Western movies and an occasional outcry about the humanitarian crisis seems to be the only attention paid to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The horrific situation in that remote country deserves much more attention, concern and action by the rest of the world.
The human rights situation in Congo as “a cause for grave concern,” according to a report issued by the office of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for the Security Council. Ban’s report accuses rebels and people on the side of the government, which could undermine Security Council confidence in Congolese President Joseph Kabila.
U.N. Intervention in the DRC
Last week, the council approved an increase in the size of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo, known as MONUC, by 3,000, bringing the biggest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world to 20,000 troops and police. The aim of the troop surge is to prevent a new war in eastern Congo.
The report said elements of the Congolese army and national police “were responsible for a large number of serious human rights violations during the reporting period (July-November), namely arbitrary executions, rape, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
Rebel groups, including renegade Congolese Tutsi Gen. Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP, and Rwandan militia accused of participating in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, “perpetrated serious human rights abuses with impunity.”
Origins of the Conflict
The origins of Congo’s war are intimately connected to the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, where some 800,000 people from the minority Tutsis and political moderates from the majority Hutus were slaughtered at the instigation of the extremist Hutu government.
Rwanda’s post-war Tutsi government invaded Congo in 1996 to pursue extremist Hutu militias that had crossed the border, in the process helping Congolese rebels end Mobutu’s 32-year rule.
Rwanda installed rebel leader Laurent Kabila as president but then turned against him when he started stirring hatred towards Tutsis in Congo. Rwanda intervened to try to remove Kabila, but he fought them off with assistance from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, while Uganda weighed in on the Rwandan side.
The ensuing regional war raged from 1998 to 2003.
Joseph Kabila took power after the assassination of his father Laurent in January 2001, and began negotiating peace.
He set up a temporary power-sharing government with four vice-presidents, two of them from former rebel groups, and then won presidential elections in 2006.
Although Kabila is popular in the Swahili-speaking east of the country, he’s viewed as an outsider by many people in Kinshasa and the west, where Lingala is the main language.
Kinshasa politicians, local bigwigs and neighbouring countries are accused of cashing in on valuable natural resources in eastern Congo, and international rights activists say Rwanda and Uganda continue to arm and fund militias in the area even after pulling out their national troops.
This post is based on a number of sources at AlterNet.
It is worth asking what actually triggered the massacre in Rwanda in 1994. The R.P.F. (Rwanda Patriotic Front) had invaded Rwanda and was poised to take over Rwanda when the massacre happened. But the massacre was not only Hutu extremists killing “Tutsis and Hutu moderates” as John writes. The Chief prosecuter at the Hague, Carlo-Ponti resigned from her job there in disgust because she was under pressure to drop prosecutions against the Tutsis involved in the massacres.
Who trained up the RPF to try to take back control of Rwanda for the minority Tutsis? They had escaped as young refugees from the Hutu takeover of Rwanda twenty years earlier and around 1994 came back as a very well trained and equipt army with U.S. support. The Tutsi come back was planned for 20 years and they are now fully in charge of the neighbourhood with US and UK financial support. The Tutsis run Rwanda but no one is allowed to claim any ethnic identity there because the Hutus clearly have the numbers by far and if they were allowed to organise as Hutus, the Tutsi dictatorship would once again be overthrown. Rwanda’s Tutsi led troops started the wars of 1996 and 1998-2003 that killed millions in the Congo. All this with US and UK approval – they still bankroll the minorityTutsi dominated Rwandan government which is practically a mercinary country for the West. However, since the latest return to Tutsi led violence in the Congo, a couple of Western countries including the Netherlands have been withdrawing financial aid after the release of a damning human rights report blaming the Tutsi led Rwandan government for the renewed hostilities in the Congo.
Jan,
Excellent commentary. The fact that for instance Paul Kagame was trained in the US, and then supported, financed, etc. by the US and UK, should be explained by the US and UK governemnts.
I still want to know what exactly set off the genocide, how it was organized, and by whom.
We are not getting anywhere near the real story from the corporate media, this article included.
And what is this ‘hell on earth’ circle, instead of detailed analysis? Every time I hear that, or the phrase “The curse of *** (fill in the mineral)”, I feel as if they are relaying blame.