MOJA ya visa vya kusisimua katika masimulizi ya kale ya Kibiblia ni kile cha marafiki wa tatu wa Nabii Daniel waliokutwa na kile ambacho tunaweza kukiita kuwa ni "kisongombingo" cha Mfalme Nebukadneza wa Wababeli aliyetawala kama miaka 600 hivi kabla ya Kristo. Wengine wanaweza kuita kisanga kile kuwa ni “kasheshe” la karne. Tunawafahamu marafiki hao kwa majina ya Shedraki, Meshaki, na Abednego. Unaweza kusoma kisa chenyewe kwenye kitabu cha Daniel sura ya tatu. Mimi hata hivyo ninaangalia siasa za simulizi hilo na kuona mfanano wa ajabu kati yake na kile kinachoendelea katika taifa letu Tanzania leo hii; hususan katika ulingo wa siasa. Kisa hiki kinaanza pale ambapo Mfalme Nebukadneza alipoamua kusimamisha sanamu ya dhahabu yenye urefu wa kama mita 27 hivi (dhiraa sitini) ili watu wake waiabudu. Sanamu hiyo iliyotengenezwa kwa dhahabu ya thamani ilipokamilika aliisimamisha kama “mungu” wa wababeli hao.
Na kisha ukatumwa ujumbe katika pande mbalimbali za Babeli na mataifa yaliyokuwa chini ya ufalme huo kuwa watu waje kuiabudu sanamu ya Nebukadneza. Na kwa maelfu yao walikusanyika mbele ya sanamu hiyo na ikatolewa amri kuwa watu watakaposikia sauti ya tarumbeta basi wote waanguke mbele ya sanamu hiyo na kuiabudu; vinginevyo watawekwa kwenye tanuru ya moto. Tunasimuliwa kuwa: “Basi maliwali, wasimamizi, watawala, washauri, watunza hazina, waamuzi, mahakimu na maafisa wengine wa jimbo walikusanyika kwa ajili ya kuizindua sanamu ile ambayo mfalme alikuwa ameisimamisha. Nao wakasimama mbele ya hiyo sanamu.” Kwa maneno mengine ni kuwa yeyote aliyekuwa “mtu kati ya watu” alikuwepo kwenye uzinduzi wa sanamu hiyo.
Tunachoambiwa ni kuwa wanasiasa na watawala na wasomi wa wakati ule wote walikuwepo kwenye uzinduzi wa sanamu hiyo na pale panda ilipopigwa tunasimuliwa kuwa “watu wa kabila zote, mataifa na watu wa kila lugha wakaanguka chini na kuiabudu ile sanamu ya dhahabu ambayo Mfalme Nebukadneza alikuwa ameisimamisha.” Hapa tunachodokezwa ni kuwa maprofesa, madaktari, wanafizikia, wafanyabiashara wakubwa, n.k wote walianguka mbele ya sanamu hiyo ya Nebukadneza.
Hawa wote walifanya hivyo kwa sababu waliamini kabisa kuwa maisha yao na mafanikio yao yamo mikononi mwa Mfalme Nebukadneza. Maelfu hawa wa watu kila ulipofika uchaguzi walijikuta hawana jinsi isipokuwa kuendelea kuchagua utawala wa Nebukadneza na kutokana na ukweli huo walipoitwa kuipigia magoti sanamu yake walijua hawana uchaguzi. Walijua utawala wa Nebukadneza ulikuwa na ufisadi wa kila namna, lakini pia ndio uliowafanya waishi wakijisikia wako na “amani, utulivu, na mshikamano”.
Kilichowatisha ni moto
Watu hawa wote walipiga magoti mbele ya sanamu hii baada ya kusikia tarumbeta kwa sababu tangazo lilisema kuwa “mtu ye yote ambaye hataanguka chini na kuiabudu sanamu hiyo atatupwa saa hiyo hiyo ndani ya tanuru iwakayo moto.’’ Watu walijua kuwa wakifanya uamuzi kinyume na hilo agizo la mfalme, basi watakiona kile wahenga walikiita cha “mtema kuni”; yaani kutupwa kwenye tanuru la moto ambalo bila ya shaka lilitumika kufulia dhahabu ile.
Ukitupwa kwenye tanuru hiyo hakuna kupona. Hivyo watu wote waliojua ukweli huo na wengine labda wakijua pia kuwa sanamu ile “si lolote wala chochote” walijikuta wanaanguka kifudifudi ili kusalimisha maisha yao na ya watoto wao.
Kwa maneno mengine, waliuza utu wao na haki yao ya kuwa huru kwa sababu ya kumuogoa Mfalme Nabukadneza. Isipokuwa vijana watatu.
Vijana wale watoto walijua kuwa hawawezi kuiabudia sanamu hata kama imetengenezwa kwa thamani kubwa na inasimama kama “jitu la dhahabu”. Walifahamu kuwa imani yao (ya Kiyahudi) inawakataza kuabudu sanamu ya aina yoyote.
Hawa walijua kuwa uchaguzi wao ulikuwa ni rahisi kweli. Kwamba kama ukiabudu sanamu hiyo utakuwa na mafanikio, usalama, maisha mazuri na kutengemaa kwa kila namna. Walijua pia kuwa kutoabudu sanamu hiyo na kukana imani na dhamira yao kunamaanisha kifo. Walijua gharama ya kutokuiabudu sanamu.
Walikuwa ni masalia ya wale wenye kuamini katika “Mungu mmoja” na ambao wanajua kuwa hana mshirika na wala hashirikishwi na kitu chochote au kiumbe chochote. Walijua kuwa Mungu hana mbia mwingine yoyote, na hivyo walikuwa tayari kuingia kwenye tanuru ya moto kuliko kukana imani yao hiyo.
Vijana Meshaki, Shedraki na Abednego (majina yao ya Kibabeli) walishitakiwa kwa kutopigia magoti sanamu na mwisho wake wakutupwa kwenye tanuru la moto. Hawakujua kama wataokolewa lakini walikuwa tayari wamejisalimisha kwa Mungu wao kuwa ni heri kufa kuliko kupigia sanamu magoti. Tunaambiwa waliokolewa na yule “mtu wanne” ndani ya tanuru ile.
Sanamu yetu ya leo ni CCM!
Katika taifa letu hili tumesimamishiwa sanamu kubwa iliyotengenezwa kwa thamani nyingi sana nayo yaitwa CCM. Sanamu hii tunaambiwa na watawala wetu kuwa ndiyo njia pekee ya uhakika ya watu wetu kufanikiwa. Watu wetu leo hii wanaamini kabisa kuwa pasipo “CCM” hawawezi kuishi kwa mafanikio na pasipo kujisalimisha kwake basi maisha yatakuwa magumu na mipango ya mafanikio itakoma.
Hivyo tunakuta makundi ya wasomi wetu mbalimbali, wafanyabiashara, wanataaluma na watu ambao wanaonekana kuwa na upeo mkubwa wa kimtazamo wakipiga magoti mbele ya chama hiki.
Wapo majaji, wakuu wa majeshi, polisi, magereza, wasomi kwenye vyuo vyetu na hata wananchi wa kawaida ambao wamechagua CCM kwa sababu moja tu; nayo ni kuwa pasipo CCM maisha yao hayawezi kwenda mbali na hawawezi kufanikiwa kiurahisi.
Hivyo, utaona kuwa hata katika maeneo ambayo yameathirika zaidi na ufisadi kama Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Mbeya, Kilimanjaro n.k wanaichagua CCM kwa wingi zaidi kwa sababu kutoipigia magoti ni kutaka kuingizwa kwenye tanuru ya moto!
Huko tunakoenda kuelekea uchaguzi mkuu wa mwakani tutawaona watu wengi zaidi wakijitokeza zaidi kujiunga na CCM, na kugombea nafasi mbalimbali kupitia chama hicho kwa sababu wanajua bila ya hivyo wamekwisha.
Hata kwenye kikao cha bunge kinachokuja utaona watu wenye akili timamu na wasomi waliobobea wakikitetea chama chao (sanamu) kuwa “ni safi” na kuwa ufisadi ni wa mtu mmoja mmoja.
Kama vile waliotukuza dhahabu iliyotengeneza sanamu ya Nebukadneza, vivyo hivyo tutawaona watu wengine wakiitukuza CCM kama vile sanamu ile! Pamoja na mgongano tunaouona ndani ya CCM hivi sasa , ukweli ni kuwa hawa wote wanaabudu sanamu ile ile, na hawawezi kufikiria maisha nje ya CCM. Wanahofu kuna tanuru la moto!
Wanatafutwa Watanzania Masalia!
Wanatafutwa wananchi wasomi na wasio wasomi, matajiri na wasio matajiri, wenye kitu na wasio na kitu, wazee kwa vijana, kinamama kwa kinababa kuwa kama wale vijana watatu wa zama za Daniel ambao watakuwa tayari kukataa kuipigia magoti sanamu hii iliyosimamishwa katika taifa letu.
Watu hawa watatakiwa kuwa majasiri ambao wako tayari kulipa gharama kubwa zaidi hata ya maisha yao ili kuiokoa nchi yao. Wanaotafutwa ni wale ambao wanajua Tanzania ndiyo iko juu ya chama chochote cha siasa, juu ya itikadi yoyote, sera zozote au mwelekeo wowote wa kisiasa.
Wanaotafutwa ni watu ambao hawajali majina na hadhi zao, majasiri wasioteteleka, wajuzi wa tunu bora za kale, walinzi wa njozi za kizazi kilichopita! Wanatafutwa tena watu ambao watamkatalia mtawala wetu wa leo kuwa hawako tayari kupiga magoti mbele ya CCM! Watu ambao watafuata mfano kama wa Augustine Lyatonga Mrema ambaye amelipa gharama kubwa zaidi ya kisiasa na kimaisha na aliyetupwa kwenye tanuru ya moto na kufikiriwa kuwa ameungua na ameteketea. Mrema ni mmoja wa vigogo wachache wa zamani ambao hadi sasa hawajakubali kurudi na kuipigia sanamu hii magoti ili maisha, afya, na mambo yao yafanikiwe. Pengine Mrema ndiye mtu pekee katika historia yetu ambaye alilipa gharama kubwa zaidi katika zama hizi za CCM kwa kukejeliwa, kupuuzwa na kufanywa duni.
Ni mtu ambaye amekataa kuipigia sanamu hii (CCM) magoti ingawa anajua kabisa kuwa akifanya hivyo mambo yake yatamnyookea; kwani amewaona wenzake waliokuwa pamoja walivyouza dhamira zao, utu wao na hadhi zao ili mambo yao yawanyokee! Wanatafutwa ‘Watanzania Masalia’ ndugu zangu! Je wewe ni mmoja wa wanaoendelea kuipigia magoti CCM kwenye sanduku la kura? Je wewe ni mmoja wa wale wanaoamini kabisa kuwa sanamu hii ina uamuzi juu ya maisha na hali yako?
Kama ndiyo, endelea kufuata imani yako hiyo; kwani wewe ungekuwa mmoja wa wale walioipigia magoti na kuisujudia sanamu ya Mfalme Nebukadneza! Tanzania itajengwa na wale waliosalia; ambao ikibidi wataingia kwenye tanuru ya moto kama Augustine Mrema!
War in Congo has again been splashed across world headlines and the same old clichés about violence and suffering are repackaged and rebroadcast as ‘news’. Meanwhile, early indications out of America are that President-elect Barack Obama will assemble a foreign policy-team primed for business as usual.
How will Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State compromise the Obama Administration’s capacity to honestly redress the untold suffering, massive theft of resources and millions of deaths in Africa?
And Tom Daschle? Behind the media smokescreens are people whose involvement has been documented and exposed, but there is always some African fall guy—the ‘embraceable’ black subordinate or ‘rebel’ commander—charged with war crimes and used to deflect attention from the leaders of organized white-collar crime networks. Blacked out are the corporate executives, government officials and expatriate personnel of Western enterprises whose success amidst chaos implicates them in the deracination and death of millions of black people. What’s behind the recent hostilities and media posturing in Central Africa?
THE SHORT, BRUTISH LIFE OF SANDRINE
On a darkling plain in a far away place the skeletons of hundreds of unnamed people lie strewn over the land amidst the red dirt and brown grasses scorched by the equatorial sun. Bones poke into the air here and there, hidden by the tall grass, tripping you up as you walk; others lay bleaching white in piles where the bodies fell. These are the killing fields of Bogoro, a small hillside village on a southerly road out of Bunia, a metropolis of suffering in the wild, wild east of Congo.
The grassy plains of Bogoro were guarded by soldiers and when I arrived the militia of the day wore black trench coats and black mirror sunglasses to enhance the aura of terror that surrounds them. With AK-47’s slung over their shoulders they talked on shiny Nokias and Motorolas and Samsungs—cellphones built with the blood minerals of the Congolese people.
Militia soldier talking on is cell-phone while guarding the killing fields of Bogoro. Photo copyright 2007 Keith Harmon Snow.
Sandrine—not her real name—is a survivor who participated in the massacre at Bogoro. I interviewed Sandrine, just seventeen at the time, in 2007, and she recounted her ordeal as the sex slave of soldiers. Sandrine told how people were forced by militia commanders to chase down neighbors and kill or be killed. I found Sandrine living in misery in an evacuated refugee camp. Sandrine knows nothing at all of the vast mining operations or minerals shipments being flown out of remote jungle airstrips in her home territory—or even that such airstrips exist. Ditto for the Congolese researchers I met, in Orientale, who worked with the International Criminal Court. Moto Gold? Mwana Africa? Walter Kansteiner? They had never heard of such companies, or such people.
In Western media reportage the plunder of raw materials in Congo is usually de-linked from the killing, even though the extractive industries are directly behind it, and even though almost everyone has begun to parrot the accusation of ‘resource wars’ in Congo. The Bogoro massacre occurred in February 2003 and, like the Hutu-Tutsi stories from Rwanda, the media whipped up the specter of ancient tribal animosities between Hema and Lendu tribes. But the real story is not quite so black and white. Or is it?
Today the International Criminal Court (ICC) holds three Congolese ‘warlords’ in the ICC prison at The Hague, Netherlands, and all three were associated with events at Bogoro. However, the white patrons reaping the profits behind the bloodletting in the eastern Congo are protected by a new humanitarian order predicated on permanent inequality, structural violence and race politics.
But for a few brief periods of relative calm, the war in Congo’s eastern Orientale and Kivus provinces has hardly stopped since its’ beginning in 1996, and the realities have been shrouded in media clichés and stereotypes and disingenuous expressions of outrage that deflect attention from the true protagonists and root causes of war and plunder in Africa.
GOOD VERSUS EVIL AND THE NAMES GAMES
The UPC, FPRI, FNI—these are three of the scores of militias that have risen and fallen in Orientale since the war began in 1996 and, more poignantly, they are meaningless acronyms used to scramble the brains of western spectator-news-consumers.
First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat President Mobutu. Next came the ‘rebellion’ with Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), and all the different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, or Congolese Rally for Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K, RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and Uganda.
Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president; Laurent Desiré Kabila, the ADFL figurehead and assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Meles Zenawi, president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea; Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president; and John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.
Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert guerrilla wars against governments that were considered ‘undesirable’ by Washington; both achieved their objectives of seizing land and gaining control, and both insurgencies were covertly backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees official Roger Winter—a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in Sudan and a dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John Garang.
Winter’s protégé is Susan Rice, Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Rice was one of the primary architects of the Pentagon’s prized Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM).
The coups d’etat in Rwanda and Burundi occurred after the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a decade of covert U.S. military support for the SPLA, channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led to the Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the creation of the autonomous country of South Sudan.
The ‘Rwanda genocide’ began with the 1990 invasion of northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally targeted everyone in their path. By the time the RPF/A forces—comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan troops—reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) were hovering around the capital city: they were terrified, they were homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably—they took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its Canadian General Romeo Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war.
The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare, spawned by Washington, against populist movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala. This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan today: low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by powerful shadow forces competing for land and loot.
SPLA leader John Garang received military training at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia. Paul Kagame received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was Museveni’s director of military intelligence; upon his return he assumed command of the army created, financed and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda Patriotic Army.
Both Garang and Kagame likely received ‘counter-insurgency’ training through the Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Since 1998, the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF and 291 UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended the notorious School of the Americas are today known human rights violators in Latin America.
In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the CNDP, created by self-appointed Rwandan ‘General’ Laurent Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General Nkunda as good, the FDLR as evil. Only recently has Nkunda come under any kind of ‘harsh’ criticism. The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described with clichés about the ‘Rwanda genocide.’ The usual targets of white media racial profiling and hysterical academic polemics are the Hutu—the infamous Interahamwe and FDLR—the ‘killers’ that ‘fled Rwanda after committing genocide’ there. This is how millions of innocent Hutu people—comprising over 85% of the populations of Rwanda and Burundi—are collectively dehumanized.
Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as ‘nationalists’ sometimes ‘wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads’ and ’shooting magic bullets.’ The Mai Mai are the closest thing to a people’s or indigenous justice movement in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the Congo’s national army, the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai Mai are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.
In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the Front for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC, the FNLK is purportedly vying for power against General Nkunda’s CNDP. However, alliances are constantly shifting based on private profit and ‘warlord’ fiefdoms, and ALL factions, at some point or other, have collaborated in war and resource plunder.
Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of militias around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and nothing substantive about foreign backers they collaborate with. Militias mysteriously appear and disappear. Indeed, the more you read about Congo from venues like the New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the less you will understand. This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.
Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their suffering, it makes no difference what the acronym stands for, it’s all one big sadistic joke of language and power. The most significant fact to remember about this ‘F’ ‘N’ ‘I’ is that they served as the private proxy army for the gold mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti, headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold. Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.
Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is also a director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar mercenaries. Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy, Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the Museveni regime. Saracen’s top shareholder is General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and Congo’s nemesis, a Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and plunder in Congo.
AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining conglomerate of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American intelligence insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert operations in Africa. Tempelsman’s diamond interests in Congo were, at least partially, displaced by the Israeli cartels of Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz. It is a no-brainer that the Tempelsman gang backs Rwanda’s occupation of eastern Congo.
For a second example, media corporations have consistently blacked out the truth about the lucrative corporate ‘conservation’ industry with articles like the recent New York Times production ‘Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas’ (Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the many accusations coming out of North Kivu that link the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to local Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on, intimidate and abuse the locals. The white agents working for Western ‘conservation’ NGOs—and we know their names—are directly responsible for extortion, racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities and for ripping apart the social fabric.
‘The commander of the Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja,’ report Congolese locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are confirmed by a Spanish journalist). ‘We count already five people killed because of this [conservation] project… DFGF and JGI are without doubt corrupt… they are paying armed groups and forcing us off of our lands.’
The Gettleman NYT article, on the other hand, cites one of these agents, Samantha Newport, described as ‘a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park,’ who in fact works for Richard Leakey’s organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity involving Walter Kansteiner.
A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE
The international arrest warrants issued by Spain and France against some 40 former RPF/A and current Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) are patently dismissed by Western media of all stripes, buried behind waves of pro-RPF propaganda and intimidation that labels anyone who does not support the Kigali military dictatorship as genocide deniers, themselves guilty, by extension, of genocide.
While the RPF/A and UPDF are often named for leading the charge and supplying the bulk of the forces, the 1996 invasion of Zaire, launched from Uganda and Rwanda, involved U.S. covert forces with state-of-the-art C4ISTR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance—and there were Humvees and C-130 aircraft ferrying black-skinned U.S. Special Forces into South Sudan and northeastern Congo. The invasion also involved Israeli military experts, an assortment of Eritrean and Ethiopian regulars, and SPLA forces.
The Anglo-European-Israeli forces penetrated eastern Zaire through the Gulu and Arua Districts of northwestern Uganda—the heart of Acholiland and ground zero for the ongoing genocide of the indigenous Acholi people—and they backed the RPA/UPDF who marched across Zaire massacring refugees, mostly women and children, mostly Hutus, that fled Kigali in 1994.
Howard French, then the Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times, witnessed the Hutu genocide in Zaire, and wrote about it. Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani—who by no means was an impartial observer when he arrived in Goma in September 1997—described ‘an indiscriminate slaughter’ of Interahamwe, of unarmed Hutu refugees, and of Congolese Hutus in the Kivus. Bill Richardson, President Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations, stated in a may 1997 interview: ‘I think there’s strong evidence that there have been these massacres.’
But the subject of Hutus being slaughtered was only broached as a tool to hammer down the uppity black rebel who diverged from his script and upset Washington’s plans. Indeed, the rise and fall of ADFL figurehead Laurent Desire Kabila exemplifies the embraceable black leader transformed almost overnight into the unembraceable black fall guy. In the end, a bullet dispatched Laurent Kabila on 16 January 2001, exactly 40 years after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (17 January 1961).
Anyone who dismisses the organized and intentional RPF/A and UPDF military campaign against millions of Hutu people—massacred and chased from the Uganda border to Kigali, into to eastern Congo, and finally attacked in refugee camps and butchered all the way across Zaire—is a genocide denier. (Of course, the UPDF-RPF/A alliance also summarily executed and massacred Rwandan Tutsis and indigenous Twa, and Congolese people.) Similarly, anyone who dismisses the organized persecution and atrocities against the Acholi people in northern Uganda—maintained by the Museveni government and the UPDF occupation—is a genocide denier.
The criminality of the Kagame regime is whitewashed by the massive public relations campaigns involving Kagame’s special advisor/sponsors: former Ambassador Andrew Young and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Young’s Goodworks International also backs the Museveni regime. Buffing the shiny image of the government of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila is Stevens and Schriefer Group the Washington D.C. PR-firm that twice helped get George W. Bush elected [http://www.ssg-dc.com/].
The New Yorker and CNN have consistently manufactured the pro-RPF/A propaganda, reported by Christiane Amanpour and Philip Gourevitch. Amanpour is married to James Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State and Madeleine Albright’s right-hand man, and now economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama. Gourevitch—who produced the celebrated pro-RPF/A text We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, is a close friend of Paul Kagame and a conduit for State Department disinformation passed by James Rubin, who was also Chief Spokesman for the Clinton State Department (1997-2000), and whose sister, Elizabeth Rubin, was dating Gourevitch.
U.S. business tycoon Joe Ritchie ‘has volunteered in Rwanda for the past five years introducing the country to business leaders around the world.’ Ritchie also runs an ‘entrepreneurial philanthropy’ called Friends of Rwanda and serves on President Paul Kagame’s Advisory Council and as CEO of the Rwanda Development Board. Like Walter Kansteiner, Joe Ritchie is a commodities and options trader from Chicago with deep pockets and dark secrets: involved in a private attempt to overthrow the Taliban in 2000, Joe and James Ritchie were aided by their favorite consultant, former national security adviser Robert McFarlane, who successfully lobbied the CIA to dispatch an Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle (UAV) to the skies over Afghanistan.
The Congo wars have direct links to the many long years of war in Sudan and Uganda, and they are intertwined with the current low-intensity warfare and the mass murder in Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. If we apply the genocide label to conflicts where it surely fits, then genocide is ongoing in Congo’s Orientale and Kivus provinces, and in Acholiland in Northern Uganda. But it is also occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Botswana, Columbia, the Palestinian Territories and Malaysia, to mention a few irrefutable cases.
These geopolitical and strategic hotspots remain mostly blanketed by media reportage that quite literally blacks out key white protagonists by putting a black African face on things. Another example: there has been little reported about the perpetual warfare and human rights atrocities in Orientale linked to tight little airstrips carved out of the rainforest and paved with support from the Pentagon-connected United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Consider Mwana Africa, a South African firm that controls the Kilo-Moto gold fields in Zani, DRC. The Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), led by Thomas Lubanga, occupied the Zani gold fields in 2002 and stirred up ethnic animosities that led to massive suffering and depopulation. However, according to Congolese locals, it was the white missionaries from the Africa Inland Mission (www.aimint.org/usa/where_we_work/) that deeply divided local ethnic groups. French tycoons Jacques and Alvaro Hachuel own Mwana Africa.
Mwana Africa’s European director, Etienne Denis, began his long career of impoverishing the Congo at Umicore, formerly the Belgian mining giant Union Miniere, in 1974. The Mwana Africa airstrip at Zani, and nearby roads, were built with USAID backing, and the gold is flown out to Tanzania—one of the most underappreciated criminal players funneling weapons to Uganda and Congo—or sometimes shipped out by road through Uganda. Mwana Africa is also involved in Congo’s bloody MIBA diamond concessions in Mbuji Mayi and the cobalt/copper concessions in Katanga.
Similarly, almost nothing in context has been reported of the white mercenaries and their petroleum operations on the Uganda border with Orientale. Like the ongoing covert war in Darfur, where the backers of the ‘mysterious’ rebel groups are never exposed, the militias operating in Congo are proxy armies that serve the interests of external power blocks at the expense of their competitors.
Most reporting from the Kivus zooms in on sexual violence and the Western media always blames the victims—Congolese soldiers caught in the maelstrom of international proxy warfare and organized crime—but we hear nothing about U.S. or Canadian or Australian mining companies—and for those rare times that we do the reportage de-links the mining from the mass murder. More often, the media turns the story upside down, claiming that responsible Western mining executives are waiting in the wings for security to improve so they can provide jobs and accountability and ’sustainable development’ for the Congolese people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A recent front-page news feature, ‘Congo’s Riches, Looted by Renegade Troops,’ about the Bisie tin mine in North Kivu, offers the perfect example. ‘On paper, the exploration rights to this mine belong to a consortium of British and South African investors who say they will turn this perilous and exploitative operation into a safe, modern beacon of prosperity for Congo,’ wrote Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times. ‘But in practice, the consortium’s workers cannot even set foot on the mountain. Like a mafia, Colonel Matumo and his men extort, tax and appropriate at will, draining this vast operation, worth as much as $80 million a year.'
And thus do the valiant white knights of the New York Times shine their spotlight on plunder and extortion in Congo. Alas, it is a selective shining, an expedient ‘humanitarian’ concern, and an arrogant moral high ground. Indeed, it is just another shade of the black and white race politics behind the politicization of the International Criminal Court.
THE BLACK AFRICAN FALL GUYS
In June of 2008 the ICC charged two black African rebel leaders, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, with six counts of war crimes (willful killing; inhuman treatment or cruel treatment; using children under the age of fifteen years to participate actively in hostilities; sexual slavery; intentionally directing attacks against civilians; and pillaging) and three counts of crimes against humanity (murder, inhumane acts and sexual slavery).
ICC prosecutors say that Chui and his commander Katanga—known as Simba—led a militia called the Front for Patriotic Resistance of Ituri (FPRI); Chui was also a commander in another militia, the National Integrationist Front (FNI). The FPRI was fighting against the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC); another militia in Congo backed by outsiders, in particular, some faction from the U.S.
UPC commander Thomas Lubanga—another black man—was the first person detained at the ICC’s Scheveningen prison at The Hague. Charles Taylor, former ‘warlord’ and president from Liberia was the second. Germaine Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui were next to be chosen for this auspicious club. Congolese ‘warlord’ Jean-Pierre Bemba is the last of five detainees now held at the ICC. Bemba was the leader of the Congolese rebel army, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), but he is charged with crimes in the Central African Republic.
These five men all have more in common than the charges against them. They are all black men, once embraced by the system and empowered as local or national leaders, and they are now the black stooges who fell from grace to become, in the language of anthropologist and scholar Dr. Enoch Page, ‘unembraceable’.
The unembraceable status, applied to Africa, is reserved for black males, for dictators and warlords, rapists and killers, for ‘dirty’ Arabs like Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, and for former ‘Marxist’ guerillas, like Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. Always they are people of color: they are the O.J. Simpsons and Michael Jacksons of Africa, formerly embraced black males now ruthlessly persecuted by the Western establishment—primarily through racial surveillance and targeting in the mass media. Such treatment is rarely applied to white males, anywhere.
Someone has to be held responsible for the mass murder at Bogoro, but who paid the 29 year-old ‘warlord’ Germaine Katanga? Why should he be the only one prosecuted? Who provided the jeeps for the ‘warlord’ Mathieu Chui? Where did ‘warlord’ Thomas Lubanga get the satellite phone to coordinate his private militia? How did Charles Taylor go from Harvard University to money laundering in Liberia to a Massachusetts prison—which he ‘escaped’ from—and then on to become first the ‘President’ and later ‘warlord’ of Liberia?
How does Moto Gold Mining Company extract gold from a war zone? And how do the shiny black leather belts and pressed camouflage fatigues and crisp felt berets and rocket-propelled grenades find their way to Laurent Nunda’s ‘rebel’ army now fighting in the North and South Kivu provinces of Congo?
Aware of their vulnerability as black African fall guys—and soon after the ICC arrest of Jean-Pierre Bemba—the top brass of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces curtailed their international travel plans and convened a special meeting at Uganda’s Bombo army headquarters near Kampala, in June 2008, to discuss fears of ICC warrants being issued against them.
Of course, the U.S. Government and its business partners dictate the operations of the ICC. While considering soldiers of the United States and its allies to be above international humanitarian law and protected from the jurisdiction of the ICC, the Pentagon has simultaneously directed the formation, operations and legal precedents of the ICC through the involvement of members of the U.S. military’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, the legal arm of the Pentagon.
Congolese troops and militias connected to Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet and their military collaborators operate extortion and racketeering networks that are plundering Congo. While former militias responsible for plunder have ostensibly been disbanded, new military networks have replaced them again and again.
UGANDA ARMING MILITIAS YET AGAIN
‘The Congolese military [FARDC] works with Ugandans,’ reported Christian Lukusha, an expert with Justice Plus, a Congolese human rights NGO based in Bunia, ‘including Salim Saleh, Museveni’s half-brother. And they ship timber and minerals across the border at both Aru and Mahagi. It’s completely clandestine.’
According to the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC), fighting in Orientale in September 2008 drove over 90,000 additional IDPs from their homes and lands. Fighting continued into October and November, and militias new and old are today floating between Uganda, South Sudan and DRC, recruiting and conscripting soldiers, including children, and training and indoctrinating them in the ideology of their ‘mysterious’ leaders.
The FPJC—Front Congolaise Pour la Justice au Congo—is but the latest militia to suddenly emerge from the hills of Orientale. On September 29, 2008, the FPJC, described as ‘a newly formed rebel group,’ attacked and pursued retreating contingents of President Joseph Kabila’s regular army, the FARDC, before raiding and looting villages. Since mid-September the FPJC has engaged FARDC troops in firefights along the Lake Albert border zone. According to Congolese sources in Bunia, the FPJC is solidly backed by Uganda and provides a second front in an alliance with Laurent Nkunda’s Rwandan army, which has freely operated in the Kivu provinces for years.
‘The FPJC rebels are in the bush close to the Semliki River and the Uganda border,’ says Godefroid (not his real name), a Congolese professional in Bunia who travels back and forth to Uganda by land. ‘There is some new recruitment of former militias along the Congo-Uganda border by Thomas Lubanga’s former UPC minister Mr. Avochi, a Congolese who as been in exile in Uganda since 2004.’
Military training camps for the new FPJC recruits are today operating from at least four sites on the Uganda side of the border: {1} in the Kikong-Hoima district; {2} in Kasatu (close to Djegu) in Nebbi district; {3} in the Urusi area (close to Mahagi) of Nebbi district; and {4} in Bondo (close to Aru and Arua) in the Uganda district.
‘Such trainings cannot happen without a clear agreement and support of the upper authorities of Uganda,’ says Godefroid. ‘It’s all connected to the oil under Lake Albert and the gold in Orientale.’
According to this source, a senior FPJC military commander named Sherif confirmed that Laurent Nkunda and his National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) are involved with these Ugandan bases. ‘They are providing CNDP military training and recruits are given the CNDP ideology.’
Coincidentally—but not reported by the media—a hornet’s nest of Western petroleum and mining companies, all linked to international private military companies, local militias, and the national armies of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, are fighting for control of the land on both sides of the Congo’s eastern border.
‘Salim Saleh is involved in all of this,’ said one Congolese official at the border town of Aru, DRC. ‘He is certainly responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saleh worked with Jerome Kakwavu when he was the big chief in Aru. Kakwavu is a FARDC general now, in Kinshasa. Salim worked all the different groups, trading arms, playing them off one against the other.’
Petroleum companies that have recently emerged and now laying claim to DRC or Ugandan concessions on Lake Albert include: Tower Resources; South African consortiums PetroSA and Divine Inspiration; and H Oil & Minerals Ltd.[30] Tower Resources is a U.S.-U.K. firm affiliated with U.K.-based Hardman Resources and tied to oil exploitation in Kenya and Namibia.[31]H Oil & Minerals is a European firm operating in South Sudan, DRC and Angola; financiers include the Deutsche Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, and the Belgian giant Société Generale—one of the Congolese people’s greatest historical enemies. H Oil & Minerals is also closely linked to Marc Rich and his Switzerland-based company Glencore International, both known for arms trafficking in Angola and DRC through Angolagate notable Pierre Falcone. An Arizona (USA) republican, Falcone is reportedly very tight with the Joseph Kabila government. Marc Rich is the fugitive Swiss financier who for years appeared on the FBI’s list of most wanted criminals on charges ranging from trading with embargoed states, tax evasion, racketeering and arms trafficking; Marc Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton on Clinton’s last day in office.
One of the most notorious global arms traffickers involved in Congo, Namibia and Zimbabwe is John Bredenkamp, one of Britain’s 50 richest men. Walter Hailwax, the Belgian honorary consul to Namibia, is a director of arms producer Windhoeker Maschinenfabrik, and the local director of Bredenkamp’s arms brokerage company ACS International Ltd. A key agent in Zimbabwean and DRC organized crime networks, Bredenkamp is one of the phantom white-collar criminals behind Robert Mugabe, another black African fall guy now targeted by the Western press, think tanks and flak organizations, to the exclusion of other major interests. Of course, the Ndebele people suffered war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under Mugabe, with the bulk of the atrocities committed from 1981-1988. (Mugabe remained an embraceable black agent of white power until about 1999, and today—according to the Western economic and policy establishment, and the mass media, who no longer embrace him—he is the devil incarnate in Zimbabwe.)
THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY
If you asked Western media consumers to name a bloodthirsty guerrilla movement in Africa it is likely they would point to ‘warlord’ Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), this thanks to the one-sided fictional media campaigns waged by National Public Radio, Time Magazine, Washington Post, or by Christopher Hitchens—who calls them ‘a Christian Khmer Rouge’—and Vanity Fair.
In the simplistic Western media narratives, the LRA is always described as a ‘fanatical Christian cult’ that abducts children and forces them to commit atrocities. In the dichotomy of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ the LRA is ‘wicked’ and the forces they are fighting against, President Museveni and the UPDF, are benevolent. Indeed, evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States have been deeply involved with the SPLA war against the ’satanic’ forces of the LRA and the Islamic Government of Sudan.
Spilling over from the wars in Uganda and Sudan and operating a clandestine network of terror and extortion in the north of Congo today, the LRA has waged a low-intensity war against the Museveni regime since circa 1987. The LRA is a Ugandan guerrilla force backed by the government of Sudan (Khartoum) and its allies and clandestinely supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington.
‘For 19 years, Joseph Kony has been enslaving, torturing, raping, and murdering Ugandan children,’ wrote Christopher Hitchens, ‘many of whom have become soldiers for his ‘Lord’s Resistance Army,’ going on to torture, rape, and kill other children.’ Parroting the establishment line, Hitchens has no complaints about the UPDF brutalizing children in the refugee camps of Acholiland, and he never mentions the SPLA’s conscription of thousands of child soldiers.[36] According to a high-level United Nations source working in the DRC, the LRA maintains very high-level political ties in New York and Washington D.C. through Jongomoi Okidi-Olal, a Ugandan-American representative living in the U.S. The Uganda government has purportedly asked the Bush Administration and the United Nations to arrest Okidi-Olal and hand him over to the ICC. Other sources claim that Okidi is a fraud.
Interestingly, we find that Mwana Africa—whose vast Kilo-Moto mining concessions sprawl across northern Orientale—is also operating in Angola and South Africa, and at five major mining concessions in the so-called ‘failed state’ of Zimbabwe.[38] The government of Angola has always backed President Joseph Kabila, is very hostile to the Kagame gang, and currently controls Congolese territory (Kehemba) near the Angolan border. Given the spoils to be had, it is likely that factions from Angola or Zimbabwe also back the Lord’s Resistance Army in a bid to displace Mwana Africa and other competitors from mining and petroleum sites in northeastern Congo.
Congolese sources claim that MONUC moved into the Watsa region in northern Orientale only after the LRA—coming in through Garamba National Park near the Sudan border—began threatening the operations of AngloGold Ashanti, Mwana Africa and Moto Gold Mining. Additionally, Garamba National Park is rich in diamonds and gold.
While the LRA is also supported by Ugandan factions opposed to the Museveni dictatorship, it is widely believed the LRA is a tool of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors and thereby procure massive financial backing to facilitate some of the world’s most lucrative and unappreciated AID-for-ARMS scandals. It is the perfect ruse to facilitate permanent foreign military intervention.
The LRA also reportedly moved into the northern DRC to displace SPLA troops that had a long history of plundering the area, shooting wildlife and harassing villages. Thus while the evil LRA is always in the crosshairs of the international media, the same media protects the saintly SPLA, no matter the justice or criminality of either.
The mass media and foreign policy discourses are saturated with the writings, op-eds and policy briefs of ‘experts’ that serve as apologetic propagandists for foreign interventions and hidden agendas. Such ‘experts’ exercise stark biases in naming or delineating the ‘killers’ versus ‘victims’ and for this reason they often gain exclusive access to mass media venues. The system of information control becomes self-perpetuating in favor of power and deception.
Experts working for the Pentagon, State Department, or national security apparatus deploy arguments cloaked in righteous assumptions of higher morality about human rights or humanitarian concern. For example, Sudan ‘experts’ like Dr. Eric Reeves and Alex De Waal provide a constant barrage of one-sided propaganda to manufacture consent at home and project American power in Sudan.This propaganda is unassailable by Western ‘news’ consumers, because consumers are not otherwise privy to, interested in, or compelled to discover the deeper truths
Katika makala yangu ya ukosoaji wa mikakati ya wapiganaji CCM (ikiwa ni makala ya kukosoa wapiganaji ili kuwanoa) mojawapo ya magazeti yaliyotumia makala hiyo yaliipa kichwa cha habari ambacho bila ya shaka kilikuwa na lengo la kupotosha hasa ni kitu gani nimesema.
Gazeti hilo lenye mrengo wa kifisadi lilitumia makala hiyo na kudai kuwa ujumbe wake mkubwa ni kuwa wananchi “wale fedha za kina Mwakyembe lakini wasiwachague” ifikapo uchaguzi mkuu 2010. Nitakuwa msaliti wa mapambano na mpiganaji uchwara endapo ningesema kitu cha namna hiyo. Hadi hivi sasa sijaona sababu yoyote ile ya kunifanya nisite au nipinga kwa Dr. Mwakyembe kurudi Bungeni mwakani, na watu wa Kyela wanaweza kujikuta wanafanya kosa la milele endapo watafanya uchaguzi wao kwa kuongozwa na kitu kingine zaidi ya maslahi yao na yale ya Taifa.
Ndio maana kwa wakati huu nikielewa siasa za Kyela na Mbeya kwa ujumla zilivyo na mvutano wa makundi nisingeweza kusema kitu cha namna hiyo. Hata hivyo kwa kadiri wakati unavyoenda na endapo kuna ulazima wa kufanya hivyo, sitosita kuchukua msimamo wa kumuunga mkono mtu au kumpinga mtu kwa kipimo changu kimoja tu nacho ni je “atalifanyia nini taifa”?
Pamoja na kuweka hilo sawa (kwani nimepokea barua nyingi pepe za watu ambao walishangaa jinsi mada hiyo ilivyopotoshwa na gazeti hilo) ni vizuri nirudi nyuma kidogo kuzungumzia kile ambacho Dr. Mwakyembe alidaiwa kusema kwenye mkutano wa NEC akimtetea Spika Sitta kuwa mgogoro ulioko ndani ya CCM na kwenye taifa kwa ujumla ni mgogoro dhidi ya ufisadi (niseme mfumo wa utawala wa kifisadi) na kuwa “Ugomvi huu utaisha pale ufisadi utakaposhindwa. Zaidi ya hapo hakuna kinachoweza kumaliza ugomvi wetu”
Si ugomvi dhidi ya matajiri
Ni muhimu kuelewa kuwa tunachopigania si utajiri wa watu fulani au wivu unaotuongoza; hatuna ugomvi na matajiri wa Tanzania kwani utajiri siyo sawa na ufisadi! Hili ni muhimu kulielewa vinginevyo tutajikuta tunapigana sisi kwa sisi na pasipo kujua kuwa tunaumizana. Ni muhimu kulielewa ili tusije tukaingia kwenye mtego ambao hatuwezi kujinasua. Vita hii ya ufisadi siyo vita dhidi ya matajiri wa Tanzania.
Kwa sababu kama tunapigana dhidi ya utajiri ina maana tunapigania umaskini! Na nina uhakika hatupiganii umaskini kwa hiyo basi hatuwezi kupigana dhidi ya utajiri au matajiri. Tatizo letu kubwa na kiini cha mgongano huu ni mfumo uliotengeneza na unaoendelea kutengeneza matajiri nchini; yaani mfumo wa utawala wa kifisadi. Si fisadi mmoja mmoja au kikundi cha watu wachache, la hasha ni mfumo ambao unafanya kazi kama mashine ijiendeshayo (automatic) na kila kukika ikiibua matajiri wa haraka haraka ambao wametumia mfumo huo kuvuna wasichopanda, kula wasichopika na kulala katika nyumba isiyo yao!
Ndio maana ni vizuri sana kuelewa mfumo wa utawala wa kifisadi (MUK) ili kuweza kuelewa vita hii ni pana na kubwa kwa kiasi gani. Nimesoma mahali fulani ambapo watu wanamshangaa Waziri wa Nchi ofisi ya Waziri Mkuu anayeshughulikia Sera na Bunge Mhe. Marmo ambaye anailaumu Katiba kuwa inafanya vita dhidi ya ufisadi kuwa ngumu kweli. Marmo anachosema ndicho ambacho nilikiandika kwenye sehemu ya kwanza ya kuuelewa mfumo wa ufisadi; ni mfumo ambao umetengenezwa na kujipenyeza kwenye uchumi, sheria, na siasa. Hivyo Marmo anaposema “Kama serikali tunaona tuna mapungufu katika katiba, ndio maana hata utekelezaji wa mapendekezo ya Kamati teule ya bunge kuhusu uchunguzi wa Richmond yanachelewa” anasema ukweli nusu.
Ni ukweli nusu kwa sababu anachozungumzia ni taratibu zinavyogongana kati ya serikali (watendaji) na Bunge na taasisi nyingine. Lakini ukweli kamili ni kuwa Bunge linasimama kama msimamizi wa serikali na siyo serikali kuwa ni msimamizi wa Bunge; Bunge lina nguvu kubwa kuliko wizara, idara, n.k na maagizo yake yanatakiwa kutekelezwa siyo kujadiliwa tena. Kosa alilolifanya Mhe. Pinda katika suala la Richmond ni kuanzisha uchunguzi mwingine badala ya kutii maagizo ya Bunge na hivyo kusababisha mgongano usio wa lazima.
Ndio maana ni vyema kuelewa kuwa mgongano huu hauhusishi mtu mmoja mmoja tu bali ni mfumo mzima na hivyo ni mgongano ambao hata ukimuondoa mtu mmoja au kufunga jela watu wanne au sita bado mfumo utaendelea kutengeneza mafisadi wengine.
Mjadala na mafisadi hauwezekani
Mojawapo ya vitu ambavyo tunaweza kuviona muda si mrefu ujao na hasa kwenye kikao kijacho cha Bunge ni kitu kama mjadala kati ya wale wanaogemea kambi ya ufisadi na wale walio kinyume. Wapo ambapo wanaamini kuwa tunaweza kukaa meza moja na mafisadi na kukubaliana nao jinsi ya kuwashughulikia.
Na hili ndilo kosa la Rais Kikwete alipoamua kuunda timu ya kina Mwanyika akijaribu kutafuta ukweli zaidi wa wizi wa EPA; lilikuwa ni kosa kwa sababu alichofanya ni kujikuta anawalazimisha watendaji hawa kukaa meza moja na mafisadi na mwisho kujikuta kuwa mafisadi kumbe hawako mbali sana na wengine wako karibu “sana” na matokeo yake ni kupatwa na kigugumizi cha ghafla.
Suala la Richmond, EPA na mengine ni masuala ambayo yalihitaji kuchukuliwa hatua za kisheria, mengine ni mbele ya safari. Baada ya kashfa ya EPA kuibuliwa tu kiongozi makini angeifumua Benki Kuu nzima ile na kuwatia pingu watu na kuwaburuza toka maofisi yao! Lakini kwa kuamua kukaa meza moja nao na kuwapa muda tukawatengenezea mazingira ya kutafuta nani awe kafara!
Hapa Dr. Mwakyembe yuko sahihi; hakuna kitu kinachoweza kumaliza ugomvi au mgogoro huu dhidi ya ufisadi nchini isipokuwa ushindi tu. Kama hatuko tayari kushinda, basi ni bora tusipigane kabisa; kama tunataka kutoka droo na mafisadi tusipigane kabisa kwani kutoka droo nao ni kushindwa kwetu, na ushindi kwao!
Wapiganaji wote walenge kuubadili mfumo
Hadi hivi sasa hatujasikia wapiganaji wakizungumzia hii mashine tuliyonayo inayotutengenezea mafisadi utadhani mashine ya kusaga! Wapiganaji wetu bado hawajagusa injini yenyewe inayoibua mafisadi. Wao wanazungumzia dalili na matokeo tu ya kazi ya mashine hii, Ni lazima kama wanataka kuushinda ufisadi kuanza kuzungumzia matatizo ambayo Marmo ameyagusia na aliyekuwa Katibu Mkuu wa OAU na Waziri Mkuu wa zamani Dr. Salim ameyatanaibisha kwa mbali kuwa tatizo ni mfumo!
Yeye Dr. Salim alinukuliwa na gazeti moja kusema hivi kuhusu tatizo hasa nchini (akikaribiana zaidi na mimi katika kutambua tatizo hilo), “Rais Kikwete anajitahidi na ana nia ya kupambana na rushwa, lakini bado 'system' (mfumo) haijajitayarisha vya kutosha kupambana rushwa”
Lakini ukweli ni kuwa mfumo haujashushwa na shetani au haukukua ardhini kama uyoga; mfumo huu wa utawala wa kifisadi tumeujenga na kuukuza kwa sheria zetu na taratibu zetu sisi wenyewe. Katiba ni yetu na kama Marmo anajua kuwa Katiba ina matatizo kwanini wasije na mapendekezo ya kubadili Katiba au hata kuandika upya katiba yetu ili itusaidie kweli kupambana na ufisadi?
Tudhamirie kuleta watu watakaoleta mabadiliko ya mfumo 2010
Tunapoelekea uchaguzi mkuu mwakani, tusikubali watu wenye kutuahidi vile vile ambavyo wamekuwa wakituahidi; maji, shule, hospitali, barabara n.k Hivi vyote ni vizuri na ni matamanio yetu, lakini ni katika vitu hivyo hivyo ndipo tunaona ufisadi mkubwa sana ukitokea.
Ukisema tutajenga shule, maana yake hadi hiyo shule ijengwe kuna watu watamaliza na wenyewe nyumba zao; ukisema tujenge barabara usishangae hadi barabara ije kukamilika ukakuta fulani amejenga nyumba na magari kadhaa ya kutanua nayo.
Kumbe, hivi vyote tunavyoahidiwa wakati mwingine ndiyo hivyo hivyo vinageuka kuwa vyombo vya kubebea mafisadi na kuwanufaisha mafisadi. Tunachotaka ni kujua hao wanaotaka kuja kututawala 2010 watafanya nini kuondokana na mfumo wa kifisadi? Ni mabadiliko gani ya Katiba wanayapendekeza na watayatekeleza ndani ya muda gani wakiingia madarakani? Je, tukiwachagua watafanya mabadiliko gani katika ofisi ya DPP, Mwanasheria Mkuu, Polisi au Usalama wa taifa?
Tusikubali tena kukaa na kufanya mapatano na mafisadi; tunapoelekea 2010 ni sisi ndio tutatengeneza ajenda ya mabadiliko tunayoyataka. Wale wasioyataka mabadiliko hayo au kukumbatia ajenda hiyo, basi wao watakuwa wamechagua upande wa ufisadi.
Na kwa hilo, hatuna mapatano nao tena, na ugomvi wetu hautaisha isipokuwa kwa ushindi! , Dr. Mwakyembe yuko sahihi.
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April through mid-July, at least 500,000 people were killed.[1] Most estimates indicate a death toll between 800,000 and 1,000,000,[2] which could be as high as 20% of the total population.
In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group, composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda. The Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime, with support from Francophonenations of Africa and France itself,[3][4] and the RPF, with support from Uganda, vastly increased the ethnic tensions in the country and led to the rise of Hutu Power, an ideology that stressed that the Tutsi intended to enslave Hutus and thus must be resisted at all costs. Despite ongoing ethnic tension, including the displacement of large numbers of Hutu in the north by the rebels and periodic localized ethnic cleansing of Tutsi to the south, pressure on the government of Juvénal Habyarimana led to a cease-fire in 1993 and the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords.
The assassination of Habyarimana in April 1994 was the proximate cause of the mass killings of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus. They were carried out primarily by two Hutu militias associated with political parties: the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi. The genocide was directed by a Hutu power group known as the Akazu. The killing also marked the end of the peace agreement meant to end the war and the Tutsi RPF restarted their offensive, eventually defeating the army and seizing control of the country.
Background
In 1957 the Hutu Emancipation Movement called Parmehutu published the "Bahutu" Manifesto, in which it alleged a monopoly of power held by the Tutsi minority. In the 1960s, these denunciations led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic headed by Gregoire Kayibanda. This was a regime which persecuted the Tutsi, who in many cases were forced to flee. The persecution also went on under the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana who had seized power in 1973 and promised progress and reconciliation.
Civil war
The Tutsi refugee diaspora was by the late 1980s a coherent political and military organization. Large numbers of Tutsi refugees in Uganda had joined the victorious rebel National Resistance Movement during the Ugandan Bush War and made themselves a separate movement. In October 1990 the RPF invaded Rwanda to restore themselves within the nation. The journal Kangura, a Hutu counteraction towards the Tutsi journal Kanguka, active from 1990 to 1993, was instrumental in incitement of Hutu disdain for Tutsis,[5] on the basis of their ethnicity, rather than their previous economic advantages. Hassan Ngeze, founder and editor of Kangura, published the widely read Hutu Ten Commandments, which called for the formal installment of Hutu Power ideology in schools and the establishment of an exclf the transitional government, was open to all parties, including the RPF. The extremist Hutu Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), nominally controlled by President Habyarimana, was strongly opposed to sharing power with the RPF, however, and refused to sign the accords. When at last it decided to agree to the terms, the accords were opposed by the RPF.[citation needed] UN Peacekeepers were deployed to patrol ceasefire and assist in demilitarization and demobilization. A March 1993 report found that 10,000 Tutsi had been detained and 2,000 murdered since RPF 1990 invasion. In August 1993, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN forces, made a reconnaissance trip to evaluate the situation and requested 5,000 troops; he was given 2,500. He saw the situation as a standard peacekeeping mission.
Preparations for the genocide
The killing was well organized[6] and by the time it had started, the Rwandan militia numbered around 30,000 — one militia member for every ten families — and was organized nationwide, with representatives in every neighborhood. Some militia members were able to acquire AK-47assault rifles by completing requisition forms. Other weapons, such as grenades, required no paperwork and were widely distributed. Many members of the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi were armed only with machetes.
Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda revealed, in his testimony before the International Criminal Tribunal, that the genocide was openly discussed in cabinet meetings and that "one cabinet minister said she was personally in favor of getting rid of all Tutsi; without the Tutsi, she told ministers, all of Rwanda's problems would be over."[7] In addition to Kambanda, the genocide's organizers included Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, a retired army officer, and many top ranking government officials and members of the army, such as General Augustin Bizimungu. On the local level, the genocide's planners included Burgomasters, or mayors, and members of the police.
Government leaders communicated with figures among the population to form and arm militias called Interahamwe, "those who stand (fight, kill) together", and Impuzamugambi, "those who have the same (or a single) goal". These groups, particularly their youth wings, were responsible for much of the violence.[8]
Media propaganda
According to recent commentators the news media played a crucial role in the genocide: local print and radio media fueled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground.[9] The print media in Rwanda is believed to have started hate speech against Tutsis which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators anti-Tutsi hate speech "became so systemic as to seem the norm." The state-owned newspaper Kangura had a central role, starting an anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF campaign in October 1990. In the ongoing International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the individuals behind Kangura have been accused of producing leaflets in 1992 picturing a machete and asking "What shall we do to complete the social revolution of 1959?" - a reference to the Hutu revolt that overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and the subsequent politically orchestrated communal violence that resulted in thousands of mostly Tutsi casualties and forced roughly 300,000 Tutsis to flee to neighboring Burundi and Uganda. Kangura also published the infamous "10 Hutu Commandments," which regulated all dealings with Tutsis and how Hutus are to treat them, and generally communicated the message that the RPF had a devious grand strategy (one feature article was titled "Tutsi colonization plan").[10]
Due to high rates of illiteracy at the time of the genocide, radio was an important way for the government to deliver messages to the public. Two radio stations key to inciting violence before and during the genocide were Radio Rwanda and Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). In March 1992, Radio Rwanda was first used in directly promoting the killing of Tutsi in Bugesera, south of the national capital Kigali. Radio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a communiqué warning that Hutu in Bugesera would be attacked by Tutsi, a message used by local officials to convince Hutu that they needed to protect themselves by attacking first. Led by soldiers, Hutu civilians and members of the Interahamwe subsequently attacked and killed hundreds of Tutsi.[11] At the end of 1993, the RTLM's highly sensationalized reporting on the assassination of the Burundi president, a Hutu, was used to underline supposed Tutsi brutality. The RTLM falsely reported that the president had been tortured, including castration of the victim (in pre-colonial times, some Tutsi kings castrated defeated enemy rulers). From late October 1993, the RTLM repeatedly broadcast themes developed by the extremist written press, underlining the inherent differences between Hutu and Tutsi, the foreign origin of Tutsi, the disproportionate share of Tutsi wealth and power, and the horrors of past Tutsi rule. RTLM also repeatedly stressed the need to be alert to Tutsi plots and possible attacks and called upon Hutu to prepare to 'defend' themselves against the Tutsi.[11] After April 6, 1994, authorities used RTLM and Radio Rwanda to spur and direct killings, specifically in areas where the killings initially were resisted. Both radio stations were used to incite and mobilize, then to give specific directions for carrying out the killings.[11]
The RTLM had used terms such as inyenzi (cockroach in Kinyarwandan) and Tutsi interchangeably with others referring to RPF combatants and warned specifically that RPF combatants dressed in civilian clothes were mingling among displaced people fleeing combat zones. These broadcasts gave the impression that all Tutsi were necessarily supporters of the RPF force fighting against the government.[11] Women were part of the anti-Tutsi propaganda prior the 1994 genocide, for example the "Ten Hutu Commandments" published in December 1990 by "Kangura" included four commandments which portrayed Tutsi women as tools of the Tutsi people, as sexual weapons that would be used by the Tutsi to weaken and ultimately destroy the Hutu men.[12] Gender-based propaganda also include cartoons printed in newspapers depicting Tutsi women as sex objects. Examples of gender-based hate propaganda used to incite war rape include statements by perpetrators such as "You Tutsi women think that you are too good for us" and "Let us see what a Tutsi woman tastes like ".[12]
There were 50,000 civilian deaths in Burundi in 1993.
United Nations
On January 11, 1994 Lieutenant General Dallaire (United Nations Force Commander in Rwanda) notified Military Advisor to the Secretary-General, Major-General Maurice Baril of four major weapons caches and plans by the Hutus for extermination of Tutsis. The telegram from Dallaire stated that an informant who was a top level Interahamwe militia trainer was in charge of demonstrations carried out a few days before. The goal of the demonstrations was to provoke an RPF battalion in Kigali into firing upon demonstrators and Belgian United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) troops into using force. Under such a scenario the Interhamwe would have an excuse to engage the Belgian troops and the RPF battalion. Several Belgians were to be killed, which would guarantee a withdrawal of the Belgian contingent. According to the informant, 1,700 Interhamwe militiamen were trained in Governmental Forces camps and he was ordered to register all the Kigali Tutsis. Dallaire made immediate plans for UNAMIR troops to seize the arms caches and advised UN Headquarters of his intentions, believing these actions lay within his mission's mandate. The following day headquarters stated in another cable that the outlined actions went beyond the mandate granted to UNAMIR under Security Council Resolution 872. Instead, President Habyarimana was to be informed of possible Arusha Accords violations and the discovered concerns and report back on measures taken. The January 11 telegram later played an important role in discussion about what information was available to the United Nations prior to the genocide.[13] On February 21 extremists assassinated the Minister of Public Works, and UNAMIR failed to gain approval to investigate the murder.
On the April 6, 1994 the RTLM accused the Belgian peacekeepers of having shot down – or helping to shoot down – the president's plane. This broadcast has been linked to the killing of ten Belgian UN troops by soldiers of the Rwandan army.[14]
The situation proved too "risky" for the United Nations to attempt to help. The RPF successfully brought the country under their sway, although their efforts towards a conclusion to the conflict were delayed after the UN-mandated French-led force, under Operation Turquoise, established and maintained a "safe zone" for Hutu refugees to flee to in the southwest. Eventually, after the UN Mandate of the French mission was at an end, millions of refugees left Rwanda, mainly headed to Zaire. The presence of Hutu refugees (see Great Lakes refugee crisis) on the border with Rwanda was the cause for the First and Second Congo Wars with clashes between these groups and the Rwandan government continuing.[1]
The UN's mandate forbids intervening in the internal politics of any country unless the crime of genocide is being committed. France has been accused of aiding the Hutu regime to flee by creating what is known as Operation Turquoise. Canada, Ghana, and the Netherlands provided consistent support for the UN mission under the command of Roméo Dallaire although it was left without an appropriate mandate for the capacity to intervene from the U.N. Security Council. Despite emphatic demands from UNAMIR's commanders in Rwanda before and throughout the genocide, its requests for authorization to end it were refused and its intervention-capacity was even reduced.
Religion
The Roman Catholic Missionary "White Fathers" came to Rwanda in the late 1880s and developed the "Hamitic" theory of race origins which taught that the Tutsi were a superior race.[15] The Church itself has been considered to have played a significant role in fomenting racial divisions between Hutu and Tutsi.[15] Some in its religious hierarchy have been brought to trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and convicted.[15] The Roman Catholic Church affirms that genocide took place but argues that those who took part in it did so without the permission of the Church.[15] As of 2007 there has been no official statement by the Church comparable to We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah with regard to Jews and the Holocaust.[15]
Though religious factors were not prominent (the event was ethnically motivated) the Human Rights Watch reported that a number of religious authorities, particularly Roman Catholic, in Rwanda failed to condemn the genocide. [16] Bishop Misago was accused of corruption and complicity in the genocide but was cleared of all charges in 2000.[17] The majority of Rwandans, and of Tutsis in particular, are Catholic.
Catalyst and initial events
On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali. Both presidents died when the plane crashed. Responsibility for the attack is disputed, with both the RPF and Hutu extremists being blamed. But in spite of disagreements about the identities of its perpetrators, the attack on the plane is to many observers the catalyst for the genocide.
On April 6 and April 7 the staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) and Colonel Theoneste Bagosora clashed verbally with the UNAMIR Force commander Lieutenant General Dallaire, who stressed the legal authority of the Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, to take control of the situation as outlined in the Arusha Accords. Bagosora disputed the authority, and Dallaire gave an escort of UNAMIR personnel to Mrs. Uwilingiyimana to protect her and to allow her to send a calming message on the radio the next morning. But by then, the presidential guard had occupied the radio station and Mrs. Uwilingiyimana had to cancel her speech. In the middle of the day, she was assassinated by the presidential guard. The ten Belgian UNAMIR soldiers sent to protect her were later found killed; Major Bernard Ntuyahaga was convicted of the murders in 2007. Other moderate officials who favored the Arusha Accords were quickly assassinated. Protected by UNAMIR, Faustin Twagiramungu escaped execution. In his book Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire recalled the events from April 7, the first day of the genocide:
I called the Force HQ and got through to GhanaianBrigadier GeneralHenry Anyidoho. He had horrifying news. The UNAMIR-protected VIPs - Lando Ndasingwa [the head of the Parti libéral], Joseph Kavaruganda [president of the constitutional court], and many other moderates had been abducted by the Presidential Guard and had been killed, along with their families [...] UNAMIR had been able to rescue Prime Minister Faustin, who was now at the Force HQ.[18][19]
Genocide
Numerous elite Hutu politicians have been found guilty for the organization of the genocide. Military and Hutu militia groups systematically set out to murder all the Tutsis they could capture, irrespective of their age or sex, as well as the political moderates. The western nations evacuated their nationals from Kigali and abandoned their embassies in the initial stages of the violence. National radio, with the exacerbation of the situation, advised people to stay in their homes, and the Hutu power station RTLM broadcast vitriolic propaganda against Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Hundreds of roadblocks were put up by the militia around the country. Lieutenant-General Dallaire and UNAMIR were in Kigali, escorting Tutsis, and were unable to stop the Hutus from escalating their attacks. During this time, the Hutus also targeted Lieutenant-General Dallaire, and UNAMIR personnel through the RTLM. On April 8 Dallaire sent cable to NY indicating ethnicity was the driving force of killings. The cable detailed killings of politicians and peacekeepers (Chairman of Liberal party, Minister of Labor, Minister of Agriculture and dozens more). Dallaire informed the UN that campaign of violence is well organized, deliberate—conducted primarily by presidential guard.
On April 9, UN observers witnessed the massacre of children at a Polish church. The same day 1000 highly armed and trained European troops arrived to escort European civilian personnel out of country. The troops did not stay to assist UNAMIR. Media coverage picked up on the 9th as the Washington Post reported the execution of Rwandan employees of relief agencies in front of their horrified expatriate colleagues. On April 9-10, US Ambassador Rawson and 250 Americans were evacuated.
Killings quickly took place throughout most of the country. The first person to organize killings on a genocidal scale was the mayor of the northwestern town of Gisenyi, who on the evening of April 6 called a meeting to distribute arms and send out militias to kill Tutsis. Gisenyi was a center of anti-Tutsi sentiment, both as the homeland of the Akazu and as a refuge for thousands of people displaced by the rebel occupation of large areas in the south. While killing occurred in other towns immediately after Habyarimana's assassination, it took several days for them to become organized on a similar scale. The major exception to this pattern was in Butare Province. In Butare, Jean-Baptiste Habyarimana was the only Tutsi prefect and the province was the only one dominated by an opposition party.[20] Habyarimana opposed the genocide, resulting in the province becoming a haven of relative calm, until he was deposed in lieu of an extremist, Sylvain Ndikumana.[20] Finding the population of Butare unenthusiastic about the killings, the government proceeded to fly in militia members from Kigali by helicopter, and the killing began immediately.[20]
Most of the victims were killed in their villages or in towns, often by their neighbors and fellow villagers. Militia members typically murdered their victims by hacking them with machetes, although some army units used rifles. Victims were often found hiding in churches and school buildings, where Hutu gangs massacred them. Ordinary citizens were called on by local officials and government-sponsored radio to kill their neighbors, and those who refused to kill were often murdered themselves. "Either you took part in the massacres or you were massacred yourself."[21] One such massacre occurred at Nyarubuye. On April 12, more than 1,500 Tutsis sought refuge in a Catholic church in Nyange, then in Kivumu commune. Local Interahamwe, acting in concert with the priest and other local authorities, then used bulldozers to knock down the church building.[22] People who tried to escape were hacked with machetes or shot. Local priest Athanase Seromba was later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison by the ICTR for his role in the demolition of his church and convicted of the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity.[22][23][24] In another case, thousands sought refuge in Ecole Technique Officielle school in Kigali where Belgian UNAMIR soldiers were stationed. However, on April 11, Belgian soldiers withdrew from the school and members of the Rwandan armed forces and militia killed all the Tutsis who were hiding there.[25]
There is no consensus on the number of dead between April 6 and mid-July. Unlike the genocides carried out by the Nazi Germany and by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, authorities made no attempts to record deaths. The RPF government has stated that 1,071,000 were killed, 10% of whom were Hutu. Philip Gourevitch agrees with an estimate of one million, while the United Nations lists the toll as 800,000. Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omar of African Rights estimates the number as "around 750,000," while Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch states that it was "at least 500,000." James Smith of Aegis Trust notes, "What's important to remember is that there was a genocide. There was an attempt to eliminate Tutsis — men, women, and children — and to erase any memory of their existence."[26]
Out of a population of 7.3 million people - 84% of whom where Hutu, 15% Tutsi and 1% Twa - the official figures published by the Rwandan government estimated the number of victims of the genocide to 1,174,000 in 100 days (10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, 7 every minute). Other sources put the death toll to 800,000, 20% of whom were Hutus.[citation needed] It is estimated that about 300,000 Tutsis survived the genocide. Thousands of widows, many of whom were subjected to rape, are now HIV-positive. There are about 400,000 orphans and nearly 85,000 of them have become heads of families.
In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda made the landmark decisions that war rape in Rwanda was an element of the crime of genocide. The Trial Chamber held that "sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide."[27] Although no explicit written orders to rape or commit sexual violence have been found, evidence suggests that military leaders encouraged or ordered their men to rape Tutsi as well as condoned the acts taking place, without making efforts to stop them.[12] Compared to other conflicts the sexual violence in Rwanda stands out in terms of the organized nature of the propaganda that contributed significantly to fueling sexual violence against Tutsi women, the very public nature of the rapes and the level of brutality towards the women.[28]
In his 1996 report the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rwanda, Rene Degni-Segui stated that "rape was the rule and its absence the exception." The report also stated that "rape was systematic and was used as a weapon" by the perpetrators of the massacres. This can be estimated from the number and nature of the victims as well as from the forms of rape. The Special Rapporteur estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 Rwandese women and girls had been raped.[29] A 2000 report prepared by the Organization of African Unity’s International Panel of Eminent Personalities concluded that "we can be certain that almost all females who survived the genocide were direct victims of rape or other sexual violence, or were profoundly affected by it".[29] The victims were mostly Tutsi women and girls, of all ages, while men were only seldom the victims of war rape.[12] War rape during the genocide was also directed against Hutu women considered moderates, but also occurred regardless of ethnicity or political affiliation, with young or beautiful women being targeted based only on their gender.[citation needed] Sexual violence against men was much less common, but frequently included mutilation of the genitals, which were often displayed in public.[12] The perpetrators of war rape during the Rwanda genocide were mainly members of the Hutu militia, the "Interahamwe". Rapes were also committed by military soldiers of the Rwandan Armed Forced (RAF), including the Presidential Guard, and civilians.[12]
Sexual violence against women and girls during the Rwanda genocide included: rape, gang rape, sexual slavery (either collectively or individually through "forced marriages"), rape with objects such as sticks and weapons often leading to the victim’s death, sexual mutilation of, in particular, breasts, vaginas or buttocks, often during or following rape. Pregnant women were not spared from sexual violence and on many occasion victims were killed following rape. Many women were raped by men who knew they were HIV positive and it has been suggested that there were deliberate attempts to transmit the virus to Tutsi women and their families. War rape occurred across the country and was frequently perpetrated in plain view of others, at sites such as schools, churches, roadblocks, government buildings or in the bush. Some women were kept as personal slaves for years after the genocide, forced to move to neighboring countries after the genocide along with their captors.[28]
UNAMIR and the international community
A school chalkboard in Kigali. Note the names "Dallaire", UNAMIR Force Commander, and "Marchal", UNAMIR Kigali sector commander.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was hampered from the outset by resistance from numerous UN Security Council members, who were reluctant to become involved, first in the Arusha process and then the genocide.[30][31] Only Belgium had asked for a strong UNAMIR mandate, but after the murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers protecting the Prime Minister in early April, Belgium pulled out of the peacekeeping mission.[32]
The UN and its member states appeared largely detached from the realities on the ground. In the midst of the crisis, Lt. General Roméo Dallaire was instructed to focus UNAMIR on only evacuating foreign nationals from Rwanda. The change in orders led Belgian peacekeepers to abandon a technical school filled with 2,000 refugees, while Hutu militants waited outside, drinking beer and chanting "Hutu Power." After the Belgians left, the militants entered the school and massacred those inside, including hundreds of children. Four days later the Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR to 260 men.[33]
Following the withdrawal of the Belgian forces, Dallaire consolidated his contingent of Canadian, Ghanaian, and Dutch soldiers in urban areas and focused on providing areas of "safe control". His actions directly saved the lives of 20,000 Tutsis.[citation needed] The administrative head of UNAMIR, former Cameroonian foreign minister Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, has been criticized for downplaying the significance of Dallaire's reports and for holding close ties to the Hutu militant elite.[citation needed]
The U.S. government was reluctant to involve itself in the "local conflict" in Rwanda and refused to label the killings as "genocide", a decision which then-president Bill Clinton later came to regret in a Frontline television interview. In the interview, five years after the genocide, Clinton stated that he believes if he had sent 5,000 U.S. peacekeepers, more than 500,000 lives could have been saved.[34]
The new Rwandan government, led by interim President Théodore Sindikubwabo, worked to minimize international criticism. Rwanda at that time had a seat on the Security Council and its ambassador argued that the claims of genocide were exaggerated and that the government was doing all that it could to stop it.
The UN conceded that "acts of genocide may have been committed" on May 17, 1994.[35] By that time, the Red Cross estimated that 500,000 Rwandans had been killed. The UN agreed to send 5,500 troops, mostly from African countries, to Rwanda.[36] This was the original number of troops requested by General Dallaire before the killing escalated. The UN also requested 50 armoured personnel carriers from the United States, but for the transport alone they were charged $6.5 million (U.S.) by the U.S. Army. Deployment of these forces was delayed due to arguments over their cost and other factors.[37]
French role
A French soldier, part of the international force supporting the relief effort for Rwandan refugees, adjusts the concertina wire surrounding the airport.
In the analysis of U.K. Linda Melvern, documents recently released from the Paris archive of former president François Mitterrand show how the RPF invasion was considered as clear aggression by an Anglophone neighbour on a Francophone country[38]. The documents are said to argue that the RPF was a part of an "Anglophone plot", involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking "Tutsi-land" and increase Anglophone influence at the expense of French influence. In Melvern's analysis, the policy of France was to avoid a military victory by the RPF. The policy had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand. French policy had been unaccountable to either parliament or the press.[38]
On June 22, with no sign of UN deployment taking place, the Security Council authorized French forces to land in Goma, Zaire on a humanitarian mission. They deployed throughout southwest Rwanda in an area they called "Zone Turquoise," quelling the genocide and stopping the fighting there, but often arriving in areas only after genocidaires had expelled or killed Tutsi citizens. Operation Turquoise was charged with aiding the Hutu army against the RPF by Jacques Bihozagara, the then-Rwandan ambassador to France, who later testified, "Operation Turquoise was aimed only at protecting genocide perpetrators, because the genocide continued even within the Turquoise zone." [39]
Following an investigation of the plane crash of 6 April1994 that killed both the Rwandan PresidentJuvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and precipitated the genocide, and in which three French crews had died, the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière indicted eight associates of Rwandan president Paul Kagame on November 17, 2006. President Kagame himself was not indicted, as he had immunity under French law as a head of state. Kagame denied the allegations, decrying them as politically motivated, and broke diplomatic relationships with France in November 2006. He then ordered the formation of a commission of his own Rwandan Justice Ministry's employees that was officially "charged with assembling proof of the involvement of France in the genocide".[40] The political character of that investigation was in turn further averred when the commission issued its report solely to Kagame - symbolically on November 17, 2007, exactly one year after Bruguière's announcement - and the head of the Rwandan commission, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, stated that the commission would now "wait for President Kagame to declare whether the inquiry was valid."[40] In July 2008, Kagame threatened to indict French nationals over the genocide if European courts did not withdraw arrest warrants issued against Rwandan officials, which by then included broader indictments against 40 Rwandan army officers by Spanish judge Fernando Andreu.[41][42] Findings of the commission were released at Kagame's order on August 5, 2008 and accused the French government of knowing of preparations for the genocide and helping to train the ethnic Hutu militia members; named 33 senior French military and political officials of involvement in the genocide, including then-President Mitterrand and his then general secretary Hubert Védrine, then-Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, then-Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, and his chief aide at the time, Dominique de Villepin[43][44][45] A statement accompanying the release claimed that "French soldiers themselves directly were involved in assassinations of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis... French forces committed several rapes on Tutsi survivors", though the latter was not documented in the report.[43] A BBC report commented that French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide but said that political errors had been made.[43] Another BBC report delved into the motivations for the Rwandan report and stated that
Chief among them has been an iron determination to keep the world's attention focused on the genocide, rather than on the role of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the force that took power in 1994, bringing President Paul Kagame to power. In recent years uncomfortable questions have been raised about the war crimes the RPF are alleged to have committed during and after 1994. While stressing there can be no equation between genocide and war crimes, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch says RPF leaders do have a case to answer. "Their victims also deserve justice," she says.[46]
The suspicions about United Nations and French policies in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 and allegations that France supported the Hutus led to the creation of a French Parliamentary Commission on Rwanda, which published its report on December 15, 1998.[47] In particular, François-Xavier Verschave, former president of the French NGO Survie, which accused the French army of protecting the Hutus during the genocide, was instrumental in establishing this Parliamentary commission. The commission released its final report on December 15, 1998. It documented ambiguities and confusion in both the French and UN responses. Regarding Operation Turquoise, it regretted that the intervention took place too late, though it noted that this was better than the non-response from the UN and the opposition by the U.S. and U.K. governments to such a response. The report documented mixed success at disarming the Rwandan Army and militias, but a definite and systematic attempt (though not fast enough as far as then-General Paul Kagame of the opposing RPF forces was concerned, in documentation of the latter's communications with the French forces). It did not find any evidence of French participation in the genocide, of collaboration with the militias, or of willful disengagement from endangered populations, to the contrary. It documented multiple French operations, all at least partly successful, to disable genocide-inciting radio broadcasts, tasks which the UN and the United States had rejected calls for assistance with. The report concluded that there had been errors of judgment pertaining to the Rwanda Armed Forces, but before the genocide only; further errors of judgment about the scale of the threat, at the onset of the genocide; over-reliance on the UNIMAR mission without awareness that it would be undercut by the United States and other parties; and ineffective diplomacy. Ultimately, it concluded that France had been the foreign power most involved in limiting the scale of the genocide once it got started, though it regretted that more had not been done.[47]
American role
Prior to the war, the U.S. government had aligned itself with Tutsi interests, in turn raising Hutu concerns about potential U.S. support to the opposition. Paul Kagame, a Tutsi officer in exile in Uganda who had co-founded the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1986 and was in open conflict with the incumbent Rwandan government, was invited to receive military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, home of the Command and General Staff College. In October 1990, while Kagame was at Fort Leavenworth, the RPF started an invasion of Rwanda. Only two days into the invasion, his close friend and RPF co-founder Fred Rwigema was killed, upon which the U.S. arranged the return of Kagame to Uganda from where he became the military commander of the RPF.[48] An article in the Washington Post of August 16, 1997, authored by its Southern African bureau chief Lynne Duke, indicates that the connection continued as RPF elements received counterinsurgency and combat training from U.S. Special Forces.[49][50]
In January 1994 NSC member Richard Clark developed formal US peacekeeping doctrine, Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25).
Unlike French and U.N. troops, there were no U.S. troops officially in Rwanda at the onset of the genocide. Nevertheless, the U.S. government and military made a number of decisions, some of commission and most of omission, that had the effect of facilitating and extending the genocide.[citation needed] A National Security Archive report points out five ways in which decisions made by the U.S. government contributed to the slow U.S. and worldwide response and to the continuation of the genocide:
1.Contrary to later public statements, the U.S. lobbied the U.N. for a total withdrawal of U.N. (UNAMIR) forces in Rwanda in April 1994;
2.Secretary of State Warren Christopher did not authorize officials to use the term "genocide" until May 21, and even then, U.S. officials waited another three weeks before using the term in public;
3.Bureaucratic infighting slowed the U.S. response to the genocide in general;
4.The U.S. refused to jam extremist radio broadcasts inciting the killing, citing costs and concern with international law;
5.U.S. officials knew exactly who was leading the genocide, and actually spoke with those leaders to urge an end to the violence but did not follow up with concrete action.[51]
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) battalion of Tutsi rebels stationed in Kigali under the Arusha Accords came under attack immediately after the shooting down of the president's plane. The battalion fought its way out of Kigali and joined up with RPF units in the north.[52] The resulting civil war raged concurrently with the genocide for two months. The nature of the genocide was not immediately apparent to foreign observers, and was initially explained as a violent phase of the civil war. Mark Doyle, the correspondent for the BBC News in Kigali, tried to explain the complex situation in late April 1994 thus:
Look you have to understand that there are two wars going on here. There's a shooting war and a genocide war. The two are connected, but also distinct. In the shooting war, there are two conventional armies at each other, and in the genocide war, one of those armies, the government side with help from civilians, is involved in mass killings.[53]
The victory of the RPF rebels and overthrow of the Hutu regime ended the genocide in July 1994, 100 days after it started.
Aftermath Approximately two million Hutus, participants in the genocide, and the bystanders, with anticipation of Tutsi retaliation, fled from Rwanda, to Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and for the most part Zaire. Thousands of them died in epidemics of diseases common to the squalor of refugee camps, such as cholera and dysentery.[54] The United States staged the Operation Support Hope airlift from July to September 1994 to stabilize the situation in the camps.[55]
After the victory of the RPF, the size of UNAMIR (henceforth called UNAMIR 2) was increased to its full strength, remaining in Rwanda until March 8, 1996.[56]
In October 1996, an uprising by the ethnic Tutsi Banyamulenge people in eastern Zaire marked the beginning of the First Congo War, and led to a return of more than 600,000 to Rwanda during the last two weeks of November. This massive repatriation was followed at the end of December 1996 by the return of 500,000 more from Tanzania after they were ejected by the Tanzanian government. Various successor organizations to the Hutu militants operated in eastern DR Congo until May 22, 2009.
Political development
After its military victory in July 1994, the Rwandese Patriotic Front organized a coalition government similar to that established by President Juvénal Habyarimana in 1992. Called The Broad Based Government of National Unity, its fundamental law is based on a combination of the constitution, the Arusha accords, and political declarations by the parties. The MRND party was outlawed. Political organizing was banned until 2003. The first post-war presidential and legislative elections were held in August and September 2003 respectively.
The current government prohibits discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race or religion. The government has also passed laws prohibiting emphasis on Hutu or Tutsi identity in most types of political activity.[citation needed]
In March 1998, on a visit to Rwanda, U.S. President Bill Clinton spoke to the crowd assembled on the tarmac at Kigali Airport: "We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred" in Rwanda.[57] Four years after the genocide, Clinton issued what is now known as the "Clinton apology," acknowledging his failure to efficiently deal with the situation in Rwanda, but not formally apologizing for inaction by the U.S. government or the international community.
Despite substantial international assistance and political reforms, the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output and to foster reconciliation. In March 2000, after removing Pasteur Bizimungu, Paul Kagame became President of Rwanda. On August 25, 2003 Kagame won the first national elections since the RPF took power in 1994. A series of massive population displacements, a nagging Hutu extremist insurgency, and Rwandan involvement in the First and Second Congo Wars in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to hinder Rwanda's efforts.
The biggest problems facing the government are reintegration of the more than two million refugees, ending the insurgency among ex-soldiers and Interahamwe militia fighters and the Rwandan Patriotic Army in the north and southwest of the country, and the shift away from crisis to medium and long-term development planning.[citation needed] The prison population will continue to be an urgent problem for the foreseeable future, having swelled to more than 100,000 in the three years after the war. Trying this many suspects of genocide will tax Rwanda's resources sorely.
The long-term effects of war rape in Rwanda for the victims include social isolation (social stigma attached to rape meant some husbands left wives who had become victims of war rape, or that the victims were rendered unsuitable for marriage), unwanted pregnancies and babies (some women resorted to self-induced abortions), sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, gonorrhoea and HIV/AIDS.[28] The Special Rapporteur on Rwanda estimated that between 2,000 and 5,000 pregnancies resulted from war rape (between 250,000 and 500,000 Rwandese women and girls had been raped).[29] Rwanda is a patriarchal society and children therefore take the ethnicity of the father, underlining that war rape occurred in the context of genocide. [28] The main issue involving reintegration is the fact that the violence that had occurred often involved neighbors; people lived next to rapists, murderers and torturers. It was very difficult right after the genocide for Tutsis to trust Hutus, whether or not they had any involvement in the genocide.
With the return of the refugees, the government began the long-awaited genocide trials, which had an uncertain start at the end of 1996 and inched forward in 1997. In 2001, the government began implementing a participatory justice system, known as Gacaca, in order to address the enormous backlog of cases.[58] Meanwhile, the UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, currently based in Arusha, Tanzania. The UN Tribunal has jurisdiction over high level members of the government and armed forces, while Rwanda is responsible for prosecuting lower level leaders and local people.[59] Tensions arose between Rwanda and the UN over the use of the death penalty, though these were largely resolved once Rwanda abolished the punishment in 2007.[60] However, domestic tensions continued over support for the death penalty, and the interest in conducting the trials at home. In ten years the Arusha tribunal only succeeded in sentencing 20 people. In 2003, in an attempt to redress this mismanagement,[citation needed] the UN appointed Hassan Bubacar Jallow chief prosecutor with exclusive jurisdiction over Rwanda. Faced with the local criminal system's inability to cope with a number of detainees awaiting trial in Rwandan jails reaching 90,000, in 2000 a series of popular tribunals called gacaca courts were setup. The convicted are invited to admit their guilt in exchange for significant reductions in their sentences.
On Thursday, December 18, 2008, Theoneste Bagosora was found guilty of crimes against humanity. He was charged by UN judge Erik Møse, and sentenced to life in prison.[61] The court also found Bagosora responsible for the deaths of former Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian peacekeepers.
In 2005, Alison Des Forges wrote that eleven years after the genocide, films for popular audiences on the subject greatly increased the "widespread realization of the horror that had taken the lives of more than half a million Tutsi".[11] In 2007, Charlie Beckett, Director of POLIS, made the following observation: "How many people saw the movie Hotel Rwanda? [it is] ironically the way that most people now relate to Rwanda."[64]
The song Rwanda by the punk-ska band Rancid from the album Rancid (2000 album) is about the Rwandan genocide.
In 2006, Immaculée Ilibagiza survived the genocide and documented her story in Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (2006). Left to Tell recounts how Immaculée Ilibagiza survived for 91 days with another seven other women during the holocaust in a damp and small bathroom, no larger than 3 feet (0.91 m) long and 4 feet (1.2 m) wide. [65]
Accusations of revisionism
The context of the 1994 Rwandan genocide continues to be a matter of historical debate.[66] There have been frequent charges of revisionism.[67] A "double genocides" theory, accusing the Tutsis of engaging in a "counter-genocide" against the Hutus,[68] is promulgated in Black Furies, White Liars (2005), the controversial book by French investigative journalist Pierre Péan. Jean-Pierre Chrétien, a French historian whom Péan describes as an active member of the "pro-Tutsi lobby," criticizes Péan's "amazing revisionist passion" ("étonnante passion révisioniste").[69]
Ukikiangalia chombo hiki utaniambia kiko katika hali gani. Usalama wa maisha ya watu, mali zao pamoja na chombo chenyewe uko shakani. Ajali ikitokea tutaundiwa tume ya kuchunguza mchawi ni yupi na mwisho itasemwa Kazi Ya Mungu Haina Makosa.
Leo majira ya saa sita na robo usiku mbunge wa RUANGWA mkoani LINDI MHE. SIGFRIDI N'GITU ameaga dunia katika hospitali ya moi kutokana na ugonjwa wa shinikizo la damu, Mungu ailaze roho ya marehemu mahali pema peponi Amina.
Bunge limeharisha kikao chake leo asubuhi kwa mujibu wa kanuni
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