPA- FARDC coalition on innocent civilians. Thus, on 26 January 2009 at night, three soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and the DRC Armed Forces (FARDC) have raped several women and girls including one called Cecilia, daughter of Butwire Didace, who sells beverages in the district of Chemchem, town of Nyamilima , Binja group in the territory of Rutshuru in North Kivu . The innocent victim is being treated at the hospital of Nyamilima.

These barbaric acts against innocent civilians must clearly and strongly be condemned and punished. The FDLR urge once again the Rwandan and Congolese authorities to immediately stop their military offensive and focus on the way of dialogue rather than to plunge their countries into a crazy, unnecessary and deadly war.

Finally, the FDLR warn the MONUC against risks to which could lead the United Nations support for a crazy and dangerous plan because by supporting such a plan, officials of the MONUC create a historical precedent to use UN forces as a back-up troop to oppressive forces. This support would be interpreted as a blank check given by the UN to a plan to exterminate the peoples of the African Great Lakes region by armed predators of their peoples and their wealth.

Therefore, officials of the MONUC must be prepared to fully assume all the consequences of such acts before History.

The FDLR remain committed to peace and reiterate their commitments made in Rome on 31 March 2005.

Callixte Mbarushimana is Executive Secretary of the FDLR

Related article:
Rwandan refugees in Congo on the brink of extermination

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 6:58 PM 0 Comments

DR Congo: Conflict Risk Alert

By Administrator
January 29, 2009

London-UK: Save the Congo calls upon PM Gordon Brown to use his leverage on the Rwanda leadership, the Congolese government and regional powers to end the join military operation of Rwanda and Congo which threatens to plunge Eastern Congo further into what is already an unmatched human suffering in recent history without assurance that it will solve the region’s conflict.

President Joseph Kabila of DRC and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda have embarked on a join military operation to flush FDLR-rebels out eastern Congo. The operation has already impacted negatively on the ability of MONUC [UN mission in DRC] peacekeepers, as well as various UN agencies and aid agencies, to protect and assist the civilian population in some areas.

Rwanda has invaded Eastern Congo twice in recent years under the pretext of disarming the FDLR; and on both occasions, investigations and reports by aid agencies and the UN appointed Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, uncovered and unveiled primary evidences implicating President Kagame’s close friends and military elites in series of systematic plundering of Congo’s natural resources; summary executions of as well as orchestrated campaign of sexual violence against civilians, whom they believe were aiding the government, and force displacements which have led to the human tragedy engulfing the Congo.

In addition, Save the Congo fears a repeat of the 1996-1997 scenes as MONUC is not involved. In 1996-1997, when AFDL [alliance of Rwandan, Ugandan armies and anti-Mobutu groups under the leadership of Laurent Desire Kabila] marched into Congo, then Zaire, to oust Joseph Mobutu from a 32 years reign of power, the Hutu populations, some of whom were responsible for the 1994 genocide and some simple innocent civilians, living in refugee camps in Eastern Congo were systematically and indiscriminately slaughtered. An estimated 3 Million are said to have been killed.

Furthermore, Save the Cong warns of a political stunt by the Rwandan authority: between 1998-2001 Rwanda invaded Eastern Congo under the same pretext [disarming and flushing FDLR out of Eastern Congo] – throughout that period, Rwandan soldiers and its offshoot RCD-Goma did not go after or clashed with FDLR but, on the contrary, Rwanda and RCD-Goma occupied rich mining areas in Eastern Congo, collaborated with FDLR-rebels and coltan, cassiteririte, gold and diamonds exploited by the FDLR were being sold in Rwanda.

“More bloods will not cleanse bad blood” said Vava Tampa, a Congolese born and undergraduate student at Queen Mary College, University of London.

"The FDLR are in Masisi but the Rwandans have instead gone to Rutshuru. We don't really know what they are doing there because our access has been blocked” - said Jean-Paul Dietrich, MONUC military spokesman.

“The world must not stand idly when armies bearing trade marks of war crimes embark on military assaults, that has no insurance of removing the cloud of war that has shadowed the region for sixteen years, in communities already gripped with humanitarian catastrophes that wouldn't exist in peaceful time to apprehend a group of individuals indistinguishable from ordinary Congolese civilian population” added Vava Tampa.

“Wounds still fresh… nightmares of the Rwandan military activities in the Congo in recent years still haunting the civilian population… and forcing such people -the local population, to share the same paths with Rwandan soldiers at the wake of the recent Rwandan backed war by CNDP which left over 500 000 killed; over 250 000 uprooted and scenes of war crimes across the Kivus between August 28 to December 12, is, in essence, pouring their wounds with gall and vinegar – said Vava Tampa, a Congolese born and undergraduate student at Queen Mary College, University of London.

“Given the Rwandan and Ugandan armies’ last clash over mining areas in Kisangani in 2002; fear, resentment, acute ethnic tensions and availability of tools of destructions in the Kivus; and MONUC’ inability to decisively deter those fuelling and perpetuating inhumane actions in ethnic line; the on-going join military operations, at its current form, risk to plunge the region into inter-state genocidal destruction; and unless PM Gordon Brown, who has a very significant influence upon the Rwandan and Congolese leadership, takes on a pro-active role to end the joint military operation, Eastern Congo could, once again, be transformed into huge battlefields.” – added Vava Tampa.

For further information, please contact:
Vava Tampa: +44 (0) 7960 705 829 (day or night)
vava.tampa@savethecongo.co.uk
http://www.savethecongo.co.uk/

Vava Tampa is a Congolese born and undergraduate student at Queen Mary College, University of London, and Director of Save the Congo –a UK based Congolese youth led advocacy organisation campaigning for and promoting the restoration of peace, security, justice and human dignity in the Congo.

Note to the editors:

The DRC is a home to vast expanses of pristine rain forest, rare animal species and a treasure trove of rare precious minerals – it houses all elements found on the periodic table. Its abundant reserves of Copper, Cobalt, Coltan -an essential component of mobile phones, laptops and game counsels, Cassiterite (tin ore), Diamonds, Hydraulic Cement, Iron, Gas, Gold, Lead, Lithium, Manganese, Nickel, Oil, Silver, Timber, Tungsten, Uranium and zinc have the potential to serve as the engine of growth in its reconstruction and eradication of poverty in the Central African region and beyond.

Yet its one of the poorest and chaotic nations, ruined by wars, sexual atrocities and humanitarian catastrophes. One can take all lives lost in Bosnia, Rwanda 1994, Darfur, the 2005 tsunami in Asia, and then add a 9-11 every single day for 356 days and then go through Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Put all of those together, multiply by 2 and you still don’t reach the number of lives that has been lost in the Congo since 1998.

NGOs estimate that over 6 millions have so far been killed; around 40% of all adult women have been made widows; around 2 million internally displaced; 100 000s of women and young girls brutally gang raped; and million more remain trapped between warring parties.

The UK is the largest unilateral aid donor to the Congolese government –providing more aid than France, Belgium and US combined; and the second largest aid donor to the Rwandan government.

The first report of the UN appointed Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was published on 12 April 2001.

The Final report of the UN appointed Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was published on 12 December 2008 (S/2008/773).

The National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP)

CNDP is an armed group almost exclusively composed of ethnic Tutsis. It was established by Laurent Nkunda –a former officer of RCD-Goma which in 2003 signed the Sun City peace-deal and joined the transitional government with Laurent Nkunda as a Colonel but soon promoted to General.

However, in 2004, with the support and assistance of close allies of President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Laurent Nkunda with some (former) RCD-Goma officers and militia retreated to the highlands of Masisi Plain, Eastern Congo, under the pretence of defending the interests of the Tutsi minority in eastern Congo and formed a band coalition, CNDP, of ethnic Tutsis from Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.

On January 22, the Rwandan authority announced that they had arrested Laurent Nkunda; four days later, on the 26th, the Rwandan army spokesperson Maj. Jill Rutaremara, when questioned by the press, said “Laurent Nkunda was in Rwanda but “not in jail.” And he would not elaborate other than saying Nkunda was “safe”.

Democratic Force for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)

FDLR is a coalition almost entirely composed of ethnic Hutus. It was formed in 2000 “after the merger of ALIR –the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda and a loose Hutu Congolese armed group.

ALIR was overwhelmingly composed of Rwandan Hutus responsible for the genocide in Rwanda but fled to the Congo as Paul Kagame’s RPF advance toward Kigali in 1994.

During the 1998-2003 war, FDLR sided with the Kinshasa government trying to end Rwandan and Ugandan led scramble of rich natural resources in Eastern Congo.

In March 2005, the FDLR announced it was abandoning its armed struggle against the Rwandan government and returning to Rwanda to form a political party but the move was not welcome nor aided by the Rwandan government and soon collapsed. FDLR have since resumed their military activities.

Source:
Save The Congo
--Building Hope Shaping the Future--

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 3:45 PM 0 Comments

Extreme Opacity

By Administrator
January 29, 2009

A few days ago, I had a very long and illustrative talk with a Congolese expert on the politics in the DRC.

Before, he told me, he was aware of what was going on. He basically got the information, and according to it he could foresee what was going to happen. These days, he does not know what is happening. Like anyone else interested in the war in North Kivu, he can only try to understand the current situation on the basis of the news, interpreting the chain of events and making his own deductions.

According to him, only four people really know what has been agreed between Rwanda and the DRC: the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame; the president of the DRC, Joseph Kabila, the Congolese general John Numbi, former chief of the Congolese Air Force and nowadays DRC Police Inspector General; and the Chief of General Staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces, James Kabarebe. To these men we could add a few of the highest officials from the governments of the US, the UK and France.

The visit of James Kavarebe to Kinshasa on January 8th, very much rejected by the Congolese public opinion, can be seen now as the turning point for the current scenario.
The opacity in the decission making is extreme. It´s not only that the Congolese governors do not know what is happening. The Congolese ministers themselves were not informed about the agreement with Rwanda.

As a result, the destiny of sixty million Congolese and an extremely relevant issue for the future of ten million Rwandans is being decided leaving absolutely every citizen aside. It is completely undemocratic.

Only five months ago, Paul Kagame used strong words agains Joseph Kabila in La Libre Belgique. Now, they are working together. Only huge international pressure can explain that.
Now that the hunt of the FDLR has started, people wonder what will be the future of Walikale, the richest mining region in North Kivu. This is an area controlled by the 85th Congolese Batallion and the FDLR. Will they be sweeped? No one knows if this is part of the deal.

Another issue is the weight of the Rwandan army in the operation. Rwanda has publicly annonunced the “observer” nature of their forces in Kivu. However, everyone knows the real capabilities of the FARDC. It can hardly be called an army. And from one day to another, they are supposed to be capable to face the FDLR. Everyone knows who is carrying the military weight of the operation.

Many of us fear the humanitarian consequences of the military operation. The FDLRs have been living in Congo for fifteen years, have mixed with the population, have had children… As a relevant Congolese authority recently said, referring to the presence of FDLR in North Kivu: if you mix salt and sugar, how are you supposed to separate both again?

The expert I talked to agreed on the fact that a lot more than what we actually know has been dealed. But no one knows the real terms. Only the four men mentioned above… and a few others whose names we don´t know.

Source:
http://stopthewarinnorthkivu.wordpress.com/

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 3:25 PM 0 Comments

Congo: A Secret Deal with Kagame?

By Emin Pasha
January 28, 2009

According to La Lettre du Continent, France's President Sarkozy is going to propose that the Congo permit Rwanda to police the eastern Congo and eliminate the FDLR and CNDP threats. In return, the mineral wealth of the eastern Congo will be put in a "common pot" under the auspices of one or another of the regional economic hubs--either the CEEAC or the CEPLG. The Congo would then issue licenses and garner royalties from the countries or companies exploiting the minerals.

Sarkozy is said to be keen to make this deal happen on his trip to Africa in late March, and Kagame is also said to be enthusiastic about it. France and Rwanda have been on a slow-motion diplomatic game of chicken for some time now, with each country accusing the other's government of either initiating or actively supporting the 1994 genocide. This rapprochement could enable both countries to avert what appeared to be an oncoming train wreck.

The Lettre says that the seed of the proposal was first planted by Herman Cohen in his op-ed in the New York Times. Cohen, the Lettre says, is now a lobbyist for French interests in Africa. As has been well-documented elsewhere, Cohen is one of those frighteningly amoral people, a man who turned his State Department connections into high-paying gigs lobbying for some of Africa's ugliest dictators, including Laurent Kabila. But when his op-ed came out, I couldn't tell what angle he was working, and criticized his proposal merely for being unworkable.

The Congolese newspapers have been in an uproar about Sarkozy's plan since they got wind of it a couple of days ago (here, and here). They believe the ground is being laid, internationally, to trade off Congolese patrimony to appease their invaders. And they see further evidence of that possibility in their own government's decision last week to allow Rwandan troops directly onto Congolese soil, ostensibly to round-up the ex-genocidaires still at large in eastern Congo.

To be honest, I thought the Kinshasa rumor mill was just operating in overdrive, and even thought about writing a piece making fun of their "Grand Unified Theory." Not all dots necessarily connect, as I keep reminding Congolese friends. But Congolese history is just too replete with the most brazen sort of opportunism to dismiss all of this as a mere conspiracy. Stay tuned.

Source:
Congo Ressources

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 3:21 PM 0 Comments

New Twists in Congo Conflict – and Just Maybe a Turn for the Better

By J.Peter Pham, PhD

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 3:03 PM 0 Comments

Rwanda: A Fake Report on Fake Elections

By Filip Reyntjens
Professor of African Law and Politics
University of Antwerp
Belgium

For the full report, please click can here

Last Monday, the EU Electoral Observation Mission released its final report on the legislative elections held in Rwanda in September 2008. The presentation happened quite discreetly in Kigali, and the story was not picked up by the international press. When reading the report, one understands this discretion and why this release happened months after the date initially announced.

In his opening remarks at the press conference, the Chief Observer, British MEP Michael Cashman, stressed that “The process of democratisation in Rwanda since the end of the genocide is remarkable”. However, that is not really what the report implies. Although often hidden in technical language, the mission reports major flaws in the electoral process. For instance, in 76% of the polling stations observed, the ballot boxes were not sealed; in 73% of the cases the upper slot of the ballot box was not sealed after the end of voting, a fact which, in the report’s own prudent wording, “could have left room for potential electoral abuse”. The consolidation process, a crucial moment as it is here that the results are “made”, is assessed by the mission as “poor or very poor with procedures not properly followed in 63.9% of the cases”. These percentages relate to operations observed by the mission, i.e. 576 polling stations out of a total of over 15,000. One can only image what has happened in places where no observers were present.

All this might be seen by some as minor defects without substantial impact on the outcome of the elections, were it not that the mission knows very well that the “imperfections” noted in its report are just the visible signs of a massive electoral fraud. Indeed, according to several of its members, the mission found out that the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) had been too efficient in intimidating the voters and fixing the ballot, as it obtained 98.39% of the vote. This observation is based on a very robust sample size of 24.96% of the total vote (which gives a standard error for the smallest sample of under one percent). Realising that this result looked too “Stalinist”, the regime modified the results: officially the RPF obtained 78.76%, and two other parties were credited with 13.13% (PSD) and 7.50% (PL). Although the mission is fully aware of this manipulation, it is not mentioned in the report, which is thus as fake as the elections it pretends to analyse.

The “generosity” of the RPF of course does not in the least diminish the fact that this was a massive and centrally organised fraud. Indeed, it is as if no elections had taken place: it was the RPF that decided its share of the vote and that of the two other parties. There are at least two lessons in this story. The first is that less serious faults in elections elsewhere would lead to strong criticism and possibly sanctions by donors, but that Rwanda –as often in the past– escapes condemnation. The Rwandans of course know that we know, and the message for them is all too clear: impunity remains ensured. This can only encourage the regime to continue pursuing its path of disastrous political governance, which will eventually lead to new massive violence. As the main bilateral donor of budget aid, the UK bears a heavy responsibility for this likelihood.

The second lesson relates to the EU observer mission. It is a useless way of spending taxpayers’ money if what is observed is not reported. As a matter of fact, it is worse than useless: it is counterproductive, as it sends a signal to the Rwandan regime that it need not worry about conducting free, fair and transparent elections in the future.

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 1:39 AM 6 Comments

Rwanda: RPF's Paranoia Over UDF-Inkingi

Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda
By Servillien M. Sebasoni
Spokesperson of RPF secretariat

After one of its metamorphoses, Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda (RDR) has become INKINGI –FDU (or United Democratic Forces). By blending into “cousin” organizations, RDR is playing hide and seeks to acquire some credibility.

The spokesperson of Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary General of the UN, should have gathered enough information before allowing confusion to reign at the UN because of allegations, fabricated by people who fear neither God nor man, against the nomination of General Karake Karenzi as Deputy Commander of the UN-AU Hybrid Force for Darfur.

To refute those allegations, it is necessary to review the origins of the RDR, its political doctrine and its allies.

ORIGINS

Shortly after the Genocide of Tutsis, in 1994 with the help of Operation Turquoise, an “interim government of Rwanda” in exile was set up in Bukavu (DRC, former Zaire).

As for the command of Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), good at its tactics of using people as human shields, took hostage of a huge mass of Rwandan refugees and drove them to the vicinity of Goma (north Kivu) into camps hastily set up by the UNHCR.

In these inhospitable camps, located close to Rwanda’s border for political rather than rational reasons, cholera was going to wreak havoc.

The Secretariat of the International Christian Democrats (IDC) in Brussels was shocked. A “democratic Christian regime” carefully nurtured since the fifties and cared for with outstretched arms ever since, had just sunk into Genocide, the first genocide in Africa.

A political adviser of the IDC, Alain de Brouwer, was sent to Bukavu, with a band of Christian Democratic parliamentarians, to the Rwanda government in exile” in order, so it was said, to organize a kind of court of honour for separating those who had blood on their hands from the others.

The latter were to be prepared for power-sharing negotiations with the RPF which was already in charge in Kigali. This move was never taken. No one knows whether the mission failed or whether the envoy of the IDC found nobody with clean hands.

No one knows either whether the meeting called by UDF-INKINGI (RDR and the like), in Holland on September 22nd, 2007 planned to go through the same process to acquire the credibility it craves so much from the government in Kigali. It will be very difficult because a number of the members of UDF-INKINGI have a clouded history.

The IDC then tried another move: they were going to start rebuilding from the base, since the top was rotten, and create a political movement which would rally together the refugees.

Origin of RDR

RDR was created by François Nzabahimana, a former civil servant and minister in the Habyarimana regime; he was then a refugee in Belgium.

François Nzabahimana got means and encouragement from two Belgian Catholic parties to go and explain his programme in the Rwandan refugee camps in Tanzania and Zaire.

Passing through North Kivu, Nzabahimana enticed the former FAR with his project: at the end of their meeting of April 28-29, 1995, about twenty senior officers asked the interim Rwanda government in exile in Bukavu to dissolve itself and hand over all its files to Nzabahimana.

The latter was thereby going to become the leader of all the refugees and would bargain their return to Rwanda. The movement was then called Rally for the Return and Democracy in Rwanda; it was only later that it took its current name (without the word “Return”), when it became obvious that the refugees were going home in big numbers by various other means.

The leaders of the movement now dreamed to see themselves staying alone in the countries of exile. The topic of “return” had been made irrelevant by the political developments initiated by the government in Kigali: the Constitution of 2003 in its Article 3 stipulated the right of every Rwandan to return to his homeland and exercise the full rights of a citizen.

It was precisely for this reason that the Rwanda Patriotic Front had taken up arms in the first place. It should be noted that Father Serge Desouter of the Congregation of White Fathers, a former missionary in Africa, in Rwanda particularly, supported the movement of Nzabahimana from the start.

In his writings, he still supports its cousin organisations and offshoots. Father Desouter, in effect, denies that there was any genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda; he has written it several times and most explicitly in an article on the website of Minorisa-Inshuti. He still denies it in his current writings. We shall meet him later on in the company of fellow negativists.

ALLIANCES

The RDR apparently likes to change names. In a meeting in Brussels on October 15, 2006, it confederated with three other political formations (FRD, ADR and AJIIR) to create what was called Inkingi/Forces Démocratiques Unifiées (FDU) or United Democratic Forces (UDF).

Democratic Resistance Forces (FRD) was founded in 1995, in Brussels, by Faustin Twagiramungu and Seth Sendashonga. Twagiramungu, who was present at the last meeting of Brussels, seems to have distanced himself and claims to be simply a sympathiser.

Maybe, he was reserving himself to contest for the presidency of the Republic and left the presidency of the party to Eugene Ndahayo.

Ndahayo is known for no other high deed than being the son of his father. He entered politics by inheritance, just like his mentor, Twagiramungu, whom he once served as secretary in MDR, a party his father had entered through “ethnic” solidarity.

Snugly settled in France, he accomplished a very long distance research (8000 km from Rwanda!) on “the RPF system.” He probably instigated his neighbour, Judge Jean Louse Bruguière, to carry out his infamous long distance judicial inquiry on the plane of Habyarimana.

ADR-Isangano (Rwandan Democratic Alliance) is led by Jean-Baptiste Mberabahizi, a veterinary doctor in Dakar.

Once, before 1994, Mberabahizi who is the current Secretary General of Inkingi, made a pilgrimage to the headquarters of the RPF in Mulindi, claiming to be a socialist from the internal opposition to Habyarimana’s regime.

Just like many other members of the internal opposition, he had hoped to use the RPF to gain power and, thereafter, to discard it. He told himself that he would take the RPF bus to Kibungo and get off in Rwamagana to go his own way.

When he realised that he had underestimated the RPF, he chose to go and exercise his opportunism elsewhere.

The AJIIR Group (Action for impartial International Justice in Rwanda) is led by Jean-Marie Vianney Ndagijimana, who served briefly as a minister in the 1994 transitional government.

In the suburbs of Lille, JMV Ndagijimana said blandly to an acquiescent audience: “Who did not lose someone in 1994?”

“Nobody”, replied the audience. “You see then,” he went on, “you should not speak of the Genocide of Tutsis, but of a Rwandan genocide.” Presented in this way, the denial of the Genocide of Tutsis passed unobserved, thanks to the skilfulness of a diplomat.

Sent abroad to provide supplies for his country’s embassies, he preferred stashing away the money for his own use and went to hide in his favourite country, France, where he had represented Habyarimana and MRND.

This very knowledgeable man rightly thought that it was the safest place for souls tormented by Genocide. This clever man managed to entice Carla del Ponte, then Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and persuade her that any death in war is equivalent to a genocide.

Ndagijimana had just founded his “Action for Impartial International Justice in Rwanda (JIIR) where “impartial” means that killing a Hutu in pitched battle and committing genocide is the same thing.

He so convinced the Prosecutor, that she sought judgement in Arusha, against those who had committed Genocide (sponsors of the RDR and today members of Inkingi), and those who had stopped it (the RPF).

JMV Ndagijimana is currently the 2nd Vice President of Inkingi which, after Carla del Ponte, causes confusion in the mind of spokeswoman of the UN Secretary General. This failed diplomat is undoubtedly a breaker of weak hearts.

The central committee of INKINGI consists of the following:

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza (RDR), Chairperson, with the spirit of her father, Joseph Gitera, founder of APROSOMA; Eugene Ndahayo (FRD) is first Vice President, JMV Ndagijimana (AJIIR) second Vice President, while Jean Baptiste Mberabahizi (ADR) is Secretary General of the movement.

Such are the people who provide the UN “disturbing information” questioning the integrity of people called upon to carry out high international functions. Such are the people who would like to claim they have the trust of Rwandans and the credibility of the international community.

DOCTRINE

The programme of UDF-INKINGI movement is to rally together the opposition to the government in Kigali, to define a concerted action plan and undertake active resistance against the government that they call “the RPF regime.” That is a route taken by so many others, who thought they were so smart, but were actually ill informed.

However, at the Brussels meeting in October 2006, the attempt to “rally the opposition” was not entirely successful.

The following either stayed away or were not invited: PDR (Party for Democracy in Rwanda) of Rusesabagina, “still at the embryonic stage” (sic), FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) “because it is divided”(sic), the Intwari Partnership “because some of its members are Tutsis”(sic), as well as Joseph Ndahimana’s monarchic movement which has a dormant existence.

Birth of Minorisa-Inshuti in Spain

During the dismantling of the “refugees’” camps in North Kivu by the new Rwandan army, a group of them moved to Spain with the help of CARITAS.

They were received by Minorisa Association and together they formed the Minorisa-Inshuti association which has a website of the same name, frequently visited by the promoters of denial of the Genocide of Tutsis and by those who uphold the ideology of double genocide in Rwanda.
Minorisa-Inshuti, in effect, denies the Genocide of Tutsis and maintains that genocide of Hutus is taking place in Rwanda even today.

On the same site Desouter argues that what took place in Rwanda in 1994 has been “a misuse of the word genocide.”

It is Minorisa-Inshuti, the cousins of Inkingi from the camps of North-Kivu, which launched the initiative to complain against the Rwanda Patriotic Army (APR) for Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Rwanda and Zaire. Their lawyer is Jordi Palou-Loverdos, who was recently heard on radio in the General Karenzi Karake affair.

When the godsons of the ex-FAR come together to preach justice and fight for human rights, it is a little like the devil becoming a peace-loving monk.

Nothing shows, however, that after so many trials and tribulations and so many changes, those who make up Inkingi today have abandoned (RDR, ex-FAR) their intention to complete the Genocide or gotten rid of those who have blood on hands.

Nor have the others (FRD) abandoned the heritage of MDR-P, which met in Ruhengeri on May 18th, 1960 to order that “the Tutsi colonialist of Ethiopic breed should be thrown into the river to take them home to Ethiopia.

Nor have the others, such as the chairperson of INKINGI, disavowed the ten commandments of her father, Gitera, leader of the Aprosoma, who proclaimed, in September, 1959, the “ten commandments for the Hutus”, which preached a form of ethnic hatred so extreme that, in comparison, “the ten commandments for Bahutu” of Kangura newspaper in December, 1990, seem like the simple wishes of a child taking first communion.

What they have in common is the same bitter hatred, the same determination to spoil for conflict. It is surely not the annual celebration of Kamarampaka, (the referendum of 1961 which brought Aprosoma and Parmehutu to power) a symbol of exclusion, which will put things right.

Source:
The New Times-Kigali

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Rwanda-UN : The UN has failed again Rwandans by the appointment of war crimes suspect Maj. Gen. Karenzi Karake to lead the Darfur Force

The UN should resist US pressure and hand General Karenzi over to justice

Response to allegations by the UDF-Inkingi against Major General Karenzi Karake, joint deputy force commander for the AU-UN-hybrid force (UNAMID)

U.N. Offers To Keep Rwandan In Darfur: Commander Is Charged With 1990s War Crimes

Probe into Rwandan Darfur general

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:38 AM 0 Comments

Rwanda: Exiled Opposition Planning for Presidential Elections

Kigali, September 29 (RNA) - An exiled group of bitter critics to the authorities in Kigali say they will take part in the 2010 presidential elections after the current term of President Paul Kagame ends, RNA reports.

The Unified Democratic Forces - FDU Inkingi said Monday that its political council which met in The Hague (The Netherlands) had ruled that that the group should take part in the elections as a counter measure to the continued dominance of the Rwanda Patriotic Front - RPF.

In its usual stance, often dismissing any progress in Rwanda, the Dutch based group said it would compete "alone or with other political organisations" with a mission to "put in place a democratic multiparty regime", according to a statement signed by its hard-talking head Ms Victoire Ingabire.

Rwandans are just coming out of a parliamentary election contest that saw the ruling RPF and a coalition of six small parties scooping 42 of the 80-member Lower Chamber. Its largely weak two opponents only shared 11 seats between themselves.

In the 2003 Presidential elections, all these parties backed President Paul Kagame - who was running on the RPF ticket - ushering him in with an unassailable landslide at more than 97% of the vote.

His only probable rival, former Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu managed to attract less than 3%, in a vote tally he described as 'unbelievable'. Though out of the country, he has since disappeared from the political scene - not even commenting in the media - a stunt he had been accustomed.

The other candidate Ms. Alivera Mukabaramba decided at the last moment to hand her votes to Mr. Kagame. She is now a Senator from among the Presidential Appointees to the Upper House.

Critics, including the European Union dismissed the polls as having been marred by irregularities - accusations the electoral commission said were baseless.

According to Rwanda's 2002 Constitution, a political organization out of the country is not allowed to take part in any political process - meaning FDU Inkingi would have to register locally.

Presidential terms run for seven years, parliamentarians going for 5 and the senators for 8 years.

It will be the first exiled political grouping to express interest to compete in the polls in the country - as political observers say the playing field is increasingly becoming more open to numerous players. (End)

Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information
(ARI/RNA)
B.P. 453 Kigali-Rwanda
Tel : (250) 587215/514674
Fax : (250) 587216
Email : rna@rwanda1.comwww.rnanews.com

Source:
UPI.com

UPI distributes certain third party submissions from official government news agencies, such as this article. Since UPI does not control the material included in these submissions, UPI does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of the material in such submissions, and UPI does not endorse any of the views or opinions expressed therein.

Related materials:
UDF-Inkingi resolves to take part in the 2010 presidential elections

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:36 AM 0 Comments

Rwanda: Exiled Opposition Forms Coalition

By Administrator
Sunday, 07 December 2008

Kigali: Bitter that their voices are not being heard, Rwandan opposition groups have decided to put together what they have described as a “common structure for consultation” apparently to return ‘democracy and rule of law’ in the country, RNA reports.

The new grouping Rwanda Democratic Opposition or ‘Opposition Démocratique Rwandaise’ – ODR – in the French acronyms formed in Belgium this week brings together the old political faces back into the spotlight.

Among them include Mr. Rusesabagina Paul – the name behind the Hollywood theatrical ‘Hotel Rwanda’ – that has since left him a persona non grata in Rwanda after he started poking at the authorities here using his fame. He is said to be behind the U.S. based PDR Ihumure party but denies any links. Mr. Rusesabagina will be taking on the diplomatic docket for the new coalition.

Former Defense Minister Maj General Habyarimana Emmanuel who fled the country in 2003 – a year after he had been dropped from his position, is also in the fold. Government said then that he was sacked for his "extreme pro-Hutu" views.

General Habyarimana accused security forces of targeting him for elimination. He brings his Partenariat Intwari party into the new coalition. The General will be in charge of communications – essentially meaning he will be the media-man for the group.

Another familiar face is Dr. Higiro Jean Marie Vianney – a former top government official before the Genocide but declined to join the post Genocide political landscape – preferring to leave the country. He has since become a constant critic of the establishment here.

ODR is to have US based academic Dr. Kanyamibwa Félicien as its Secretary General. In 2003, the Rwandan Permanent Representative to the UN Amb Stanislas Kamanzi named him among the 12 individuals heading the FDLR – militias in DR Congo. Dr. Higiro was also on the list and a host of others in different countries.

However, new coalition does not seem to be interested in joining up with Dutch-based FDU-Inkingi which announced recently that it would come to Rwanda to take part in the 2010 presidential elections.

It is clear that the opposition groups may have realized they have no leverage over authorities in Kigali who remain the darling with the international community.

Source:
Rwanda News Agency

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:16 AM 0 Comments

Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

An open letter to President Barack Obama
By Paul Rusesabagina
01/28/2009

Dear Mr. President:

Please allow me, as an African brother, to congratulate you on your historic inauguration last week as the 44th President of the United States of America and the leader of the free world.

It was particularly uplifting to hear you declare your deep compassion for the people of poor nations, pledging “to work alongside them to make their farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds”. My foundation, the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, is at the forefront of this fight, especially in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Unfortunately, incessant wars make it a very challenging mission.

That is why I am humbly compelled to submit to you the following for your urgent and most needed intervention. You are now in a unique position to stave off the next chapter of a looming humanitarian catastrophe in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

1. Last week, a reported 3,000 Tutsi RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) troops crossed into the DRC to start a military campaign with the public purpose of forcefully disarming Hutu rebels of the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda). This comes under a purported peace deal between Rwanda, the DRC and the remaining factions of the CNDP (National Congress for the Defense of the People) Tutsi rebel movement based in easternCongo, which is supported by the Rwandan government. In fact, this is merely the latest step in the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi elites going on since before Rwanda’s independence in 1962, and which led to the genocide in 1994.

2. Friday’s arrest of Laurent Nkunda, indicted war criminal and the notorious leader of the rebel CNDP group in the Congo, was good news for people in the Congo and the world. Problematically, some see this as the end of the conflict in the Congo. In fact, it is simply another move on the chess board by the Rwandan government, who apparently have arrested their former ally when his actions became too embarrassing and brought unwantedinternational attention to the crisis. Nkunda’s arrest absolutely does not end this crisis. In fact, if the Rwandan government has its way this may now turn international attention away from the area just as the Rwandan army, aided by the Congolese, are engaging in another mass attack on Hutu refugees.

3. While there are certainly some armed rebels among the Hutus in eastern Congo, including some who should be tried for their roles in the 1994 genocide, most of the people in the region are innocent refugees. They fled to the Congo during the genocide in 1994, and since then have been joined by those fleeing from Paul Kagame’s Tutsi-elite government in Rwanda. These refugees rightfully fear for their safety if they return home, but are now merely political pawns in eastern Congo. And now these innocents are about to be attacked by the combined might of the Rwandan and Congolese forces. The well armed militias may be the “official” targets, but an enormous number of innocent people will be caught in the middle. And the deaths of these innocents will NOT be an accident.

4. International reports are clear that most militia members currently in the region were not even alive, or were at most children during the genocide in 1994. Unfortunately, given the ongoing political situation in Rwanda, many have since joined the militia as their only hope for a better life. According to the Rwandan government, only Tutsis count as “survivors” of the genocide, even though countless Hutus were also victims in the conflict. Thus if you have two Hutu parents, you cannot receive an education or any other benefits in Rwanda. Combined with other government policies, such as the recent change in official language from French to English, anyone with a Hutu background is an estranged minority at best in Rwanda today.

5. According to a BBC News report on January 21, 2009, “The UN and aid agencies have raised concerns about the threat posed to civilians on the ground” by this military escalation. BBC News also reported that the UN mission in the country (MONUC) peacekeepers and aid workers have been barred by Congolese troops from entering war zones. This is disturbingly reminiscent of a similar operation in 1995 at the Kibeho camp of internally displaced people inside Rwanda, where the RPF Rwandan army butchered more than 4,000 innocent people with UN forces barred from intervening.

6. Your swift executive action and call for peace will carry enormous weight as one of the early major decisions of your Presidency. It can stop the fateful march to confrontation and have an immediate impact in preventing the death of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent Congolese civilians caught in the cross-fire of the two battling armies.

7. Sweden and the Netherlands, two of the four largest sources of foreign aid for Rwanda, have already taken action by cutting off their aid in response to this crisis. There have also been calls for additional international troops to support MONUC, from countries who can actually be neutral and help the innocent civilians in the area. The United States can take a new and highly effective leadership role by supporting these efforts, along with placing pressure on the Rwandan regime.

8. You probably already know that unending wars in the DRC in the last decade have claimed the lives of more than 5 million people, the most in any conflict since WWII. You probably also know that armed violence in the whole Great Lakes region of Africa started in 1990 when current Rwandan President General Paul Kagame made his debut on the international political scene with his RPF rebel army invasion of Rwanda from Uganda. Since then, close to an estimated 10 million people in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC, including 4 Presidents, have been killed as an immediate result of this armed violence. With United States leadership, this insanity can be brought to a peaceful and democratic end. Without it, innocents and combatants will continue to die.

9. Finally, Mr. President, I would like to pledge to you my unconditional allegiance in this fight for peace, especially in the Great Lakes region of Africa. You may already know that I am actively striving to garner support for an internationally instituted TRC – a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Rwanda. While the Rwandan government shows the world museums and claims that the effects of the 1994 genocide are in the past, this is most certainly not the case. While the Rwandan government trumpets an economic miracle, this is not shared by the vast majority of the Rwandan people. Genocide occurred in 1994, along with significant war crimes on both sides of the conflict. The creation of a fair, internationally sanctioned TRC, to investigate ALL sides and bring out the truth, is essential for Rwanda and the Great Lakes region to move forward. Without this, there will never be peace, justice and genuine reconciliation among Rwandans. There will also be no peace for the Congo or in the region.

I am aware of your heavy schedule and the enormous challenges awaiting you as leader of this great country, but at your earliest convenience it would be an immense pleasure and privilege to share with you in person the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation’s initiative for peace and justice.

Mr. President, our brothers and sisters are being massacred unnecessarily in Central Africa and I, for one, cannot remain indifferent.

Please allow me again to pay a vibrant tribute to your historic inauguration as President of the United States of America. May God bless you ever more.

Most respectfully yours,

Paul Rusesabagina
Founder and President
Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation

CC:
- UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon- Permanent Members of the United Nations Security
Council (All)

- US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi- US Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid

- US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton

- US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice

- UN Special Envoy in the Great Lakes Region Olusegun Obasanjo- EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso- AU Commission President Jean Ping

Source:
Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 11:15 AM 1 Comments

MONUC supports an exploratory mission of ex Rwandan RUD/FDLR combatants to their country

Information Note / MONUC
26 january 2009

Kinshasa, DR Congo– Alan Doss, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General in the DRC, welcomes the departure of the RUD/FDLR exploratory mission for Rwanda, which he said “underlines the will of the two Governments to continue to offer a voluntary peaceful option to Rwandan combatants.”

Six combatants, accompanied by five of their dependents (three women and two children), members of the Rassemblement pour l’Unité et la Démocratie (RUD), and a dissenting faction of the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), started, on 23 January 2009, a one week exploratory mission in their country of origin.

It is the result of a sensitizing mission in Kasiki, approximately 200km north of Goma by MONUC’s Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Resettlement and Reintegration (DDRRR) team.

One week earlier, MONUC obtained the agreement of 150 RUD rebels to send representatives on an exploratory mission to their country of origin, on the invitation of the Rwandan government. The RUD members had already disarmed since 31 July 2008.

This joint initiative of the Rwandan and DRC governments, facilitated by MONUC and supported by the international community, aims to encourage all FDLR combatants who have disarmed to voluntarily return via the Rwandan DDRRR programme.

The group then crossed the border into Rwanda, accompanied by a MONUC DDRRR delegation and representatives of the Joint Nairobi follow up Working Group and the International Facilitation team, as well as Congolese and Rwandan government officials. The delegation was accomodated in Rubavu (formerly Gisenyi) by the President of the Rwandan Commission of demobilization and reintegration.

“More than ever, at the present time, FDLR combatants and other rebel factions must know that the DDRRR option remains fully open, and that MONUC temas are ready to accomodate those who wish to voluntarily and peacefully disarm,” said MONUC DDRRR chief Bruno Donat.

The President of the Rwandan Commission of Demobilization and Rehabilitation, Jean Sayinzoga, stressed that his government remained ready to accomodate and reinsert Rwandan combatants who choose the DDRRR option.

MONUC is pleased with this positive development.

Source:
MONUC
UN Mission in DR Congo

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 1:18 AM 0 Comments

Children aged 9 ‘trained to killin Congo war’

By Mike Corder, Netherlands

CHILDREN snatched from Congo streets were trained to kill and forced to fight in a brutal ethnic war, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said yesterday as the tribunal opened its historic first trial.

Children as young as nine, ripped from their families, were told “their gun was father and mother and would feed and clothe them,” Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the three-judge panel in the trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga.

Lubanga’s trial has been hailed as a legal landmark by human rights activists, because it is the first international criminal prosecution to focus solely on child soldiers and the first to include the participation of witnesses.

It also marks the coming of age for the International Criminal Court, six years after it was set up. Prosecutors plan to call 34 witnesses, including nine former child soldiers, and hope to wrap up their case in a few months.

Lubanga, wearing a dark suit and red tie, showed no emotion as his lawyer Catherine Mabille said he pleaded not guilty to using children under age 15 as soldiers in the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots political party in 2002-03.

Lubanga’s militia “recruited, trained and used hundreds of young children to kill, pillage and rape. The children still suffer the consequences of Lubanga’s crimes,” Moreno-Ocampo said. He said he would seek a sentence close to the maximum, which could be either 30 years or life, depending on the severity of his crimes.

Moreno-Ocampo showed judges video of Lubanga addressing recruits — including young men and children dressed in military fatigues or T-shirts and shorts — at a training camp. Girls were particularly vulnerable, Moreno-Ocampo said. “As soon as the girls’ breasts started to grow, Thomas Lubanga’s commanders could select them as their wives,” he said. “Wives” is the wrong word.

They were sexual slaves.” Lubanga, a 48-year-old university graduate, claims he was a patriot fighting to prevent rebels and foreign fighters from plundering the vast mineral wealth of Congo’s eastern Ituri region. His lawyer was due to give her opening statement today.

The United Nations estimates that up to 250,000 child soldiers still fight in more than a dozen countries. Param-Preet Singh of Human Rights Watch welcomed the trial, but urged prosecutors to pursue more senior suspects. Lubanga was arrested by Congolese authorities in 2005 and flown to The Hague a year later.

He is one of four suspects in the court’s custody — all Congolese. Other judges at the court are close to deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide in Darfur province.

Lubanga’s trial was originally slated to begin last June but was held up by a dispute between judges and prosecutors over confidential evidence that raised concerns Lubanga might be unable to get a fair trial.

It took months of wrangling before judges and defence lawyers were granted access to the evidence. Ninety-three victims are being represented by eight lawyers and can apply for reparations.

“What my clients expect from the court is, first of all, recognition of the harm they suffered,” said lawyer Joseph Keta.

The trial is a key test of the court’s ability to hold efficient trials where victim participation could stretch out proceedings.

Judges must take control of the courtroom “so this doesn’t become an unruly trial that lasts indefinitely,” said Singh.

Source:
Irish Examiner

Related aricles:
Congo militia leader is first case at new International Criminal Court
Lubanga denies war crimes at ICC
Lubanga defence team addresses permanent war tribunal for first time

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:40 AM 0 Comments

Rebel major prefers death to ‘slavery’ in Rwanda

By AFP

Photo:
Children walk through a transit camp for soldiers of the FDLR

MIRIKI, DR Congo: In a reed hut camp he has called home for 10 years, a Rwandan Hutu rebel major waited defiantly to face government troops determined to drive his militia out of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

“It’s better to die here than to return as a slave to Rwanda,” said Kafa Bimanos, a military leader with the Democratic Force for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebel movement.

“Let them come! With their devil, their major power. We are ready to react, we are not afraid!” said the baby-faced major, sporting a thin moustache.

His militia set up camp a decade ago in the village of Miriki, which now lies in the line of fire as a joint Congolese-Rwandan military operation makes way for the region’s remote valleys.

“We don’t want war, we want dialogue,” said Bimanos, whose Abacunguzi Combatant Forces (FOCA) is reputed to be FDLR’s most radical faction.


Rebels nonchalantly kick about the mud-hut village wearing their characteristic black rubber boots and army fatigues, as AK-47s dangle at their sides.


The rebel major claims his fighters do not want to endanger the lives of villagers, calling them “our close friends”, yet in the same breath says bloodshed is inevitable.“But if Rwandan troops attack us, we will shoot back.


We cannot leave without fighting,” said Bimanos, clad in a spotless olive green uniform.“Some of us will die, as well as many innocent Congolese,” he said.Residents of the mud hut village, forced to live alongside the FDLR troops, are visibly worried about lies around the corner.

Thirty kilometres southeast, the joint force has yet to move in on the fief of FDLR rebels, some of whom took refuge in eastern DR Congo after participating in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis and moderate Hutus.


The UN estimates that Kigali’s Tutsi-dominated government sent at least 5,000 Rwandan soldiers into Nord-Kivu province last week as part of an offensive that marked a striking turnaround in bilateral relations with Kinshasa.

Kigali had previously been accused of supporting ethnic Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s campaign against the Kinshasa government, while the Rwandans in turn accused the Congolese officials of supporting the Hutu rebels.

Bimanos was “not surprised” by the Congolese government’s move to join an operation against the FDLR rebels, while he called the Rwandan operation a “pretext”.“They will start with us, but after a few weeks, their cannons will turn towards Kinshasa,” said Bimanos, insisting his men would not be vanquished.“In 2002, the entire Rwandan army was in Congo.

They never succeeded in crushing us or repatriating us,” he said.“This time, it will be the same thing.”Bimanos, a former teacher now in his early 30s, said he took part in the “resistance” in his country and decided to take up arms in DR Congo after being “wrongly imprisoned and mistreated”.

“Since 1996, the enemy has been attacking us and wants to annihilate us,” said Bimanos.“We are fighting against racial segregation, social inequality, arbitrary arrests,” he said, adding that his rebels would not disarm.“It’s not possible. Those (Hutus) who went back to Rwanda are mistreated,” he said.

Source:
Gulf Times

Related articles:
While World Watches Washington, Rwandan Troops Enter Congo
Rwandan refugees in Congo on the brink of extermination
Rwandan troops to help disarm Hutu rebels
Rwandan operation "not welcomed"

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:27 AM 0 Comments

Interview with FDU-UDF chairwoman Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza 18 - 01- 2009

By Olivier Nyirubugara

Link to the interview:
http://vimeo.com/2954847

The next presidential elections in Rwanda are about two years away but the opposition in exile is already getting ready for them.

The Unified Democratic Forces (UDF) have already announced their participation and are even optimistic.

Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza heads that organization and has been presented by Dutch and Belgian media as UDF candidate.

That is not the case, at least for the time being, says Ingabire in an interview that I am pleased to present in several parts covering the following topics:

1. Ingabire’s biography,

2. democracy and governance in Rwanda,

3. genocide and ethnicity,

4. UDF’s relations with other organisations,

5. their diplomatic relations, including Ingabire’s meeting with Barack Obama

Source:
olny.nl on Vimeo

Related articles:
Nederlandse huismoeder leidt oppositie Rwanda http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/article2942920.ece?cid=rss

Victoire in 2010 Rwandan Elections
http://www.nkb-journal.com/spip.php?article684

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 11:25 PM 0 Comments

Goma/Bukavu: Testimony of a direct eye witness, January 1997

Source: Minorisa-Inshuti

SUMMARY OF TESTIMONY

1. The majority of Rwandan refugees did not go back to Rwanda: 450,000 at most returned back to their homeland, compared to 1,103,000 Rwandan refugees. Most of the returnees come from Mugunga and Kibumba camps and the head count is between 300,000 and 400,000 refugees. Given the strategic nature of their repatriation, the media from all over the world were invited to film this "massive repatriation" and to force the cancellation of the international intervention force, intervention which had been very difficult to obtain.

2. Rwandan refugees are not fleeing combats: they are fleeing massacres. The operation that is taking place in Zaire has all the ingredients of a new genocide. Large mass graves are found all around Goma. Women, children lie together with elderly and men, hands attached on their back, a bullet in their head. According to estimates in Goma, several hundreds of thousands of refugees already found death since the beginning of the conflict, either because of being massacred, or by starvation or exhaustion. Stories of massive massacres are coming from Masisi and Walikale in particular. For the Tutsi rebels, Rwandan refugees are a military target.

3. Rwandan refugees are not the only ones targeted by these massacres. Zairean Hutu populations are also targeted. Everywhere in eastern Zaire, but particularly in Goma, disappearances are multiplying, and every influential person of Hutu background is enlisted on a "red list". In all the Masisi region, massive massacres of civilians are taking place.

INTRODUCTION

On Monday January 26, 1997, two unknowns came at my house near Goma. One of them was in military uniform and was carrying an automatic gun; the other was wearing a civilian uniform, but was carrying a revolver under his shirt, a fire arm usually reserved to higher rank officers. They requested to see me in person by my name, but my guard was smart enough to say that I was absent. They said they would be back an hour later.

There was no time to waste, I assembled a few items in rush, and managed to run away, through an ICRC vehicle that carried me across the border to Gisenyi. I just escaped an attempt murder. Three spanish World Doctors were less lucky in Ruhengeri on January 19, 97; they lost their lives.

Like myself, they probably knew more than they should, they had seen with their very eyes a lot, or at least somebody thought they had seen a lot...

The events succinctly related in this chronicle are factual information that I have observed personnally. Given the sensitive nature of these facts, the reader will understand that they can only be revealed under the protection of anonymity. I hope everybody will understand that lives are in danger.

1- HOW MANY RWANDAN REFUGEES ARE STILL PRESENT IN ZAIRE?

Since the beginning of the conflict, there have been a war in numbers concerning the number of refugees still present in Zaire. The "rebels" state since the beginning that the quasi-totality of refugees returned back home; the only people who failed to return are the "Interahamwe" and the "ex-FAR" and the genociders in Zaire (it is therefore legitimate to chase them); Kigali states that they are more than 500,000 to have crossed the border.

This war of numbers is strategic: one one hand, it is aimed at preventing any foreign intervention in favor of the remaining refugees (why intervene if there are no more refugees in Zaire?); one the other hand, it is aimed at attracting the maximum of foreign aid on Kigali, in favor of "reconstruction"...

What is really the number of refugees still present in Zaire? Let us simply use the official numbers of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

a. Refugees of Bukavu region: 316,000 persons distributed among different camps: INERA, KASHUSHA, NYANGEZI, PANZI, KALEHE, KATANA, BIRAVA, IDJWI NORD (Bugarula) et SUD (Kashofu);

b- Refugees from Goma region: 715,991 persons scattered in different camps: MUGUNGA\LAC VERT, KIBUMBA, KATALE, other camps (MINOVA, SAKE,...)

c- Refugees from Uvira region: 180,144 persons Rwandans: 71,828 Burundians: 117,316
TOTAL GENERAL (Uvira, Bukavu, Goma): 1,221,483.
Let us say: 1,220,000 refugees (Rwandans and Burundians), present in Zaire in October 1996, at the beginning of the war.

Not knowing the whereabouts of 117,000 Burundian refugees, I will retain 1,103,000 Rwandan refugees.

Of 1,103,000 Rwandan refugees, how many did cross the border back to Rwanda?
Since the beginning of the war, there have been only one massive movement of refugees back to Rwanda: the return home from Mugunga refugee camp, located at 7 KM (4.5 miles) from Goma.
Mugunga had become the "world largest refugee camp"; I visited Mugunga camp one day before Goma takeover, Wednesday October 30. I saw the arrival of refugees who were fleeing from Kibumba camp. These refugee camps had been shelled the previous day from Rwanda, by the "rebels".

I saw many woundeds in a relatively serious condition, some hit by shotguns, others scraped by bomb fragments. It would be impossible to accurately state their number, which was increasing as more refugees were coming, the wounded being sent in different treatment centers of the camp. I saw around 100 wounded refugees, in only one center that I managed to visit. It would be difficult to know how many people were killed in Kibumba camp.

In all, there were 500,000 persons at the Mugunga site, originating from Mugunga camp itself, and Lac Vert (300,000), and from Kibumba camp (197,000). The refugees who crossed the border on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday November 15, 16 and 17, 1996 came from this group.
I saw a relatively important column of refugees on Friday 15, and in Goma, we estimate that 50,000 persons crossed the border that day. The next day, I saw an extraordinary crowd of refugees on the same road, all day long. That Saturday, on November 16, 200,000 persons probably crossed the border. On Sunday 17, the flow of refugees was again less important, similar to Friday's: we estimate that 50,000 persons crossed the border that day.

In all, according to our estimates, between 300 and 350,000 refugees returned back home in three days, which is a lot of people, compared to 500,000 who were living in Mugunga refugee camp a few days earlier. This estimate is comparable to the ones produced by a well-known medical NGO.

At this point, four observations must be made:

1. I did not see anybody cross the border but modest families, families of peasants. I did not see any of the intellectual families that I knew in Mugunga. Didn't these educated families walk toward Masisi instead?

2. X, Y, and Z, school teachers in Goma, who fled along with their families toward Matanda, on the Masisi road, during Goma takeover, told me that they saw, "in great numbers", refugees walking across Matanda, from Mugunga camp toward Masisi.

3. The operation "Mugunga Liberation" took place in front of world cameras, as the last dispositions for the then imminent international intervention were being prepared. Journalists, up until then very limited in their action and movement (they were routinely given visas only for 2 to 4 hours) were given free ride to report on this special event, visibly with the goal to impress the international public opinion.

The "massive return of refugees" did in fact cancel out the military intervention.
4. Within the gigantic crowd that crossed back to Rwanda, there were very few people from Katale and Kahindo camps. They only appeared toward the end of the cortege on Sunday, Nov. 17, 96. They were visibly very much weakened by a very long trip and they were vulnerable. For example, we picked up a young woman who did not weigh more than 30 KG (90 lb.), clearly very exhausted. She died a couple of days later.

The following weeks, very small groups of refugees would be escorted at the border posts of Bukavu (Ruzizi) and Goma ("Grande Barriere") by the High Commission for Refugees (HCR). They were mainly women, children, and elderly. In all, 80,000 refugees were counted.

BRIEFLY, 450,000 REFUGEES AT MOST CROSSED THE BORDER BACK TO RWANDA, FROM A TOTAL OF 1,103,000,000 PERSONS. 653,000 REFUGEES DID NOT GO BACK TO RWANDA, AND THEY ARE THEREFORE IN ZAIRE.

IT APPEARS THAT BETWEEN 200 AND 250,000 REFUGEES HAVE FINALLY MADE IT TO THE CAMPS OF TINGI-TINGI, AMISI, and SHABUNDA.


AT LEAST 400,000 RWANDAN REFUGEES ARE MISSING (WITHOUT COUNTING 117,000 BURUNDIANS): WHAT DID HAPPEN TO THEM?

2- ARE THE RWANDAN REFUGEES FLEEING FIGHTINGS OR MASSACRES?

If it was just for fighting, Rwandan refugees wouldn't have any more reason to flee than Zairian populations: Rwandan refugees are fleeing massacres that are specifically targeting them from "Tutsis rebels".

FOR TUTSIS "REBELS", HUTU REFUGEES CONSTITUTE A MILITARY TARGET

The "rebels" dialectic goes like this: refugees who did not return back to Rwanda are "genociders". It is obvious that those involved in the 1994 atrocities could not go back to Rwanda at any cost, but many innocents could not either (according to the UNHCR estimates, 7% of the refugee population are believed to have been involved in killings). The intellectuals, for example, the staff of the administration, property owners, successful business men, particularly those coming from cities, were afraid to return.

Finally, many people who wished to return were not able to do so because they were taken in hostage by the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR), and were being used as human shield. Psychological (fear) as well as physical (threat) pressure were common in refugee camps.
Calling "genocider" every Hutu refugee is aimed to legitimize in the eyes of the international opinion, but also in the eyes of "rebel" troops, the use of force, even total annihilation of these refugees. During the genocide in 1994, the Interahamwe had adopted the word "Inyenzi" (coachroaches) to designate Tutsi to kill them the conscience light.

The great number of mass graves attest the systematic intent to annihilate refugees, and the fact that they have been considered as a military target since the beginning of the war. These mass graves are everywhere, but they are always carefully hidden and located in area of difficult access. It is obviously extremely dangerous to be found by "rebels" in area where mass graves are located: it means immediate execution.

I saw near Mugunga, at one hour walking distance in the North, three mass graves of around 10, 12 and 30 bodies each. Bodies included men, women, sometimes holding babies on their back, children and elderly. Each one of them had a bullet in the head, including the babies.
In Kibumba, I saw at the deep end of the camp, on the Rwandan border, in the small wood which serve as the border line, metric piles of skeletons. There was three such sites, containing fifty (50) to one hundred (100) skeletons each. There too, the bodies had one bullet in the head. A methodical search would surely allow the discovery of other sites, but who would risk his life in such a dangerous place?

On November 26, in the forest North of Sake, on the pathway which goes down the hill, after five days of walk from Kahindo camp, (on the Rutshuru road), I saw a dying man, abandoned on makeshift stretcher. This man had deep wounds of machete all around his head. Through one open wound, one could see his brain. We asked him who did that to him, and he said, "it is the Tall Men"; we asked him where was his family; and he answered that his wife and all his children had been killed with machetes a few days earlier in the forest, by the "rebels", who wanted to prevent them from reaching Mugunga. His brothers, very weak and exhausted, could not carry his strecther no more, and abandoned him near the road. Farther North, we found the remaining of a camp that appeared to have been abandoned in hurry. A pregnant woman was lying on the ground, a bullet in the head. She must have been unable to run away.

There were bodies scattered all the way along the pathway that leads to Kahindo and Katale camps. On December 24, two "rebels" kidnaped two young Zairian Hutus from village R. They came back two days later, after being severely tortured. They have now became the guides for between 70 and 100 Tutsi "rebels" (one pick-up truck and one big transport troop vehicle) heavily armed.

In one incident, they took them on the site of three little camps hidden in the forest. Result: "Waliwauwa wotw, wale wakimbizi, wote kabis, hakuna hata mmoja aliyepona" (they killed all of them, really all, those refugees, not even one survived), the "guide" told me when he came back.
It was probably three little camps of around 100 persons each. Many refugees from Katale are still hidden in the Virunga park forest, blocked at the entry and the exit by the mass graves and the military operations.

One of those operations took place on January 30, 1996. Two hundreds fifty (250) "rebels" soldiers were brought at Katale camp, at the entry of the forest, to have it cleaned up.
It is difficult to estimate the number of refugees still hidden there, but there are more than 300.000 refugees between Katale and Kahindo. It is estimated that between 30 and 80.000 among them have been able to reach Rwanda.

Many die in the forest, where they have been feeding themselves for months now with plants and drinking rain water, when it is raining. We met, for example, a young lady absolutely exhausted and dehydrated. She could make it no more, and despite our efforts, she died in our hands.

Farther North, under a cabin made of branches, lays the body of a woman, dead of exhaustion, while giving birth. On her feet, the body of a four years old child lays, no doubt hers, dead of loneliness.

Helping those people is considered by the "rebels" as helping the enemy, an active support to the Interahamwe. It has been suggested that the refugees who have stayed in the Zairian forests are after all in their natural milieu. I can testify, for having been there tens of times, that it is false.
The Zairian forests of Goma are established on a volcanic land, where one can not find any source of water, nor animals, nor any kind of food. To condemn those refugees to stay in the forests is to condemn them to death. Mr. Boutros-Ghali has talked of "genocide by hunger".

On December 17, 1996, in the weekly confidential meeting of the responsible of the NGOs, EUB, the local association that is in charge of collecting the dead on the main roads (Goma/Sake; Goma/Rutshuru) announced that it had already collected 6537 dead bodies, among them 2743 for the sole town of Goma. EUB has not the mandate of searching for bodies in the bush.
On the road Kibumba/Rutshuru, after crossing the little forest after Munigi, one is extremely distressed (it is then necessary to close all the windows) by a terrible smell of dead bodies in decomposition.

Days and weeks pass , but the smell doesn't disappear, as if the corpses were "renewed" as the time passes. That road is the only one that goes to Katale. The refugees who take the risk to take that road by foot to go back to Rwanda are diverted to that forest and executed. Soldiers are continually patrolling at that place.


A tutsi "rebel "did not try to hide it; on a road barrage at Rumangabo; he told to me on December 19: "those refugees are a pest, when I meet them in the bushes, I have to eliminate them". The same day, on December 19, on the road from Tongo, heading to Kalengera, I saw a small pick-up truck carrying refugees, around twenty of them, with four armed "rebels". The refugees were shouting and crying. Our car was following theirs. At the little junction from where the old road goes to right, now cut off by the lava flow, the pick-up went right, to the one-way street.

We took the left, heading toward the asphalted road Rutshuru-Goma: those people were going to the discreet place of their execution; it was about 18 o'clock.

At Katale camp, at the level of the river at the left side, after about 30 minutes of walk past the camp, at the entry of the bush on the West side, I saw many large mass graves.
The first contained about 200 persons, all killed with an automatic riffle. The second, a bit further, bigger than the first one, with 300 bodies in it, some rolled in sheeting (for the transport?), followed by 2 more others of the same importance.

Many women and children, all of them shot in the head. Men, killed with a bullet in the head also, have their arms attached on the back. Our guide, a refugee, assures us that two other mass graves were located not far from there, and that much larger mass graves, with "thousands" of dead bodies, were located even further at many hours of walk, in the forest. He offered to lead us there. Unfortunately, we had to refuse, for obvious security reasons.

On the lava plain behind Katale and Kahindo camps, heading to the West, in the opposite direction to the Rwanda side, one can see thousands of skeletons, mowed down with a machine gun while they were fleeing, and covered of sheeting that have been burnt in the attempt to make those remainings disappear.

I met at the hospital a refugee who was being treated from six impacts of bullets in the back. That man had been left for dead among dead bodies; he had been able to scramble up to a NGO car and had been evacuated to Goma. He told me that tutsi "rebels" have rounded his "quarter" in Katale camp; they separated men from women, orderedthem to lay down face on the ground, and opened fire with machine guns. How many died, he can not tell, but a quarter in the camps was home to two (2) to three (3) thousand refugees. This happened in the beginning of November.

I met, again at Mugunga, a man was keeping a little diary of his wandering since the attack on Katale camp to that of Mugunga. That testimony has also been collected by a well known medical NGO.

The man tells how they have left Katale under the nourished fire of heavy and light machines guns, how they fled to the forest in the panic. The forest, where again the "rebels" were waiting for them; back to Katale, the "rebels" again, and this up to three times before his refugee group was flown over by a small reconnaissance plane.

We also found North of Mugunga, at about 5 hours walking distance on the road heading in the North to Katale camp, in the forest behind the Nyiragongo volcano, a small camp of about fifty refugees. There were among them 17 persons who survived the massacres at Kahindo camp.
The 3500 persons who made up their quarter were rounded by soldiers. At first, they acted friendly, and offered to escort the refugees back to Rwanda. They indeed escorted them, but lead them in the opposite direction to Rwanda. As soon as they reached the bush, the "rebels" opened fire, killing them all, except those 17 refugees, who were now scared to death, and were not willing to go back in Rwanda.

Among those people was a little boy who had lost his 7 brothers and his parents in that killing.
In Tongo, I met a farmer who told me that one month before all this happened the tutsi soldiers were already there; they were dressed in blue, wearing coats and rubber boots. They paid dollars to the pesants to dig deep graves, well hidden in the forest.

In a Goma dispensary I met a twelve-year-old girl with very severe burns in half of her body. She was coming from Bukavu. In her camp there had been an attack: she and her mother were wrapped in a sheeting which was then burnt. Her mother died.

On December 24 I met a Rwandan boy from the Idjwi camps in Goma. The refugees from the Bugarula camp scaped in a canoe towards the Nyabibwe bank. It was undoubtedly too late: the "rebels" were already there, waiting for them. They drowned, with their own hands, his parents and brothers. He was the only one who could scape, swimming to Goma. He was then coming back to Rwanda.

We helped the refugees who came from Bukavu and Sake and who were going to Goma. We and the official organizations that were there were surprised by the fact that among the refugees there only were women, children and old people. Two days later, in Nyabibwe, I was told that the rebels selected the refugees before letting them come back to the forest. They killed all the boys who were ten or older. Only women and old people could make it to the forest. Channel Africa confirmed it in it January 23 edition: only 30% of the refugees who returned to Rwanda were men (old men).

In the Bukavu region, in Burhale, at the beginning of November, father Jean-Claude, a young priest ordained in August, was killed when he was trying to intervene between the rebels and a group of refugees, mainly families that had fled from the Kashusha camp towards Ngweshe. The Red Cross found there 600 dead, but another priest who was accompanying him and who could hide in a banana plantation states that more than 2000 people were exterminated. Later, the farmers were required to bury in improvised graves the maximum number of bodies possible before the Red Cross arrived. there was the same problem in Kibeho, Rwanda.

We could multiply the examples, but what we wanted is to tell only the facts we have witnessed. We have never been able to reach the Masisi or the Walikale area, because the rebels block the access to these areas to any foreigner. The hearsay evidence we get confirms the aim to exterminate every refugee.

The most numerous massacres have taken place in the Walikale area, where, according to a credible witness, "dozens of thousands of refugees were eliminated".
We are surprised by the similarity between these experiences and witnesses. The same methods have been used, north and south, in a systematic and planned way. It is an african way of solving it once and for all.

The geopolitic evolution of the situation in the Great Lakes area forces the observer to wonder about the existence of a big political drawing; for example, the fact that Major Buyoya got hold of the Government in Burundi in July. Genocide isn't, perhaps, used by extremists from only one group.

Some initiatives of the HCR in the last months, before the Uvira, Bukavu, Goma and Rutshuru attacks (gathering of refugees in very few places, systematic registration in the camps...) make us wonder if this agency of the United Nations was informed of the preparation of an attack coming from Rwanda or if it has been manipulated from Kigali to facilitate the work.

Anyway, the day after the seizure of Goma, all the material, specially the informatic, was emptied from the HCR Goma, in BDGL. The lists of all the refugees were sent to Gisenyi and with them the confidential reports that these refugees had made in order to get some food.
On December, 20, 1996, I spoke to a leading executive from HCR-Goma and I reproached him their not reporting these indiscriminate killings. He answered me: "we know perfectly that dozens of thousands of refugees are murdered in the forest, but, what can we do?. We are not an army. It is the intervening forces who must act"... But why this silence?
Dozens of thousands of refugees have been,murdered:

IT IS ESTIMATED THAT ABOUT 500.000 REFUGEES HAVE DIED IN GOMA. MOST OF THEM WERE MASSACRED BUT OTHERS STARVED TO DEATH, DIED OF EXHAUSTATION, ILLNESSES OR THIRST.

All this can explain why there are so few refugees in Tingi-Tingi. With the inexorable advance of the "rebel" troops towards Lubutu it is almost sure that it will be soon necessary to add to this list the 200000 refugees of Shabunba, alrady conquered now, and Tingi-Tingi.

We can foresee that the official organizations will run away. The camp, probably surrounded for some days, will be "cleaned" according to Mr Kabila's expression. Perhaps some women will be able to come back to Kigali. Will the international community finally solve the painful problem of the genociders?

It is certainly difficult because the genociders, especially the Interhamwe, ex-Far and ex-presidential guards, to which most of the massacres are attributed, are young and strong; they can run fast and know the guerrilla methods. In case of an attack they can easily vanish in the forest. A lot of them are still near the Rwandan border, hidden in the forest; this favours the existence of a disorganized, desperate guerrilla. That doesn't mean that guerrilla is less cruel. In fact,it could survive indefinitely, because it will be very difficult, almost impossible, to completely eradicate it.

I saw the famous Interhamwe on December, 27, 1996. They had laid an ambush in the Rwandan border and I could scape miraculously unhurt; It seemed to me they were very strong and in healthy condition. They lived on the raids made in Rwanda and the looting of Zairian towns nearby. There are no controls there.

The massacred refugees are not the murderers: they are families who scape following the rhythm of their children. They go in groups because they think it is much safer.

3- ZAIRIAN HUTU POPULATIONS ARE THREATENED

As soon as they entered the town of Goma, Friday November 01, 1996 soldiers started hunting down Zairian soldiers and Hutu refugees. Any refugee who was found was shot down. Every refugee was labeled "Interahamwe".
This schema has often become caricatural. A Zairian Hutu family I know very well got itself rid of an eight-year old child very rapidly. This family had adopted him at age six during the Rwandan exodus of 1994. January 06, two soldiers came and threatened the family because it had given shelter to an "Interahamwe".

Very quickly, it is also the hunt of Zairian Hutu that began. These were not "Interahamwe" but "Magrivi". Magrivi is a Hutu organization similar to other organizations other tribes founded after the National Conference. Those organizations defended tribal ideas, especially recently with rising tensions and the Rwandan war.

Kidnaping increased particularly in the Goma area and in the whole northern Kivu in general where the Hutu community is strong with estimates ranging from 500 to 700,000 people.
In Goma, every educated person or person with some wealth or anybody with some influence is directly targeted. Rafael M. is for instance hunted down because he has contacts in Europe where he went to school. His contacts makes him an influential person. He must disappear.

Because he cannot be found, it is his wife who is targeted. The military are hunting her down. Friends are hiding her. For how long? The old R. is also hunted down. He was director of a school in Birambizo in Masisi. He is a Hutu. Armed soldiers went to his house three times during the day. In the night of December 17, they came back again. They were seven well armed. They knocked at the door of his house at midnight and called him by his name. He did not answer and had his children stay silent. Disappointed by this , the military went to his neighbor's house. His neighbor was a nineteen-year old Hutu, owner of a shop. They looted his shop and sent a bullet into his head. R. has moved elsewhere but he lives in fear. What I am saying happened in the district of Mabanga.

M. is a Hutu businessman. His tool for his work is his Toyota pick up. In the afternoon of January 12, soldiers went to his house. They wanted to buy his car and offered him $2,000.00. M. refused because on one hand the price was ridiculously low, on the other without a car M. is with out work. The same day, at eight in the evening, they came back and forced into his house. M. had enough time to escape from a back door. However, they found his twenty-year-old son in the kitchen and summarily executed him.

Many people are kidnaped at night, others in broad daylight. In general people disappear for good. However some come back from their detention center after having been beaten up and told to shut up. Some are kidnaped, released, kidnaped again. Then, they disappear. Witnesses who live near the borders report a large number of cars crossing into Rwanda at night when borders are supposed to be closed. Also a number of Hutu are directly killed in Zaire, probably on Rutshuru road, in the bushes of Munigi, on both sides of the road.

In Goma and Rutshuru, the kidnaping have really reached alarming proportions in recent weeks. Even Bukavu is not spared. The last Hutus who are still in hiding are hunted down, be they Zairian or Rwandan, but also Zairians who for instance worked for refugees in an NGO. It is estimated that 4 to 5 persons disappear every night in Bukavu, compared to 40 per week in Goma.

The hunt of Hutu is carried out in cities but it is particularly in Masisi that the man hunt is massive. In fact the Hutu community of Masisi is very important, easily identified because it lives in villages of the same clan. Finally, during the unfortunate war in Masisi, stirred up since the Rwandan exodus of 1994, this population sometimes carried out violent activities against Tutsi and Hunde that led to the departure of all Tutsi who lived in Masisi and sometimes the massacres of Tutsi. (Mokoto for example, April 96).

"Rebels" have therefore carried out systematic and violent massacres at a large scale. In Jomba for example, they entered from Rwanda and killed every person they met. Very often they only met mothers and their children because youths had fled. It is these mothers who were executed, as was the case for the mother and the little sister of R. This wave of executions lasted about three weeks at the beginning of November.

Even the parish Minister, an influential person, known for his moderate opinions was kidnaped with four nuns who run the high school of Jomba, and were taken towards Uganda (customs office of Bunagana). They were never seen again.

In the village of Chanzu, Jomba Parish, people were called to a political meeting where the agenda of the new government was going to to be discussed. The meeting started, they closed the doors and killed using a small hoe (Agafuni in Rwandese). Every person was struck once on the front. Remaining villagers counted 207 people. Bodies were tossed, some into mass grave, others into toilets, the head first.

Similar scenarios were repeated in all the sectors of Masisi, Matanda, Nyakariba, Birambizo, Katwe, Bibwe, Rutshuru, Rugari.


In Birambizo, a Hutu fighter injured a"rebel" in early January. Soldiers sealed off the village, called the population to the village square in front of a church. They separated parents from their children. Then, "Rebels" killed all the children in front of their parents, and tossed the bodies behind the church. To retrieve the body and bury it, one had to pay $3.00. The majority of parents are subsistence farmers. They did not have that money.

In many places, massacres went along with the profanity of the sacred.. Thus in Nyakiriba two young Hutu priests were assassinated on December 24, 1996. Days after "rebels" were seen walking around wearing the priests' ceremonial (mass service) cloths. A similar account comes from Bukavu, Panzi. In Jomba, the tabernacle was riddled with bullets.

Everywhere church leaders and their families were targeted because they are influential in society. Thus a nun lost 18 family members in Matanda, and 15 in Nyakariba. Their names are on the top of the lists being circulated in Goma. The existence of those lists was confirmed to me by individuals associated with the new regime in Goma during a confidential conversation on January 23.

This ethnic cleansing is not just settling scores as it is the case in all war when the victor wipes out his old adversaries. Hutu are systematically targeted, moderates as well as extremists. The evidence of this systematic hunt of Hutu is the existence of lists of name. My name was in one of them.

4 - HOW TO EXPLAIN THE SILENCE OF THE MEDIA

The reader might wonder how, given the extreme gravity of the elements reported here, the international press has not much reported about this situation.
There are many reasons to that:

1. The press has considered as over the question of refugees when they went back to Rwanda in large numbers from Mugunga, on November 15th, 16th, and 17th.

Thereafter, there were almost no journalist in Goma and Bukavu. The media attention hadshifted to Tanzania, where another massive return of Rwandan refugees was being prepared(engineered).

The competition between different media is at the origin of the inflation in the numbers ofrefugees returnees that were reported... ones fancier than others.

For example, in the evening of November 16, G. Perez, Radio France International (RFI), reported that 400,000 refugees werewaiting downtown in the city of Goma to be able to cross to Rwanda the following day onSaturday November 16th; that was twice the population of Goma! I was there; I estimate that there were no more than 25,000.

2. The " rebels" consider, and they are right, that the war has to be done on the media front the same way it is done on the battle ground, because it is in the West (Europe, North America) where decisive alliances for the victory on the ground are made.

The accesses to the war zones or any other sensitive zone are strictly controlled. For example,on Friday November 1st, all the journalists and organisms present in Goma have been evacuated from UNHCR premises where they had gathered, by Major David of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), while at the same time the fighting was raging in Goma.

There were only a few expatriates remaining in Goma; the town was strewn with corpses (more than 2,500 have been counted). The journalists were all at the border, prevented from entering, until all the corpses were buried, which took four days. Thereafter, they wereallowed to enter the city, CNN at the front line, and were queuing up to take pictures one by oneof a decomposing corpse, with a military uniform, forgotten (?) at the Signers traffic circle.

The road to Mugunga has been closed until the " liberation "of the camp, where, as it has been seen, all the cameras from all over the world have been invited.

The road to Rutshuru has been closed to all Westerners (Zairian could pass) until December 6, 1996. That road leads to the camps of Kibumba, Katale and Kahindo (where 500,000refugees had been living). No one knows what happened to the refugees in the camps of Katale and Kahindo, all we know is that these camps were heavily bombarded. Whatdid happen of all of those refugees? No body seems to be interested to know.

Not a single journalist has been able to go beyond Sake, and visit Masisi for example, or Walikale, even though everybody knows that the refugees who fled west-ward took those roadson their way to Kisangani.

Untill now, journalists are retransmitting press releases from the military top command,broadcasted without any verification, for they don't know better. This has already been seenduring the Golf war. A war in the 20th century has at first to be mediatic. The " rebels "distribute to the editorial staffs very well prepared press releases, with all the statistics alreadyestablished.

3. The eyewitnesses have to keep quiet; or can only speak under the cover of anonymity.
If they speak, they risk death or expulsion, or they put in danger their staff working on the field.

As for the journalists themselves, the ones who search their information outside the military topcommand circle, they are closely monitored, feel unsafe, and they do not hesitate to submit their articles to the new authorities for reaction before publication. The very simple presence of journalists put in great danger eyewitnesses of these situations.

When they interview someone inpublic or in a crowd, in general, someone else in this crowd is in charge of keeping an eye onwhat is being said: people know that and they prefer to say nothing. It is then difficult to have crucial and reliable information from the population.

All these reasons make very difficult to have access to objective information, and impose to the eyewitness to be very cautious, despite the high gravity of the situation. As T. Ben Jelloum said "If you speak, you die, if you keep silent, you die, then speak and die".

During contacts obtained at a very high political level, in Europe, I was surprised to see that, in general, decision makers are very well informed of the situation, also known in their chancelleries and embassies, even if they do not know the exact extent.

Could one believe General Baril when he declared, in mid-December, at Sake, that not one single Rwandan refugee was remaining in Zaire, because after having spent a half-day on the road leading to Masisi, in a vehicle of a " rebel " officer, he had not met one single refugee?

This declaration, which sealed off the end of the multinational force, will have been the cause of the deaths of thousands among them. Could he ignore that? Diplomatic calculations prevent people from doing anything, the same way, paradoxically, the silence of the media does.

In conclusion, everybody knows the truth, but everybody keeps silent. And the refugees continue to die, women and children first.

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 1:17 AM 0 Comments