THE CONGO PANORAMA
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s voice in the English-speaking world

In this Spring 2004 issue:

The 1994 GENOCIDE IN RWANDA:
10 YEARS ON…
WHY DID THIS KILLING HAPPEN?

HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH ANOTHER GENOCIDE NOW BEING PERPETRATED IN THE NEIGHBOURING DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO?

Antoine Roger Lokongo, a London-based Congolese journalist confronts the two nightmares

£10 to support the Congo Solidarity Campaign (CSC)





Contacts:
www.congopanorama.org
 Lokongo@hotmail.com
Tel: 07984 227 381 (mobile)
INTRODUCTION

On 10 January 2004, the UN General Assembly declared the 7th of April of each year an “International Day of Remembrance of the victims of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda”, so that what happened in April 1994 does not happen again in Rwanda or anywhere else in the world. Yes, on 7 April 1994, began one of the worst genocides in African history. It took place in the “the country of a thousands hills” as Rwanda is otherwise known. In a few weeks, 800,000 Tutsis, Hutus from the south of the country, political opposition leaders and intellectuals were massacred; and two millions more fled from their country.

The fact that the genocide took place in a strikingly deafening silence on the a part of the most powerful countries of this world beggar belief, especially when it has now been established that they were all aware of the plot that was being hatched by its would-be perpetrators. The detailed preparation of the crime, the assassination that triggered the genocide, the shooting-down on 6 April 1994 of the plane that was carrying the then president of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntwagiramira, the helplessness of the Blue Helmets… nothing of all these moved the world to intervene and stop the genocide from happening.

It is only when millions of refugees crossed into eastern Congo (killers and civilians alike) and the controversial French intervention code named “Opération Turquoise” took place, that the international opinion woke up from its slumber and started asking questions. Now that we know what happened, it is important also to know why it happened, since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda foreshadowed the war of aggression to which the Democratic Republic of Congo has been subjected since 2 August 1998, the massacre of more than 5 million Congolese (4.7 millions according to latest report by the American Human Rights organisation, International Rescue Committee) and the looting of Congo’a natural and mineral resources by the invading troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, backed by well-known superpowers and western multinationals and the complicity of the so-called Congolese rebels.

WHY THE GENOCIDE TOOK PLACE

But why the genocide in Rwanda took place can be explained in one sentence: it was a kind of “retour des vaincus de l’histoire”, “the return of the defeated”.

Since 1959, the history of Rwanda has been perceived by the Hutu as the history of the “ Hutu majority” oppressed by the “feudal Tutsi minority”. That is why the struggle for independence and the establishment of the Republic under the leadership of the Hutus had been presented as a “legitimate revenge by yesterday’s oppressed, the Hutus that is. In the eyes of the Tutsis on the other hand, the last decades constitute the history of an unprecedented marginalisation that they have been subjected to, the 1994 genocide being its culminating point. Some Rwandan Tutsi groups in the Diaspora interpreted the history of Rwanda as a “history of power lost”. That is why after joining the army in Uganda and helping Yoweri Museveni’s NRM to come to power, as well as Frelimo in Mozambique, young Tutsis under the leadership of Fred Rugyema (he died in mysterious circumstances) and General Paul Kagame (trained in America and who became president in 2000) formed the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) that would take power from the Hutus with the backing of Uganda - after the Somali debacle, American troops gifted all the weapons to Uganda but with a reason. There is nothing for nothing – albeit on the wake of a genocide.
Charles Onana, a Paris-based Cameroonian investigative journalist and author provoked a big storm in 2001 when he revealed in his book, “Les Sécrèts du Génocide Rwandais – Enquête sur les Mystères d’un Président”, meaning “The Secrets of the Rwandan genocide, investigations on the Mysteries of a President”, that, the actual president of Rwanda, General Paul Kagame was the key instigator in the shooting down of the plane of the plane that was carrying the then president of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntwagiramira, thus unleashing the killing spree which has carefully been planned following the advance of the RPF from Uganda considered by the then Hutu regime as an invasion.

A report by the French special anti-terrorist police division confirmed it on 30 January 2004. The UN kept the black box.
200,000 Tutsi were thereafter massacred in cold blood. The RPF asked the UN to leave, arguing that it would have the situation under control. Belgium withdrew its Blue Helmets (after 10 were killed) with the tacit agreement of the Americans. Because of this RPF’s blunder 600,000 were killed in the countryside where the genocidists were still in charge. Onana told how the RPF signed the Arusha peace accord with Habyarimana’s government just in order to buy time. The RPF wanted to take power by force no matter how many people would die as a result because it was not sure it would win the elections, the Tutsis being the minority. Kagame who sacrificed so many Tutsis to take power, sued Onana for defamation on 6 March 2002 but lost the case a the French High Court.

HOW THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FAILED RWANDA

The genocide took place under the nose of the UN peace-keeping troops deployed under the UN Mission known by its French acronym as MINUAR (Mission des Nations Unies pour l’Assistance au Rwanda), charged to monitor the implementation of the Arusha peace process. It was led by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, a bruised and tormented man ever since. In October 2003, the Canadian General who was forced into retirement “for health reasons”, but who believes that it was because “he would not stop telling the truth about the tragedy in Rwanda”, published a book titled “J’ai serré la main du diable”, meaning, “Shake hands with the devil”.
He was also a witness at the International Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania. In his account, detailed both in his book and in his deposition, General Dallaire told how he was almost driven to suicide for failing to stop what he called the “most appalling, heartbreaking tragedy he has ever helplessly witnessed in his life and that the world has ever known since the holocaust” from taking place. He explained that the genocide took place because there was no political will to act, neither on the part of the superpopwers and the UN system (brief the international community), nor the government of Rwanda at the time and the RPF rebel movement. He spared no one.

“The Rwandan army led by its chief of staff, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora,” he said, “armed and trained thousands of militiamen, those squadrons of death, otherwise known as the “Interahamwe” (those who kill together) during the months that preceded the genocide. The training of “those capable of killing a thousand Tutsis every twenty minutes”, took place in a military camp reserved for the training of the para-military troops under the supervision of the late president Juvenal Habyarima’s special presidential guards. Roméo Dallaire said that he received death threats from Colonel Bagosora whom he met 25-30 times after President Habyarimana’s death and the assassination by government soldiers of prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimina ‘for meddling in Rwanda’s internal affairs’”.

General Dallaire castigated his hierarchical superiors at the UN, where the department for peace-keeping operations was led by the current UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. He confirmed that Kofi Annan responded negatively to his request that he formulated for his attention in January 1994, to dismantle all arms and munitions dumps disseminated all over the country, arguing that that was not part of MINUAR’s mission. At the same time the killing machine was put to work, meticulously spearheaded by its organisers.
“We wasted two and half months for nothing,” said Dallaire.

“I implored the UN a thousands of times to send me more troops, equipement and a go-ahead for preventing et stopping the massacres from happening. I called, I sent faxes and dispatches to Kofi Annan to inform the international community of nations of the extensiveness of the tragedy and to stir up a jump. In vain! That is why I categorically refused to leave Rwanda, when the UN, at the hey days of the genocide, decided to dissolve my mission!.”

“The RPF rebel movement, now in power,” he said, “did not have the well-being of the people as its first priority, but a long-time hatched plan that would allow the Tutsis to return from exile and control power.”

“I could see that the RPF wanted to take control of the whole country, and was not necessarily ready to establish an ethnically balanced government.”
Indeed to what extent some RPF elements took part in the atrocities? There will be no true peace in the Great Lake Region of Central Africa if we do not answer that question, because there is no peace without justice.
In August 2003, Carla del Ponte, was removed from her post as prosecutor for the Rwanda genocide court. The Swiss judge blamed her dismissal on the country’s president, Paul Kagame. She also revealed that - in a last-ditch effort to remain in the job - she had offered to step down from the trial of the former Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, Ms Del Ponte also criticised Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, describing his position on the matter as “inflexible”.
She was quoted as saying that she had fallen foul of President Kagame because she insisted on tackling not only the 1994 genocide but also the alleged war crimes of his followers in the former rebel army that put an end to the killings. In her first detailed account of events leading up to her dismissal, Ms Del Ponte described a showdown last year in which, she said, Mr Kagame screamed at her “as if he was giving me an order”, telling her that it was up to the government to investigate the military and up to her to investigate the genocide.
“This work of yours is creating political problems for me,” she quoted him as saying. “You are going to destabilise the country this way.”
Speaking in Kigali,
Ms Del Ponte, said: “Probably, if I had given in - if I had accepted his orders - I would still be here.” The UN Security Council voted unanimously to relieve the Swiss- born lawyer of her duties in Africa while giving her a second four-year term as chief prosecutor at the Hague-based tribunal investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. The decision was taken despite a personal appeal by Ms Del Ponte at the end of July. She told La Repubblica she had set off to New York “furious” over leaks that had begun to undermine her authority.

“I had grasped what the Rwandans were up to, but I wanted to explain to the secretary general that it was not the right moment to split the two tribunals. I had no doubt that Kofi Annan would back me as he had done on other occasions - spurring me ahead. Instead, everything had already been decided.”
She said the head of the secretary general’s legal office told her a majority of security council members wanted to divide the two posts.
“Annan dug in behind that attitude and I realised that there was no room for negotiation,” said Ms Del Ponte. She asked him if she could choose between the Hague and Kigali. “The secretary general was inflexible. [He said:] ‘No. The trial against Milosevic is too important to be left in the hands of someone else’.”
General Roméo Dallaire reserved the most stinging criticism to the United States, Britain, France and Belgium, Rwanda’s former colonial power, because they had all the power and means to stop the genocide from happening, but they let it happen. That is the accusation that General Roméo Dallaire levelled against them.
In an interview with the French daily, Le Monde, published 10 December 2003, General Dallaire said: “The mission failed. We failed the people of Rwanda. Instead of peace, a war took place. There were massacres, there was a genocide. And the world never lifted a finger to prevent the horror that could be foreseen. Worse, this world, led by the United States of America, The United Kingdom and France, facilitated and encouraged the genocide. Never will these countries be able to wash off the blood of Rwandans that still sully their hands.”
“America, traumatised by its experience in 1993 in Somalia failed to understand the gravity of the situation. The UN left me with just a hundred or so troops to face a genocide that could have been prevented.
But at the end of the day, the UN can do nothing. The UN has no troops. The UN was under the yoke of the US and France, who, for diverse reasons, did everything to torpedo my mission and ended up helping the “génocidaires” [that is the perpetrators of the genocide].”

With a tone of anger in his voice, General Dallaire added: “Genocide, that terrible word! Why did it take so long for the world to use it in the case of Rwanda? And why all these contortions, all this arm-twisting on the part of the Clinton Administration to make sure the word is avoided in reports and coverage, or for delaying its use? How many people have to die before a tragedy to deserves the description of a genocide…?”

WHAT IS THE NEW POST-GENOCIDE RWANDA LIKE?

Ten years on, the West which has been wrestling with its conscience and seeking ways how to wash it, has taken firm and long-term commitments to help Rwanda, rebuild itself, albeit on the ashes of the genocide. The new regime led by General Paul Kagame (elected with 99.9% last year!) has made of security its priority of priorities. Millions of refugees have been repatriated, the reconstruction of the State apparatus and the administration has taken place, faster than was expected. Kigali the capital harbours new avenues, along which new villas (surprisingly and ironically nicknamed by some as “Vive le génocide!” – Long live the genocide!) have been built by the wealthiest, the dignitaries of the new regime, that is. Business is thriving. A new Institute of Science, Technology and Management has even been launched, children go to school and ordinary people can be seen cultivating the land again.
But don’t be deceived by appearance. Fear still reigns supreme in the new Rwanda post-genocide. The regime is obsessed with security as the notorious “Military Security Department” has been suspected of acts of kidnapping and killing. The press is gagged and many journalists either languish in jail or in exile. Many dignitaries within the ranks of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in power have defected and exiled themselves for fear for their lives, including former prime minister Celestin Rwigema, a Hutu, accused of being a “genocidaire” after working for four years with the new regime. The former president Pasteur Bizimungu (a Hutu) is languishing in jail for having created another party other than the RPF. Under President Kagame’s “Imidugu” policy or the“Politics of villagisation”, most of the villagers have been forced to built their huts along the main roads so that the notorious Local Defense Forces will keep a vigilant eye on them and to wield off infiltrators. The countryside is therefore deserted and Catholic missions there forced to close.
President Kagame is quoted as having said: “I can’t oblige Rwandans, Hutu and Tutsi to love each other. All I can do is guarantee the security of each and all.”
Survivors of the genocide feel abandoned to themselves. Ordinary Rwandans say their leaders all returned from exile do not identify with them. In fact the new regime keeps a grudge against them, accusing them of having collaborated with the former Hutu regime. Nevertheless, Kagame cannot “sell” the genocide to draw moral credit out of it anymore.

WHAT WAS AT STAKE IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: KABILA WAS NOT “THE MAN TO DO BUSINESS WITH”

Rwanda’s biggest neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo is paying a heavy price for Kagame’s obsession with security at all costs. When the Hutu militia responsible for the genocide regrouped and retrained in refugees camps in eastern Congo – they have crossed into Congo with the whole military arsenal and all the money that the country had - in order to retake power in Rwanda, with the tacit support of Mobutu Sese Seko, they posed a big threat to the new power in Rwanda. In fact, they began to mount successful incursion from eastern Congo into Rwanda. Kigali insisted that those camps be dismantled. There was no doubt about this. However, Rwandan troops killed every living beings in camps in eastern Congo, and later would put the blame on Kabila’shoulders when they turned against him. Kabila with the military support of Rwanda and Uganda overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo’s now deceased long time brutal and kleptocratic dictator. Kabila strategically kept quiet at the time. Even Ngandu Kisase, Kabila’s most trusted Congolese top military officer was killed in an ambush by Rwandans. Rwandan officers were commanding the rebellion. James Kabarebe, a Rwandan Tutsi was even Congo’s chief of staff. Bizima Karaha, another Congolese Tutsi was Kabila’s first minister of foreign affairs who secretly undermined Kabila’s autority.
This time, international public opinion was very sensitive to Kigali’s case. In fact right after the RPF took power in Rwanda, the first thing Britain did was to open an embassy in Kigali, for the first time in Rwanda’s history. There was a “geo-political change in the region. Congo’s neighbours in the east (Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi) and Angola decided to do away with Mobutu who was harbouring rebel movements against them.

The Cold War was over and America had already decided that Mobutu’s time was up! And Laurent Désiré Kabila, a long-time guerilla fighter against Mobutu’s dictatorial and kleptocratic regime took advantage of it. Together with other Congolese opposition movement, he formed the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL). Britain and America readied their military and logistic support to Kabila, and in less than a year Mobutu’s regime was overthrown on 17 May 1997. As a reminder from February to March 1997, Angolan troops, not Ugandans and Rwandans were Kabila’s most trusted allies and did most of the job. Kabila had 47,000 men and there were 3,000 Rwandan and Ugandan commandants. With 3,000 how could they liberate Congo, a huge country as big as the whole of Western Europe? The people everywhere supported Kabila’s war of liberation. Kabila was the only one who has been combating Mobutu all these years from his stronghold of Fizi-Baraka in the east of Congo near the Burundian border. He enjoyed the support of Bidandi, a staunch Rwandan panafricanist and revolutionary. So Kabila could not be anti-Tutsi whatsoever.
There was a hidden agenda with Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda who are overpopulated and very poor. Congo instead is very rich. Western multinationals lend their financial support, vied contracts and sharpened their appetite for a “new scramble for Congo, so rich in minerals”. That was the first war of liberation. Soon a another “war of correction” would be launched on 2 August 1998, when Kabila proved to be a man “they could not do business with”.
Why did Laurent Désiré Kabila reign only for 44 months after overthrowing Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo’s long time brutal and kleptocratic dictator ? That is because as soon as he settled in Kinshasa, Kabila – like his mentor Patrice Lumumba - started to articulate clearly the aspirations of his people and summoned them to take their own destiny into their own hands politically and economically. This was perceived by his former allies (Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, US, Britain who helped him come to power) as a covert declaration of independence. This Kabila’s nationalist stance immediately clashed with their interests, as he eventually reviewed all the contracts he had signed with American, Canadian and South African mineral companies when he was a rebel. He demanded that they pay up front for decades of future profits which they would make, because he needed money urgently for the reconstruction of basic social and transport infrastructures. He refused to pay back all the debts Mobutu had contracted with the IMF and the World Bank, arguing that he did not see any work that that money had done in Congo. The stakes were then raised!

THIS IS A WAR OF AGGRESSION

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been ravaged by nearly four years of what the Western media has dubbed ‘the first African World War’, in which Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola have supported the government of the assassinated President Laurent Désiré Kabila in Kinshasa - now led by his son and successor General Major Joseph Kabila - against Congolese rebel forces backed by Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and elements of Angola’s Unita rebel movement.
Six years into the war launched on 2 August 1998, and it is very frustrating to still notice that the same media has not shifted from this “distorted perception” of the war, despite the fact that - as time has shown and events have proved - this war is an aggression against the Democratic Republic of Congo and its people by a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition, logistically supported and financed by well known superpowers and multinationals.
Several toothless Security Council resolutions – especially resolutions 1304 (2000) and 1341 (2001) - have condemned the aggression and have recommended that Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda unconditionally withdraw their troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo, half of which they occupy, very much against international law. The resolutions recognised Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola as Congo’s allies in the war, legitimately invited by the government in Kinshasa, just as Britain had allies during World War II.

A UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo on 12 April 2001 confirmed that the reasons evoked by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi for maintaining their troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are an alibi because they are instead systematically looting Congo’s fauna and flora, natural and mineral resources, including the highly sought coltan (colombo tantalite) which they illegally mine and smuggle from occupied territories (see www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/diamond/index.htm).

Amnesty International and the International Rescue Committee (USA), Oxfam International have confirmed a genocide of more than 5 million Congolese by the invading troops. Often people are buried alive, shot dead or chopped with machetes, their bodies thrown into rivers or forced down the latrines. Women are raped, their sexual organs mutilated or shot at by Rwandan , Ugandan and Burundian troops who are all HIV positive. 60% of the women are now infected with HIV in eastern Congo.

The toll is certainly higher and worse than what happened in Kosovo and Rwanda itself. Isn’t it? If it goes unreported, it is because stakeholders have managed to suppress the story and to protect the perpetrators from accountability. 5 million is like the whole Malawi or Palestinian population wiped out. Could the holocaust have happened without anybody knowing about it? Most likely. The silent genocide in Congo has proved it.

The most atrocious incident took place on 15-22 November 1999 in Mwenga district, in the localities of Bulunzi, Bogombe and Ngando, where 15 women, suspected of supporting the Mayi Mayi, that is Congolese combatants resisting against occupation, were buried alive by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) soldiers, after their bodies were smeared with hot pepper. Mary Robinson, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights promised an investigation which never came.

Three times and under the nose of UN peace keepers, the armies of Rwanda and Uganda have fought each other over diamond in the city of Kisangani, leaving 3,000 Congolese dead, the city destroyed, and this at 1,500 km away from their borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo which they claim to be securing from rebel incursions! More than 500 people were either decapitated, disembowelled and thrown into the Congo river or buried in mass grave by Rwandan troops and their Congolese RCD rebel allies following a carefully stage-managed and faked mutiny against the Rwandan presence in Kisangani, last year.
In the north-eastern part, Ugandan-masterminded ethnic clashes between the Hema (pastoralists) and the Lendu (hunters and cultivators) and their respective rebel allies have claimed 600,000 lives as a result of mass murder, rape, and villages raised to the ground since last April in the area of Bunia alone. It is a pretext used by Uganda to prolong its presence in this area rich in rare minerals and the recently discovered oil in Lake Albert. Tony Buckingham’s Oil Heritage is ready to put its hand on these massive oil reserves. Hence the link with Uganda and the ethnic cleansing going on. Somalian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Sudanese thugs (including John Garang’s men are used for the dirty job. The French Opération Artemis in Bunia did not make so much a difference and all the weapons were given to Museveni when the French troops left.

If you recall or if you have read The Heart of Darkness (the darkness that surround the civilising enterprises of the so-called civilisers), Congo was the site of the 20th century’s first genocide because this is where King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into his own personal fiefdom. More than 10 million Congolese died then of forced labour, some had their hands cut off if they did not harvest enough wild rubber needed for the manufacture of the tire which had just been invented; or ivory which was needed for church organs key boards in Europe. More than 10 millions I say! and it is simply never discussed. It is a non-event! That was the first silent genocide against the Congolese people. The first atomic bomb was made out of Uranium from Congo. And today Congolese people are again being slaughtered for gold, diamond, timber, copper, cobalt and especially coltan (short for colombo tantalite), a strategic mineral needed for the manufacture of mobile phones, computer chips, satellites, in fact everything high-tech very much part of Western life style today.

Indeed this is how Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi have managed to develop in the last few years and meet their obligations under IMF and World Bank guidelines: by plundering eastern Congo. Kagame confirmed that the war of invasion was auto-financing itself. Actually Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian capitals are crawling with arms merchants and Western prospectors seeking to cash in on mineral resources which are being extracted from Congo.
Meanwhile these regimes –especially Uganda – are being held up as models of African neo-liberal development – when in reality it is all based on the plunder of Eastern Congo and they have also been made into “welfare states” because 60% of their national budget is subsidised from “abroad”. They are in fact used by Britain and America as “client states” in the Great Lakes region to cement their hegemony there.

At the same time, a great deal has been made of the fact that Zimbabwean companies, which support Kabila against the Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian invasion, have been given rights to work the diamond mines. The point is the Zimbabwean companies were given those rights through the Congolese government. Joseph Kabila is after all an actual Head of State. Whereas Rwandans, Ugandans and Burundians and the Western firms that are profiting immensely from the plunder of the region, don’t have any authorisation to do that from Kinshasa, which is the capital of Congo.

THE SO-CALLED CONGOLESE REBELS

Congolese rebels are traitors. The people rightly deride them as puppets and stooge (by the way the rebellion was launched one month after the invasion by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi to give it some sort of Congolese legitimacy. The “divide and rule” policy is really at work here.

HOW MANY REBEL FACTIONS ARE THERE?

1.First there is the main RCD (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie) rebel movement, a front for Rwandan occupation, almost made up of disgrantled Mobutuists who lost power to Kabila and Tutsi Banyamulenge of Rwandan origin whom Rwanda wanted to be in command. RCD-Goma or rather RCD-Rwanda is responsible for the destruction on a massive scale of Congo’s socio-economic infrastructure. Whole factories are dismounted and taken to Rwanda or Uganda, such as the sugar cane factory in Kiliba, South Kivu, which has been transferred to Jinja, Uganda with the approval of the (Congolese?) RCD rebel movement. RCD’s first president was Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, a Congolese. He was removed and replaced by Dr Emile Ilunga, another Congolese. He was also removed and replaced by Adolphe Onosumba, another Congolese (Onosumba’s sister is married to arms trafficker and businessman Sanjivan Ruprah, a Kenyan of Indian origin, chased away from Belgium for Mafia activities and then after 11 September, his links with the Talibans and Al-Qaida came to light). He too has been finally removed and replaced by Azarias Ruberwa, a Tutsi Munyamulenge. That suits Kigali now. No wonder why the women of Kinshasa on 8.03.2004 (Women’s Day) stripped off in front of him – a sign of curse in our tradition – to protest against all the rapes, tortures and massacres Congolese women in the east are still being subjected to by Rwandan and Congolese RCD rebel troops.

Historically, the Banyamulenge fled recurring infighting and massacres between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda during the colonial time and settled in eastern Congo. Our people welcomed them and allowed them to settle in a hilly area of Eastern Congo, called Mulenge. Hence, they have ever since been referred too as Banyamulenge. The Belgian colonial power also needed some of them to work in mines and plantations. Rwandan troops used them as a pretext to invade Congo, in order to rescue the Banyamulenge who allegedly faced a threat of genocide coming from Congolese natives per se. Mobutu indiscriminately gave some of them a blanket nationality, when one of them Bisengimana was director of his cabinet. But when Kabila came to power, he decided that this being a sensitive matter, it should only be decided by people in a referendum and enshrined in constitution. Now they don’t want to go to Rwanda after discovering that the current government in Rwanda used them for its own purposes. I hear that fierce fighting is going on between Banyamulenge and Rwandan troops who want to suppress a mutiny of Masunzu, a Munyamulenge commander who defected from the RCD rebel movement, causing many deaths. Some say the fighting is carefully stage-managed by Rwandan occupation troops to justify their presence in eastern Congo. However, Banyamulenge feel that their future is compromised because Congolese will no longer accept them after they have been used against the Congolese population and they don’t want to go back to Rwanda.
But some of them crossed into Rwanda last year, just to go and vote for Kagame and came back to Congo. It is also suspected that whites farmers chased away from Zimbabwe, even some Israeli wanting to quit the much violence prone Middle East are eyeing eastern Congo for settlement. And for that native Congolese through this war of aggression have to be wiped out!

NOW BACK TO THE REBELS

When Wamba dia Wamba was removed because he fell from grace from the Rwandans, he went to seek the support of Uganda and created the RCD/ML and choose Kisangani as his base. That is why Rwandans and Ugandans fought three times in Kisangani. It was rivalry and it was for the control of diamonds.

2. MLC – A creation of Uganda –led by Jean Pierre Bemba, Mobutu’s son in law and a so-called millionaire business man. No! He and his father Bemba Saolona embezzled during Mobutu’s time.
Jean Pierre Bemba’s forces are well known for looting the same area under their control, such as Butembo recently. Congonline.com reported that Ugandans have massacred many Congolese in Gemena, Bemba’s own birth town and cutting people’s hands to instill fear in them because their labour is needed in cutting and transporting timbers! TV5, a French channel showed it recently, in a shocking documentary. Bemba like his father-in-law Mobutu, has resumed, albeit in the 21st century, with to King Leopold II’s practices at the end of the 19th century. Worse than that, the UN Security Council has condemned acts of cannibalism committed by Bemba against the pygmies in Ituri province. The blood on his hand is too thick to weigh.


3. RCD-Bunia –another Uganda-backed rebel movement, led By Mbusa Nyamwisi, a former Director general the Kilomoto Gold mine sold to George Bush Senior by Mobutu.
When Kabila came to power, he awarded the contract to Ashanti Gold Fields of Ghana (now a British company listed in the London Stock Exchange), believing that Africans should trade among themselves first. Last year, Rwandan troops closed on the mine, met with a fierce resistance from the minors who killed 400 Rwandan troops. There are other little groups such as RCD/N, led by Roger Lumbala and still masterminded by Uganda, UPC, led by Thomas Lubanga and masterminded by Rwanda, FAPC, led by Jerome Kwakavu and masterminded by Uganda.

Not having a genuine political, economic, and social policies that can appeal to the Congolese people, the various rebel factions have transformed themselves into Mafia networks (or simply the relays of international ones) whose major aims are the control and exploitation of their country’s natural and mineral resources and the tightening up of their stronghold or the territories under their control in order to safeguard those economic interests.
As a concrete example of the intrusion of the international Mafia in the Congolese imbroglio, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, signed a $16 millions loan deal (over one year deposit) with the First International Bank of Grenada, the owner of which is a wanted man in America, on the 15th June 1999 in Kisangani. The loan was supposed to be reimbursed over five years by the Congolese government (in case he Wamba dia Wamba became President) of course with interests.

There are mass graves everywhere in the territories formerly under the control of these so-called rebels. One was discovered on 10.03.2004 in Kindu, a city under the control of RCD, just near its troops’headquarters. And imagine, these “genocidists” are the people President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is advocating that they be given political power in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These criminals should rather be hanged for crimes against humanity against their own people!

THE HIDDEN HANDS BEHIND THE WAR OF AGRESSION

BRITAIN AND AMERICA

Britain and America want to redraw the economic map of Africa through the so-called economic liberalisation which knows no borders, using African stooges. The Labour Government under Tony Blair gives Museveni and Kagame £60 millions a year respectively – guess where the money goes- to wage war, massacre and loot in Congo; and send the booties to Britain. This is according to Channel Four’s documentarty last year titled “Congo’s Killing Fields”.
Britain and America are the major suppliers of arms to Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi for use throughout the Great Lakes Region (central Africa). According to a report by Wayne Madsen, an American Investigative journalist, presented on 17 May 2001, before the American Congressional subcommitee on international operations and the committee on international relations and human rights, the CIA is funding Rwandan and Ugandan military operations throughout the Great Lakes Region.

“It is very disturbing,” he said, “ to see that the world’s greatest democracy is concocting deadly conflicts in Africa at the same time pretending to be a peace-maker. An American Mobile Training Team (MTT) is grooming regional insurgents, he revealed . “American troops,” he said, are stationed in Uganda at Entebbe old airport, Nakasonga, Kabamba, Ssingo, Nkozi, Gulu, Ssese Islands, and at Bugesera in Rwanda and other mobile locations.”
The MTT is unfortunately made up of Black American marines. Anybody who remembers the slave trade and colonialism knows that economic exploitation of Africa was its main objective. Imperialists set up political administrators, just like Mobutu, Museveni and Kagame in modern day Africa, for the purpose of defending their foreign economic agenda.
But what is absurd and disturbing is the fact that a son of Africa like the late Ron Brown –Suzan Rice, former US Secretary of State for African Affairs was very pro-Kagame and pro-Museveni - then US Secretary of State for Commerce under Clinton, and who died in rather mysterious circumstances in a plane crash in Croatia, dared to say at an official diner in Kampala, Uganda, albeit without thinking: “For many years African business has been dominated by Europeans while America got only 17% of the market. As the only superpower left, we are now determined to reverse that trend and take the lion’s share.”

How can a son of Africa, although proud of his American citizenship, envy European exploitation of Africa to the point of wishing that America does the same to Africa?
I do not believe that an American Jew would be that insensitive and careless with his remarks about Israel, no matter how glamourous a job he or she was offered. But Even Abraham Lincoln, himself one of the greatest Americans there have ever been, said: “As I would not like to be a slave, I shall not keep a slave.”

Contrary to Ron Brown’ thinking, Muhammad Ali, actually before fighting George Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974, before the “Rumble in the Jungle” told crowds: “I wish Patrice Lumumba was here to watch me in action”. That is why Mobutu did not come to the stadium in person. Mobutu who owed everything to Lumumba (thanks to Lumumba, he climbed the social ladder), was put to power by Western powers after betraying Lumumba, the first democratically elected Congolese leader ever, whom he had arrested, executed in the most savage way you can think of (his body and that of his companions Mpolo and Okito were chopped and doused in a barrel of acid).
US Black Marines were fighting in Congo in 1998 on the side of Rwandans and Ugandans. They were based at Idjui Island on Lake Kivu, manning communications equipments for Rwandan and Ugandan troops, intercepting all the communication of the Congolese chief of staff with his troops from Kinshasa and giving Rwandan and Ugandan troops satellite images of the movement of Kabila’s troops from two warships which Clinton sent at the port of Banana, west of Congo on the Atlantic coast.

ISRAEL

That leads me to the role Israel is playing in the war of aggression against Congolese people and the support it is giving to Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. When attending the first anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Ephraim Zavroff, the famous Nazi hunter and director of the Simon-Wiesenthal Centre in Tel-Aviv in 1995, said to Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda: "Your tragedy is like ours."
Israeli military experts have since helped Paul Kagame a Tutsi, in his endeavour to track down those who allegedly committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and inspired him in his “Imidugu” policy, or the regrouping of Hutus in communal villages in trouble spots in Rwanda, following the model of Kibboutz”
Like Israel and Palestine, Paul Kagame’s Rwanda has made of security his major objective, independent of what his neighbour Congo would suffer out of it. Kivu is his South-Lebanon and his Golan Heights, most particularly the “security zone” which extends from Bukavu to Goma, a buffer zone quasi-annexed today by a regime which feels more and more squeezed within its boundaries and therefore needs to extends the living space of its people.

SOUTH AFRICA

The South African government is very hypocritical about the situation in Congo. South Africa has been not only arming and sending mercenaries to Rwanda and Uganda-backed Congolese rebels but also hold secret talks with other Congolese political opposition leaders, particularly to Etienne Tshisekedi. It had invested $100 million with Rwanda and awaits returns, according to Colette Breackman, a Belgian journalist with Le Soir, in her Book, “Les Nouveaux Prédateurs”. President Thabo Mbeki openly said: “We have lost control over Kabila [including in the battlefield]. Museveni admitted having bought guns from South Africa but “only for use in policing”. However, the French daily, La Libération, revealed on 25 January 2000, that 55% of Uganda’s military budget is financed by money coming in as “development aid” from abroad.

South Africa’s double game was eventually denounced by Colonel Jean Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, the leader of the Hutu rebel movement in Burundi. Colonel Ndayikengurukiye decided to continue to stay away from the proposed peace talks, despite the appointment of Mr Mandela as peace mediator.
Colonel Ndayikengurukiye said his group had evidence that Mr Mandela’s administration had helped the current government in Bujumbura with arms despite a regional embargo in place. That is why Mandela has so far not succeeded in his mediation in Burundi.

Can you believe that Mandela, the “wise man of Africa” was the first to oppose Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola’s intervention in Congo?
Do you know that most of the big multinationals are now invading Africa, “where the market is still potentially huge” masquerading as Vodafone South Africa, Eskom South Africa, Siemens South Africa and so on…? This, notwithstanding the fact that in the new post-apartheid South Africa, the 5% white minority still control 85% of the the country of Nelson Mandela’s wealth.
And Imagine Vodafone which has lost 13 billion pounds here in the UK is now opening a mobile phone market in Congo, to sell mobile phones to Congolese, probably manufactured out of blood coltan, illegally looted in Congo! We need investors in Africa, but where does the investors’money come from? Have we asked ourselves this question?

And now as a result of the war just like after the Berlin Conference of 1884, the scramble for Congo goes on. Behind various factions you find Russian arms dealers, Belgian, French, German Korean, Japanese, Chinese and British dealers in diamond, gold, coltan (colombo tantalite used in the manufacture of mobile phones, computer chips, very strategic, according to the Pentagon).
M&M: Metal and Minerals company is the main British company that supply the looted coltan from Congo to all other networks here in the UK, Barclays Bank is involved, as well Avient and Knight Air companies, yes, on the side of the invaders.
The Mai-Mai, that is Congolese local combatants red handedly caught 27 workers (including a Swedish) of a Thai-Ugandan timber and logging company.
In a recent article published by The Guardian, James Astill, wrote:
“So far, the West has been a spectator to Congo’s tragedy, hiding behind the well-worn notion that African problems need African solutions. Perhaps if Israeli diamond dealers, British, French, Belgian and American coltan buyers and Russian arms suppliers had not fuelled the war throughout, it would be Africa’s problem and not ours too. But however much we would like to sweep it under the carpet, Congo’s tragedy is ours too.”

ON THE DIPLOMATIC FRONT: WHERE IS THE AFRICAN UNION?

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has not played its role or taken its responsibilities seriously with regard to the war of aggression against Congo.
The London-based New African magazine published in its July/August 2003 issue, an official document published by the OAU Secretariat in Addis Ababa. It is called : “From the Organisation of African Unity to African Union, “Achieving a 40-year Dream”. There was a whole chapter dedicated to conflicts in Africa but it did not even mention the war of aggression against Congo.

Yet in its Cairo Summit of 1993, the OAU agreed to “the creation of a Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution”, which it declared would present “the opportunity to bring to the process of dealing with conflict in our continent a new institutional dynamism, taking speedy action to prevent or manage and ultimately resolve conflicts when and where they occur.”

“The mechanism will be guided by the objectives and principles of the OAU charter, in particular the sovereign equality of member states, non-interference in the internal affairs of states, the respect of the sovereign and territorial integrity of members states.
All that have been violated in Congo.

I therefore believe that the new African Union, which is actually born today, to be credible should suspend Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi’s membership until they withdraw their troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo, answers for their crimes against humanity committed in Congo under the African Union Court of Justice and pay compensation to the Congolese state for acts of looting and destruction.

THE UN MISSION IN CONGO

The UN Mission in Congo, known by its French acronym, MONUC, has 5,000 unarmed observers in a country as big as the whole of Western Europe. What can they do? The UN Security Council keeps on renewing MONUC’s mandate! What for?
The final solution must be the end of occupation and the immediate withdrawal of forces of aggression and the reunification of Congo. Anything else is just distraction and complicity against the Congolese people. Kofi Annan keeps on lamenting that no country is offering troops. We are calling for a UN peace enforcing contingent of 50,000 men given all the stakes in this war. If Congo unravels, the whole of Africa will.

You will recall that in the 1960s, the UN Mission in Congo (ONUC) failed to protect Lumumba from assassination. And “Lumumba”, an award-winning film produced by Haitian-born Raoul Peck, that fictionally reconstructs Lumumba’s coming to power in 1960 and the intrigues which led to his brutal murder, has been censored in the US. It bleeps out the name of Frank Carlucci, the then future deputy director of the CIA and secretary of defense, in the dialogue and masks his name in the credits. At the time of Lumumba’s death, Carlucci was the second secretary at the US embassy in Congo and, covertly, a CIA agent.

What about the NGOs? NGOs are trying their best to help the Congolese people. But after the Nyirangongo volcano devastated Goma, Congolese who sought shelter in Rwanda returned to their devastated homes instead of letting NGOs cash in on camps hastily set up by them inside Rwanda. That was a strong political message.

Kabila told NGOs to channel money through government who had a plan for reconstruction instead of trough civil society, churches or opposition political parties, but in vain. In 1999, two CIA agents were arrested in the southern city of Lubumbashi, posing as missionaries and it led to the discovery of an arm cache in one of the “churches”.

THE LUSAKA PEACE ACCORD UNFAVOURABLE TO CONGO’S NATIONAL INTERESTS

The Lusaka accord was essentially about bringing different belligerents in the war to sign a cease fire and to observe it.
The fact that it was extended to deal with other matters strictly to do with Congo's national sovereignty and internal affairs, such as the question of granting a blanket Congolese nationality to all Rwandan Tutsis living in the Congolese territory, the constitution of a national army, the withdrawal of non-invited forces of aggression conditioned to the inter-Congolese dialogue, the deployment of the UN peace keeping force not along Congo's borders with Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, but from the interior of the country along the front lines between government forces and troops of aggression, which in a way could consecrate Congo's partition...have been judged as unfavourable to Congo's national interests.

Yet the Congolese government signed the Lusaka peace agreement because it hoped for a quick way out of the conflict to peace so that it can resume with the work of national reconstruction. But the Democratic Republic of Congo is not Kosovo!

What is amazing is the fact that Ketule Masire, former president of Botswana and OAU-nominated facilitator in the peace process in the Democratic Republic of Congo, denounced the lack of funds for the organisation of the long-awaited inter-Congolese dialogue between the government, the rebellion, the political parties, representatives of the civil society, of religious confessions and of traditional leaders; as part of the implementation of the Lusaka peace accord.

Mr Masire, on one hand, complained that the funds promised for the event, by the USA for example, have not arrived. But on the other hand, Mr Masire refused the funds offered by President Kabila in order to “speed up” the process arguing that accepting money from Kabila could cause problems with the other protagonists of the war!

There was a wide perplexity with regard to Masire’s decision in Congo to refuse the funds which cannot be defined as “Kabila’s money” given that it would come from the state coffers. More reason to question why it cannot be used to sustain an already difficult peace process and to wonder what Sir Ketule Masire was up to!
President Joseph Kabila has agreed to abide by all the terms of the Lusaka accord and has liberalised not only the economy by also political parties.

Under last year reached partial agreement by all the Congolese parties, Joseph Kabila will remain President during a two-years transition after which elections will be held. However with little backing from the international community and the apparent conflicting interests of its signatories depending on who is pulling the strings behind the scenes, this agreement risks to become yet another water under the bridge.

Hubert Olangi, a mercenary from Congo-Brazzaville on the pay-list of Jean-Pierre Bemba, was arrested in November last year at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kinshasa. His mission was to assasinate Joseph Kabila, after which Bemba would take power.
Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, still maintain some of their troops in Congo, despite the images we saw on television last year, depicting them withdrawing with pomp. They withdrew during the day and came back at night because their presence is visible in Kisangani, where, just last a plane loaded with arms was intercepted by Mai-Mai General Padiri Bulendwa, chief of staff of that military region at Bangwoka airport. They have also created militia in eastern and north-eastern Congo to loot Congo by proxies such as Thomas Lubanga of the UPC (a stooge of Kagame), Chief Kawa, Jerome Kwakavu and so on... (stooges of Museveni). Massacres in the east are still perpetrated despite the presence of UN troops, as is the case in Bunia, Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu.

The national reunification of the army or of the revenues is still not a reality in the territories under occupation. Rebel governors are still in place. A arms cache was found in the house of one of them, Xavier Chiribanya, governor of South Kivu and N019 on the list of those condemned to death for his involvement in the assassination of President Laurent Désiré Kabila, as well as other RCD rebel generals in Bukavu, such as Laurent Nkunda, responsible for the massacres of Kisangani), Bora Uzima, colonels Georges Mirindi, John, Elie and Doris, who are all condemned to death in Kinshasa for their involvement in Laurent Désiré Kabila’s assassination, and who do not want to join the new reunified army but want to lunch another war sponsored by Kigali from eastern Congo.

At end of February 2004, the transitional government nearly collapsed when General Nabolya, chief of staff of the 10th military region headquartered in Bukavu, found an arm cache at the residence of an RCD-Goma officer named Jeff Kasongo (there arms cache everywhere in eastern Congo). After confiscating the cache, the General arrested him and sent him to Kinshasa to be tried. RCD-Goma protested his arrest despite the fact that the officer violated the law and the military code, kept weapons of war, and then insulted Joseph Kabila as a dictator for letting that arrest happen, threatened to pull out of the government if Kasongo was not released, had Rwandan troops called from Kigali, who ransacked Nabolia’s residence, killed two of his body guards, searched everywhere where he was hiding including in convents and had Kasongo sent back to Bukavu from Kinshasa. RCD is a puppet of Rwanda and Rwanda wants to reck the peace process in Congo. Joseph Kabila refused to be trapped!

Western countries are refusing to investigate the involvement of their multinationals in the looting of Congo’s natural and mineral wealth on the heals of troops of occupation from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi with the complicity of the so-called Congolese rebels; as recommended by the UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Congo’s riches. The UK government was the first to officially rule out such an option, claiming that because the Panel has already been disbanded, there is no need to pursue such an investigation. As a reminder 85 multinationals were involved in the looting according to the Panel’s report.

CONCLUSION:

The whole history of Congo for the past 120 years has been so tragic. The Congolese people, except for brief periods, have faced either constant exploitation or war and when they tried to forge an independent path, have faced fiercest external aggression, all because of the wealth that is their country.

Kabila said: “More than 40 years of African Independence have offered to the world a sad spectacle of a continent looted and humiliated with the complicity of its own sons and daughters. But we wish to live in the 21st century and beyond, totally free and independent of foreign interference and the political and economic battle for that independence and sovereignty is fought in the interests of long-time impoverished, subdued and humiliated Congolese and African masses at large.”

Despite the burden of war, the people of Congo have kept their morale high, and are not ready to let themselves be humiliated. There is only one Democratic Republic of Congo and they don’t want it divided.
The history of Congo is also the history of resistance and of freedom fighters. Early in the 15th century, Kimpa Vita, our woman hero, organised decades of resistance against the Portuguese invasion in western Congo, close to the Atlantic ocean. She was betrayed, captured and burnt alive on the stake. The Baoni revolt nearly brought King Leopold II of Belgium’s Congo Free State (Congo was then King Leopold’s private property) to its knees. The Baoni were Congolese troops trained by the Belgians to constitute the Force Publique whose objectives were to keep Congolese in checks, in repression and facilitate the exploitation of natural and mineral resources. They turned against the established order, rejected the enslaving conditions which they have been subject to and which they worked under and for 15 years waged a revolt, which was crushed down by mercenaries from various nationalities on the pay list of King Leopold. History always repeat itself in Congo. But that was the first strong political message from Congolese people. Congo Free State trained Force Publique, Force Publique turned against the occupying power. Do you smell Iraq here?
Another hero of ours is Ngongo Lutete who drove away the Arab slave traders from Congo into Zanzibar.
Then we had Simon Kimbangu who rejected the Catholic smothering and paternalistic religious and spiritual hegemony and founded the first African Christian Church, very much an international church today. He died in jail after performing countless miracles like Jesus.
Patrice Lumumba snatched independence from the Belgians 100 years then planned and you know how he was savagely killed (who is the terrorist?!). His followers Pierre Mulele and Laurent Désiré Kabila shared in his fate after they continued with his struggle, they nearly won, had the time to pass on their message and the Congolese people, after declaring them national heroes will never forget them. Young people, bear-handedly, trucked down Rwandan and Ugandan troops who besieged Kinshasa the Capital in 1998, put tires around their necks and burnt them alive.

The Mai-Mai warriors, loyal to the government in the east took the resistance into the very heart of rebel-controlled territories where the Congolese flag was still flying in many localities. The aggressors controlled only the main cities, towns and road junctions, but they dared not go to the interior because they knew what fate awaited them.

Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi’s claim that they are in Congo to secure their borders from Congo-based rebel incursion and to hunt for the Interahamwe militia, allegedly responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is an alibi. How come they have failed to root them out in four years? Instead, Kagame has also threatened Central African Republic and Congo Brazzaville of an armed aggression if they don’t hand over the Interahamwe who fled there. But the Interahamwe also fled to Tanzania and Kenya. Is Kagame going to declare war against Tanzania and Kenya? I doubt it. Are the French-speaking countries in central Africa Kagame’s weakest link?

In fact, Colette Braeckman, a Belgian journalist for the daily Le Soir and Congo expert in an article revealed recently that Kagame Museveni and Buyoya are collaborating with the same Interahamwe in the exploitations of Congo’s mineral resources.

“President Kagame,” she wrote, “always stresses that his troops are in Congo to disarm the Interahamwe, but at the same time observers are concerned that the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), occupying the eastern Congolese provinces on north Kivu and south Kivu for five years now, have not really engaged in any serious fighting with those militias. Contrary to all belief, the RPA is collaborating with some of them for exploiting coltan and other rare minerals in Congo.”

But the US sweeps all that under the carpet and backs them and was even ready to send marines in Congo, moreover in territories still under the government’s control to help the aggressors in the hunt for the “genocidaires” or “negative forces” as they call them.
Perhaps Washington is totally oblivious to the fact that the Congolese government has just filed a court case at the International Court of Justice against Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi for invasion, aggression, illegal looting of Congolese resources and genocide against Congolese people. After all, Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State under Clinton, clearly said that “Rwanda is for the US what the pupil is for the eye.”

Nick Gordon, a BBC reporter investigated and reported that the Kigali regime has built crematorium in at Bugasira, Ruhengeri, Byumba, Kibungo, Inyungwe and other locations where thousands of Hutus and Congolese deportees are killed daily and their bodies are incinerated under the program called “MANPOWER DUTIES” while US officials are looking the other way. The Tutsi regime is conducting genocide in Rwanda to reduce the Hutu population to “manageable level”.

At Gabiro, one of those Auschwitz-like crematorium, Gordon reported, between 1,000 and 2,000 Hutus and Congolese deportees are incinerated daily and their ashes spread in the fields by a tractor. It is also reported that American troops have established a base adjacent to the crematorium at Bugasira. “It impossible for American Generals not to hear the daily loud and groaning coming from across the fence; neither can they fail to smell the stench of burning flesh,” Gordon reported.
The Anglo-American press also ignored Cameroonian-born journalist Charles Onana’s victory over Kagame in the French High Court after he published a book that clearly demonstrated that it was the Tutsi who started the genocide in Rwanda.

To wind up, it is up to Congolese themselves to get their country out of this mess with the support of the international community of course, but which international community?
So we need to organise ourselves.

1. By re-reading our history: Since the Berlin Conference, we did not know that Western powers agreed to leave our country as a “free exchange zone area” where each will go and help themselves. We must fight for our total independence and sovereignty. However 35 years of Mobutu’s corrupt rule make reforms and change of mentalities within Congo itself very difficult. The masses must be involved in the running up of the country backed by a strong army. We have to rebuild our military capacity to protect our borders and resources. We wish to leave in peace with our neighbours and we are ready for a mature and equitable cooperation with all other nations under the sun, not just with the US, or the EU, Belgium, Germany or France.
Our country is not just a heap of mineral but a living space granted to us by God since the time of our ancestors.

2. End of impunity: There are serious crimes against humanity being committed in Congo by a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition. They must not go unpunished. If the USA and Britain punished Irak, Japan and Germany for invading other countries, why not Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi who are doing exactly the same in the Democratic Republic of Congo? These powers and the international community as a whole, which they influence so much, must do away with selective morality. Justice for the people of Congo now! Nuremberg in Congo now! How can Britain and America be fighting global terrorism in Afghanistan and at the same time sponsoring it in Congo? In fact these two superpowers are backing a vicious project of the new “Republic of Oriental Congo”, whose capital will be Kisangani and a Congolese of Rwanda offshoot, its first President. Over my dead body!

3. Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi must unconditionally withdraw their troops from Congo - posing as Congolese soldiers belonging to the RCD rebel movement - in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions. Only then can Congolese talk freely among themselves, looking at the past and deciding on the future of their country in the framework of the inter-Congolese dialogue stipulated by the Lusaka peace accord, without any external pressure, or any sword of Damocles hanging above their heads.

4. The international community must set up an international tribunal to try and punish those responsible for crimes against humanity since 2 August 1998, as well as convene an international conference on the lasting peace in the Great Lakes region of central Africa.

As long as there is no democracy in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi - now led by a small Tutsi clique in power – there will be no peace in that region and these countries will continue to export their problems into Congo. The people of Congo are not responsible for the 1994 genocide which took place in Rwanda where Rwandans killed each other. Why must they pay a heavy price for it and for their hospitality? The Hutu refugees must be reintegrated into society there.

The Congolese government rounded up 2,000 Hutu fighters roaming about in the territories still under its control, presented them to the UN Secretary General Koffi Annan when he last visited Congo. The fighters expressed their wish to go back home to a “democratically and ethnically-inclusive Rwanda, following an inter-Rwandan dialogue” But up now Kigali does not want to know about them.
Instead of deploying its troops and observers inside Congo, the UN must rather deploy them along the borders of Congo with Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, create a buffer zone so that all the parties in the conflict may feel secure, an idea Kigali strangely and vehemently opposes.

5. Finally, Western foreign policies in general and American foreign policies in particular, vis-à-vis Congo must change, a wish expressed by President Joseph Kabila in an interview with The Guardian. He said, and I quote:
“Irrespective of their advance in technology, their intelligence services, you get the impression that they are not as well informed as they should be. That is why their foreign policies are always in a tangle, in contradiction with their people on the ground.”

APPENDIX ON THE MEDIA

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the subsequent outpouring of refugees into eastern Congo, a special BBC team (part of Focus on Africa Programme) broadcast in Swahili and other African languages to explain to the local people what was going on. A special programme code named “The Great Lakes Life Line”, was therefore aired from Bush House, London with correspondents on the grounds. Later, the Swiss Foundation called Hirondelle, set up a radio known as Radio Hirondelle, to cover the situation of the refugees in camps and the activities of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania.

In all western media’s coverage (influenced by their governments’foreign policies), never the word “genocide” was mentioned in the beginning when the killing spree gained its momentum. General Roméo Dallaire, a unique witness of the Rwandan genocide insisted that such a coverage had no impact whatsoever, compared to the Radio Milles Collines set up by the “génocidaires” to propagate their hatred and their ideology.

He told the French daily, Le Monde, on 10 December 2003: “The media, what media? It is unbelievable that Tonya Harding, the pool playing, cigarette smoking, truck driving bad girl of figure skating who fascinated the skating world and who later became a professional boxer, got all the headlines in the United States than the massacres in Rwanda. I did everything to bolster journalists’interest. I gave them accommodation and transport. There was an extensive coverage but the problem lied with the editorial. Editors let us down. Headlines were not compelling or punchy enough, especially to politicians and deciders as well as the need for ethical reporting. How we needed of the caliber of Camus in newsrooms!”

As far as the Democratic Republic of Congo is concerned, when Kabila overthrew the bloodiest and kleptocratic dictator, Mobutu that is, on 17 May 1997, less than a year after launching what he called the war of liberation, the Western media were ecstatic. Laurent Désiré Kabila, the new president of the newly re-baptised Democratic Republic of Congo (from Zaire) was voted “the man of the year” by the German press in 1997. The British media was equally magnanimous towards the former rebel leader.
Early on 16 April 1997, a Daily Telegraph editorial already read: "Decades of misrule in Zaire have turned it once again into Africa's heart of darkness. It is therefore natural that Laurent Kabila should be welcome as a messiah in the towns which his rebels have taken from President Mobutu's forces… Mr Kabila has shown himself no fool. He recognises the importance of regional sensibilities and has tuned his message accordingly…Too great a reliance on an ethnic minority and the governments of neighbouring countries will impede the formation of a broadly-based administration.”

The Times subsequently on 19 May 1997, wrote: “Mr Kabila, 58, a member of the Luba tribe’s offshoot in Katanga Province, has enormous personal credibility - he had been fighting the Mobutu regime for 32 years…A former Marxist and friend of Che Guevara, Mr Kabila has clearly given up the idealism of his youth. Before he took power [on 17 May 1997], he had already signed multi-million-dollar contracts with foreign mining companies to exploit Congo’s staggering mineral wealth.”

As Kabila’s rebel movement was capturing one town after another from Mobutu's ill remunerated forces, Western governments and multinationals' expectations were clearly outlined in an article published by The Times on 22 April 1997, and which read:

“Mining multinationals have signed billion-dollar deals for mineral rights with Laurent Kabila, Zaire’s rebel leader, to get ahead in what is being billed as ‘the second scramble for Africa’.

“Mining giants such as De Beers and American Mineral Fields have signed contracts, which are worth at least $3 billion a year, to develop Zaire's copper, cobalt, gold, zinc, and diamond deposits with [Kabila's rebel] forces, cutting the legally recognised government [of Mobutu] out of the picture.

“Executives with the companies said that they are [sic] happy to be doing business with the rebels who control all of Zaire's mineral resources other than its offshore oil fields, because they do not ask for bribe.
“De Beers has also ditched its relationship with the fast crumbling regime of President Mobutu and signed up with the rebels to get involved in $500m a year diamond business.

“The unusual alliance between big business and revolutionaries, many of whom were Chinese-trained Maoists and Marxists in their youth, has been accepted by Western governments, who see Mr Kabila as a man to lead Zaire out of three decades of corruption and staggering poverty.

“This week, American Mineral Fields signed three contracts worth $885m which would give the mining house access to the vast metal reserves of Katanga Province. Other multinationals have been asked to offer satellite telephones to the rebels, who have argued that without them they would be unable to negotiate mineral rights deals internationally…

“Kenneth MacLeod, president of International Panorama Resource Corporation of Vancouver [Canada], said: ‘We are going to capitalise on the current strife by increasing our presence and our land holdings in the country’.

“Another mining magnate based in Johannesburg gave the second scramble a historic twist”: ‘Cecil Rhodes must be spinning in his grave at the opportunities he is missing.’”

But according to Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist and intelligence specialist, author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993 - 1999, the US military has been covertly involved in the war in Congo. Madsen on May 17 told the US House subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, that the US was using Private Military Contractors (PMCs). Madsen said American companies including one linked to former President George Bush Snr are stoking the Congo conflict for monetary gains.

The British media have relentlessly demonised Mugabe over the issue of land reform which Britain should have funded 20 years ago and have cited Zimbabwe's intervention in Congo as the source of destruction and near collapse of Zimbabwe's economy. The Labour government even threatened not to sell hawk jet spare parts to Zimbabwe because they reckoned Zimbabwe was involved in an unnecessary and costly adventure in Congo.
What about British companies such as Knight Aviations which transport soldiers and military equipment to and from Congo for Uganda as revealed by London daily The Guardian.
However, no such a thing is said about Uganda's economy. In fact, the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni boasted in New York during the UN Special Session on Congo war held on 24 - 26 January last year, that the Congo war has not negatively affected his economy. Yet the French daily, Libération, revealed on 25 January 2001 that 55% of Uganda's military budget is financed by money coming in as 'development aid' from abroad, as we said earlier.
In addition, Zimbabwe's intervention in Congo is not popular with some sections of society at home. The privately owned Standard newspaper caused national uproar when consorting with ‘foreign intelligence’, it published a story alleging that a Zimbabwean soldier killed on duty in Congo was buried with his head missing. The story caused such uproar that the government was forced to exhume the decomposed body and display it to the world cameras to prove that the allegation was false. It was a double blow to the bereaved family - they lost a breadwinner only to be compelled to exhume the body and put it on public display, something that affronts African customs.
The presence of Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian troops in the Congo under the pretext of suppressing Hutu militia extremists (Interahamwe) responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is an alibi as time has shown. But this is the mantra the western media always repeat. As The Independent put it in a feature article published last January, “Rwanda is the driving force behind the battle in [Congo]. Its Tutsi leadership wants to track down and kill the perpetrators of the genocide that wiped out a million Tutsis. Secretly funded by the CIA, Rwanda has military operations in [Congo] far above its means. It has 30,000 troops in Congo”.
Colette Braeckman of the Belgian daily Le Soir, said: “The media often follow the lead set by their home governments in deciding how to cover this war.
“As this crisis unfolded”, she said, “you had the bad guy [Laurent Désiré] Kabila. It is easy to go back and find how many stories demonise him - some with good reason, some bad, but all exaggerated. And because Kabila did not bite…the rest is history! It is no surprise that Kabila's head cost $36 million financed by American agencies, according to the Belgian weekly Solidaire in its edition of 9 May 2001, confirmed by Colette Braeckman in her book , Les Nouveaux Prédateurs.

“When [Laurent Désiré] Kabila came to Belgium, we had a briefing from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which said that [the Belgians] were not ready to give him a red carpet treatment, so the [media] were influenced enough to demonise him, and I wonder if that happens in other countries too.

“I wonder who set the agenda, it was not just the press. The political leaders usually say this is a good guy, this a bad guy. At the moment, Joseph Kabila is a good guy, but maybe tomorrow he will be a bad guy,”, said Colette Braeckman.

“The world community”, she continued “wanted to get rid of Kabila for so many reasons, also for reasons of economic interests. Naturally the imperialist media have positioned themselves on the side of economic interests.” Colette is right! Proof? Every time Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda announced the capture of a major Congolese locality, the media [especially the Financial Times] hurried to state precisely its economic importance”.
And people have closed their eyes to what is really going on…
What is going on? Both Amnesty International and the International Rescue Committee (USA) have confirmed a genocide of more than 5 million Congolese by the invading troops. Often people are buried alive, shot dead or chopped with machetes, their bodies thrown into rivers or forced down latrines. That is worse than what happened in Kosovo and Rwanda itself. Isn't it? Why does all this go unreported? Is it because stakeholders have managed to suppress the story and to protect the perpetrators from accountability?

Can one genocide be condemned (the 1994 genocide perpetrated by Hutu extremists known as Interahamwe, meaning those who kill together) and another condoned (perpetrated by a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition occupying half of the Congo)?
Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi are responsible for crimes against humanity in Congo, not only for the looting, but also because of a genocide that Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian troops – given means beyond their capability by Britain and America - have committed against the innocent Congolese people.

The Belgian judicial system which claims an international competence accused Yerodia Abdoulaye Ndombasi, Laurent Désiré Kabila’s then Minister of State and now one of the vice-presidents in Congo’s transitional government, of “inciting hatred against the Tutsis” (similar to anti-semitism) when he rallied the people of Kinshasa not to let themselves be enslaved by “worms” (this is how the Nazis were also called) coming from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, who were then just at the door of the capital, having already cut power to the Capital Kinshasa, provoking the death of hundreds of people, especially the sick in hospitals and babies in incubators.

Well, Kagame has done worse. He called the Congolese the “IBICUCU”, which means in his native Kinyarwanda “people who do not matter, people of no importance, good for nothing, the nobodies”. This is how the Nazi propaganda against the Jews started. Well, if Kagame thinks the Congolese are nobodies, then it is easy to eliminate or massacre them like animals without any scruples, occupy their land (EXPANSIONISM) and take what belong to them. And this is what he has done. Rwandans troops have even used a deadly chemical stuff called NAPALM when bombing whole villages in eastern Congo and clearing them of their inhabitants. They also engage in the trading of human organs of the massacred Congolese!!!

Despite the burden of war, the people of Congo have kept their morale high, and are not ready to let themselves be humiliated. They know that there is only one Democratic Republic of Congo and it cannot be divided. Congo’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity are non-negotiable as President Joseph Kabila always makes it clear!

Like I said before, the Mai-Mai warriors loyal to the government in the east have taken the resistance into the very heart of rebel-controlled territories where the Congolese flag is still flying in many localities. The aggressors control only the main cities, towns and road junctions, but they dare not go to the interior because they know what fate awaits them. Surprisingly, the Mai-Mai are being subjected to a negative campaign by the Western media as well as by the MONUC, the UN mission in the DRC. They are being labelled as “negative forces” and put in the same box with the Interahamwe.

A headline in the London’s Daily Telegraph on 9 August read: “Terror reign of the ‘magic water militia’”, accusing the Mai-Mai of atrocities to the delight of Rwandans, Ugandans and Burundians, the true perpetrators of massacres and a genocide in Congo.

No! No! No! The Mai-Mai are native Congolese fighting against occupation. They held one Kenyan, one Swede and 27 Thais hostage for over two months after they caught them red handed while harvesting timber for a Ugandan-Thai forest company called DARA-Forest - another proof that multinationals are very much involved in the looting of Congo’s resources. It went unreported.
Upon Laurent Désiré Kabila’s assassination, Michela Wrong, a former correspondent for Reuters, BBC and The Financial Times, and author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo, wrote in the Financial Times: “Laurent Kabila…alienated Western powers and African allies in his three-and-half years in power…He was welcomed as a liberator when his rebel forces marched into Kinshasa in 1997, toppling the late Mobutu Sese Seko, but diplomats and statesmen had come to view him as a man impossible 'to do business with’, a key factor in central Africa's growing instability…The World Bank and the IMF found him so obstructive, talks on new aid were abandoned.”
Yet as stated above, in his first year in power Kabila proved that Congo, a nation with everything does not need to live on aid all the time. His death has deprived the Democratic Republic of Congo and its people of what they had of precious value, as Alex Duval Smith summed it up when covering Kabila’s burial for the London daily The Independent on 24 January 2001:

“A nation with very little seemed yesterday, once more, to have lost all it had. As the mausoleum door was shut on the three-and-a-half-year reign of Kabila, assassinated last week, Congo entered a new phase of fear and uncertainty…Then as the coffin, drapped in the republic’s yellow-starred blue flag, was transferred to the mausoleum at the palace of Nation, thousands ran alongside the cortege, It was as if they were holding on to the only figure who - albeit through war - had given the nation an identity”.