Police 'killed' in north DR Congo

From Al Jazeera
UPDATED ON:
Friday, October 30, 2009
17:25 Mecca time, 14:25 GMT

Armed villagers have killed at least 47 policemen who were trying to intervene in ethnic clashes in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo, reports say.

A number of civilians were also killed in the violence which erupted in the village of Dongo in Equateur province early on Thursday, the UN-sponsored Radio Okapi said, citing local officials.

Residents from neighbouring villages representing two different ethnic groups have been clashing in recent months over fishing rights.

Government authorities in the capital, Kinshasa, said that they were aware of the clashes, but were unable to confirm the number of policemen or civilians killed.

"They've been fighting over fishing ponds. We know that there were clashes. There was fighting with machetes and with hunting rifles, but at present we don't know how many dead there are," Lambert Mende, DR Congo's information minister, said.

"The policemen were sent to re-establish order. I don't know why they would have been attacked," Mende said.

The violence is not linked to fighting in the DR Congo's east, in which Rwandan Hutu groups, who fled Rwanda after helping orchestrate the genocide in the 1990s, are accused of atrocities.

Joseph Kabila, the DR Congo's president, said his forces are succeeding against Rwandan militias there.

'Gaining ground'

Speaking to reporters on Friday during a visit to South Africa, Kabila said the operation against the Rwandan Hutus would continue until he "controls the whole territory".

Kabila said the situation was starting to stabilise, nine months after the offensive began, and that civilians in the province of North Kivu have begun to return to their villages.

Hundreds of thousands had been displaced as a result of the fighting.

Kabila also said troops were "gaining ground" against Ugandan fighters in the country's vast, troubled north.

Ugandan and DRC forces began a co-ordinated operation against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) who spread into DR Congo territory in late 2008.

The LRA, engaged in one of Africa's longest-running conflicts against the Ugandan government, has also extended its reach into Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR).

University of California Berkeley DR Congo Lecture

Speaker: Filip Reyntjens, Professor & Chair, African Law and Politics, Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp
Sponsors: African Studies, Center for, Dutch Studies, Human Rights Center

Profesor Reyntjens will address the causes, outcomes, and extraordinary human toll of the successive wars in the Great Lakes Region of Africa since the early 1990s.

As part of this lecture, Professor Reyntjens will discuss his recent book which examines a decade-long period of instability, violence and state decay in Central Africa from 1996, when the war started, to 2006, when elections formally ended the political transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A unique combination of circumstances explain the unravelling of the conflicts: the collapsed Zairian/Congolese state; the continuation of the Rwandan civil war across borders; the shifting alliances in the region; the politics of identity in Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DRC; the ineptitude of the international community; and the emergence of privatized and criminalized public spaces and economies, linked to the global economy, but largely disconnected from the state – on whose territory the ‘entrepreneurs of insecurity’ function. As a complement to the existing literature, this book seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of concurrent developments in Zaire/DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda in African and international contexts. By adopting a non-chronological approach, it attempts to show the dynamics of the interrelationships between these realms and offers a toolkit for understanding the past and future of Central Africa.

Open to audience: All Audiences

Event Contact: 510-642-8338

Atrocities haunt DRC child soldiers

10/24/2009 10:17:49 AM

Militia brigades abducting children and forcing them to become soldiers, porters and sex slaves is a huge problem in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the last few months, fighting between the DRC army and Rwandan Hutu rebels and other militias has intensified.

Aid agencies describe the situation as catastrophic, warning that recruitment is on the rise.

The children go through a terrifying ordeal as they are trained to kill almost as soon as they are recruited.

One tactic favoured by the militia is to force the child to murder a member of his own family

There are doubts whether such children will ever recover from their experience at the hands of the rebels - even if they escape, it takes time and a lot of rehabilitation before they are ready to go back to their families.

Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow reports from Goma in DRC.

BERKELEY CITY COUNCIL PASSES RESOLUTION FOR DR CONGO

The Berkeley City Council Breaks The Silence and calls on members of Congress, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, The United Nations and President Barack Obama to do more to bring an end to the conflict in the Congo.

Encourage your local political leaders to pass resolutions in support of the people of the Congo and call on world figures to do their part in bringing an end to the greatest scar on the human conscience of our time.

Join the global movement and build a worldwide consensus to end the conflict and suffering in the Congo.

Support the inaugural Congo in Harlem Film Festival, which culminates on Saturday, October 24, 2009.

Remember to get your Congo Week T-shirts.

Participate in a Congo Week activity in your locale.

THE RESOLUTION:
SUPPORTING CONGO WEEK FOR THE BAY AREA FRIENDS OF THE CONGO
WHEREAS, adoption of Congo Week October 18-24, 2009 for the BAY Area Friends of the Congo (BAFOTC); and
WHEREAS, Congo week calls for peace, justice and national reconciliation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and
WHEREAS, offers condolences for the lost lives and moral support for the survivors; and
WHEREAS, calls for the protection of the environment and endangered species in the Congo; and
WHEREAS, calls for an end to conflict and for the support by world leaders and people of good will across the globe in this effort; and
WHEREAS, call for the wrongful exploitation of the Congolese peoples’ resources, recognizing that these resources should not be a curse but rather a blessing, and that the Congolese people are the rightful beneficiaries of their great natural wealth; and
WHEREAS, encourages the community to observe this week by connecting with friends, fellow employees, and relatives as well as religious, school, and civic groups, to encourage in projects benefiting the people of the Congo; and
WHEREAS, supports community efforts in bringing this conflict to an end through education, policy and advocacy.
NOW THERFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Council of the City of Berkeley that it directs the City Clerk to send the attached letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Senator Barbara Boxer, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and President Barack Obama, with a copy to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE:
Dear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Since 1996 nearly six million children, women, and men have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to conflict and hundreds of thousands more have been victims of unimaginable atrocities that deeply shock the conscience of humanity. Today, Congolese deaths continue at the rate of 45,000 each month.
These crimes against humanity threaten the peace, security and well-being of the Congo and its people, and those responsible for such crimes have largely gone unpunished.
The United Nations has named the Congo as the deadliest conflict in the world since World War Two.
For these reasons, the Berkeley City Council communicates its grave concern for the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We urge that:
a) There be no use of the US military in the Congo. b) The US make a priority of supporting local Congolese institutions with a proven
record of delivering services to the people. c) The US government hold US corporations accountable for their actions in the
Congo. d) The US play a key role in facilitating a political-economic framework for ending
the conflicts in the Congo and the African Great Lakes region and relieving the
tremendous suffering of the region’s women, children and men. e) The US hold its allies Rwanda and Uganda accountable for their actions in the
Congo.
Berkeley City Council Berkeley, California
Cc: President Barack Obama Congresswoman Barbara Lee United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Congo Week Activities in the San Francisco Bay Area

Tuesday, October 20th: CONGOLESE DANCE w/ Makaya
@ Dance Mission, 3316 24th @ Mission, SF, Ca
Fee: $12 ($11 w/cell phone donation)
8-9:30pm

Wednesday, October 21st:
"Black King, Red Rubber,White Death" Film & Discussion w/Mike Kabangu
Congo Dance & Drum Presentation by Visual Sounds of Africa
SF State (Cesar Chavez Ctr.) 1650 Holloway Avenue, SF, Ca
Fee: Free w/cell phone donation, Time: 3-6pm

SFSU Congo-Diaspora Dance Workshop w/Lungusu Malonga, Rehema Bah, Isaura Brazil, Constant Massengo, Mbay Louvouezo, Lakiesha, Makaya & More...
SF State University, Jack Adams Hall, 1650 Holloway Avenue, SF, Ca
Fee: $10 ($8 w/cell phone donation), Time: 7:00-9:00pm

Friday, October 23rd:
"Be Part of a Change Agenda in the Congo" Presentation & Discussion by Dr. Patrick Cannon(CSUS), Nkusu Muanza, Boona Cheema & Muadi Mukenge w/ performances by local Congolese performing artists & groups
@The Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Oakland, Ca
Fee: $5 (w/ cell phone donation) Time: 6:30 - 8:30 pm

Saturday, October 24th:
"Kongo Suite Congo" Dance Workshop w/Muisi-kongo Malonga & Regina Califa
Malonga Casquelourd Center, 1428 Alice St, (2nd Flr.) Oakland, Ca
Fee: $15 ($14 w/cell phone donation), 1:00-2:30pm

"The Heart of Africa" Film & Discussion
BlackDot Cafe , 1195 Pine St. Oakland, Ca
Fee: Free (w/cell phone donation), Time: 6:30-9:30pm
(Congolese Dinners for sale)

Information sent courtesy of the Congolese Dance & Drum Workshop & Fua Dia Congo performing arts
For more information, visit us at www.congolesecamp.org

For More Information on Congo Week Activities:
Contact Rehema Bah, AfricaTesito...Creating African reConnections
(510) 764-2449, africatesito@yahoo.com

Congo and Angola Agree to End Expulsions

Published 10/14/09 New York Times

By BARRY BEARAK

JOHANNESBURG — Tens of thousands of people — some of them wrenched from their homes with only the clothes on their backs — have been expelled recently from both Angola and Congo in what has been a tit-for-tat immigration dispute between two of Africa’s behemoth neighbors.

But after weeks of acrimony, with inflammatory statements a staple in the local news media, both countries on Tuesday finally agreed to suspend the expulsions, said Congo’s information minister, Lambert Mende.

“The two heads of state have reached an understanding, and something formal will be signed based on what has been agreed,” Mr. Mende said.

The expulsions began in Angola, where the government has been annoyed by the number of impoverished Congolese who cross the border. Some are fleeing the continuing war in their homeland, which has claimed millions of lives. Others cross in search of an economic lift, including those who hope to pluck a fortune from diamond fields.

Angola has often relied on mass expulsions to discourage the migrants, sending home waves of Congolese from 2003 onward, according to the United Nations. But this year’s expulsions were particularly upsetting.

“We never challenged the expulsions themselves; we challenged the way they were being conducted — all the beating of people and looting their goods, even sometimes their clothes,” Mr. Mende said. “We began our own expulsions as a kind of retaliation.”

During 27 years of civil war, thousands of Angolans poured across the long, porous border into Congo. Many acquired refugee status, though this apparently failed to keep some from being ousted in recent sweeps.

“Most of those Angolans had been there for years, working in factories, doing small business, even teachers who were teaching in the schools,” said Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The largest share of the Angolans came from the western Congo province of Bas-Congo. Most of the Congolese expelled from Angola were taken from an area around the northwestern city of Soyo or the enclave of Cabinda.

Humanitarian agencies are concerned about the living conditions of about 40,000 uprooted people. Many have made it safely back to their original homes. But others are congregated near border checkpoints.

“The situation is very worrying,” Mr. Giuliano said. “There are potential risks, among them the lack of drinking water, the lack of sanitation.”

Relations between Angola and Congo have largely been cordial of late. Angola’s emergence from decades of war has allowed the government to exploit the country’s natural wealth in oil and diamonds. So far, the revenues have largely benefited a small elite. Two-thirds of the people get by on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. Yet Angola is a lodestone for migrants.

Congo, too, has vast mineral wealth, unrealized as yet, which has been misallocated to war.

Deported Congolese tell of Angolan terror

By Edouardin M'Putu (AFP) – 6 days ago

YEMA, DR Congo — The Democratic Republic of Congo said it had agreed with Angola to halt tit-for-tat expulsions of each other's citizens as victims on Wednesday told of being subjected to brutal rapes and lootings when they were thrown out by Luanda.

Aid agencies have expressed concern about the expulsions that have left tens of thousands of people homeless on both sides of the border in recent weeks.

Kinshasa's Communications Minister Lambert Mende late Tuesday announced the end of the deportations which according to the UN involves 20,000 Angolans, and some 18,000 people going the other way.

"The expulsion measures against Congolese and Angolan nationals have been suspended by the two presidents," said Mende.

The move follows a meeting of foreign, interior and defence ministers of the two governments in Kinshasa on Tuesday, according to DR Congo's foreign ministry.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said last week that most of the Congolese expelled from Angola had fled to Bas-Congo province on the Atlantic coast, almost all of them arriving in August and September as the expulsions intensified.

Among them was Bibi, who said she and other women in her cell had been raped after being rounded up for deportation by Angolan police.

"Police woke me up at 4 o'clock in the morning, they ripped up my residence card and took me to a cell where I was raped, along with other women," said the 23-year-old who had worked in a market in Angola's oil-rich Cabinda enclave.

Nicolas Ndaye, a computer engineer, said he had a "very bad memory of the Angolans" after his three-year stay in Cabinda.

"I've travelled all over the world but what I lived through in Cabinda was hell, and yet there I was training computer technicians, invested 3,200 dollars, and I have a consular card."

"I've lost everything, except what I'm wearing," after being thrown into a truck packed with other Congolese and deported, said Ndaye, adding that he had been separated from his family.

During his deportation, he had counted "six dead, people who were thown off a vehicle moving at high speed towards the border."

"My wife told me about the mass rape of women in the cell where she was being held before being deported."

Ostensibly an operation to crackdown on illegals dubbed Operation Clean Up, Angola targeted migrants mainly from DR Congo and Republic of Congo, the two nations that surround its oil-rich Cabinda enclave and cut it off from the rest of the country.

Kinshasa responded in kind the following month, September, focusing on Angolan migrants.

Both countries say only illegal immigrants were targeted.

However, Jean-Claude Molo, 35, said: "Police told me they didn't care about my residence card. They stripped me, took my shoes off, and took 7,000 kwanza (about 60 dollars in Angolan currency) before dumping me in a cell."

Molo is now one of thousands of residents crammed into a makeshift camp in a car park in Yema, on the Congolese side of the border with Cabinda.

Desperate deportees have been arriving here in their hundreds in recent days, traumatised by the alleged brutality of the Angolan security forces.

Bibi, sheltering in a hut made of bamboo and palm fronds in the car-park, said: "Bandits tipped off the police where the Congolese were living, whether they were illegal or not, and we were stripped of our belongings.

"I would have lost my life if I had tried to hang on to anything. I saw people being beaten up and dying for their belongings."

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Rape of a Nation

http://mediastorm.com/0022.htm
Click the link for a look at the DR Congo's ongoing crisis.

Break The Silence

Congo Week 2009 is now upon us! Everything you do this week, do it for the DR Congo.

General DR Congo facts (from www.congoweek.org)

History & Geography
1. Congo is situated in the heart of Africa straddling the equator.
2. Congo is bordered by nine other countries and is the size of Western Europe with a population of 65 million people.
3. The lingua franca is French however four major (Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba, and Swahili) languages are spoken among the over 250 ethnic groups.
4. Congo’s Ishango Bones, a binary counting system and lunar calendar, is one of the oldest mathematical artifacts in the world, dating to 20,000 BC.
5. The Kongo empire reigned during the period of African enslavement and prior to the Colonization era.
6. Congo was given to King Leopold II of Belgium at the 1884/85 Berlin Conference.
7. King Leopold II ruled Congo as his own personal property for 23 years (1885 – 1908) during which time approximately 10 million Congolese were slaughtered
8. Belgium took the Congo from King Leopold II in 1908 and ruled as colonial power until 1960.

Politics
1. Congo obtained independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960 under the elected leadership of Prime Minister Patrice Emery Lumumba who was summarily assassinated within months by Western powers and Congolese sycophants
2. Pursuant to Lumumba’s assassination, the United States installed and backed dictator Mobutu Se Seko for over three decades
3. U.S. allies, Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Congo twice (1996 & 1998) which resulted in the removal of Mobutu in 1997 and the unleashing of the deaths of nearly six million.
4. The overthrow of Mobutu resulted in the installation of Laurent Desire Kabila in 1997, who was assassinated in 2001 and followed by his son Joseph Kabila who is still in power after elections in 2006. The next elections will take place in 2011.

The Tragedy
1. Nearly six million people have died as a result of conflict and conflict related causes in the Congo since 1996. Forty-five thousand continue to die each month.
2. Hundreds of thousands of women have been raped as weapon of war
3. Eighty percent of the population lives on 30 cents or less per day
4. The international community is systematically looting Congo’s spectacular wealth

The Potential
1. Congo is a storehouse of strategic minerals (cobalt, copper, zinc, gold, diamond, silver, magnesium, germanium, uranium, coltan, petroleum and many other resources.
2. Congo has anywhere from 64% to 80% of the world’s reserve of coltan
3. Congo has 34 % of world’s cobalt and 10% of its copper
4. Congo is a part of the second largest rainforest in the world behind the Amazon
5. Congo has the hydro capacity to provide electricity for the entire African continent, southern Europe and parts of the Middle East.
6. Congo has the agricultural capacity to feed the entire world through 2050

Aid Workers Protest

Aid groups protest DR Congo deaths
10/13/2009 2:41:57 PM

Taken from Al Jazeera:http://m.aljazeera.net/?i=4360&artId=184702&showonly=1

More than 1,000 civilians have been killed since January in fighting between Rwandan Hutu rebels and UN-backed government forces in eastern Congo, rights groups say.

A coalition of 84 rights groups announced the figure on Tuesday in a report in which they sharply criticised UN peacekeepers for supporting a deadly government offensive against the rebels.

The report said nearly 900,000 civilians had been displaced in the offensive, while 7,000 women and girls had been raped.

"The human rights and humanitarian consequences of the current military operation are simply disastrous," Marcel Stoessel, of the UK-based aid agency Oxfam, said.

"UN peacekeepers, who have a mandate to protect civilians, urgently need to work with government forces to make sure civilians get the protection they need, or discontinue their support."

'Risk of backslide'

The UN mission said it must continue supporting government forces in their operation against the Hutu rebels, known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Reuters news agency reported.

"The target still has to be the FDLR and the disarmament of the FDLR," Kevin Kennedy, a UN spokesman, said.

But he said the UN is making efforts to limit the cost to civilians.

"If you do not keep moving forward, and if you don't have the international community supporting the democratically elected government as a backstop to the army, there is a risk of backslide."

The offensive, launched in January, began in North Kivu with the backing of Rwanda, and has subsequently reached into South Kivu with the backing of the UN Security Council.

But the coalition of rights groups said civilians were paying the price of the offensive, with thousands caught between retaliatory rebel attacks.

Fugitive Captured!

Taken from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/world/africa/07rwanda.html?_r=2&hp

October 7, 2009
Rwandan Fugitive Is Captured in Uganda

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — One of the most wanted fugitives from Rwanda’s genocide, an intelligence officer accused of organizing the slaughter of civilians, including a ceremonial queen, was arrested in Uganda this week, Ugandan and Rwandan officials said Tuesday.

The fugitive, Idelphonse Nizeyimana, had been on the run for years. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2000 and charged with crimes against humanity and offenses related to genocide for orchestrating massacres of civilians, including whole families. He had been an intelligence officer in the former Rwandan Army and was the second in command of an elite military school in Rwanda before the country exploded in genocide in 1994.

More recently, Mr. Nizeyimana was a top commander of a rebel army of former Rwandan soldiers hiding out in the forests of eastern Congo, Rwandan officials said. That force, the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, or FDLR, has been blamed for some of the most atrocious attacks in eastern Congo and is widely seen as a threat to regional peace.

Eric Kayiranga, a Rwandan police spokesman, said Mr. Nizeyimana was arrested in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, on Monday, though he did not have many details about the capture. According to the BBC, Mr. Nizeyimana was trying to travel to Kenya from Congo and was caught in Uganda with false papers.

“This guy was causing terror in Congo, and he was a threat to the region,” Mr. Kayiranga said. “His arrest is a success.”

The most notorious accusation against Mr. Nizeyimana was that he ordered a squad of soldiers to kidnap and execute a ceremonial Tutsi queen who was believed to be in her 80s at the beginning of the genocide in 1994. Local Rwandan courts have already convicted and punished several other men who were part of that killing.

Officials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is located in Arusha, Tanzania, said Mr. Nizeyimana would be extradited from Uganda to the tribunal, where he would stand trial. Already 47 of the genocide’s ringleaders, “the big fish,” as they are called in Tanzania, have been prosecuted at the tribunal, with all but a handful found guilty.

According to tribunal officials, Mr. Nizeyimana was one of the top four genocide suspects still on the run.

Oakland International Film Festival

Gilbert Mulamba's Street Children of Kinshasa will be shown at the Oakland International Film Festival. The festival starts October 8, 2009.

use the link below to get the film schedule:
http://www.oiff.org/filmschedule.pdf