Sanders Research Associates
By Hirondelle Foundation
Sep/14/2007
The Hague, 7 September 2007 (FH) - In "Peace and Punishment", Florence Hartmann, former spokesperson for Carla del Ponte, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, states how on pressure from the United States the special investigations targeting suspects from the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) were buried forever, sullying the legacy of the ICTR.
In this book, which will be available 10 September in France, from Flammarion editions, Hartmann tells how in August 2003, Carla del Ponte was pushed aside by the United Nations Security Council from the position of prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, only preserving her prerogatives on its Yugoslavian counterpart.
In New York, the former French journalist asserts, the entry into the millennium signed the end of the ad hoc tribunals, the one for the former Yugoslavia as for the one for Rwanda were summoned to finish their work and to close their doors in the decade.
For the Americans, writes the author, it was "to ensure the support of their Rwandan allies for closing the Tribunal in Arusha, even if it is far from finishing trying the notables of Hutu power, instigators of the 1994 genocide (...) At the announcement, in November 2001, of a fast closure to the tribunal, the Rwandan authorities protested, considering the idea premature. But President Paul Kagamé is not difficult to convince. Carla del Ponte opened in December 1999 investigations against Tutsi officers from the Army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that Kagamé commanded"
In Kigali, Kagamé "estimates that his men do not have to explain themselves to the justice of an international community which let Tutsis be massacre. Pierre-Richard Prosper (American prosecutor at the ICTR who will later become American ambassador for war crimes) promises that the closing of the ICTR will put a term to these investigations which disturb him", writes Florence Hartmann. In spring 2003, Washington turned up the pressure. American ambassador for war crimes, Prosper, tries to generate an agreement between Kigali and the ICTR prosecutor.
If the manoeuvre had not been a secret for a while, the author describes the details.
"Wednesday 14 May 2003, in late afternoon, in an elegant conference room of the State Department (...) del Ponte and her advisers take a seat around a table, facing the Rwandan delegation. At the end of the table, Pierre Prosper plays the master of ceremonies. He interferes and suggests the major debating points"
Carla del Ponte accuses Kigali of obstruction. "The Rwandans replied that the prosecution is far from achieving its mandate. In evidence, they prepared a diskette comprising three hundred and fifty names of high ranking persons allegedly involved in the genocide against which the ICTR has not yet opened an investigation". The negotiations restart the following day.
"The message is clear: The ICTR cannot legitimate investigations against Tutsi soldiers as it is far from completing its work on the genocide. The Rwandans do not deny the crimes but dispute with whomever, and in particular with the international community, the right to prosecute the members of its army. They say they want to take care of it (...) Prosper intervenes on several occasions to encourage the prosecutor to yield the special investigations in Rwanda. The magistrate is pushed to let the Rwandans have parallel investigations, but wants to keep control of the conclusions of the RPA case. Prosper leans in favour of Rwanda, which wants to keep control on the investigations and the prosecution against its officers".
But the author writes that the discussions ran into the refusal of the Swiss woman who receives, in July, in The Hague, a draft agreement. "Del Ponte pushes back the document from the hand and leaves it to her advisers to inform Prosper of her refusal to subscribe to it. On her part, she informs Kofi Annan's cabinet, who condemns the American manoeuvre but objects to the fact that del Ponte let herself be exposed to the pressure from a country", writes Hartmann.
The Security Council then instructs the prosecutor to stop her investigations at the end of 2004. In exchange of the suspension of prosecution, the Americans obtain from Kigali the signature of a bilateral agreement ensuring impunity of its own soldiers before the International Criminal Court (ICC). The American congress lifts the embargo on weapons and approves a military aid agreement.
In August 2003, New York approved the resolution relieving Carla del Ponte by assigning to the ICTR a specific prosecutor. Hassan Bubacar Jallow took the head of the prosecution. In November 2003, as New York debated over the text which would result in the resolution of 26 March 2004 on the "completion strategy" of the ad hoc tribunals, Pierre-Richard Prosper reassured President Kagamé. "He convinced him not to worry about the text of the future resolution since Gambian Hassan Bubacar Jallow, named at the beginning of September to succeed del Ponte, ratified the promise of the United States to the Rwandan authorities on the abandonment of prosecution against the Tutsi soldiers by the ICTR."
Also weakened in her renewal at the head of the prosecution for the ICTY, several voices rose up at the Security Council to limit her mandate to one year. Carla del Ponte had not produced any indictment against the RPA, which would however have enabled her to bind the prosecution to her investigations.
For the last four years, Hassan Bubacar Jallow has explained that he consults the evidence boxes left by the investigators of Carla del Ponte, who had managed to investigate into certain massacres sites in the north of Rwanda, and answers invariably that he will make a decision on this subject. Florence Hartman's book cast doubt on the ICTR's willingness to do something with the RPA case.
15 September, 2007
Allegations of Coup Plot Leads To Arrests
MISNA
14 September 2007
Editor's Note: According to some of the Congolese NGOs, some of these men were under the pay of General Nkundabatware. Despite if the coup plot was real or not, the torture of these soldiers will alienate the international community and set a ominous precendent.
Ten people have been arrested on accusations of “attempted overthrow of the government of president Joseph Kabila” since the end of August according to the NGO ‘Voix des sans Voix’ (VSV). The arrested include six military, three civilians and a priest, father Roger Masirika, vicar of the parish of Chimpunda in the archdiocese of Bukavu; they are said to have been arrested in the area of Bukavu, capital of South-Kivu, and of Minova only to be moved to the capital, Kinshasa. Since then, said VSV, “they have been tortured and subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment”. Since September 12, they are said to have been locked up in pavilion 1 of the Kinshasa Penitentiary Center, where they are unable to receive visits, and where they have yet to receive food according to VSV. The NGO believs that these people are victims of a score settlement tied to the nomination of one of the arrested, Colonel Placide Chibalonza, who heads the 11th brigade of the 10th military region, a post to which Colonel Foka Kahasha Mike apparently aspires; the latter is said to have been the source of the arrest warrant presenting a list with their names to the governor of South Kivu, Célestin Chibalonza.
14 September 2007
Editor's Note: According to some of the Congolese NGOs, some of these men were under the pay of General Nkundabatware. Despite if the coup plot was real or not, the torture of these soldiers will alienate the international community and set a ominous precendent.
Ten people have been arrested on accusations of “attempted overthrow of the government of president Joseph Kabila” since the end of August according to the NGO ‘Voix des sans Voix’ (VSV). The arrested include six military, three civilians and a priest, father Roger Masirika, vicar of the parish of Chimpunda in the archdiocese of Bukavu; they are said to have been arrested in the area of Bukavu, capital of South-Kivu, and of Minova only to be moved to the capital, Kinshasa. Since then, said VSV, “they have been tortured and subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment”. Since September 12, they are said to have been locked up in pavilion 1 of the Kinshasa Penitentiary Center, where they are unable to receive visits, and where they have yet to receive food according to VSV. The NGO believs that these people are victims of a score settlement tied to the nomination of one of the arrested, Colonel Placide Chibalonza, who heads the 11th brigade of the 10th military region, a post to which Colonel Foka Kahasha Mike apparently aspires; the latter is said to have been the source of the arrest warrant presenting a list with their names to the governor of South Kivu, Célestin Chibalonza.
North Kivu: Students Kidnapped by Insurgents?
MISNA
14 September 2007
Editor's Note: General Nkundabatware recruiting more "kadogos." He's using the ceasefire to rearm and regroup.
A group of 280 students is said to have been kidnapped in the Masisis territory, in North Kivu (north-east of the RD Congo) by insurgents loyal to general Laurent Nkunda said a representative of North Kivu to MISNA. He noted that the boys were taken away on September 12 from the schools of Rushinga, Kagura, Kiloriwe and Burungu. “The information was issued today by a group of parliamentarians. We do not have confirmations for the time being, but it is information that we are taking very seriously and we are verifying it” said Sylvie Van den Wildenberg, MONUC spokeswoman to MISNA, contacted in Goma, capital of North-Kivu. Since August 27 to September 6, soldiers loyal to Nkunda have clashes with the regular army in the territories of Masisi and Rutshuru; the fighting between the two sides have ceased thanks to a ceasefire, but clashed between Nkunda’s men and other armed groups in the area have ensued. The violence has forced several thousands of people to abandon their villages.
14 September 2007
Editor's Note: General Nkundabatware recruiting more "kadogos." He's using the ceasefire to rearm and regroup.
A group of 280 students is said to have been kidnapped in the Masisis territory, in North Kivu (north-east of the RD Congo) by insurgents loyal to general Laurent Nkunda said a representative of North Kivu to MISNA. He noted that the boys were taken away on September 12 from the schools of Rushinga, Kagura, Kiloriwe and Burungu. “The information was issued today by a group of parliamentarians. We do not have confirmations for the time being, but it is information that we are taking very seriously and we are verifying it” said Sylvie Van den Wildenberg, MONUC spokeswoman to MISNA, contacted in Goma, capital of North-Kivu. Since August 27 to September 6, soldiers loyal to Nkunda have clashes with the regular army in the territories of Masisi and Rutshuru; the fighting between the two sides have ceased thanks to a ceasefire, but clashed between Nkunda’s men and other armed groups in the area have ensued. The violence has forced several thousands of people to abandon their villages.
14 September, 2007
Koroma Set for Sierra Leone Presidency
Financial Times
Matthew Green in Freetown
Published: September 13 2007 22:17 | Last updated: September 13 2007 22:17
Editor's Note: Still, the song "Swegbe" echos in my head... Mr. Koroma will have a lot to prove to the Sierra Leonian people before he gains their trust after so many years of corruption and war under the previous administration.
Results from Sierra Leone’s presidential run-off showed Ernest Bai Koroma, the opposition challenger, heading for almost certain victory, setting the stage for the country’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence.
The electoral commission said in its daily briefing on Thursday that Mr Koroma had won 859,144 votes, compared to 567,449 for Solomon Berewa, the ruling party candidate, with 76.1 per cent of ballots from Saturday’s poll counted.
The remaining results are due to be released on Monday.
While a last-minute upset may still be theoretically possible, it would take a major shift in the voting trend to deny Mr Koroma and his All People’s Congress victory.
”We have an unassailable lead,” said Alpha Kanu, APC spokesman. ”We are waiting for Mr Berewa to concede.”
Officials of Mr Berewa’s ruling Sierra Leone People’s party (SLPP) were not immediately available for comment.
The largely peaceful conduct of Saturday’s poll, which followed an initial round of voting on August 11, has been seen as an important step in Sierra Leone’s recovery from a decade of civil war that ended five years ago. The ballot is the first to be held since one of the world’s largest peacekeeping forces withdrew in 2005.
Britain, which sent commandoes to help end the war in its former colony, has taken the lead in international efforts to rebuild. Renewed stability has led to an increase in diamond production and the revival of one of the world’s largest natural rutile mines, used to produce titanium ore.
But Mr Koroma’s lead has been widely interpreted in Freetown, the capital, as an indictment of the ruling SLPP’s party’s failure to deliver jobs and stamp out corruption.
Clashes between party activists marred the run-up to the second round vote in the capital and some other parts of the country. The electoral commission says it is investigating reports of irregularities from both parties.
Matthew Green in Freetown
Published: September 13 2007 22:17 | Last updated: September 13 2007 22:17
Editor's Note: Still, the song "Swegbe" echos in my head... Mr. Koroma will have a lot to prove to the Sierra Leonian people before he gains their trust after so many years of corruption and war under the previous administration.
Results from Sierra Leone’s presidential run-off showed Ernest Bai Koroma, the opposition challenger, heading for almost certain victory, setting the stage for the country’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence.
The electoral commission said in its daily briefing on Thursday that Mr Koroma had won 859,144 votes, compared to 567,449 for Solomon Berewa, the ruling party candidate, with 76.1 per cent of ballots from Saturday’s poll counted.
The remaining results are due to be released on Monday.
While a last-minute upset may still be theoretically possible, it would take a major shift in the voting trend to deny Mr Koroma and his All People’s Congress victory.
”We have an unassailable lead,” said Alpha Kanu, APC spokesman. ”We are waiting for Mr Berewa to concede.”
Officials of Mr Berewa’s ruling Sierra Leone People’s party (SLPP) were not immediately available for comment.
The largely peaceful conduct of Saturday’s poll, which followed an initial round of voting on August 11, has been seen as an important step in Sierra Leone’s recovery from a decade of civil war that ended five years ago. The ballot is the first to be held since one of the world’s largest peacekeeping forces withdrew in 2005.
Britain, which sent commandoes to help end the war in its former colony, has taken the lead in international efforts to rebuild. Renewed stability has led to an increase in diamond production and the revival of one of the world’s largest natural rutile mines, used to produce titanium ore.
But Mr Koroma’s lead has been widely interpreted in Freetown, the capital, as an indictment of the ruling SLPP’s party’s failure to deliver jobs and stamp out corruption.
Clashes between party activists marred the run-up to the second round vote in the capital and some other parts of the country. The electoral commission says it is investigating reports of irregularities from both parties.
Country Moves to Halt US Military
This Day (Lagos)
14 September 2007
By Juliana Taiwo
The Federal Government has begun moves to frustrate the plan by the United States to establish a military base in the Gulf of Guinea.
The oil-rich gulf is bordered by Nigeria, Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Sao Tome and Principe
US has been desperately wooing some countries in the West Africa sub-region to allow her establish a military base to protect the strategic gulf for sometime now.
The move, according to US, is to protect the area from alleged external aggressions but with America now looking in the direction of Africa for her energy needs given the instability in the Middle-east, many analysts say the move is to protect her oil interests. .
Defence sources, however, told THISDAY last night in Abuja that the Federal Government was already discussing with heads of government of the African Union and leaders of the sub-regional body, the Economic Community of West African State, on how to block any move by US to establish a base in the gulf.
"Nigeria is not taking the issue lightly at all and the government is not going to allow the US establish any military base anywhere in the ECOWAS region. The interest of the US government in the Gulf of Guinea has reinforced the commitment of the government to intensify its efforts at providing the needed security in the sub-region," the source said.
It was learnt that the Federal Government was worried by the terror alert raised by the US authorities last week and saw it as a ploy to label Nigeria and countries in the sub region as unsafe in order to get the opportunity to create a military base in the region.
As a first step to checkmate that plan, the FG has vowed to frustrate the campaign by the US to establish a base in the gulf.
"The government of this country is not ready for any blackmail. What they cannot get through the back doors they want to get through blackmail. We are not going to succumb to that game," the source said.
THIS DAY also learnt that the Defence Headquarters has concluded plans to visit Pentagon, in Washington, to further discuss the issue with the US government.
"In a few weeks from now, some top military personnel will be in the US to present papers on the plans by the African Union to establish an African Command, which will be charged with the responsibility of providing the needed security in the continent.
"We really want to let the US and other countries of the world know that we are capable of protecting the resources within our continent. Nigeria is one country that will continue to move against any plans by the US government to establish a military base in our sub-region. We cannot afford to allow them do that, otherwise we will be finished as military," he said.
Last month, a delegation of the Government of Equatorial Guinea had visited Nigeria and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nigerian Navy in the area of security, training and equipment.
Currently, US has some presence in the Gulf of Guinea and its forces have been engaging in frequent patrol of the gulf.
However, US interest in the gulf has been increasing amid rising oil exploration in the region.
It was being alleged that West African Navy fleet lacks the capacity to protect oil platforms in the gulf.
As far back as June last year, US explained that its presence in the Gulf of Guinea was aimed at protecting an area regarded as one of the richest sources of hydrocarbons in the world from international criminals.
"We hear a series of stories for our presence in the Gulf of Guinea, but I want to say that we are concerned for Nigeria and we want to help her protect the region from the hands of maritime criminals," said the Commander of US Naval Forces in Europe and Commander of the Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy, Admiral Henry Ulrich.
"In all parts of the world, the US and any good nation want a safe coast for those countries who are supplying energy, and that is why we are often there. So there is nothing to fear for Nigeria," Ulrich said during a Seapower Africa Symposium in Abuja in June last year.
Ulrich had also disclosed that the US planned to increase its naval presence in the Gulf of Guinea in order to ensure maritime safety in the region.
US Naval official said it was necessary to secure the area from international criminals, including terrorists, sea pirates and smugglers.
The gulf's oil and gas deposit is put in the region of 10 billion barrels.
Statistics show that as of 2004, Africa as a whole produced nearly nine million barrels of oil per day, with approximately 4.7 million barrels per day coming from West Africa.
Also, African oil production accounted for approximately 11 percent of the world's oil supply, while the continent supplied approximately 18 per cent of the US net oil imports.
Both Nigeria and Angola were among the top 10 suppliers of oil to the US.
14 September 2007
By Juliana Taiwo
The Federal Government has begun moves to frustrate the plan by the United States to establish a military base in the Gulf of Guinea.
The oil-rich gulf is bordered by Nigeria, Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Sao Tome and Principe
US has been desperately wooing some countries in the West Africa sub-region to allow her establish a military base to protect the strategic gulf for sometime now.
The move, according to US, is to protect the area from alleged external aggressions but with America now looking in the direction of Africa for her energy needs given the instability in the Middle-east, many analysts say the move is to protect her oil interests. .
Defence sources, however, told THISDAY last night in Abuja that the Federal Government was already discussing with heads of government of the African Union and leaders of the sub-regional body, the Economic Community of West African State, on how to block any move by US to establish a base in the gulf.
"Nigeria is not taking the issue lightly at all and the government is not going to allow the US establish any military base anywhere in the ECOWAS region. The interest of the US government in the Gulf of Guinea has reinforced the commitment of the government to intensify its efforts at providing the needed security in the sub-region," the source said.
It was learnt that the Federal Government was worried by the terror alert raised by the US authorities last week and saw it as a ploy to label Nigeria and countries in the sub region as unsafe in order to get the opportunity to create a military base in the region.
As a first step to checkmate that plan, the FG has vowed to frustrate the campaign by the US to establish a base in the gulf.
"The government of this country is not ready for any blackmail. What they cannot get through the back doors they want to get through blackmail. We are not going to succumb to that game," the source said.
THIS DAY also learnt that the Defence Headquarters has concluded plans to visit Pentagon, in Washington, to further discuss the issue with the US government.
"In a few weeks from now, some top military personnel will be in the US to present papers on the plans by the African Union to establish an African Command, which will be charged with the responsibility of providing the needed security in the continent.
"We really want to let the US and other countries of the world know that we are capable of protecting the resources within our continent. Nigeria is one country that will continue to move against any plans by the US government to establish a military base in our sub-region. We cannot afford to allow them do that, otherwise we will be finished as military," he said.
Last month, a delegation of the Government of Equatorial Guinea had visited Nigeria and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nigerian Navy in the area of security, training and equipment.
Currently, US has some presence in the Gulf of Guinea and its forces have been engaging in frequent patrol of the gulf.
However, US interest in the gulf has been increasing amid rising oil exploration in the region.
It was being alleged that West African Navy fleet lacks the capacity to protect oil platforms in the gulf.
As far back as June last year, US explained that its presence in the Gulf of Guinea was aimed at protecting an area regarded as one of the richest sources of hydrocarbons in the world from international criminals.
"We hear a series of stories for our presence in the Gulf of Guinea, but I want to say that we are concerned for Nigeria and we want to help her protect the region from the hands of maritime criminals," said the Commander of US Naval Forces in Europe and Commander of the Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy, Admiral Henry Ulrich.
"In all parts of the world, the US and any good nation want a safe coast for those countries who are supplying energy, and that is why we are often there. So there is nothing to fear for Nigeria," Ulrich said during a Seapower Africa Symposium in Abuja in June last year.
Ulrich had also disclosed that the US planned to increase its naval presence in the Gulf of Guinea in order to ensure maritime safety in the region.
US Naval official said it was necessary to secure the area from international criminals, including terrorists, sea pirates and smugglers.
The gulf's oil and gas deposit is put in the region of 10 billion barrels.
Statistics show that as of 2004, Africa as a whole produced nearly nine million barrels of oil per day, with approximately 4.7 million barrels per day coming from West Africa.
Also, African oil production accounted for approximately 11 percent of the world's oil supply, while the continent supplied approximately 18 per cent of the US net oil imports.
Both Nigeria and Angola were among the top 10 suppliers of oil to the US.
US Oil Firm Pulls Out of Sudan
Fortune
By Vivienne Walt
September 12 2007: 9:39 AM EDT
Editor's Note: Keep in mind that Marathon is still a shareholder of a joint venture project in Sudan.
VIENNA (Fortune) -- Two months after Fortune revealed that a Houston-based oil-services company was operating in Khartoum despite a tight U.S. embargo against Sudan, the company announced on Monday that it was withdrawing from the country, as well as from Cuba, Iran, and Syria (all of which are under U.S. sanctions). In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Weatherford said it would not sign any new contract in those countries, and that it would soon begin "an orderly discontinuation and winding down of our existing business" there.
In July Fortune discovered that the Texas company was operating out of an unmarked two-story house on a discreet side street in Khartoum - a fact which surprised even U.S. activists fighting for divestment from Sudan. Sudan is only one of five countries declared by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism. Weatherford said in its SEC filing that it had taken a "strategic decision" based on "the current U.S. foreign policy environment and the inherent uncertainties surrounding these countries."
That "environment" might have included bad publicity. As concern has mounted over the huge death toll in the conflict in Darfur, in Western Sudan, several American states have signed divestment bills, agreeing to withdraw public funds from companies which do business in Sudan. After Fortune published its story on Weatherford, the Washington-based Sudan Divestment Task Force listed Weatherford on its quarterly "Worst Offenders" list of 24 companies, which appeared on August 31. Numerous universities and state legislatures have used the task force list as a guide to making divestment decision.
To many Americans the revelation that U.S. companies operate at all in countries like Sudan, Iran and Cuba is a big surprise. Weatherford - which has annual revenues of more than $6.5 billion - used a loophole in the U.S. sanctions law. Under U.S. sanctions, American companies are allowed to operate through foreign-registered subsidiaries, using only non-American staff. Weatherford's operations in Sudan fall under its subsidiary Weatherford Oil Tool Middle East, which is registered in Bermuda. Its local director, Tarek Khalil, is Egyptian.
A Khartoum boom, courtesy of China
Weatherford's chief financial officer Andy Becnel told Fortune in July that he believed the U.S. sanctions law meant that "no U.S. people and no U.S. goods can have any dealings with Sudan." U.S. Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise agreed.
Weatherford's far larger competitor, Halliburton, used the same loophole for years in order to operate in Iran, as Fortune revealed during a visit to Tehran in 2005. And Baker Hughes, another Houston oil-services company, operated in Sudan until 2004.
Ultimately, Weatherford might have felt the threat of bad publicity, rather than legal action. "We are determined that it is in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders to implement this new policy," said the company in its SEC filing. Weatherford did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
By Vivienne Walt
September 12 2007: 9:39 AM EDT
Editor's Note: Keep in mind that Marathon is still a shareholder of a joint venture project in Sudan.
VIENNA (Fortune) -- Two months after Fortune revealed that a Houston-based oil-services company was operating in Khartoum despite a tight U.S. embargo against Sudan, the company announced on Monday that it was withdrawing from the country, as well as from Cuba, Iran, and Syria (all of which are under U.S. sanctions). In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Weatherford said it would not sign any new contract in those countries, and that it would soon begin "an orderly discontinuation and winding down of our existing business" there.
In July Fortune discovered that the Texas company was operating out of an unmarked two-story house on a discreet side street in Khartoum - a fact which surprised even U.S. activists fighting for divestment from Sudan. Sudan is only one of five countries declared by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism. Weatherford said in its SEC filing that it had taken a "strategic decision" based on "the current U.S. foreign policy environment and the inherent uncertainties surrounding these countries."
That "environment" might have included bad publicity. As concern has mounted over the huge death toll in the conflict in Darfur, in Western Sudan, several American states have signed divestment bills, agreeing to withdraw public funds from companies which do business in Sudan. After Fortune published its story on Weatherford, the Washington-based Sudan Divestment Task Force listed Weatherford on its quarterly "Worst Offenders" list of 24 companies, which appeared on August 31. Numerous universities and state legislatures have used the task force list as a guide to making divestment decision.
To many Americans the revelation that U.S. companies operate at all in countries like Sudan, Iran and Cuba is a big surprise. Weatherford - which has annual revenues of more than $6.5 billion - used a loophole in the U.S. sanctions law. Under U.S. sanctions, American companies are allowed to operate through foreign-registered subsidiaries, using only non-American staff. Weatherford's operations in Sudan fall under its subsidiary Weatherford Oil Tool Middle East, which is registered in Bermuda. Its local director, Tarek Khalil, is Egyptian.
A Khartoum boom, courtesy of China
Weatherford's chief financial officer Andy Becnel told Fortune in July that he believed the U.S. sanctions law meant that "no U.S. people and no U.S. goods can have any dealings with Sudan." U.S. Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise agreed.
Weatherford's far larger competitor, Halliburton, used the same loophole for years in order to operate in Iran, as Fortune revealed during a visit to Tehran in 2005. And Baker Hughes, another Houston oil-services company, operated in Sudan until 2004.
Ultimately, Weatherford might have felt the threat of bad publicity, rather than legal action. "We are determined that it is in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders to implement this new policy," said the company in its SEC filing. Weatherford did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
FNL Resumes Recruitment
Burundi Réalités (Bujumbura)
14 September 2007
The FNL has resumed recruitment in various communes of Burundi after its negotiations with the national government froze on 21 July 2007 when the FNL delegation led by Jean-Berchmans Ndashimiye walked out on the team in charge of monitoring the implementation of the peace agreement.
FNL is now toughening its stance. Leaders of FNL no longer want Charles Nqakula to act as mediator in this peace process because they consider him to be partial to the government. The African Union's Representative, Mamadou Ba, is opposed to this new move of FNL. The situation is escalating in the strongholds of this last holdout rebel movement which signed ceasefire agreement a year ago.
Just three days before the start of the new school year, classrooms in Musigati are still sheltering civilians who fear ransoms and the resumption of clashes between the Burundian Defence Forces and FNL. On Tuesday 11 September 2007, these two sides came close to combat in this area, triggering a massive movement of the population to the parish of Musigati.
The whole Burundian peace process is summitry. The 12th summit of the regional initiative for peace in Burundi is due to begin on 28 September 2007. This conference is aimed at reviving the peace process after a year of wrangling has resulted in the present deadlock. The regional political community has already stated that the issue of FNL must be resolved before the end of this year. In order to meet this deadline, heads of state of the region will have to exert strong pressure on both sides.
14 September 2007
The FNL has resumed recruitment in various communes of Burundi after its negotiations with the national government froze on 21 July 2007 when the FNL delegation led by Jean-Berchmans Ndashimiye walked out on the team in charge of monitoring the implementation of the peace agreement.
FNL is now toughening its stance. Leaders of FNL no longer want Charles Nqakula to act as mediator in this peace process because they consider him to be partial to the government. The African Union's Representative, Mamadou Ba, is opposed to this new move of FNL. The situation is escalating in the strongholds of this last holdout rebel movement which signed ceasefire agreement a year ago.
Just three days before the start of the new school year, classrooms in Musigati are still sheltering civilians who fear ransoms and the resumption of clashes between the Burundian Defence Forces and FNL. On Tuesday 11 September 2007, these two sides came close to combat in this area, triggering a massive movement of the population to the parish of Musigati.
The whole Burundian peace process is summitry. The 12th summit of the regional initiative for peace in Burundi is due to begin on 28 September 2007. This conference is aimed at reviving the peace process after a year of wrangling has resulted in the present deadlock. The regional political community has already stated that the issue of FNL must be resolved before the end of this year. In order to meet this deadline, heads of state of the region will have to exert strong pressure on both sides.
What Steve Biko Means for SA Today
allAfrica.com
13 September 2007
By Nyameko Barney Pityana
South Africa has been commemorating the 30th anniversary of the killing of black consciousness leader, Steve Biko, by apartheid security police.
Since his death Biko has become an international icon of black self-pride and of the African sense of humanity which the South Africans call, in their two main language groupings, "ubuntu" or "botho". In recent days, much has been written about Biko's intellectual heritage and what his life means to the liberated South Africa of today.
However, few South Africans can speak with the authority of the activist, lawyer, priest and academic, Nyameko Barney Pityana, now the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa. Pityana was one of the band of students who, with Biko, founded the principal institutions of the black consciousness movement in South Africa from the late 1960s. He delivered this address on September 12, the day on which, three decades earlier, Biko had died alone on the floor of a Pretoria prison cell.
Stephen Bantu Biko was an ordinary young man of his time. Nothing could have distinguished him, his family circumstances and environment from any other young man growing up in a small township in a small Eastern Cape town.
Not even his death, in some respects was extraordinary. After all, it was not unusual for political activists to die in detention. He was in fact the 42nd person to die while detained by the South African Security Police, the Special Branch. Almost all who died were young. Steve's comrades in the Black Consciousness Movement were also beginning to die either in detention as well, or in suspicious circumstances. Mapetla Mohapi, a young social worker and community activist, who died in detention, comes to mind, as does Mthuli ka Shezi, assassinated by being pushed in front of an oncoming train at Germiston Station. Onkgopotse Abraham Tiro died in exile, as a result of a parcel bomb. The manner of his death was not extraordinary either, shocking as it was. He would not have been surprised.
Steve Biko was an ordinary young man who lived in ordinary times but who made something extraordinary out of his life, not out of his own will, by but the machinations of an evil system. He touched the lives of young men and women of his generation and he was part of an abiding movement capable of changing the social and political face of our country. In other ways he gave birth to a society that could shape its own future.
I am one of those then young people of Biko's generation who was touched in extraordinary ways by his life and presence. For me it began when we shared a desk in class IVa at Lovedale in 1963; it continued when as university students we found ourselves at an ASF [Anglican Students' Federation] Conference at Michaelhouse, Natal, and later during a very long evening of conversations following a NUSAS [National Union of SA Students] Conference at Rhodes University Grahamstown.
It grew through an extraordinary three years when he invited me to live with him in Durban and I ended up sharing his room illegally at the Allan Taylor Residence of the University of Natal Medical School (UNB). Together with our two families we then shared a house in Umlazi, Durban. We travelled together distances across the length and breadth of this country, sharing long conversations, good times and bad, and a host of dear friends and comrades.
The last time I had any contact with him, though, was when, on 15 August 1977 we had a long telephone conversation on his domestic situation, in contravention of the banning orders to which we had been subjected. Later that afternoon the security police came and took me into detention at Baakens Street Police Station. On the Sunday, Major Fisher called in to tell me, with alacrity, that they had also detained Steve. I heard no more. I never saw the police again.
But a few days after Steve died, circumstances in my cell changed. The coloured policeman who was on duty at the police station disappeared. A young white police constable appeared. He was truly shocked to see me in prison. "Meneer prokureur", he said, "wat soek jy hierso? Hulle het mos my gesê daar is a baie gevaarlike terroris hierso." [Mr Attorney, what are you doing here? They told me there was a very dangerous terrorist here."] Upon seeing me he could not believe it. Unbeknown to me, he had been suddenly transferred from his duties as a court orderly in the Magistrate's Court in Port Elizabeth, the New Law Courts, where I used to appear as an articled clerk with a right of appearance.
He was a kind young man. He allowed me to have a shower, exercise out of the cell and, a privilege, let me read his morning newspaper - although by this time he was not keen to let me read. I managed to read a report on a statement by Jimmy Kruger on the death of Steve Biko, the infamous "Biko's death leaves me cold." Then I knew what my young policeman friend wanted to hide. That, it seemed, like it was the end.
But many South Africans of my generation could tell similar stories. My comrades in the Movement could tell their own stories. They could speak of a sense of loss and devastation, of anger, of the unleashing of resistance and the rededication that came with the murder of Steve. They could tell of the personal pain they felt at the loss of a dear friend, comrade and leader. They could also share a sense of fear, and for some of us guilt, that he died and we continued to live. For some there may have been some despair and hopelessness, that with Steve's death all was lost, and the exodus towards exile and the armed struggle turned into a flood. I remained in detention until August 1978 under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, and another spell in preventive detention.
I have said that Steve's life was ordinary and that in the circumstances of his day, not even his death could be said to have been extraordinary. But what was germane to Steve's story is that he touched the lives of many people of his generation, black and white. Among them, was the then editor of the East London Daily Dispatch, Donald Woods and at another end, Father Aelred Stubbs, CR. They were dear friends and they had the power of influence. They could not prevent his death but they could tell the world who he was. They wrote their stories about how Steve Biko changed their lives.
The world listened, and Steve became no longer the ordinary friend and comrade. He became a representative figure of the new generation of political activist and would-be revolutionaries that we fancied ourselves to be. But this is not a biography, not about Steve or about Barney Pityana. This address is a personal reflection on the 30 years that have passed since Steve was murdered. From a perspective of today's South Africa, I wish to make an analytical statement about the meaning and relevance of the life and times of Steve Biko, and its impact on contemporary South Africa.
The Black Consciousness Method
Recently I received by e-mail a copy of my paper Black Consciousness and Black Theology from Dr Ben Khumalo, a South African theologian now based in Germany. I gathered from the e-mail that Dr Khumalo had found it fit to distribute the paper to a number of people across the globe, in commemoration of Steve Biko. The paper was published in a book of essays on BLACK THEOLOGY edited by Prof Mokgethi Motlhabi now on the staff of our College of Human Sciences. Reading this paper again at the behest of Dr Khumalo I was reminded how ideas flowed and developed during the Black Consciousness era.
I wish to introduce this substantive part of this paper with a brief reflection on the Black Consciousness method. Steve Biko has come to be known as the "Father of Black Consciousness". While that is true, it needs however, to be put in context.
It is important to point out that Black Consciousness drew much from the method and pedagogy of the Latin American grassroots development movement. The Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire and his seminal work A Pedagogy of the Oppressed was an early influence. Social analysis leading to reflection and action were critical tools of engagement. I am reminded that the way black consciousness evolved was through many, and long hours of interaction and debate among friends at the Alan Taylor Residence.
Steve Biko was a central participant; he listened and challenged ideas as they emerged, concretised them, and brought them back for further development. This was a small group of men and women who were medical students, but joined regularly by some of us from other universities, especially at weekends. In such an environment it is hard to say who the originator of the ideas could be. All ultimately owned and identified with the expression of the collective idea. What I do know though, is that it was Steve who translated that common idea into essays that went into his columns as Frank Talk: I Write What I Like, and as memoranda to the SRCs and SASO [South African Students' Organisation] local branches. It was Steve ultimately who concretised and articulated the ideas. He captured the common mind.
In order to undertake such an experiment it is important to assert that this group of black consciousness activists were avid readers. I was introduced through their circle to the works of Paulo Freire, Amilcar Cabral, Franz Fanon, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and indeed, African literary giants like Chinua Achebe, James N'gugi (as he was then known). There was in that group a culture of reading and of intellectual engagement. Debate was always rigorous, and maybe even opinionated. So there was never any question of uninformed debate or ideas that could not be justified.
With such critical insights therefore, it was possible to subject the social and political reality of South Africa at the time to critical scrutiny. The starting point and the perspective was on the oppressed, the marginalised; those who sought after and yearned for freedom. It was observed that at the time liberatory politics were in danger of suffocating from the vice-grip of two social forces. While black consciousness was conscious of and acknowledged the proud history and traditions of liberation struggles, they had to contend with the fact that visible and vocal activism had gone underground, with many in exile and more still in jails. The dominant condition was one of pathological fear because the security system was repressive and ruthless.
First, was the relentless attack from the system with its onslaught of Bantustanism. It was observed that in an environment where the authentic voice of the people was not heard many Bantustan quislings had appropriated the rhetoric of freedom. They presented the Bantustans as a step towards freedom and as a legitimate response to the cry of the people. What was alarming was not only that this nonsense was becoming accepted as some joined the system - ostensibly in order to subvert it, but also that the media of that day especially, was acquiescent and touted these Bantustan leaders as representative of the people. It was necessary to address that.
Second there was the "liberal" onslaught. Various bodies and institutions led by whites who were opposed to the policies of the apartheid regime, were assumed to be speaking for the black people. It was important to denounce any idea that they could be speaking for us. For one thing there was an effective accommodation of the prevailing white dominant ethos and hegemony, which needed to be exposed and set apart from the liberatory ethos we sought to affirm. The trouble with this was that there seemed to be the setting in of the idea that black people need not do anything by themselves, but that white people and institutions could be the defenders of black interests. There was a real concern that black people were abdicating responsibility for their own liberation and entrusting it to those who had no interest in the liberation of black people.
Social and political analysis was a necessary starting point to reflection and action. Much of Steve's writing therefore, addressed these three themes: fear, Bantustans and liberals. It was important to do so in order to create a conceptual space that would free black people for creativity, and to take responsibility for their own liberation.
Steve Biko's discourse on fear was in fact addressed to the black community. It was an internal conversation. It began with an analysis of the history of white people's dealings with black people, which was always based on instilling as much fear as possible in order to dominate, suppress and conquer. Fear had even more devastating consequences. It was demeaning of the dignity of black people and negated their humanity. Fear, therefore, had to be resisted because to do so was an assertion of one's humanity. Resistance therefore was the most humanising response to oppression.
The white liberal establishment, including white opposition parties in the apartheid parliament, the media, and institutions like the SAIRR [South African Institute of Race Relations], as well as NUSAS could not be entrusted with the task of liberation. They too were part of the movement that imprisoned the mind of the black people and created false hopes about what they might accomplish while at the same time participating in and enjoying the fruits of an evil system.
Their vision of South Africa was based on exploitative values, and the integration they espoused would entrench inequalities. There was also a connivance between all these forces: the apartheid regime and their Bantustan collaborators, and the liberal establishment, all had one thing in common: they applied and derived comfort and sustenance from a system of racial oppression, then they dared to believe that self-respecting black people would wish to be co-opted to their grand design, and finally to have their response to the condition of oppression programmed. That had to be rejected.
This analysis then set the scene for a presentation of black consciousness as a response to the social and political condition that was seen as a dead-end. The idea was to transform politics out of the danger of acquiescence, and position the voice of liberation as abiding – a voice that could not be silenced. That required courage, but also clear thought and ideas. Black consciousness therefore, as an ideology, was meant to lift black people out of despair and instil in them hope about a future that was in their own hands.
Millard Arnold [one of the first editors of Biko's writing, and formerly a lawyer of the The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in the U.S.] was right in observing that "Biko's lasting legacy was that he had an uncomplicated vision; an intrinsic appreciation of the essence of the struggle confronting black people."
There is a sense in which there is nothing original about black consciousness. There is in its articulation an amalgam of ideas from the black power and civil rights movements in the United States; there is a thread that runs from the early nationalist movements in Africa, the Ethiopian Movement to the early ANC; there is much that draws on the influence of negritude of Senghor and others, and the Pan African Movement. The essence of it though, is that it was not to become merely a set of ideas but "a way of life" as the SASO Manifesto so eloquently put it.
It was a call first and foremost to the black society to take responsibility for their liberation, to free the human spirit and claim back their nature as free humanity. Secondly, it was giving notice to all who undermined the humanity of black people that the condition of subjugation was not one which God had ever decreed, and that black people were ready to claim their freedom and their inherent humanity and that they would do so on their own terms.
I now wish to highlight three instruments that were intrinsic to this liberation ethic. One, a new and critical understanding of culture. Culture needed to be liberated from what Biko referred to as the "arrested" image of culture that lacked vibrancy and dynamism. His idea, however, was that culture was a necessary ingredient towards humanising black people, towards claiming back their instruments of humanity. Of course, it was recognised that the same culture had been used as an instrument of subjugation, set in a tight box as backward and uncivilised.
Inasmuch as the history of all subjugated peoples was a history of conquest, black people needed to be authors of their own histories, to make history while they lived it. Culture was an important determinant of consciousness, but African culture had to be subjected to critique which would include the discovery of authentic culture, draw from the elements of African culture of communalism and solidarity, and engender an understanding of human nature, of creativity and the arts, of wisdom and insight. All this suggests that there is nothing about African culture to be ashamed of, but that culture could be an instrument of liberation. There are echoes of Amilcar Cabral, of Franz Fanon in Biko's discourse on culture. In a profile on Cabral the point is made that
"Culture has to take its place at the heart of the struggle for liberation. It is not enough to talk about raising consciousness, what is important is the type of future we envisage, the kind of social relations we plan to set up and how we prepare for the future of humanity."
Fanon, for his part states it bluntly, "it is this that counts, everything else is mystification. It is around the people's struggles that culture takes on substance, not around songs, poems or folklore." I raise this point here because there has been criticism of black consciousness and Steve Biko as if there ever was an idea that black consciousness had no liberatory action or revolutionary force.
The second area of focus was religion. Although Biko himself was not consciously "religious" - especially he played no part in institutional religion and the church - he was deeply conscious of the role religion could play in social upliftment, in asserting a common humanity as well as human solidarity. He was equally conscious that the church through the missionary movement had brought mixed fortunes to Africa, a liberating gospel and an ideology and practice of acquiescence.
He therefore took his place among the radicals and the non-conformists who held that the gospel had to be liberated from the clutches of the politics of the missionary establishment. African traditional religions were therefore a significant pointer of a people's quest for authentic self expression, and the church had an abiding value to large numbers of black people who continued to find meaning and value in the church. His approach therefore was not to denounce the church or embrace atheism but to liberate religion and theology as well. That is how it came about that black consciousness found common cause with the UCM, and established the Black Theology Project, and worked very closely in advocacy work with the black churches and with theological colleges.
The third area was social development. Black consciousness as a strategy for liberation built its philosophy on the idea that the black oppressed shared common values and common aspirations. The ethic of black solidarity was critical for black consciousness. It was therefore important that students as the intelligentsia of their society, must remain connected to their social and cultural roots.
SASO pioneered the programme for engagement of students in the development of communities. By so doing they not only participated in community upliftment, but they also took time to understand the communities, listen to the people, hear their stories and their struggles for life, and work with them towards solutions. The community development projects began with literacy training using the Paulo Freirean psycho-social method of pedagogy. Students later ran clinics and were soon building schools and community centres. From the work of their hands, and the application of their knowledge and learning from the elders, students were not only able to fill up gaps in their knowledge and history but they were conscientised as well. His rallying cry to members of SASO was straightforward:
"We have a responsibility not only to ourselves but also to the society from which we spring. No one else will take up the challenge until we, of our own accord, accept the inevitable fact that ultimately the leadership of the non-white people in this country lies with us."
Of course, this idea was never original to Steve. It has been the means by which a liberatory ethic could afford to build its system on the basis of contending social forces. The idea was that through their common interest such forces could be fused, and the tendency towards elitism by the intellectual and bourgeois class neutralised by committing them to integrating their life and praxis to the communities they served. That was what Amilcar Cabral practiced in Guinea Bissau and Paulo Freire advanced in Brazil. Charles Peterson (2001:26) represents Cabral's thought in this way:
"The elite reunion with mass popular struggle and culture disproves the lie of colonial invincibility and superiority by showing how colonial subjects can move beyond foreign domination. For the elite class, the class most immersed in colonial ideology and culture, moving beyond the shadow of colonial influence demonstrates the possibility of a new nation rising out of the ashes of a dominated past. With an eye on the future the re-born elite, by becoming one with the mass population, suggests and actively works towards a new democratic nation that attempts to deliver on the party's national liberatory promises."
The reference to "non-white" was made in 1969. The formulations of blackness, non-white and solidarity had not become set. In later times he would never have referred to blacks as non-white, but only to those who betray the destiny of black people and their liberation.
Transcending Divisions
Black consciousness never attempted in any systematic sense to formulate a manifesto for a new South Africa: in part because black consciousness, certainly during the time of Steve Biko, never envisaged itself as an alternative liberation force, but also in part because it was justly preoccupied with the middle passage, the strategies necessary to bring about the revolution of the mind that leads to action.
I can assert that in its early formulations black consciousness had no desire to substitute the traditional liberation organisations, neither did it see itself as formulating an alternative ideology. Its primary thrust was that in the circumstances of its time, the disunity of the black people was a luxury that we could not afford. That explains why someone like me could be a loyal cadre of the movement even though I had a strong pedigree in the ANC Youth League. Indeed, at the time of BC I was regularly in touch with the underground at various levels. I made sure that what BC was about was well communicated and understood. It was therefore not about engaging loyalties from different movements, but about seeking ways of transcending such divisions by articulating a meta-narrative of liberation that was unifying rather than particularising.
And yet Steve Biko never hesitated in advancing his own vision of a new South Africa. That vision was never detailed. It was not a Freedom Charter, it was not a ten-point programme. These were ideas Steve formulated in response mainly, to interviews he was subjected to largely by outsiders curious about a future South Africa.
It therefore emerges that he espoused a vision of a common humanity and the affirmation of a society founded on justice, without any privileges or considerations for minorities. He recognised that South Africa ruled by majority would be black and nationalist in orientation and political practice. He had no language of socialism and as such never critiqued to any substantive extent the socialist ideology, save to say that he harboured intellectual suspicions about socialist ideologies and practice.
Steve Biko's essay Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity is by common consensus considered to be the best statement he could have made of a vision for a new society. This comes not just from discursive reasoning but draws from a critique of society as it was organised. He then elaborates a vision of the people of South Africa ultimately sitting down together around a tabula rasa to formulate a truly new society based on the common value we all share together as common humanity. Somehow through this essay we begin to get an insight into Steve Biko as a visionary and as someone with a truly humane heart. "We have set out", he says, "on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horizon, we can see the glittering prize."
What Biko Means in the New South Africa
I must now come round to reflecting on what all this might mean for a new South Africa. What strikes me first and foremost is how much society needs both intellectuals and heroes. It is correct that this society should honour its heroes and heroines and celebrate its intellectuals. Heroes are never those who set themselves up as such, or who go about their business in the expectation of being hero-worshipped. Likewise intellectuals are not those who draw attention to themselves, but to ideas, their currency and to the critique of society. For both their currency is truth: to stand by the truth, to articulate reality as truthfully as they understand it without calculation of personal benefit.
Perhaps what we need even more in our current climate is a good dose of idealism. We need that capacity to think ahead and above the din of the madding crowd. Idealism comes from the knowledge that current circumstances need never be the final word and that we can visualise a better future. Without idealism, however, we can hardly find solutions to contemporary challenges, and shape our future. I believe that Steve Biko did all three things for our country. He was enormously prescient in his utterances, and he clearly envisioned the kind of future South Africa is struggling to establish today.
What is most refreshing about Steve's writings, looked at today, is their bluntness and matter-of-factness. He does not seem to calculate a particular way of courting acceptance. Reading Steve today one is amazed at how much of a truly "free" spirit he was. If one considers that he was writing at a time of repression, his courage shines through. No wonder the young people of his generation were rapt, in awe, and cultivated their own sense of imagination. Steve Biko in that sense has lessons for the young leaders of our day.
I believe that today, this should call us to a renewed connectedness to the values that sustained and entrenched the liberation struggles against all odds; in particular, to the abiding humanity, Ubuntu, that drove all aspects of the struggle.
Today, it would mean I believe, that we would address poverty with vigour, and that we would place human development at the centre of our national development strategy. We would by now, the second decade of our liberation, be advancing more strongly on all the development indices like housing, health care, primary education and basic literacy - much like what the Heads of State committed themselves to at the Millennium Summit in 2000: the Millennium Development Goals.
In truth crime and corruption devalue whatever values we stood for during the liberation struggle. They are founded on selfishness, jealousy and cold, inhuman violence. Crime and corruption inveigh against our common humanity and dignity. We are a society devoid of any regard for human life and cynical in our regard for the rights of others.
I believe that the same can be said about racism and ethnicity. A society which by common consent was founded on racism cannot but be riddled with the cancer of racism. Determined steps must continue to be taken to analyse all forms of racism, undertake corrective measures, set systems in place to entrench equality and punish all traces of racist conduct and behaviour. Social cohesion remains a major deficit of our society today. We are as divided as ever along the lines of race, gender and poverty/wealth divides. Social cohesion must remain an overriding goal of our society at all levels.
Finally, Steve Biko continues to point us towards a vision of leadership that is as visionary and sacrificial as it is transformational. His relationship with colleagues and comrades was truly collegial. A larger than life figure he was always at one with those from whom he sourced ideas and his thinking. Steve was always able to discern the strengths and weaknesses of his teams and often guided colleagues according to their gifts.
Because of his affirming nature Biko virtually lived with many of us like brothers and sisters. He was deeply concerned about our well-being and shared with those in need. We cannot tell what kind of leader Steve might have turned out to be in the new South Africa. What is undeniable is that he nurtured a band of comrades, confident and articulate, who lived in dangerous times without fear. Steve Biko is a true model of his generation.
The 2007 Steve Biko Lecture to mark 30 years of the death of Black Consciousness leader Stephen Bantu Biko, was delivered in the Senate Hall, Unisa, Pretoria, on Wednesday 12 September 2007.
13 September 2007
By Nyameko Barney Pityana
South Africa has been commemorating the 30th anniversary of the killing of black consciousness leader, Steve Biko, by apartheid security police.
Since his death Biko has become an international icon of black self-pride and of the African sense of humanity which the South Africans call, in their two main language groupings, "ubuntu" or "botho". In recent days, much has been written about Biko's intellectual heritage and what his life means to the liberated South Africa of today.
However, few South Africans can speak with the authority of the activist, lawyer, priest and academic, Nyameko Barney Pityana, now the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa. Pityana was one of the band of students who, with Biko, founded the principal institutions of the black consciousness movement in South Africa from the late 1960s. He delivered this address on September 12, the day on which, three decades earlier, Biko had died alone on the floor of a Pretoria prison cell.
Stephen Bantu Biko was an ordinary young man of his time. Nothing could have distinguished him, his family circumstances and environment from any other young man growing up in a small township in a small Eastern Cape town.
Not even his death, in some respects was extraordinary. After all, it was not unusual for political activists to die in detention. He was in fact the 42nd person to die while detained by the South African Security Police, the Special Branch. Almost all who died were young. Steve's comrades in the Black Consciousness Movement were also beginning to die either in detention as well, or in suspicious circumstances. Mapetla Mohapi, a young social worker and community activist, who died in detention, comes to mind, as does Mthuli ka Shezi, assassinated by being pushed in front of an oncoming train at Germiston Station. Onkgopotse Abraham Tiro died in exile, as a result of a parcel bomb. The manner of his death was not extraordinary either, shocking as it was. He would not have been surprised.
Steve Biko was an ordinary young man who lived in ordinary times but who made something extraordinary out of his life, not out of his own will, by but the machinations of an evil system. He touched the lives of young men and women of his generation and he was part of an abiding movement capable of changing the social and political face of our country. In other ways he gave birth to a society that could shape its own future.
I am one of those then young people of Biko's generation who was touched in extraordinary ways by his life and presence. For me it began when we shared a desk in class IVa at Lovedale in 1963; it continued when as university students we found ourselves at an ASF [Anglican Students' Federation] Conference at Michaelhouse, Natal, and later during a very long evening of conversations following a NUSAS [National Union of SA Students] Conference at Rhodes University Grahamstown.
It grew through an extraordinary three years when he invited me to live with him in Durban and I ended up sharing his room illegally at the Allan Taylor Residence of the University of Natal Medical School (UNB). Together with our two families we then shared a house in Umlazi, Durban. We travelled together distances across the length and breadth of this country, sharing long conversations, good times and bad, and a host of dear friends and comrades.
The last time I had any contact with him, though, was when, on 15 August 1977 we had a long telephone conversation on his domestic situation, in contravention of the banning orders to which we had been subjected. Later that afternoon the security police came and took me into detention at Baakens Street Police Station. On the Sunday, Major Fisher called in to tell me, with alacrity, that they had also detained Steve. I heard no more. I never saw the police again.
But a few days after Steve died, circumstances in my cell changed. The coloured policeman who was on duty at the police station disappeared. A young white police constable appeared. He was truly shocked to see me in prison. "Meneer prokureur", he said, "wat soek jy hierso? Hulle het mos my gesê daar is a baie gevaarlike terroris hierso." [Mr Attorney, what are you doing here? They told me there was a very dangerous terrorist here."] Upon seeing me he could not believe it. Unbeknown to me, he had been suddenly transferred from his duties as a court orderly in the Magistrate's Court in Port Elizabeth, the New Law Courts, where I used to appear as an articled clerk with a right of appearance.
He was a kind young man. He allowed me to have a shower, exercise out of the cell and, a privilege, let me read his morning newspaper - although by this time he was not keen to let me read. I managed to read a report on a statement by Jimmy Kruger on the death of Steve Biko, the infamous "Biko's death leaves me cold." Then I knew what my young policeman friend wanted to hide. That, it seemed, like it was the end.
But many South Africans of my generation could tell similar stories. My comrades in the Movement could tell their own stories. They could speak of a sense of loss and devastation, of anger, of the unleashing of resistance and the rededication that came with the murder of Steve. They could tell of the personal pain they felt at the loss of a dear friend, comrade and leader. They could also share a sense of fear, and for some of us guilt, that he died and we continued to live. For some there may have been some despair and hopelessness, that with Steve's death all was lost, and the exodus towards exile and the armed struggle turned into a flood. I remained in detention until August 1978 under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, and another spell in preventive detention.
I have said that Steve's life was ordinary and that in the circumstances of his day, not even his death could be said to have been extraordinary. But what was germane to Steve's story is that he touched the lives of many people of his generation, black and white. Among them, was the then editor of the East London Daily Dispatch, Donald Woods and at another end, Father Aelred Stubbs, CR. They were dear friends and they had the power of influence. They could not prevent his death but they could tell the world who he was. They wrote their stories about how Steve Biko changed their lives.
The world listened, and Steve became no longer the ordinary friend and comrade. He became a representative figure of the new generation of political activist and would-be revolutionaries that we fancied ourselves to be. But this is not a biography, not about Steve or about Barney Pityana. This address is a personal reflection on the 30 years that have passed since Steve was murdered. From a perspective of today's South Africa, I wish to make an analytical statement about the meaning and relevance of the life and times of Steve Biko, and its impact on contemporary South Africa.
The Black Consciousness Method
Recently I received by e-mail a copy of my paper Black Consciousness and Black Theology from Dr Ben Khumalo, a South African theologian now based in Germany. I gathered from the e-mail that Dr Khumalo had found it fit to distribute the paper to a number of people across the globe, in commemoration of Steve Biko. The paper was published in a book of essays on BLACK THEOLOGY edited by Prof Mokgethi Motlhabi now on the staff of our College of Human Sciences. Reading this paper again at the behest of Dr Khumalo I was reminded how ideas flowed and developed during the Black Consciousness era.
I wish to introduce this substantive part of this paper with a brief reflection on the Black Consciousness method. Steve Biko has come to be known as the "Father of Black Consciousness". While that is true, it needs however, to be put in context.
It is important to point out that Black Consciousness drew much from the method and pedagogy of the Latin American grassroots development movement. The Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire and his seminal work A Pedagogy of the Oppressed was an early influence. Social analysis leading to reflection and action were critical tools of engagement. I am reminded that the way black consciousness evolved was through many, and long hours of interaction and debate among friends at the Alan Taylor Residence.
Steve Biko was a central participant; he listened and challenged ideas as they emerged, concretised them, and brought them back for further development. This was a small group of men and women who were medical students, but joined regularly by some of us from other universities, especially at weekends. In such an environment it is hard to say who the originator of the ideas could be. All ultimately owned and identified with the expression of the collective idea. What I do know though, is that it was Steve who translated that common idea into essays that went into his columns as Frank Talk: I Write What I Like, and as memoranda to the SRCs and SASO [South African Students' Organisation] local branches. It was Steve ultimately who concretised and articulated the ideas. He captured the common mind.
In order to undertake such an experiment it is important to assert that this group of black consciousness activists were avid readers. I was introduced through their circle to the works of Paulo Freire, Amilcar Cabral, Franz Fanon, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and indeed, African literary giants like Chinua Achebe, James N'gugi (as he was then known). There was in that group a culture of reading and of intellectual engagement. Debate was always rigorous, and maybe even opinionated. So there was never any question of uninformed debate or ideas that could not be justified.
With such critical insights therefore, it was possible to subject the social and political reality of South Africa at the time to critical scrutiny. The starting point and the perspective was on the oppressed, the marginalised; those who sought after and yearned for freedom. It was observed that at the time liberatory politics were in danger of suffocating from the vice-grip of two social forces. While black consciousness was conscious of and acknowledged the proud history and traditions of liberation struggles, they had to contend with the fact that visible and vocal activism had gone underground, with many in exile and more still in jails. The dominant condition was one of pathological fear because the security system was repressive and ruthless.
First, was the relentless attack from the system with its onslaught of Bantustanism. It was observed that in an environment where the authentic voice of the people was not heard many Bantustan quislings had appropriated the rhetoric of freedom. They presented the Bantustans as a step towards freedom and as a legitimate response to the cry of the people. What was alarming was not only that this nonsense was becoming accepted as some joined the system - ostensibly in order to subvert it, but also that the media of that day especially, was acquiescent and touted these Bantustan leaders as representative of the people. It was necessary to address that.
Second there was the "liberal" onslaught. Various bodies and institutions led by whites who were opposed to the policies of the apartheid regime, were assumed to be speaking for the black people. It was important to denounce any idea that they could be speaking for us. For one thing there was an effective accommodation of the prevailing white dominant ethos and hegemony, which needed to be exposed and set apart from the liberatory ethos we sought to affirm. The trouble with this was that there seemed to be the setting in of the idea that black people need not do anything by themselves, but that white people and institutions could be the defenders of black interests. There was a real concern that black people were abdicating responsibility for their own liberation and entrusting it to those who had no interest in the liberation of black people.
Social and political analysis was a necessary starting point to reflection and action. Much of Steve's writing therefore, addressed these three themes: fear, Bantustans and liberals. It was important to do so in order to create a conceptual space that would free black people for creativity, and to take responsibility for their own liberation.
Steve Biko's discourse on fear was in fact addressed to the black community. It was an internal conversation. It began with an analysis of the history of white people's dealings with black people, which was always based on instilling as much fear as possible in order to dominate, suppress and conquer. Fear had even more devastating consequences. It was demeaning of the dignity of black people and negated their humanity. Fear, therefore, had to be resisted because to do so was an assertion of one's humanity. Resistance therefore was the most humanising response to oppression.
The white liberal establishment, including white opposition parties in the apartheid parliament, the media, and institutions like the SAIRR [South African Institute of Race Relations], as well as NUSAS could not be entrusted with the task of liberation. They too were part of the movement that imprisoned the mind of the black people and created false hopes about what they might accomplish while at the same time participating in and enjoying the fruits of an evil system.
Their vision of South Africa was based on exploitative values, and the integration they espoused would entrench inequalities. There was also a connivance between all these forces: the apartheid regime and their Bantustan collaborators, and the liberal establishment, all had one thing in common: they applied and derived comfort and sustenance from a system of racial oppression, then they dared to believe that self-respecting black people would wish to be co-opted to their grand design, and finally to have their response to the condition of oppression programmed. That had to be rejected.
This analysis then set the scene for a presentation of black consciousness as a response to the social and political condition that was seen as a dead-end. The idea was to transform politics out of the danger of acquiescence, and position the voice of liberation as abiding – a voice that could not be silenced. That required courage, but also clear thought and ideas. Black consciousness therefore, as an ideology, was meant to lift black people out of despair and instil in them hope about a future that was in their own hands.
Millard Arnold [one of the first editors of Biko's writing, and formerly a lawyer of the The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in the U.S.] was right in observing that "Biko's lasting legacy was that he had an uncomplicated vision; an intrinsic appreciation of the essence of the struggle confronting black people."
There is a sense in which there is nothing original about black consciousness. There is in its articulation an amalgam of ideas from the black power and civil rights movements in the United States; there is a thread that runs from the early nationalist movements in Africa, the Ethiopian Movement to the early ANC; there is much that draws on the influence of negritude of Senghor and others, and the Pan African Movement. The essence of it though, is that it was not to become merely a set of ideas but "a way of life" as the SASO Manifesto so eloquently put it.
It was a call first and foremost to the black society to take responsibility for their liberation, to free the human spirit and claim back their nature as free humanity. Secondly, it was giving notice to all who undermined the humanity of black people that the condition of subjugation was not one which God had ever decreed, and that black people were ready to claim their freedom and their inherent humanity and that they would do so on their own terms.
I now wish to highlight three instruments that were intrinsic to this liberation ethic. One, a new and critical understanding of culture. Culture needed to be liberated from what Biko referred to as the "arrested" image of culture that lacked vibrancy and dynamism. His idea, however, was that culture was a necessary ingredient towards humanising black people, towards claiming back their instruments of humanity. Of course, it was recognised that the same culture had been used as an instrument of subjugation, set in a tight box as backward and uncivilised.
Inasmuch as the history of all subjugated peoples was a history of conquest, black people needed to be authors of their own histories, to make history while they lived it. Culture was an important determinant of consciousness, but African culture had to be subjected to critique which would include the discovery of authentic culture, draw from the elements of African culture of communalism and solidarity, and engender an understanding of human nature, of creativity and the arts, of wisdom and insight. All this suggests that there is nothing about African culture to be ashamed of, but that culture could be an instrument of liberation. There are echoes of Amilcar Cabral, of Franz Fanon in Biko's discourse on culture. In a profile on Cabral the point is made that
"Culture has to take its place at the heart of the struggle for liberation. It is not enough to talk about raising consciousness, what is important is the type of future we envisage, the kind of social relations we plan to set up and how we prepare for the future of humanity."
Fanon, for his part states it bluntly, "it is this that counts, everything else is mystification. It is around the people's struggles that culture takes on substance, not around songs, poems or folklore." I raise this point here because there has been criticism of black consciousness and Steve Biko as if there ever was an idea that black consciousness had no liberatory action or revolutionary force.
The second area of focus was religion. Although Biko himself was not consciously "religious" - especially he played no part in institutional religion and the church - he was deeply conscious of the role religion could play in social upliftment, in asserting a common humanity as well as human solidarity. He was equally conscious that the church through the missionary movement had brought mixed fortunes to Africa, a liberating gospel and an ideology and practice of acquiescence.
He therefore took his place among the radicals and the non-conformists who held that the gospel had to be liberated from the clutches of the politics of the missionary establishment. African traditional religions were therefore a significant pointer of a people's quest for authentic self expression, and the church had an abiding value to large numbers of black people who continued to find meaning and value in the church. His approach therefore was not to denounce the church or embrace atheism but to liberate religion and theology as well. That is how it came about that black consciousness found common cause with the UCM, and established the Black Theology Project, and worked very closely in advocacy work with the black churches and with theological colleges.
The third area was social development. Black consciousness as a strategy for liberation built its philosophy on the idea that the black oppressed shared common values and common aspirations. The ethic of black solidarity was critical for black consciousness. It was therefore important that students as the intelligentsia of their society, must remain connected to their social and cultural roots.
SASO pioneered the programme for engagement of students in the development of communities. By so doing they not only participated in community upliftment, but they also took time to understand the communities, listen to the people, hear their stories and their struggles for life, and work with them towards solutions. The community development projects began with literacy training using the Paulo Freirean psycho-social method of pedagogy. Students later ran clinics and were soon building schools and community centres. From the work of their hands, and the application of their knowledge and learning from the elders, students were not only able to fill up gaps in their knowledge and history but they were conscientised as well. His rallying cry to members of SASO was straightforward:
"We have a responsibility not only to ourselves but also to the society from which we spring. No one else will take up the challenge until we, of our own accord, accept the inevitable fact that ultimately the leadership of the non-white people in this country lies with us."
Of course, this idea was never original to Steve. It has been the means by which a liberatory ethic could afford to build its system on the basis of contending social forces. The idea was that through their common interest such forces could be fused, and the tendency towards elitism by the intellectual and bourgeois class neutralised by committing them to integrating their life and praxis to the communities they served. That was what Amilcar Cabral practiced in Guinea Bissau and Paulo Freire advanced in Brazil. Charles Peterson (2001:26) represents Cabral's thought in this way:
"The elite reunion with mass popular struggle and culture disproves the lie of colonial invincibility and superiority by showing how colonial subjects can move beyond foreign domination. For the elite class, the class most immersed in colonial ideology and culture, moving beyond the shadow of colonial influence demonstrates the possibility of a new nation rising out of the ashes of a dominated past. With an eye on the future the re-born elite, by becoming one with the mass population, suggests and actively works towards a new democratic nation that attempts to deliver on the party's national liberatory promises."
The reference to "non-white" was made in 1969. The formulations of blackness, non-white and solidarity had not become set. In later times he would never have referred to blacks as non-white, but only to those who betray the destiny of black people and their liberation.
Transcending Divisions
Black consciousness never attempted in any systematic sense to formulate a manifesto for a new South Africa: in part because black consciousness, certainly during the time of Steve Biko, never envisaged itself as an alternative liberation force, but also in part because it was justly preoccupied with the middle passage, the strategies necessary to bring about the revolution of the mind that leads to action.
I can assert that in its early formulations black consciousness had no desire to substitute the traditional liberation organisations, neither did it see itself as formulating an alternative ideology. Its primary thrust was that in the circumstances of its time, the disunity of the black people was a luxury that we could not afford. That explains why someone like me could be a loyal cadre of the movement even though I had a strong pedigree in the ANC Youth League. Indeed, at the time of BC I was regularly in touch with the underground at various levels. I made sure that what BC was about was well communicated and understood. It was therefore not about engaging loyalties from different movements, but about seeking ways of transcending such divisions by articulating a meta-narrative of liberation that was unifying rather than particularising.
And yet Steve Biko never hesitated in advancing his own vision of a new South Africa. That vision was never detailed. It was not a Freedom Charter, it was not a ten-point programme. These were ideas Steve formulated in response mainly, to interviews he was subjected to largely by outsiders curious about a future South Africa.
It therefore emerges that he espoused a vision of a common humanity and the affirmation of a society founded on justice, without any privileges or considerations for minorities. He recognised that South Africa ruled by majority would be black and nationalist in orientation and political practice. He had no language of socialism and as such never critiqued to any substantive extent the socialist ideology, save to say that he harboured intellectual suspicions about socialist ideologies and practice.
Steve Biko's essay Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity is by common consensus considered to be the best statement he could have made of a vision for a new society. This comes not just from discursive reasoning but draws from a critique of society as it was organised. He then elaborates a vision of the people of South Africa ultimately sitting down together around a tabula rasa to formulate a truly new society based on the common value we all share together as common humanity. Somehow through this essay we begin to get an insight into Steve Biko as a visionary and as someone with a truly humane heart. "We have set out", he says, "on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horizon, we can see the glittering prize."
What Biko Means in the New South Africa
I must now come round to reflecting on what all this might mean for a new South Africa. What strikes me first and foremost is how much society needs both intellectuals and heroes. It is correct that this society should honour its heroes and heroines and celebrate its intellectuals. Heroes are never those who set themselves up as such, or who go about their business in the expectation of being hero-worshipped. Likewise intellectuals are not those who draw attention to themselves, but to ideas, their currency and to the critique of society. For both their currency is truth: to stand by the truth, to articulate reality as truthfully as they understand it without calculation of personal benefit.
Perhaps what we need even more in our current climate is a good dose of idealism. We need that capacity to think ahead and above the din of the madding crowd. Idealism comes from the knowledge that current circumstances need never be the final word and that we can visualise a better future. Without idealism, however, we can hardly find solutions to contemporary challenges, and shape our future. I believe that Steve Biko did all three things for our country. He was enormously prescient in his utterances, and he clearly envisioned the kind of future South Africa is struggling to establish today.
What is most refreshing about Steve's writings, looked at today, is their bluntness and matter-of-factness. He does not seem to calculate a particular way of courting acceptance. Reading Steve today one is amazed at how much of a truly "free" spirit he was. If one considers that he was writing at a time of repression, his courage shines through. No wonder the young people of his generation were rapt, in awe, and cultivated their own sense of imagination. Steve Biko in that sense has lessons for the young leaders of our day.
I believe that today, this should call us to a renewed connectedness to the values that sustained and entrenched the liberation struggles against all odds; in particular, to the abiding humanity, Ubuntu, that drove all aspects of the struggle.
Today, it would mean I believe, that we would address poverty with vigour, and that we would place human development at the centre of our national development strategy. We would by now, the second decade of our liberation, be advancing more strongly on all the development indices like housing, health care, primary education and basic literacy - much like what the Heads of State committed themselves to at the Millennium Summit in 2000: the Millennium Development Goals.
In truth crime and corruption devalue whatever values we stood for during the liberation struggle. They are founded on selfishness, jealousy and cold, inhuman violence. Crime and corruption inveigh against our common humanity and dignity. We are a society devoid of any regard for human life and cynical in our regard for the rights of others.
I believe that the same can be said about racism and ethnicity. A society which by common consent was founded on racism cannot but be riddled with the cancer of racism. Determined steps must continue to be taken to analyse all forms of racism, undertake corrective measures, set systems in place to entrench equality and punish all traces of racist conduct and behaviour. Social cohesion remains a major deficit of our society today. We are as divided as ever along the lines of race, gender and poverty/wealth divides. Social cohesion must remain an overriding goal of our society at all levels.
Finally, Steve Biko continues to point us towards a vision of leadership that is as visionary and sacrificial as it is transformational. His relationship with colleagues and comrades was truly collegial. A larger than life figure he was always at one with those from whom he sourced ideas and his thinking. Steve was always able to discern the strengths and weaknesses of his teams and often guided colleagues according to their gifts.
Because of his affirming nature Biko virtually lived with many of us like brothers and sisters. He was deeply concerned about our well-being and shared with those in need. We cannot tell what kind of leader Steve might have turned out to be in the new South Africa. What is undeniable is that he nurtured a band of comrades, confident and articulate, who lived in dangerous times without fear. Steve Biko is a true model of his generation.
The 2007 Steve Biko Lecture to mark 30 years of the death of Black Consciousness leader Stephen Bantu Biko, was delivered in the Senate Hall, Unisa, Pretoria, on Wednesday 12 September 2007.
Kampala and Kinshasa Reach Accord That Annoys Rebels.
MISNA
14 September 2007
Tensions have increased between the Ugandan government and the LRA rebels after Ugandan reached an accord with RD Congo such that LRA representatives present in RD Congo (Garanba park area) must leave the territory within the next 90 days, or be expelled by force. “An attack against our military posts would be interpreted as a declaration of war and imply a resumption of the Northern Uganda conflict” aid an LRA spokesman. The LRA adds that the deal between Uganda and Congo violates the spirit of the peace talks with the government that started over a year ago in juba, South Sudan. “If the LRA violates the ceasefire, we shall respond,” said a military spokesman from Kampala, noting that the rebels should have already regrouped in South Sudan two months ago, in Ri-Kwangba.
14 September 2007
Tensions have increased between the Ugandan government and the LRA rebels after Ugandan reached an accord with RD Congo such that LRA representatives present in RD Congo (Garanba park area) must leave the territory within the next 90 days, or be expelled by force. “An attack against our military posts would be interpreted as a declaration of war and imply a resumption of the Northern Uganda conflict” aid an LRA spokesman. The LRA adds that the deal between Uganda and Congo violates the spirit of the peace talks with the government that started over a year ago in juba, South Sudan. “If the LRA violates the ceasefire, we shall respond,” said a military spokesman from Kampala, noting that the rebels should have already regrouped in South Sudan two months ago, in Ri-Kwangba.
North Kivu: Fighting Continues, Mayi-Mayi Give Ultimatum.
MISNA
14 September 2007
Fighting continued over the past hours in North Kivu, in the east Democratic Republic of Congo, between pro-Kinshasa armed groups and militants loyal to the pro-Rwandan dissident general Laurent Nkunda. MISNA sources on the scene refer that armed groups apparently linked to the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Rwandan anti-government movement made up by refugees of the times of the genocide) and Mayi-Mayi (Congolese partisans active in the time of the conflict and never disarmed) continue engaging in clashes with Nkunda’s men in various areas north and west of Goma, provincial capital of North Kivu. The heaviest fighting was reported in Mweso, north of Kitchanga, where the sides have been exchanging heavy artillery since this morning at 3:00 a.m. Clashes and gunbattles also erupted in Mushaka, west of Sake (around 40km west of Goma) and south of Sake, where according to the fleeing residents, also the army is preparing to combat. The Congolese armed forces are however for the moment respecting a fragile truce reached in the past days with Nkunda’s militants, under strong international pressures. The situation was complicated further by an ultimatum launched today by the Mayi-Mayi of Nyabiondo, a few kilometres north-west of Masisi, giving the government 48 hours to intervene in east DR-Congo, threatening otherwise a large-scale intervention against Nkunda’s men.
14 September 2007
Fighting continued over the past hours in North Kivu, in the east Democratic Republic of Congo, between pro-Kinshasa armed groups and militants loyal to the pro-Rwandan dissident general Laurent Nkunda. MISNA sources on the scene refer that armed groups apparently linked to the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Rwandan anti-government movement made up by refugees of the times of the genocide) and Mayi-Mayi (Congolese partisans active in the time of the conflict and never disarmed) continue engaging in clashes with Nkunda’s men in various areas north and west of Goma, provincial capital of North Kivu. The heaviest fighting was reported in Mweso, north of Kitchanga, where the sides have been exchanging heavy artillery since this morning at 3:00 a.m. Clashes and gunbattles also erupted in Mushaka, west of Sake (around 40km west of Goma) and south of Sake, where according to the fleeing residents, also the army is preparing to combat. The Congolese armed forces are however for the moment respecting a fragile truce reached in the past days with Nkunda’s militants, under strong international pressures. The situation was complicated further by an ultimatum launched today by the Mayi-Mayi of Nyabiondo, a few kilometres north-west of Masisi, giving the government 48 hours to intervene in east DR-Congo, threatening otherwise a large-scale intervention against Nkunda’s men.
13 September, 2007
La Temoignage de Marcel Gerin.
Jerzy Bednarek
Magazine Africa International
Beaufays (Belgique)
07.10.98
Le Rwanda était un ban de sang
Après l'attentat aèrien de Kigali en avril 1994, la guerre reprend au Rwanda. Les étrangers sont évacués. Dans l'est du pays, Marcel et Gloria Gérin sont faits prisonniers par le FPR, le Front patriotique rwandais, actuellement au pouvoir. Isolés durant trois semaines dans leur ranch de Mpanga, ils assistent à la déroute de l'armée rwandaise puis à l'extermination de toutes les populations de la région par les unités specialisées du géneral tutsi Paul Kagame.
Le temoignage qui suit est d'un intérêt exceptionnel.
Marcel et Gloria Gérin sont les seuls rescapés de l'est du Rwanda à presenter une version à ce point crédible et détaillée des événements qui ont suivi l'attentat de Kigali qui a ouvert le génocide. On ne peut le faire un procès d'intention. Ils ne sont ni rwandais ni engagés politiquement ou manipulés. Marcel est un Belge né au Kivu en 1946 et son épouse Gloria est d'origine mexicaine. Au Rwanda, ils géraient un complexe touristique.
Déposer dans le dossier du génocide rwandais -ce dossier n'est pas clos- un élément nouveau tel ce témoignage direct n'est pas faire acte de négationnisme ou de revisionnisme. Si Marcel Gérin décrit les crimes du FPR, que certains qualifient de génocide, il ne le fait pas dans l'intention de nuire, ou de nier ou d'atténuer ceux du régime Habyarimana. Ceux-ci, il n'a pas pu les observer suffisamment, dit-il. Mais s'il peut avec son épouse relater ce qu'il a vécu, c'est en raison d'un concours de circonstances qui leur a permis d'échapper au sort que le FPR réserve aux témoins gênants: l'elimination physique.
Marcel Gérin a été un observateur de premier ordre du drame rwandais. A cause de l'isolement de son ranch, il était autorisé à utiliser son matériel de phonie dans un pays en guerre. Il peut ainsi livrer des données inédites au sujet de l'attentat aérien de Kigali. Plus important encore, il a relevé, grâce a ses observations à la jumelle, les techniques d'extermination systématique et méthodique de toutes les populations, y compris tutsies, mises en oeuvre dans la région par le général Kagame après l'attentat aérien. On est loin ici de l'interprétation donnée par le FPR et ses relais internationaux, selon laquelle tous les massacres durant cette période ont été commis par les "génocidaires hutus", alors que du côté du FPR il n'y aurait eu que quelques actes de vengeance isolés, somme toute excusables vu les circontances, provenant d'éléments indisciplinés. Ce cynisme et cette capacité de desinformer sont constants chez le FPR. Pendant qu'il concrétise sa "solution finale", signale M. Gérin, le Front patriotique fait venir sur les lieux la presse étrangère pour des visites guidées explicatives. Les spécialistes du communication du Front attendent des journalistes étrangers qu'ils désignent à leur tour les "génocidaires" hutus comme seuls auteurs de tous les massacres constatés.
D'autres points de l'entretien attirent l'attention. Il est confirmé qu'au moment de sa dernière offensive, le FPR disposait d'eléments armés de plusieurs nationalités, prefiguration des "brigades internationales tutsies" qui provoqueront le départ du maréchal Mobutu en 1997, puis tenteront en 1998 de renverser son successeur Kabila. D'autre part, qui était cette "unité Cobra" que mentionne M. Gérin à propos de l'attentat aèrien, et quel pays a fait survoler l'est du pays par un avion C-130 anonyme en mission photographique?
Pour avoir osé révéler la face la plus hideuse du Front patriotique, Marcel Gérin et son épouse sont désormais exposés aux représailles des commandos que le général Kagame, autrefois chef des services des renseignements militaires ougandais, a installés un peu partout dans le monde pour supprimer témoins gênants et opposants politiques. Espérons que Marcel et Gloria, des rescapés décidés à ne jamais se taire, échapperont cette fois encore à ses griffes.
Jerzy Bednarek-Africa International
Comment avez-vous appris qu'il y avait eu un attentat aèrien à Kigali le 6 avril 1994?
Marcel Gérin
J'ètais à ce moment-là en contact radio avec un ami allemand qui se trouvait à Kigali. J'avais une vacation radio avec lui tous les jours vers 20 h 30, depuis mon ranch Mpanga qui se trouve en brousse à 75 km de Kigali. Au moment de la prise de contact le 6 avril, nous entendons quatre détonations assez fortes, moi par la radio et mon ami en direct. Plus tard dans la soirée, vers 21 heures, des messages captés sur ma radio m'appendront que l'avion du président Habyarimana avait été abattu. Un de ces messages émanait de l'unité Cobra, une société de securité installée à Kigali. Il disait: "On a eu le Grand". Par déduction, j'ai compris qu'il pouvait s'agir du président Habyarimana. J'en aurai la confirmation à minuit par Radio France internationale.
* Qui selon vous aurait parlé de ce "Grand"?
M.G.: Il s'agissait de Cobra, le chef de la unité. Il discutait avec d'autres collègues. Les fréquences VHF qu'ils utilisaient étaient souvent les mêmes que celles de l'ONU, ou très proches.
* Et Cobra était une unité de quelle nationalité?
M.G.: Cobra était une unité de nationalité belge, et le responsable parlait en français avec un accent flamand.
* Vous aviez donc la possibilité d'intercepter des messages militaires sur votre phonie?
M.G.: Au ranch, mon installation VHF multifréquences permettait de capter toutes les émissions VHF. notamment celles de l'ONU. J'avais d'autre part un appareil HF de 0 à 30 Mhz par lequel je pouvais capter des messages militaires de l'ONU ou des Forces armés rwandaises, et d'autres encore. Après l'attentat aèrien, les messages de l'ONU et des militaires rwandais étaient des messages de désarroi profond, de desorganisation. Ceux qui parlaient ne savaient plus très bien comment ils s'appelaient, ni même sur quelles fréquences ils devaient émettre, tellement les messages se chevauchaient.
Les messages de l'armée rwandaise étaient des messages de ralliement, de tentatives de réorganiser sa défense. Cela montrait qu'elle était en difficulté, D'autre part, je puis dire très sincèrement que je n'ai jamais capté de message de l'armée rwandaise à caractère génocidaire, ou concernant de la propagande ou des exécutions arbitraires ou sommaires.
* Mais ce que vous dites contredit la thèse selon laquelle il y aurait eu un vaste plan étatique d'extermination des Tutsis, puisque vous n'avez entendu dans les messages de l'armée rwandaise aucun ordre clair donné à des unités d'aller exterminer des poupulations.
M.G.: Non seulement il n'y a pas eu d'ordre précis du côté des FAR (Forces armées rwandaises) ou de la gendarmerie rwandaise, mais dans ma région de Rusumo j'ai au contraire assisté personnellement à une intervention du bourgmestre de Kibungo qui a essayé d'arrêter les mouvements isolés de miliciens Interahamwe. Même s'il a échoué partiellement, on ne peut pas parler d'incitation au génocide. Il y a eu plutôt un mouvement de résistance nationale populaire qui a débordé. Des personnes ont été executées et des innocents ont été massacrés. Mais ce que j'ai vécu n'était pas un génocide planifié, sans quoi cela aurait été bien pire encore.
* Que s'est-il passé dans votre secteur après l'attentat contre l'avion du président Habyarimana?
M.G.: Le ranch Mpanga se situe dans la partie nord de la commune de Rusumo. Après l'intervention ratée du bourgmestre de Kibungo contre des Interahamwe qui voulaient entraîner la population dans des actes de résistance ou de représailles, on a vécu une situation particulière vers le 9 ou le 10 avril. Il y avait dans la région des populations autochtones, tels les Banyambo qui vivent dans les marais, et d'autres provenant du nord du pays où elles avaient fui le FPR en 1992 et 1993. Après l'attentat, les Banyambo sont retournés dans les marais puis ils sont passés en Tanzanie. Il y a eu ensuite l'exode des réfugiés du nord. Ils sont partis eux aussi en Tanzanie. Vers le 15 avril, les populations restantes ont pris peur et sont venues chez nous au ranch pour demander de l'aide. Une partie s'est enfui en Tanzanie avec les dernières pirogues disponibles.
L'avant-garde de l'Armée patriotique rwandaise: des Ougandais, des Somaliens, des Ethiopiens...
Puis il y a eu la descente des forces de l'Armée patriotique rwandaise, l'APR. C'est alors qu'il y a eu un mouvement de panique totale, lorsque les gens de notre région ont entendu le bruit des armes et qu'ils ont senti les odeurs nauséabondes des bûchers sur lesquels des cadavres et des agonisants brûlaient. Comme les Banyambo étaient partis avec leurs pirogues, on ne pouvait plus passer de l'autre côté de la frontière. Les réfugiés en fuite sont donc revenus en arrière sur la presqu'île du ranch en nous implorant de les cacher. Ce terrain a une superficie de 1.600 hectares, bien trop petit pour pouvoir cacher toutes ces personnes. Elles sont donc revenues chez nous. Dans cette population il n'y avait pas uniquement des Hutus, des "génocidaires" comme on dit maintenant. Il y avait aussi des "oubliés" Banyambo, des "métis" hutus-tutsis que j'appelle les Hutsis, et des Tutsis venant du nord du pays où ils avaient été persécutés par l'APR au début de 1994. Tous ces gens sont donc venus se réfugier chez moi.
Ensuite le FPR est descendu rapidement, mais d'une façon très méthodique et très progressive. Dans un premir temps, j'ai assisté au nettoyage de la région, au rassemblement des populations restées en arrière parce que ces personnes étaient malades ou handicapées, ou trop jeunes pour pouvoir suivre le reste des fuyards. Ces gens ont été rassemblés par paquets qu'on a éliminés à la mitrailleuse et à la grenade. Ils ont fini sur des bûchers ou ont été rejoindre les innombrables "flotteurs" qu'il y avait à ce moment-là sur tous les lacs, rivières et ruisseaux du Rwanda, entre autres la rivière Akagera que j'ai appellée par le suite le "Nil noir".
* Ce que vous venez de décrire, l'avez-vous vu personnellement, ou les faites-vous par ouï-dire?
M.G.: Il n'y a rien par ouï-dire. Mes souvenirs de cette période sont atroces. Ces opérations du FPR, je les ai réperées au début par l'odorat. Après, je les ai suivies avec mes jumelles pour essayer d'identifier l'origine des odeurs nauséabondes qui flottaient sur toute la région. Il y avait des odeurs de chair brûlée, calcinée, et ensuite ont a commencé à sentir des odeurs de corps en putréfaction. C'était insoutenable. Tout cela, nous l'avons malheureusement bien subi.
A ce moment-là on se pose des questions. On se démande à quoi correspondent ces coups de feu et ces odeurs. On est dans le doute. Mais malheureusement pour mon épouse et pour moi-même, dans les deux ou trois jours qui ont suivi on a vu déferler chez nous des civils en armes. On ne savait pas bien s'ils étaient des gens de l'APR ou des Interahamwe. Le contact a été brutal, puisque ma femme et moi avons été arrêtés, ce qui nous donnait la réponse à nos questions. Il s'agissait bien des forces armées de l'APR sans uniforme. Rien que pour venir nous capturer sur le ranch, ils étaient à plus de 350. Dans notre zone, il y avait des barrages presque tous les 50 mètres, tenus par des hommes en uniforme que j'ai identifiés comme des Somaliens, des Ethiopiens, etc. Au total, j'estime qu'ils étaient plus de 10.000. Qu'on les appelle mercenaires ou bandes armées, ils appartenaient en tout caus au FPR, et leur chef se nommait George Kirindi. Après notre arrestation, nous avons subi des coups et des blessures, et par deux fois des simulacres d'exécution au milieu de gens tués par balles ou à la machette. Autour de nous on entendait des réflexions telles que: "Nous gagnerons la guerre par les procédés et les outils des Interahamwe". Toute photo ou tout film qui auraient été pris à ce moment-là n'aurait pas permis à une personne extérieure de déterminer avec certitude si ces gens armés étaient des Interahamwe ou des gens de l'APR. Mais pour nous qui étions dans leurs mains, il n'y avait pas de confusion possible.
Nous avons ensuite été emmenés de force à Kibungo. Là, il y avait des officiers ougandais, mais certainement pas des Tutsis connus dans cette région. Il est certain qu'il y avait des mercenaires à la solde de commanditaires qui voulaient piller et se payer. Il faut aussi noter une particularité, c'est que dans ces bandes armées ont parlait toujours du "chef", sans jamais citer un grade. C'était toujours le chef. Le premier que nous avons rencontré se promenait en chemise hawaïenne et avec des babouches aux pieds. Personne n'était en uniforme. Le premier officier de l'APR identifiable, le capitaine Diogène Mudenge responsable APR pour l'est du Rwanda, nous l'avons vu à Gahini lors de notre transfert depuis Kibungo. C'est à cette ocasión que nous avons vu pour la première fois un uniforme de l'APR, de couleur verte unie.
Des mares de sang sur 30 kilomètres
* Quand était-ce?
M.G.: Nous avons été faits prisonniers le 26 avril 1994, et nous avons passé la fin du mois à Gahini dans les mains de l'APR.
Je voudrais faire un retour en arrière pour parler de notre souvenir le plus choquant et le plus mauvais. Il faut savoir que la route entre notre ranch Mpanga et Kibungo fait 90 kilomètres à travers des champs de bananiers. Ce qui était incroyable sur cette route, c'était premièrement l'odeur de cadavre qui flottait sur tout le pays, et ensuite le nombre de cadavres sur la route, dans les champs, les prairies et sur les chemins. Il y en avait partout, à tel point que j'ai dit qu'il y avait là plus de cadavres que de bananiers.
Lorsque nous avons pris la route asphaltée de Kabarondo vers Kibungo, jamais auparavant je n'aurais cru qu'il serait possible dans la vie d'un homme d'être obligé de rouler en voiture sur 30 kilomètres dans des mares de sang, de cervelles et de défécations.
Le lendemain, nous avons fait le voyage en sens inverse. Les cadavres avaient été déblayés des routes par des soi-disant prisonniers qui ont terminé leur vie après avoir accompli ce travail macabre. Les caniveaux étaient remplis de cadavres empilés. L'entrée de Gahini n'était que cadavres. Toutes les rivières et les lacs que j'ai vus au Rwanda durant cette période étaient absolument tous encombrés de "flotteurs", de cadavres donc.
Ce que je voudrais dire aussi, c'est que depuis notre arrestation le 26 avril au matin jusqu'à notre départ de Gahini, ce ne fut pour nous qu'un interrogatoire presque continu de jour comme de nuit, avec des pressions allant jusqu'au poteau d'exécution. Nous avons également subi des séances de torture de trois heures d'affilée, les 26 et 27 avril. Durant une de ces séances, mon domestique Gatete a été tué à un mètre de moi, de trois balles. Il n'y a donc aucun doute que le témoignage que nous donnons ici concerne bien l'APR.
* Mais est-ce que tous ces massacres n'auraient pas pu être commis en partie par les Interahamwe et les Forces armées rwandaises?
M.G.: Une chose est certaine pour les FAR et les gendarmes, c'est qu'aucune personne n'a été tuée par eux, pour la bonne et simple raison qu'ils n'étaient pas là, ayant été rappelés à Kibungo fin mars 1994. Pour les Interahamwe, dire qu'ils n'ont tué personne serait mentir. Or la "déposition" que je fais ici n'a pas pour but de mentir ou de prendre parti, mais de dire la vérité et de décrire ce que j'ai vu.
"J'ai vu des gens avancer dans le lac pour se noyer"
Lors de ces événements, j'étais dans le désarroi. Je ne savais pas si nous pouvions quitter le ranch ou s'il était préférable de rester. Il fallait évaluer la situation à l'exterieur. J'ai donc été obligé de sortir de chez moi et d'utiliser une partie de mon personnel de confiance pour obtenir des informations correctes. Je puis donc dire très clairement qu'il a eu des personnes tuées ou horriblement mutilées par les Interahamwe pendant cette espèce de fuite des populations de la région, et que les Interahamwe ont massacré environ 1.000 personnes dans l'église de Nyarubuye et aux alentours. Je n'ai pas été témoin de cette situation, mais je n'ai pas constaté que dans la région les Interahamwe ont massacré des personnes par milliers. Par contre, et c'est absolument extraordinaire, j'ai vu des gens, des Tutsis parfois, se suicider en buvant le liquide provenant de piles éléctriques trempées dans de l'eau, ou en se pendant aux arbres. Ces personnes ne voulaient pas vivre une nouvelle fois ce qu'elles avaient enduré dans le nord du pays, et elles choisissaient pour elles-mêmes la solution finale. J'ai vu des gens s'avancer tout seuls dans les lacs Cyambwe et Rwampanga pour se noyer. Mais il est presque impossible de dire combien parmi ces personnes ont été assassinées ou massacrés, ou combien se sont suicidées. En tout cas, les gros massacres, le gros nettoyage de la région, qui est toujours vide à l'heure actuelle, ont bien été exécutés par ces hordes armées que j'ai citées, qu'on les appelle Armée patriotique rwandaise ou groupes armés tutsis.
Je fais une parenthese à propos des gens qui ont été tués à coups de houes ou de machettes par ces bandes armées de l'APR très bien equipées et lourdement armées, à qui il ne manquait rien sauf l'uniforme. Ce sont eux qui utilisaient ces méthodes pour tuer. Par contre, les équipes qui restaient en arrière, disons les équipes de surveillance ou de fin de nettoyage, étaient constituées des "petits" (enfants ou jeunes adolescents), incapables de donner la mort de cette façon. Ils utilisaient donc des kalashnikovs bien trop lourdes pour eux ou des fusils R4 recuperés à gauche ou à droite. C'était d'eux que nous avions le plus peur, tellement la détente de leurs armes les chatouillait.
J'ai essayé de plaider devant les 350 militaires de l'APR la cause des pauvres gens qui avaient cherché refuge dans le ranch. Mais lors de notre départ, les ordres de l'APR ont été précis et bien intelligibles: il fallait ratisser et nettoyer le ranch, car, disaient-ils, "On n'est pas venus ici pour faire des prisonniers, mais pour reprendre notre pays". J'ai eu beau insister sur le fait qu'il y avait dans ces réfugiés des "Hutsis", des Tutsis, des Banyambo ou des Hutus, qui n'avaient rien à voir avec les soi-disant massacres commis par les Interahamwe, que ces gens cherchaient un refuge et une protection. Cela a été peine perdue, parce que les ordres étaient bien clairs et répétés: il fallait absolument "nettoyer" le ranch. A l'heure actuelle, en 1998, il est toujours une zone interdite gardée militairement. J'ignore quelle fonction il remplit.
La "solution finale" du FPR
Pour en revenir à la situation à Gahini, je dois préciser que lors de notre détention nous avons été obligés d'assister à des interrogatoires rapides de Rwandais effectués par le capitaine Diogène Mudenge, qui se terminaient tout simplement par des exécutions, la "solution finale". Il y avait des piles de cadavres, avec en bas des cadavres en desintégration, au milieu des cadavres plus frais, et en haut des cadavres qui saignaient encore. Or la période des executions par les Interahamwe était loin derrière. Nous sommes plus de vingt jours plus tard. Cette situation à Gahini était tout-à-fait particulière. On utilisait des femmes comme porteuses d'eau pour aprovisionner le campement de l'APR. Celles qui n'en pouvaient plus, ils s'en débarrassaient tout simplement à l'arme blanche. Nous avons dû assister à ces faits-là.
L'arrivée des journalistes à Gahini a été une chance pour nous. Ces journalistes ont accompagné l'escorte de l'APR qui devait nous remettre à Byumba dans les mains du général Paul Kagame. Nous avons fait toutes les routes au nord du lac Muhazi. Comme ailleurs, il y avait là des cadavres, mais aussi des amoncellements impressionants de douilles, de canons, etc. Ce qui nous a frappé le plus dans cette région, et cela confirmait ce que nous avions vu dans notre secteur, c'est qu'il n'y avait plus aucun habitant, aucun prisonnier. On n'a vu que des zones totalement vides de gens vivants.
Nous avons fait toute la route pour arriver au croisement de la piste qui rejoint Byumba. Cette piste continue sur Mulindi, vers la poste-frontière de Gatuna. Que s'est-il passé à ce croisement? Toujours est-il qu'au lieu de tourner à gauche vers Byumba, nous avons pris de petites pistes à travers champs et collines, pour enfin arriver à Gahini puis à l'entrée de Mulindi ou nous tombons sur quelques officiers de l'ONU, des Ghanéens et des Sénégalais notamment. Ils ont eu de bréves discussions avec les journalistes qui se sont rendu compte que nous étions toujours en danger. Les officiers de l'ONU ont alors proposé de nous emmener directement de l'autre côté de la frontière. Mais cette initiative a été immédiatement contrecarrée par un agent de l'APR en uniforme militaire, qui se promenait là avec un enregistreur. Il m'a obligé à me soumettre de nouveau à un interrogatoire qui a duré une bonne heure et demie, avec l'intention d'attendre la tombée de la nuit.
A la tombée de la nuit, ma femme et moi avons reçu l'ordre de quitter Mulindi pour rejoindre, soi-disant sans problème, Gatuna à la frontière avec l'Ouganda. Une chose tout-à-fait particulière, c'est que j'ai voulu aller voir les gens de l'ONU pour leur demander une escorte, mais cela m'a été refusé par l'APR. J'ai donc dû partir seul avec mon épouse, dans le véhicule qu'on nous avait obligé de conduire. Il y avait une insistance de l'APR pour dire que nous étions libres et que nous pouvions partir. C'était une chose très bizarre. Dans mon subconscient, je m'attendais à recevoir une roquette dans mon véhicule, ce qui aurait mis un terme à notre vie au Rwanda. Mais des officiers de l'ONU nous ont suivis en jeep. Ils nous ont encadrés. Nous sommes arrivés au bas de la route qui traverse le marais pour rejoindre la route asphaltée. A notre grande surprise, la route dans la vallée était entièrement inondée sur une hauteur de 30 à 40 cm. Donc le piège était là. Nous pouvions recevoir une roquette ou être pris par les eaux. Mais avec l'aide des jeeps de l'ONU, nous sommes passés et nous avons pu arriver assez facilement à Gatuna où les officiers de l'ONU nous ont fait passer la frontière et nous ont remis au petit bureau de l'ONU situé de l'autre côté de la frontière. Pour la première fois depuis notre arrestation le 26 avril, nous avons pu avoir une tasse de thé et manger quelque chose.
Le 2 mai, nous sommes en route pour la petite ville de Kabale en Ouganda où nous avions des démarches à faire. Heureusement, les autorités ougandaises nous ont donné des documents de voyage pour que nous puissions rejoindre Kampala. A Kampala, nous serons reçus par M. Walter Hoes, consul honoraire de Belgique. Il a dû faire une demande au ministère belge des affaires étrangères pour que nous puissions bénéficier d'un crédit pour nos billets d'avion Kampala-Bruxelles. Cette autorisation a été donnée contre la signature d'une reconnaissance de dette. J'ai accepté cela pour quitter l'Ouganda en qui je n'avais pas beaucoup confiance. Le consul nous emmènera jusque dans l'avion, et c'est avec soulagement que nous quittons le 5 mai Entebbe, pour un retour à Bruxelles en solitaires.
* Vous avez parlé de la presse internationale. Mais est-ce que l'APR aurait pu faire venir des journalistes étrangers pour faire constater ses propres massacres?
M.G.: La conviction que j'ai, c'est que ces journalistes sont arrivés à Gahini comme un cheveu dans la soupe. Leur accueil n'était pas prévu. En outre, pour notre chance ils se sont trompés de bâtiment en arrivant, et c'est ainsi qu'ils nous ont localisés.
D'un autre côté, la prese étrangère devait servir à confirmer la politique du FPR qui était de désigner les Interahamwe comme auteurs des massacres. Les journalistes ont été automatiquement pris en charge par des unités bien spécialisées du FPR. L'un de ces spécialistes est Tony Kabano, qui a été formé au bureau du FPR de Bruxelles. Il s'occupe de ce genre de travail. Donc il y a des "guides" de l'APR, dans des uniformes convenables, qui montrent aux journalistes ce qu'ils veulent bien montrer. Je pense que ces journalistes n'ont pas pu voir ces hordes, ces vagues plutôt, de tueurs qui nous ont pris. Ils n'ont vu que les militaires de l'APR en uniformes, qui les ont influencés en leur disant: "Voilà les agissements des Interahamwe, leurs multiples massacres", etc. Mais je ne pense pas que les journalistes aient été si dupés que ça.
Quant à l'article que le journaliste de Reuter Buchiza Mzeteka a écrit sur moi, il a été pour moi ce que j'appelle "le chèque pour la vie". En tant qu'Occidental, j'ai dû mentir, faire de fausses dépositions en utilisant le stratagème du faux vocabulaire. D'autre part, les survivants que vous trouvez au Rwanda ne témoigneront certainement pas, parce qu'ils ne savent pas s'ils seront dénoncés ou pas, ils ne savent pas où ils en sont. Par ailleurs, toutes les mises en scène que le FPR organise pour les journalistes sont très bien construites.
Pour términer, je voudrais encore préciser quelque chose. Ce que j'ai vu de mes propres yeux entre le 21 et le 28 avril 1994, ce sont les passages en rase-mottes d'un avion C-130 sur toute la zone de Rusumo-Kibungo. Cet avion semblait photographier ou filmer la région. Il n'était nullement inquiété par l'armée du FPR. Il opérait donc de connivence avec elle, pour justement prendre des documents sur ces bandes armées non identifiables du ciel. On peut donc ensuite attribuer aux Interahamwe des actions et une façon d'opérer qui sont en realité celles de l'APR.
Magazine Africa International
Beaufays (Belgique)
07.10.98
Le Rwanda était un ban de sang
Après l'attentat aèrien de Kigali en avril 1994, la guerre reprend au Rwanda. Les étrangers sont évacués. Dans l'est du pays, Marcel et Gloria Gérin sont faits prisonniers par le FPR, le Front patriotique rwandais, actuellement au pouvoir. Isolés durant trois semaines dans leur ranch de Mpanga, ils assistent à la déroute de l'armée rwandaise puis à l'extermination de toutes les populations de la région par les unités specialisées du géneral tutsi Paul Kagame.
Le temoignage qui suit est d'un intérêt exceptionnel.
Marcel et Gloria Gérin sont les seuls rescapés de l'est du Rwanda à presenter une version à ce point crédible et détaillée des événements qui ont suivi l'attentat de Kigali qui a ouvert le génocide. On ne peut le faire un procès d'intention. Ils ne sont ni rwandais ni engagés politiquement ou manipulés. Marcel est un Belge né au Kivu en 1946 et son épouse Gloria est d'origine mexicaine. Au Rwanda, ils géraient un complexe touristique.
Déposer dans le dossier du génocide rwandais -ce dossier n'est pas clos- un élément nouveau tel ce témoignage direct n'est pas faire acte de négationnisme ou de revisionnisme. Si Marcel Gérin décrit les crimes du FPR, que certains qualifient de génocide, il ne le fait pas dans l'intention de nuire, ou de nier ou d'atténuer ceux du régime Habyarimana. Ceux-ci, il n'a pas pu les observer suffisamment, dit-il. Mais s'il peut avec son épouse relater ce qu'il a vécu, c'est en raison d'un concours de circonstances qui leur a permis d'échapper au sort que le FPR réserve aux témoins gênants: l'elimination physique.
Marcel Gérin a été un observateur de premier ordre du drame rwandais. A cause de l'isolement de son ranch, il était autorisé à utiliser son matériel de phonie dans un pays en guerre. Il peut ainsi livrer des données inédites au sujet de l'attentat aérien de Kigali. Plus important encore, il a relevé, grâce a ses observations à la jumelle, les techniques d'extermination systématique et méthodique de toutes les populations, y compris tutsies, mises en oeuvre dans la région par le général Kagame après l'attentat aérien. On est loin ici de l'interprétation donnée par le FPR et ses relais internationaux, selon laquelle tous les massacres durant cette période ont été commis par les "génocidaires hutus", alors que du côté du FPR il n'y aurait eu que quelques actes de vengeance isolés, somme toute excusables vu les circontances, provenant d'éléments indisciplinés. Ce cynisme et cette capacité de desinformer sont constants chez le FPR. Pendant qu'il concrétise sa "solution finale", signale M. Gérin, le Front patriotique fait venir sur les lieux la presse étrangère pour des visites guidées explicatives. Les spécialistes du communication du Front attendent des journalistes étrangers qu'ils désignent à leur tour les "génocidaires" hutus comme seuls auteurs de tous les massacres constatés.
D'autres points de l'entretien attirent l'attention. Il est confirmé qu'au moment de sa dernière offensive, le FPR disposait d'eléments armés de plusieurs nationalités, prefiguration des "brigades internationales tutsies" qui provoqueront le départ du maréchal Mobutu en 1997, puis tenteront en 1998 de renverser son successeur Kabila. D'autre part, qui était cette "unité Cobra" que mentionne M. Gérin à propos de l'attentat aèrien, et quel pays a fait survoler l'est du pays par un avion C-130 anonyme en mission photographique?
Pour avoir osé révéler la face la plus hideuse du Front patriotique, Marcel Gérin et son épouse sont désormais exposés aux représailles des commandos que le général Kagame, autrefois chef des services des renseignements militaires ougandais, a installés un peu partout dans le monde pour supprimer témoins gênants et opposants politiques. Espérons que Marcel et Gloria, des rescapés décidés à ne jamais se taire, échapperont cette fois encore à ses griffes.
Jerzy Bednarek-Africa International
Comment avez-vous appris qu'il y avait eu un attentat aèrien à Kigali le 6 avril 1994?
Marcel Gérin
J'ètais à ce moment-là en contact radio avec un ami allemand qui se trouvait à Kigali. J'avais une vacation radio avec lui tous les jours vers 20 h 30, depuis mon ranch Mpanga qui se trouve en brousse à 75 km de Kigali. Au moment de la prise de contact le 6 avril, nous entendons quatre détonations assez fortes, moi par la radio et mon ami en direct. Plus tard dans la soirée, vers 21 heures, des messages captés sur ma radio m'appendront que l'avion du président Habyarimana avait été abattu. Un de ces messages émanait de l'unité Cobra, une société de securité installée à Kigali. Il disait: "On a eu le Grand". Par déduction, j'ai compris qu'il pouvait s'agir du président Habyarimana. J'en aurai la confirmation à minuit par Radio France internationale.
* Qui selon vous aurait parlé de ce "Grand"?
M.G.: Il s'agissait de Cobra, le chef de la unité. Il discutait avec d'autres collègues. Les fréquences VHF qu'ils utilisaient étaient souvent les mêmes que celles de l'ONU, ou très proches.
* Et Cobra était une unité de quelle nationalité?
M.G.: Cobra était une unité de nationalité belge, et le responsable parlait en français avec un accent flamand.
* Vous aviez donc la possibilité d'intercepter des messages militaires sur votre phonie?
M.G.: Au ranch, mon installation VHF multifréquences permettait de capter toutes les émissions VHF. notamment celles de l'ONU. J'avais d'autre part un appareil HF de 0 à 30 Mhz par lequel je pouvais capter des messages militaires de l'ONU ou des Forces armés rwandaises, et d'autres encore. Après l'attentat aèrien, les messages de l'ONU et des militaires rwandais étaient des messages de désarroi profond, de desorganisation. Ceux qui parlaient ne savaient plus très bien comment ils s'appelaient, ni même sur quelles fréquences ils devaient émettre, tellement les messages se chevauchaient.
Les messages de l'armée rwandaise étaient des messages de ralliement, de tentatives de réorganiser sa défense. Cela montrait qu'elle était en difficulté, D'autre part, je puis dire très sincèrement que je n'ai jamais capté de message de l'armée rwandaise à caractère génocidaire, ou concernant de la propagande ou des exécutions arbitraires ou sommaires.
* Mais ce que vous dites contredit la thèse selon laquelle il y aurait eu un vaste plan étatique d'extermination des Tutsis, puisque vous n'avez entendu dans les messages de l'armée rwandaise aucun ordre clair donné à des unités d'aller exterminer des poupulations.
M.G.: Non seulement il n'y a pas eu d'ordre précis du côté des FAR (Forces armées rwandaises) ou de la gendarmerie rwandaise, mais dans ma région de Rusumo j'ai au contraire assisté personnellement à une intervention du bourgmestre de Kibungo qui a essayé d'arrêter les mouvements isolés de miliciens Interahamwe. Même s'il a échoué partiellement, on ne peut pas parler d'incitation au génocide. Il y a eu plutôt un mouvement de résistance nationale populaire qui a débordé. Des personnes ont été executées et des innocents ont été massacrés. Mais ce que j'ai vécu n'était pas un génocide planifié, sans quoi cela aurait été bien pire encore.
* Que s'est-il passé dans votre secteur après l'attentat contre l'avion du président Habyarimana?
M.G.: Le ranch Mpanga se situe dans la partie nord de la commune de Rusumo. Après l'intervention ratée du bourgmestre de Kibungo contre des Interahamwe qui voulaient entraîner la population dans des actes de résistance ou de représailles, on a vécu une situation particulière vers le 9 ou le 10 avril. Il y avait dans la région des populations autochtones, tels les Banyambo qui vivent dans les marais, et d'autres provenant du nord du pays où elles avaient fui le FPR en 1992 et 1993. Après l'attentat, les Banyambo sont retournés dans les marais puis ils sont passés en Tanzanie. Il y a eu ensuite l'exode des réfugiés du nord. Ils sont partis eux aussi en Tanzanie. Vers le 15 avril, les populations restantes ont pris peur et sont venues chez nous au ranch pour demander de l'aide. Une partie s'est enfui en Tanzanie avec les dernières pirogues disponibles.
L'avant-garde de l'Armée patriotique rwandaise: des Ougandais, des Somaliens, des Ethiopiens...
Puis il y a eu la descente des forces de l'Armée patriotique rwandaise, l'APR. C'est alors qu'il y a eu un mouvement de panique totale, lorsque les gens de notre région ont entendu le bruit des armes et qu'ils ont senti les odeurs nauséabondes des bûchers sur lesquels des cadavres et des agonisants brûlaient. Comme les Banyambo étaient partis avec leurs pirogues, on ne pouvait plus passer de l'autre côté de la frontière. Les réfugiés en fuite sont donc revenus en arrière sur la presqu'île du ranch en nous implorant de les cacher. Ce terrain a une superficie de 1.600 hectares, bien trop petit pour pouvoir cacher toutes ces personnes. Elles sont donc revenues chez nous. Dans cette population il n'y avait pas uniquement des Hutus, des "génocidaires" comme on dit maintenant. Il y avait aussi des "oubliés" Banyambo, des "métis" hutus-tutsis que j'appelle les Hutsis, et des Tutsis venant du nord du pays où ils avaient été persécutés par l'APR au début de 1994. Tous ces gens sont donc venus se réfugier chez moi.
Ensuite le FPR est descendu rapidement, mais d'une façon très méthodique et très progressive. Dans un premir temps, j'ai assisté au nettoyage de la région, au rassemblement des populations restées en arrière parce que ces personnes étaient malades ou handicapées, ou trop jeunes pour pouvoir suivre le reste des fuyards. Ces gens ont été rassemblés par paquets qu'on a éliminés à la mitrailleuse et à la grenade. Ils ont fini sur des bûchers ou ont été rejoindre les innombrables "flotteurs" qu'il y avait à ce moment-là sur tous les lacs, rivières et ruisseaux du Rwanda, entre autres la rivière Akagera que j'ai appellée par le suite le "Nil noir".
* Ce que vous venez de décrire, l'avez-vous vu personnellement, ou les faites-vous par ouï-dire?
M.G.: Il n'y a rien par ouï-dire. Mes souvenirs de cette période sont atroces. Ces opérations du FPR, je les ai réperées au début par l'odorat. Après, je les ai suivies avec mes jumelles pour essayer d'identifier l'origine des odeurs nauséabondes qui flottaient sur toute la région. Il y avait des odeurs de chair brûlée, calcinée, et ensuite ont a commencé à sentir des odeurs de corps en putréfaction. C'était insoutenable. Tout cela, nous l'avons malheureusement bien subi.
A ce moment-là on se pose des questions. On se démande à quoi correspondent ces coups de feu et ces odeurs. On est dans le doute. Mais malheureusement pour mon épouse et pour moi-même, dans les deux ou trois jours qui ont suivi on a vu déferler chez nous des civils en armes. On ne savait pas bien s'ils étaient des gens de l'APR ou des Interahamwe. Le contact a été brutal, puisque ma femme et moi avons été arrêtés, ce qui nous donnait la réponse à nos questions. Il s'agissait bien des forces armées de l'APR sans uniforme. Rien que pour venir nous capturer sur le ranch, ils étaient à plus de 350. Dans notre zone, il y avait des barrages presque tous les 50 mètres, tenus par des hommes en uniforme que j'ai identifiés comme des Somaliens, des Ethiopiens, etc. Au total, j'estime qu'ils étaient plus de 10.000. Qu'on les appelle mercenaires ou bandes armées, ils appartenaient en tout caus au FPR, et leur chef se nommait George Kirindi. Après notre arrestation, nous avons subi des coups et des blessures, et par deux fois des simulacres d'exécution au milieu de gens tués par balles ou à la machette. Autour de nous on entendait des réflexions telles que: "Nous gagnerons la guerre par les procédés et les outils des Interahamwe". Toute photo ou tout film qui auraient été pris à ce moment-là n'aurait pas permis à une personne extérieure de déterminer avec certitude si ces gens armés étaient des Interahamwe ou des gens de l'APR. Mais pour nous qui étions dans leurs mains, il n'y avait pas de confusion possible.
Nous avons ensuite été emmenés de force à Kibungo. Là, il y avait des officiers ougandais, mais certainement pas des Tutsis connus dans cette région. Il est certain qu'il y avait des mercenaires à la solde de commanditaires qui voulaient piller et se payer. Il faut aussi noter une particularité, c'est que dans ces bandes armées ont parlait toujours du "chef", sans jamais citer un grade. C'était toujours le chef. Le premier que nous avons rencontré se promenait en chemise hawaïenne et avec des babouches aux pieds. Personne n'était en uniforme. Le premier officier de l'APR identifiable, le capitaine Diogène Mudenge responsable APR pour l'est du Rwanda, nous l'avons vu à Gahini lors de notre transfert depuis Kibungo. C'est à cette ocasión que nous avons vu pour la première fois un uniforme de l'APR, de couleur verte unie.
Des mares de sang sur 30 kilomètres
* Quand était-ce?
M.G.: Nous avons été faits prisonniers le 26 avril 1994, et nous avons passé la fin du mois à Gahini dans les mains de l'APR.
Je voudrais faire un retour en arrière pour parler de notre souvenir le plus choquant et le plus mauvais. Il faut savoir que la route entre notre ranch Mpanga et Kibungo fait 90 kilomètres à travers des champs de bananiers. Ce qui était incroyable sur cette route, c'était premièrement l'odeur de cadavre qui flottait sur tout le pays, et ensuite le nombre de cadavres sur la route, dans les champs, les prairies et sur les chemins. Il y en avait partout, à tel point que j'ai dit qu'il y avait là plus de cadavres que de bananiers.
Lorsque nous avons pris la route asphaltée de Kabarondo vers Kibungo, jamais auparavant je n'aurais cru qu'il serait possible dans la vie d'un homme d'être obligé de rouler en voiture sur 30 kilomètres dans des mares de sang, de cervelles et de défécations.
Le lendemain, nous avons fait le voyage en sens inverse. Les cadavres avaient été déblayés des routes par des soi-disant prisonniers qui ont terminé leur vie après avoir accompli ce travail macabre. Les caniveaux étaient remplis de cadavres empilés. L'entrée de Gahini n'était que cadavres. Toutes les rivières et les lacs que j'ai vus au Rwanda durant cette période étaient absolument tous encombrés de "flotteurs", de cadavres donc.
Ce que je voudrais dire aussi, c'est que depuis notre arrestation le 26 avril au matin jusqu'à notre départ de Gahini, ce ne fut pour nous qu'un interrogatoire presque continu de jour comme de nuit, avec des pressions allant jusqu'au poteau d'exécution. Nous avons également subi des séances de torture de trois heures d'affilée, les 26 et 27 avril. Durant une de ces séances, mon domestique Gatete a été tué à un mètre de moi, de trois balles. Il n'y a donc aucun doute que le témoignage que nous donnons ici concerne bien l'APR.
* Mais est-ce que tous ces massacres n'auraient pas pu être commis en partie par les Interahamwe et les Forces armées rwandaises?
M.G.: Une chose est certaine pour les FAR et les gendarmes, c'est qu'aucune personne n'a été tuée par eux, pour la bonne et simple raison qu'ils n'étaient pas là, ayant été rappelés à Kibungo fin mars 1994. Pour les Interahamwe, dire qu'ils n'ont tué personne serait mentir. Or la "déposition" que je fais ici n'a pas pour but de mentir ou de prendre parti, mais de dire la vérité et de décrire ce que j'ai vu.
"J'ai vu des gens avancer dans le lac pour se noyer"
Lors de ces événements, j'étais dans le désarroi. Je ne savais pas si nous pouvions quitter le ranch ou s'il était préférable de rester. Il fallait évaluer la situation à l'exterieur. J'ai donc été obligé de sortir de chez moi et d'utiliser une partie de mon personnel de confiance pour obtenir des informations correctes. Je puis donc dire très clairement qu'il a eu des personnes tuées ou horriblement mutilées par les Interahamwe pendant cette espèce de fuite des populations de la région, et que les Interahamwe ont massacré environ 1.000 personnes dans l'église de Nyarubuye et aux alentours. Je n'ai pas été témoin de cette situation, mais je n'ai pas constaté que dans la région les Interahamwe ont massacré des personnes par milliers. Par contre, et c'est absolument extraordinaire, j'ai vu des gens, des Tutsis parfois, se suicider en buvant le liquide provenant de piles éléctriques trempées dans de l'eau, ou en se pendant aux arbres. Ces personnes ne voulaient pas vivre une nouvelle fois ce qu'elles avaient enduré dans le nord du pays, et elles choisissaient pour elles-mêmes la solution finale. J'ai vu des gens s'avancer tout seuls dans les lacs Cyambwe et Rwampanga pour se noyer. Mais il est presque impossible de dire combien parmi ces personnes ont été assassinées ou massacrés, ou combien se sont suicidées. En tout cas, les gros massacres, le gros nettoyage de la région, qui est toujours vide à l'heure actuelle, ont bien été exécutés par ces hordes armées que j'ai citées, qu'on les appelle Armée patriotique rwandaise ou groupes armés tutsis.
Je fais une parenthese à propos des gens qui ont été tués à coups de houes ou de machettes par ces bandes armées de l'APR très bien equipées et lourdement armées, à qui il ne manquait rien sauf l'uniforme. Ce sont eux qui utilisaient ces méthodes pour tuer. Par contre, les équipes qui restaient en arrière, disons les équipes de surveillance ou de fin de nettoyage, étaient constituées des "petits" (enfants ou jeunes adolescents), incapables de donner la mort de cette façon. Ils utilisaient donc des kalashnikovs bien trop lourdes pour eux ou des fusils R4 recuperés à gauche ou à droite. C'était d'eux que nous avions le plus peur, tellement la détente de leurs armes les chatouillait.
J'ai essayé de plaider devant les 350 militaires de l'APR la cause des pauvres gens qui avaient cherché refuge dans le ranch. Mais lors de notre départ, les ordres de l'APR ont été précis et bien intelligibles: il fallait ratisser et nettoyer le ranch, car, disaient-ils, "On n'est pas venus ici pour faire des prisonniers, mais pour reprendre notre pays". J'ai eu beau insister sur le fait qu'il y avait dans ces réfugiés des "Hutsis", des Tutsis, des Banyambo ou des Hutus, qui n'avaient rien à voir avec les soi-disant massacres commis par les Interahamwe, que ces gens cherchaient un refuge et une protection. Cela a été peine perdue, parce que les ordres étaient bien clairs et répétés: il fallait absolument "nettoyer" le ranch. A l'heure actuelle, en 1998, il est toujours une zone interdite gardée militairement. J'ignore quelle fonction il remplit.
La "solution finale" du FPR
Pour en revenir à la situation à Gahini, je dois préciser que lors de notre détention nous avons été obligés d'assister à des interrogatoires rapides de Rwandais effectués par le capitaine Diogène Mudenge, qui se terminaient tout simplement par des exécutions, la "solution finale". Il y avait des piles de cadavres, avec en bas des cadavres en desintégration, au milieu des cadavres plus frais, et en haut des cadavres qui saignaient encore. Or la période des executions par les Interahamwe était loin derrière. Nous sommes plus de vingt jours plus tard. Cette situation à Gahini était tout-à-fait particulière. On utilisait des femmes comme porteuses d'eau pour aprovisionner le campement de l'APR. Celles qui n'en pouvaient plus, ils s'en débarrassaient tout simplement à l'arme blanche. Nous avons dû assister à ces faits-là.
L'arrivée des journalistes à Gahini a été une chance pour nous. Ces journalistes ont accompagné l'escorte de l'APR qui devait nous remettre à Byumba dans les mains du général Paul Kagame. Nous avons fait toutes les routes au nord du lac Muhazi. Comme ailleurs, il y avait là des cadavres, mais aussi des amoncellements impressionants de douilles, de canons, etc. Ce qui nous a frappé le plus dans cette région, et cela confirmait ce que nous avions vu dans notre secteur, c'est qu'il n'y avait plus aucun habitant, aucun prisonnier. On n'a vu que des zones totalement vides de gens vivants.
Nous avons fait toute la route pour arriver au croisement de la piste qui rejoint Byumba. Cette piste continue sur Mulindi, vers la poste-frontière de Gatuna. Que s'est-il passé à ce croisement? Toujours est-il qu'au lieu de tourner à gauche vers Byumba, nous avons pris de petites pistes à travers champs et collines, pour enfin arriver à Gahini puis à l'entrée de Mulindi ou nous tombons sur quelques officiers de l'ONU, des Ghanéens et des Sénégalais notamment. Ils ont eu de bréves discussions avec les journalistes qui se sont rendu compte que nous étions toujours en danger. Les officiers de l'ONU ont alors proposé de nous emmener directement de l'autre côté de la frontière. Mais cette initiative a été immédiatement contrecarrée par un agent de l'APR en uniforme militaire, qui se promenait là avec un enregistreur. Il m'a obligé à me soumettre de nouveau à un interrogatoire qui a duré une bonne heure et demie, avec l'intention d'attendre la tombée de la nuit.
A la tombée de la nuit, ma femme et moi avons reçu l'ordre de quitter Mulindi pour rejoindre, soi-disant sans problème, Gatuna à la frontière avec l'Ouganda. Une chose tout-à-fait particulière, c'est que j'ai voulu aller voir les gens de l'ONU pour leur demander une escorte, mais cela m'a été refusé par l'APR. J'ai donc dû partir seul avec mon épouse, dans le véhicule qu'on nous avait obligé de conduire. Il y avait une insistance de l'APR pour dire que nous étions libres et que nous pouvions partir. C'était une chose très bizarre. Dans mon subconscient, je m'attendais à recevoir une roquette dans mon véhicule, ce qui aurait mis un terme à notre vie au Rwanda. Mais des officiers de l'ONU nous ont suivis en jeep. Ils nous ont encadrés. Nous sommes arrivés au bas de la route qui traverse le marais pour rejoindre la route asphaltée. A notre grande surprise, la route dans la vallée était entièrement inondée sur une hauteur de 30 à 40 cm. Donc le piège était là. Nous pouvions recevoir une roquette ou être pris par les eaux. Mais avec l'aide des jeeps de l'ONU, nous sommes passés et nous avons pu arriver assez facilement à Gatuna où les officiers de l'ONU nous ont fait passer la frontière et nous ont remis au petit bureau de l'ONU situé de l'autre côté de la frontière. Pour la première fois depuis notre arrestation le 26 avril, nous avons pu avoir une tasse de thé et manger quelque chose.
Le 2 mai, nous sommes en route pour la petite ville de Kabale en Ouganda où nous avions des démarches à faire. Heureusement, les autorités ougandaises nous ont donné des documents de voyage pour que nous puissions rejoindre Kampala. A Kampala, nous serons reçus par M. Walter Hoes, consul honoraire de Belgique. Il a dû faire une demande au ministère belge des affaires étrangères pour que nous puissions bénéficier d'un crédit pour nos billets d'avion Kampala-Bruxelles. Cette autorisation a été donnée contre la signature d'une reconnaissance de dette. J'ai accepté cela pour quitter l'Ouganda en qui je n'avais pas beaucoup confiance. Le consul nous emmènera jusque dans l'avion, et c'est avec soulagement que nous quittons le 5 mai Entebbe, pour un retour à Bruxelles en solitaires.
* Vous avez parlé de la presse internationale. Mais est-ce que l'APR aurait pu faire venir des journalistes étrangers pour faire constater ses propres massacres?
M.G.: La conviction que j'ai, c'est que ces journalistes sont arrivés à Gahini comme un cheveu dans la soupe. Leur accueil n'était pas prévu. En outre, pour notre chance ils se sont trompés de bâtiment en arrivant, et c'est ainsi qu'ils nous ont localisés.
D'un autre côté, la prese étrangère devait servir à confirmer la politique du FPR qui était de désigner les Interahamwe comme auteurs des massacres. Les journalistes ont été automatiquement pris en charge par des unités bien spécialisées du FPR. L'un de ces spécialistes est Tony Kabano, qui a été formé au bureau du FPR de Bruxelles. Il s'occupe de ce genre de travail. Donc il y a des "guides" de l'APR, dans des uniformes convenables, qui montrent aux journalistes ce qu'ils veulent bien montrer. Je pense que ces journalistes n'ont pas pu voir ces hordes, ces vagues plutôt, de tueurs qui nous ont pris. Ils n'ont vu que les militaires de l'APR en uniformes, qui les ont influencés en leur disant: "Voilà les agissements des Interahamwe, leurs multiples massacres", etc. Mais je ne pense pas que les journalistes aient été si dupés que ça.
Quant à l'article que le journaliste de Reuter Buchiza Mzeteka a écrit sur moi, il a été pour moi ce que j'appelle "le chèque pour la vie". En tant qu'Occidental, j'ai dû mentir, faire de fausses dépositions en utilisant le stratagème du faux vocabulaire. D'autre part, les survivants que vous trouvez au Rwanda ne témoigneront certainement pas, parce qu'ils ne savent pas s'ils seront dénoncés ou pas, ils ne savent pas où ils en sont. Par ailleurs, toutes les mises en scène que le FPR organise pour les journalistes sont très bien construites.
Pour términer, je voudrais encore préciser quelque chose. Ce que j'ai vu de mes propres yeux entre le 21 et le 28 avril 1994, ce sont les passages en rase-mottes d'un avion C-130 sur toute la zone de Rusumo-Kibungo. Cet avion semblait photographier ou filmer la région. Il n'était nullement inquiété par l'armée du FPR. Il opérait donc de connivence avec elle, pour justement prendre des documents sur ces bandes armées non identifiables du ciel. On peut donc ensuite attribuer aux Interahamwe des actions et une façon d'opérer qui sont en realité celles de l'APR.
L'avocat Luc de Temmerman parle.
"Il faut se battre pour la démocratie". Les archives du Tribunal international pour le Rwanda couve la vérité de ce qui s'est passé en Afrique Centrale.
Le 5 décembre 2006, le Colonel Belge retraité Lue MARCHAL, Na 2 du commandement de la MINUAR à Kigali le 6 avril 1994, a témoigné dans le procès du colonel BAGOSORA et C° à Arusha auprès du Tribunal Pénal International pour le Rwanda en tant que témoin, présenté par la défense du Général KABILIGI, accusé de « génocide » et autres « crimes humanitaires » commis au Rwanda en 1994.
Si nous pouvons croire le journaliste du magazine flamand KNACK, Dirk DRAULANS, il s'en est bien sorti et en a étonné plus d'un. Le témoin, est-il crédible ? (Voir les articles sur www.knack.be). Où étaient Colette BRAECKMAN, Marie-France CROS, Els DE TEMMERMAN, RFI, CNN et BBC pour informer la population belge et internationale de ce témoignage important et étonnant, pour ne dire que cela ?
Le colonel a retrouvé sa mémoire et ses fameux carnets soutiennent son raisonnement, et je m'étonne qu'on n'a pas parlé de ses enregistrements «vidéo ». (J'ai demandé au Procureur fédéral de solliciter une copie intégrale du témoignage du colonel au Tribunal Pénal International pour le Rwanda et de le joindre au dossier NTUYAHAGA/10 PARAS BELGES)
Il est cependant déplorable que nous avons dû attendre plus de 12 ans pour entendre le récit du déroulement des évènements réels du drame rwandais de la bouche d'un haut responsable militaire, présent sur les lieux, nonobstant que tout le monde a déjà écrit son livre....
Je me félicite que le colonel confirme mon analyse faite fin 1994, transmise aux autorités judiciaires et à la presse à l'époque. Luc MARCHAL n'a donc que 12 ans de retard dans sa participation à la manifestation de la vérité.
Pourtant je n'ai jamais rencontré le colonel MARCHAL, et il a même refusé de venir témoigner à Dar-es-Sala ard pour éviter l'extradition du Major NTUYAHAGA vers le Rwanda et son bourreau KAGAME. Heureusement que quelques autres personnes avaient plus de courage que lui, faute de quoi il aurait eu encore un mort de plus sur sa conscience.
Le Colonel arrive aux conclusions suivantes :
1. KAGAME et son FPRIAPR étaient les seuls qui avaient préparé et prévu l'attentat sur l'avion présidentiel quand on analyse les mouvements des forces sur le terrain. (Bruguière a démasqué formellement Kagame et sa bande comme auteurs de l'attentat et ce ne sont ni Marchal, ni la justice belge ou internationale qui en ont le mérite)
2. Les responsables militaires Rwandais, y compris le colonel BAGOSORA , ont fait tout ce qu'ils pouvaient pour maintenir le calme dans le pays après l'attentat.
3. Le « génocide » n'était certainement pas planifié par les forces gouvernementales avant le 06.04.1994.
4. Notre fameux « Jean-Pierre » était un agent du FPR qui a inventé des histoires et bruits ,lancés par ses « patrons ».
5_ Les assassinats attribués aux « escadrons de la Mort » et « réseau Zéro » étaient l'oeuvre du FPR.
6. Ses propres accusations graves vis-à-vis du Colonel BAGOSORA comme étant le « principal génocidaire » étaient le fruit de sa frustration et basées uniquement sur ce qu'il a lu dans les médias belges sur le personnage, qu'il a fréquenté pourtant à plusieurs reprises et sur lequel il ne peut formuler aucune critique.
7. Le Général DALLAIRE est apparemment le complice de KAGAME car il a serré la main du diable le 7 avril 2004 en connaissance de cause. (Oh oh .. les Messieurs Clinton, Verhofstadt et Michel)
8. Le FPR/APR a provoqué et orchestré le « génocide » car cela l'arrangeait.
9. Les politiciens belges ont empêché la MINUAR et la Communauté internationale d'arrêter les massacres ( attention... Monsieur Willy CLAES).
10. Les 10 paras belges ont été assassinés par des soldats mutins dans le Camp de Kigali et leur élimination n'était nullement planifié. (alors quoi ... Monsieur le Procureur fédéral)
Le Colonel MARCHAL reste néanmoins prudent et a manifestement peur d'être éliminé. Pourtant , le colonel sait encore beaucoup plus, et dans ce volet KAGAME n'est pas en jeu.
Je pense personnellement que le colonel doit avoir plus peur de la « Belgique » que de « Kagame », qui sait qu'il est plus près de la « prison à vie » que d'un deuxième mandat comme «Président du Rwanda ». Kagame a donc d'autres soucis que de s'occuper de l'élimination de Luc Marchal. En effet, le colonel a une connaissance parfaite du dossier répressif, constitué par l'Auditeur Militaire Nicolas VAN WINSEN, qui a servi pour son procès, et dont une version « nettoyée » se trouve dans le dossier NTUYAHAGA, faisant en tout et pour tout 11 cartons (le dossier répressif de Bernard NTUYAHAGA compte presque 170 cartons)
Le colonel, son avocat et les avocats des familles des paras ont tous épluché ce dossier en 1996, et ils ont dû voir les mêmes anomalies que moi. Que faut-il cacher et que pouvons-nous pas dire ?
Le Colonel se rappellera que je me suis présenté 2 fois lors de son procès pour déposer une requête d'intervention au même titre que les conseils des familles des 10 paras, mais respectivement au nom du colonel BAGOSORA et du Major NTUYAHAGA.
A deux reprises, le Président de la Cour Militaire, Monsieur Durant, a stoppé immédiatement son audience pour aller « pondre » un arrêt « d'irrecevabilité » pour m'empêcher de participer aux débats, mais essentiellement pour éviter que je puisse disposer d'une copie du dossier répressif, qui m'aurait permis de dénoncer publiquement à cette époque, même en dehors du procès du Colonel MARCHAL, ces anomalies.
La Commission Parlementaire belge sur le Rwanda a utilisé le même procédé. En effet, ce dossier contenait :
1 le témoignage de Dimitri Pauwels qui parlait des infiltrations massives (200 par coup) des personnes FPR et des armes dans les convois MINUAR et leur présence à Kigali (dite la 5e Colorme)_
2. le fait surprenant que 4 mortiers n'auraient pas été entendu en temps opportun et que d'étranges PV DE SYNTHESE, datés de 50 jours plus tard, étaient venus prendre leur place.
3. la preuve que le « cahier du bataillon » avait été manipulé par DEWEZ dans ses rapports pour les militaires et les familles des paras assassinés.
4. la preuve que le « carnet de veille » de la 12e Cie avait été détruit « sur ordre ».
5. la preuve que le Lt LOTIN a exécuté une « mission D » en compagnie des militaires du FPR et qu'ils ont parcouru 493 km le 6 avril 1994, ce qui nécessite une incursion dans le territoire Uganda maintenant que le cahier du bataillon fait mention à 2 reprises de sa présence dans le Parc AKAGERA, faute de quoi la mission aurait fait des petits ronds dans le parc ou trafiqué leur kilométrique.
6. la preuve que le seul survivant de la mission n'aurait jamais été entendu, ce qui était impensable.
7. la preuve que tous les éléments matériels, utilisés dans la « mission D » avaient été détruits volontairement par les soldats belges
8. la preuve que la plupart des témoignages étaient de pures mensonges pour quelqu'un qui se trouvait sur le terrain et avait assisté aux évènements.
9. que le rapport DOUNKOV était un montage impossible mis en place pour dégager de toute responsabilité la MINUAR et le Général DALLAIRE dans l'assassinat des 10 paras et de mettre la responsabilité sur Bernard NTUYAHAGA, qui n'a même pas été convoqué.
En tant qu'avocat, je peux comprendre que le colonel MARCHAL n'a pas voulu affronter ses adversaires dans son procès avec ces éléments dérangeants, pour sauver sa propre tête et qu'il a attendu sa mise en pension pour ne pas être envoyé à Lotenhulle ou Kimbouktou éplucher des patates dans une maison de l'armée belge comme sanction pour sa franchise et son incompétence.
Nous sommes néanmoins déjà 6 ans plus tard et des dizaines de milliers de victimes en plus sur le compte du FPR. Cela doit être difficile de dormir tranquillement pour un homme avec une conscience humaine et son témoignage du 5 décembre 2006 doit effectivement être purifiant pour la tranquillité de son esprit. Je respecte néanmoins son courage.
A juste titre, le Colonel Luc MARCHAL estime qu'il faut se battre pour la démocratie. Faisons le d'abord en Belgique avant de vouloir imposer notre « expertise » en Afrique.
Rappelons-nous que 89 % de la population francophone en Belgique est disposée à croire que la Flandre peut prononcer son indépendance unilatéralement et que le roi a du f iir... au Congo... Quinze minutes après le début de l'émission, le PEUPLE est aller défendre le Palais Royal....
Il y a manifestement du pain sur la planche et je conseille le colonel de réétudier son dossier de base, de solliciter à l'ONU une copie des transcriptions des communications de la MINUAR entre le 6 et le 10 avril 1994, qui se trouvaient mi-mai 1995 dans une armoire des bâtiments de l'ONU à Kigali, et s'il faut, je peux la localiser au m2 près, mais les documents ont disparu sous le nez de Damien VANDERMEERSCH, pourtant informé par un haut responsable américain de la présence de ce trésor en informations.
Il y trouvera sans doute réponse à toutes les questions qu'il se pose encore( ?) et je m'efforcerai de lever les derniers mystères du drame Rwandais lors du procès de Bernard NTUYAHAGA, où il sera convoqué comme témoin_
J'espère pour lui que le Procureur fédéral le fera comparaître comme un des premiers témoins.
N'oublions pas que depuis le rapport du Judge d'Instruction français BRUGUIERE, la justice internationale est en route pour KAGAME et que sa messe est dite. I1 suffit un peu de temps et le courage de quelques acteurs importants dans le drame rwandais, comme Luc Marchai, pour que le plus important «génocidaire» soit jugé. Nous pourrions alors commencer un débat plus équilibré sur le drame Rwandais et je crains pour l'honneur de Willy CLAES et de ses conseillers.
Il faudra encore que les journalistes et que les « experts autoproclamés » font leur examen de conscience. Ne pas respecter la vérité dans le massacre de 800.000 noirs est déjà un acte raciste.
Luc DE TEMMERMAN
Le 5 décembre 2006, le Colonel Belge retraité Lue MARCHAL, Na 2 du commandement de la MINUAR à Kigali le 6 avril 1994, a témoigné dans le procès du colonel BAGOSORA et C° à Arusha auprès du Tribunal Pénal International pour le Rwanda en tant que témoin, présenté par la défense du Général KABILIGI, accusé de « génocide » et autres « crimes humanitaires » commis au Rwanda en 1994.
Si nous pouvons croire le journaliste du magazine flamand KNACK, Dirk DRAULANS, il s'en est bien sorti et en a étonné plus d'un. Le témoin, est-il crédible ? (Voir les articles sur www.knack.be). Où étaient Colette BRAECKMAN, Marie-France CROS, Els DE TEMMERMAN, RFI, CNN et BBC pour informer la population belge et internationale de ce témoignage important et étonnant, pour ne dire que cela ?
Le colonel a retrouvé sa mémoire et ses fameux carnets soutiennent son raisonnement, et je m'étonne qu'on n'a pas parlé de ses enregistrements «vidéo ». (J'ai demandé au Procureur fédéral de solliciter une copie intégrale du témoignage du colonel au Tribunal Pénal International pour le Rwanda et de le joindre au dossier NTUYAHAGA/10 PARAS BELGES)
Il est cependant déplorable que nous avons dû attendre plus de 12 ans pour entendre le récit du déroulement des évènements réels du drame rwandais de la bouche d'un haut responsable militaire, présent sur les lieux, nonobstant que tout le monde a déjà écrit son livre....
Je me félicite que le colonel confirme mon analyse faite fin 1994, transmise aux autorités judiciaires et à la presse à l'époque. Luc MARCHAL n'a donc que 12 ans de retard dans sa participation à la manifestation de la vérité.
Pourtant je n'ai jamais rencontré le colonel MARCHAL, et il a même refusé de venir témoigner à Dar-es-Sala ard pour éviter l'extradition du Major NTUYAHAGA vers le Rwanda et son bourreau KAGAME. Heureusement que quelques autres personnes avaient plus de courage que lui, faute de quoi il aurait eu encore un mort de plus sur sa conscience.
Le Colonel arrive aux conclusions suivantes :
1. KAGAME et son FPRIAPR étaient les seuls qui avaient préparé et prévu l'attentat sur l'avion présidentiel quand on analyse les mouvements des forces sur le terrain. (Bruguière a démasqué formellement Kagame et sa bande comme auteurs de l'attentat et ce ne sont ni Marchal, ni la justice belge ou internationale qui en ont le mérite)
2. Les responsables militaires Rwandais, y compris le colonel BAGOSORA , ont fait tout ce qu'ils pouvaient pour maintenir le calme dans le pays après l'attentat.
3. Le « génocide » n'était certainement pas planifié par les forces gouvernementales avant le 06.04.1994.
4. Notre fameux « Jean-Pierre » était un agent du FPR qui a inventé des histoires et bruits ,lancés par ses « patrons ».
5_ Les assassinats attribués aux « escadrons de la Mort » et « réseau Zéro » étaient l'oeuvre du FPR.
6. Ses propres accusations graves vis-à-vis du Colonel BAGOSORA comme étant le « principal génocidaire » étaient le fruit de sa frustration et basées uniquement sur ce qu'il a lu dans les médias belges sur le personnage, qu'il a fréquenté pourtant à plusieurs reprises et sur lequel il ne peut formuler aucune critique.
7. Le Général DALLAIRE est apparemment le complice de KAGAME car il a serré la main du diable le 7 avril 2004 en connaissance de cause. (Oh oh .. les Messieurs Clinton, Verhofstadt et Michel)
8. Le FPR/APR a provoqué et orchestré le « génocide » car cela l'arrangeait.
9. Les politiciens belges ont empêché la MINUAR et la Communauté internationale d'arrêter les massacres ( attention... Monsieur Willy CLAES).
10. Les 10 paras belges ont été assassinés par des soldats mutins dans le Camp de Kigali et leur élimination n'était nullement planifié. (alors quoi ... Monsieur le Procureur fédéral)
Le Colonel MARCHAL reste néanmoins prudent et a manifestement peur d'être éliminé. Pourtant , le colonel sait encore beaucoup plus, et dans ce volet KAGAME n'est pas en jeu.
Je pense personnellement que le colonel doit avoir plus peur de la « Belgique » que de « Kagame », qui sait qu'il est plus près de la « prison à vie » que d'un deuxième mandat comme «Président du Rwanda ». Kagame a donc d'autres soucis que de s'occuper de l'élimination de Luc Marchal. En effet, le colonel a une connaissance parfaite du dossier répressif, constitué par l'Auditeur Militaire Nicolas VAN WINSEN, qui a servi pour son procès, et dont une version « nettoyée » se trouve dans le dossier NTUYAHAGA, faisant en tout et pour tout 11 cartons (le dossier répressif de Bernard NTUYAHAGA compte presque 170 cartons)
Le colonel, son avocat et les avocats des familles des paras ont tous épluché ce dossier en 1996, et ils ont dû voir les mêmes anomalies que moi. Que faut-il cacher et que pouvons-nous pas dire ?
Le Colonel se rappellera que je me suis présenté 2 fois lors de son procès pour déposer une requête d'intervention au même titre que les conseils des familles des 10 paras, mais respectivement au nom du colonel BAGOSORA et du Major NTUYAHAGA.
A deux reprises, le Président de la Cour Militaire, Monsieur Durant, a stoppé immédiatement son audience pour aller « pondre » un arrêt « d'irrecevabilité » pour m'empêcher de participer aux débats, mais essentiellement pour éviter que je puisse disposer d'une copie du dossier répressif, qui m'aurait permis de dénoncer publiquement à cette époque, même en dehors du procès du Colonel MARCHAL, ces anomalies.
La Commission Parlementaire belge sur le Rwanda a utilisé le même procédé. En effet, ce dossier contenait :
1 le témoignage de Dimitri Pauwels qui parlait des infiltrations massives (200 par coup) des personnes FPR et des armes dans les convois MINUAR et leur présence à Kigali (dite la 5e Colorme)_
2. le fait surprenant que 4 mortiers n'auraient pas été entendu en temps opportun et que d'étranges PV DE SYNTHESE, datés de 50 jours plus tard, étaient venus prendre leur place.
3. la preuve que le « cahier du bataillon » avait été manipulé par DEWEZ dans ses rapports pour les militaires et les familles des paras assassinés.
4. la preuve que le « carnet de veille » de la 12e Cie avait été détruit « sur ordre ».
5. la preuve que le Lt LOTIN a exécuté une « mission D » en compagnie des militaires du FPR et qu'ils ont parcouru 493 km le 6 avril 1994, ce qui nécessite une incursion dans le territoire Uganda maintenant que le cahier du bataillon fait mention à 2 reprises de sa présence dans le Parc AKAGERA, faute de quoi la mission aurait fait des petits ronds dans le parc ou trafiqué leur kilométrique.
6. la preuve que le seul survivant de la mission n'aurait jamais été entendu, ce qui était impensable.
7. la preuve que tous les éléments matériels, utilisés dans la « mission D » avaient été détruits volontairement par les soldats belges
8. la preuve que la plupart des témoignages étaient de pures mensonges pour quelqu'un qui se trouvait sur le terrain et avait assisté aux évènements.
9. que le rapport DOUNKOV était un montage impossible mis en place pour dégager de toute responsabilité la MINUAR et le Général DALLAIRE dans l'assassinat des 10 paras et de mettre la responsabilité sur Bernard NTUYAHAGA, qui n'a même pas été convoqué.
En tant qu'avocat, je peux comprendre que le colonel MARCHAL n'a pas voulu affronter ses adversaires dans son procès avec ces éléments dérangeants, pour sauver sa propre tête et qu'il a attendu sa mise en pension pour ne pas être envoyé à Lotenhulle ou Kimbouktou éplucher des patates dans une maison de l'armée belge comme sanction pour sa franchise et son incompétence.
Nous sommes néanmoins déjà 6 ans plus tard et des dizaines de milliers de victimes en plus sur le compte du FPR. Cela doit être difficile de dormir tranquillement pour un homme avec une conscience humaine et son témoignage du 5 décembre 2006 doit effectivement être purifiant pour la tranquillité de son esprit. Je respecte néanmoins son courage.
A juste titre, le Colonel Luc MARCHAL estime qu'il faut se battre pour la démocratie. Faisons le d'abord en Belgique avant de vouloir imposer notre « expertise » en Afrique.
Rappelons-nous que 89 % de la population francophone en Belgique est disposée à croire que la Flandre peut prononcer son indépendance unilatéralement et que le roi a du f iir... au Congo... Quinze minutes après le début de l'émission, le PEUPLE est aller défendre le Palais Royal....
Il y a manifestement du pain sur la planche et je conseille le colonel de réétudier son dossier de base, de solliciter à l'ONU une copie des transcriptions des communications de la MINUAR entre le 6 et le 10 avril 1994, qui se trouvaient mi-mai 1995 dans une armoire des bâtiments de l'ONU à Kigali, et s'il faut, je peux la localiser au m2 près, mais les documents ont disparu sous le nez de Damien VANDERMEERSCH, pourtant informé par un haut responsable américain de la présence de ce trésor en informations.
Il y trouvera sans doute réponse à toutes les questions qu'il se pose encore( ?) et je m'efforcerai de lever les derniers mystères du drame Rwandais lors du procès de Bernard NTUYAHAGA, où il sera convoqué comme témoin_
J'espère pour lui que le Procureur fédéral le fera comparaître comme un des premiers témoins.
N'oublions pas que depuis le rapport du Judge d'Instruction français BRUGUIERE, la justice internationale est en route pour KAGAME et que sa messe est dite. I1 suffit un peu de temps et le courage de quelques acteurs importants dans le drame rwandais, comme Luc Marchai, pour que le plus important «génocidaire» soit jugé. Nous pourrions alors commencer un débat plus équilibré sur le drame Rwandais et je crains pour l'honneur de Willy CLAES et de ses conseillers.
Il faudra encore que les journalistes et que les « experts autoproclamés » font leur examen de conscience. Ne pas respecter la vérité dans le massacre de 800.000 noirs est déjà un acte raciste.
Luc DE TEMMERMAN
UN Maintains Gen. Nkunda Fighters are From Rwanda.
Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
13 September 2007
The allegations that dissident DR Congo General Laurent Nkunda has recruited fighters including children in Rwanda are contained in two United Nations reports that RNA has acquired.
RNA had put it to Amnesty International that their allegations released in a statement this week did not sound convincing because the UN mission in DR Congo - MONUC had refuted any implication of Rwanda in the conflict there.
The group availed a UN Security Council report compiled by four experts on behalf of a Security Council Committee established in 2004 concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The experts headed by Senegalese diplomat Ibra Déguène Ka submitted the report on July 18.
Another document, which Amnesty International claims substantiates its allegations, is a report by the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in the DR Congo to the Security Council.
The report by the experts in paragraphs 89 to 94 details how Gen. Nkunda has been provided with recruits from Rwanda and Burundi.
"Among the new recruits are Burundian and Rwandan civilians, demobilized combatants and Congolese citizens, some of whom were recruited from Congolese refugee camps in Rwanda. Some of those recruits have been children", part of paragraph 90 reads.
What is notable in the 58-page report however, it does not categorically mention Rwandan authorities as taking part in providing fighters for General Nkunda instead describes suspects as "Networks sympathetic to Nkunda and with ties to CNDP." This is in reference to Gen. Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People party.
The experts maintain that Gen. Nkunda uses children as fighters and porters to carry weapons and loot but there is no mention of gruesome abuses - neither does the report reveal any cases of females.
"Children have deserted or been demobilized from each of the mixed brigades (loyal to Nkunda). Some children have been threatened and attacked by officers of these units to prevent them from leaving, or have been physically removed from the care of child protection agencies", paragraph 94 reads.
Children who remain in the FARDC mixed brigades (Congolese forces loyal to Nkunda) have been deployed with their units, some of which have been subsequently involved in active combat against FDLR in North Kivu, the reports adds.
Meanwhile, the report by the UN Secretary General submitted to the Security Council on Jun 28 details with specifics on how, who and where the children came from exactly. But the report does not also affirm the knowledge of Rwandan authorities on the recruitments instead it is done by "men in civilian clothing".
UN Secretary General wants government of Rwanda "to act immediately, in collaboration with UNHCR and child protection partners, to stop all recruitment of Congolese children from refugee camps in Rwanda, as well as of Rwandan children for use in the Democratic Republic of the Congo".
The Governments of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo should also ensure that protective mechanisms are in place for Rwandan and Congolese children released from armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and returned to Rwanda, Mr. Ban said.
The section of the report that states the allegations on child recruitment by Gen. Nkunda forces was based on interviews with up to 30 Rwandan, Ugandan and Congolese children that have escaped. Some are as young as 12.
As at 31 May 2007, according to the 18-page report, 11 Congolese children recruited in the refugee camps in Rwanda and 16 Rwandan children (13 recruited in Rwanda and 3 recruited in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) had been separated from the FARDC mixed brigades.
Children who escaped or were separated indicated that recruitment was actively ongoing in the returnee settlements of Buhambwe, Masisi territory, the Kiziba and Byumba refugee camps in Rwanda, in the towns of Byumba and Mutura in Rwanda and in the town of Bunagana on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
The document also details the use of children among the ranks of Rwandan extremist rebels the FDLR. A 15-year-old Rwandan boy escaped from FDLR on 19 March 2007, after fighting against the FARDC mixed Bravo Brigade in Rutshuru territory early in March 2007.
According to the boy, there were five other children in his group. He also reported that large numbers of children were present among the members of the mixed FARDC Bravo Brigade.
Mixed signals
Just last week, quoting security officials in the UN mission in Congo, The Guardian newspaper reported that Rwanda is supplying ammunition and fighters to Gen Nkunda as he seizes control of parts of the region and attacks government forces.
At a press briefing on Monday, President Paul Kagame strongly refuted any claims that Rwanda was in anyway involved with the now calming chaos in DRC. Mr. Kagame said Gen. Nkunda to some extent had "legitimate concerns" that various concerned sections are not putting into consideration.
Falling short of a bitter outburst on the performance of the UN mission - MONUC and the whole organization in general, Mr. Kagame said he would rather keep his strong feelings to himself. He said the body was at most the cause and catalyst to the problems that a solution.
General Nkunda's troops had apparently occupied an area along the border with Rwanda and Uganda. Men and equipment have been observed crossing into Congo, which has already suffered from a decade of war during which about 4 million people have died, the UK daily reported.
Hardly a day later, MUNOC Spokesman, Major Vivek Koyal was quoted by the local daily The New Times as saying: "Reports that Rwanda is arming Nkunda are baseless. Such reports should be treated as just rumour and hearsay"
13 September 2007
The allegations that dissident DR Congo General Laurent Nkunda has recruited fighters including children in Rwanda are contained in two United Nations reports that RNA has acquired.
RNA had put it to Amnesty International that their allegations released in a statement this week did not sound convincing because the UN mission in DR Congo - MONUC had refuted any implication of Rwanda in the conflict there.
The group availed a UN Security Council report compiled by four experts on behalf of a Security Council Committee established in 2004 concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The experts headed by Senegalese diplomat Ibra Déguène Ka submitted the report on July 18.
Another document, which Amnesty International claims substantiates its allegations, is a report by the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in the DR Congo to the Security Council.
The report by the experts in paragraphs 89 to 94 details how Gen. Nkunda has been provided with recruits from Rwanda and Burundi.
"Among the new recruits are Burundian and Rwandan civilians, demobilized combatants and Congolese citizens, some of whom were recruited from Congolese refugee camps in Rwanda. Some of those recruits have been children", part of paragraph 90 reads.
What is notable in the 58-page report however, it does not categorically mention Rwandan authorities as taking part in providing fighters for General Nkunda instead describes suspects as "Networks sympathetic to Nkunda and with ties to CNDP." This is in reference to Gen. Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People party.
The experts maintain that Gen. Nkunda uses children as fighters and porters to carry weapons and loot but there is no mention of gruesome abuses - neither does the report reveal any cases of females.
"Children have deserted or been demobilized from each of the mixed brigades (loyal to Nkunda). Some children have been threatened and attacked by officers of these units to prevent them from leaving, or have been physically removed from the care of child protection agencies", paragraph 94 reads.
Children who remain in the FARDC mixed brigades (Congolese forces loyal to Nkunda) have been deployed with their units, some of which have been subsequently involved in active combat against FDLR in North Kivu, the reports adds.
Meanwhile, the report by the UN Secretary General submitted to the Security Council on Jun 28 details with specifics on how, who and where the children came from exactly. But the report does not also affirm the knowledge of Rwandan authorities on the recruitments instead it is done by "men in civilian clothing".
UN Secretary General wants government of Rwanda "to act immediately, in collaboration with UNHCR and child protection partners, to stop all recruitment of Congolese children from refugee camps in Rwanda, as well as of Rwandan children for use in the Democratic Republic of the Congo".
The Governments of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo should also ensure that protective mechanisms are in place for Rwandan and Congolese children released from armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and returned to Rwanda, Mr. Ban said.
The section of the report that states the allegations on child recruitment by Gen. Nkunda forces was based on interviews with up to 30 Rwandan, Ugandan and Congolese children that have escaped. Some are as young as 12.
As at 31 May 2007, according to the 18-page report, 11 Congolese children recruited in the refugee camps in Rwanda and 16 Rwandan children (13 recruited in Rwanda and 3 recruited in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) had been separated from the FARDC mixed brigades.
Children who escaped or were separated indicated that recruitment was actively ongoing in the returnee settlements of Buhambwe, Masisi territory, the Kiziba and Byumba refugee camps in Rwanda, in the towns of Byumba and Mutura in Rwanda and in the town of Bunagana on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
The document also details the use of children among the ranks of Rwandan extremist rebels the FDLR. A 15-year-old Rwandan boy escaped from FDLR on 19 March 2007, after fighting against the FARDC mixed Bravo Brigade in Rutshuru territory early in March 2007.
According to the boy, there were five other children in his group. He also reported that large numbers of children were present among the members of the mixed FARDC Bravo Brigade.
Mixed signals
Just last week, quoting security officials in the UN mission in Congo, The Guardian newspaper reported that Rwanda is supplying ammunition and fighters to Gen Nkunda as he seizes control of parts of the region and attacks government forces.
At a press briefing on Monday, President Paul Kagame strongly refuted any claims that Rwanda was in anyway involved with the now calming chaos in DRC. Mr. Kagame said Gen. Nkunda to some extent had "legitimate concerns" that various concerned sections are not putting into consideration.
Falling short of a bitter outburst on the performance of the UN mission - MONUC and the whole organization in general, Mr. Kagame said he would rather keep his strong feelings to himself. He said the body was at most the cause and catalyst to the problems that a solution.
General Nkunda's troops had apparently occupied an area along the border with Rwanda and Uganda. Men and equipment have been observed crossing into Congo, which has already suffered from a decade of war during which about 4 million people have died, the UK daily reported.
Hardly a day later, MUNOC Spokesman, Major Vivek Koyal was quoted by the local daily The New Times as saying: "Reports that Rwanda is arming Nkunda are baseless. Such reports should be treated as just rumour and hearsay"
US Sends Air Carrier to Somalia
News 24
1 September 2007
The United States military has sent an aircraft carrier to join three other American warships conducting anti-terror operations off the coast of Somalia, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet has announced.
The Navy said the development placed US warplanes directly off the coast of the country in case "the situation should require air power".
The announcement came after US warplanes launched a strike against several suspected members of al-Qaeda in Somalia on Monday.
Soldiers loyal to Somalia's United Nations-backed government and Ethiopia's military late last month drove out a radical Islamic group that had been in control of the country for six months.
According to the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet: "Due to rapidly developing events in Somalia", the US Central Command sent the carrier, USS Dwight D Eisenhower, from the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean coastal waters of Somalia.
Eisenhower carries H-60 helicopters
Lieutenant Charlie Brown said the Eisenhower would join the guided missile cruisers USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio and the amphibious landing ship USS Ashland, which were already stationed off the Somali coast.
Brown said the four warships fell under command of US Rear Adm Al Myers, aboard the Eisenhower, and were not under part of the multinational task force conducting anti-piracy and anti-terrorism operations in the region.
US warships had been seeking to capture al-Qaeda members thought to be fleeing Somalia in the wake of Ethiopia's December invasion.
According to Brown, the Eisenhower was sent from the Arabian sea, where its compliment of F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers and EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft had been operating over Afghanistan. The Eisenhower also carried H-60 helicopters.
The Navy said: "The addition of Eisenhower to Navy ships already operating in international waters off the coast of Somalia is a prudent step that enhances the (maritime security operations) capabilities that are being employed to deter individuals with links to al-Qaeda."
According to the Navy, the Eisenhower's air wing's capabilities included command and control, surveillance and reconnaissance, aerial refuelling, and precision bombing "that can support emergent contingency operations if the situation should require air power".
1 September 2007
The United States military has sent an aircraft carrier to join three other American warships conducting anti-terror operations off the coast of Somalia, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet has announced.
The Navy said the development placed US warplanes directly off the coast of the country in case "the situation should require air power".
The announcement came after US warplanes launched a strike against several suspected members of al-Qaeda in Somalia on Monday.
Soldiers loyal to Somalia's United Nations-backed government and Ethiopia's military late last month drove out a radical Islamic group that had been in control of the country for six months.
According to the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet: "Due to rapidly developing events in Somalia", the US Central Command sent the carrier, USS Dwight D Eisenhower, from the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean coastal waters of Somalia.
Eisenhower carries H-60 helicopters
Lieutenant Charlie Brown said the Eisenhower would join the guided missile cruisers USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio and the amphibious landing ship USS Ashland, which were already stationed off the Somali coast.
Brown said the four warships fell under command of US Rear Adm Al Myers, aboard the Eisenhower, and were not under part of the multinational task force conducting anti-piracy and anti-terrorism operations in the region.
US warships had been seeking to capture al-Qaeda members thought to be fleeing Somalia in the wake of Ethiopia's December invasion.
According to Brown, the Eisenhower was sent from the Arabian sea, where its compliment of F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers and EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft had been operating over Afghanistan. The Eisenhower also carried H-60 helicopters.
The Navy said: "The addition of Eisenhower to Navy ships already operating in international waters off the coast of Somalia is a prudent step that enhances the (maritime security operations) capabilities that are being employed to deter individuals with links to al-Qaeda."
According to the Navy, the Eisenhower's air wing's capabilities included command and control, surveillance and reconnaissance, aerial refuelling, and precision bombing "that can support emergent contingency operations if the situation should require air power".
ONLF Accuses Ethiopian Government of Genocide
News 24
13 September 07
Ethiopian rebels on Thursday urged the world to bring an end to an army crackdown in the restive Ogaden region, warning that another "African genocide" was unfolding.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) said thousands of displaced civilians had fled to neighbouring Somalia without food and medicine for the past four months.
ONLF said: "We call on donor nations to bear pressure on the Ethiopian regime to end its brutal campaign against our civilian population and allow international journalists and humanitarian organisations to travel and operate freely in Ogaden.
"The United Nations bears a particular responsibility to thoroughly investigate war crimes in Ogaden and halt the unfolding of yet another preventable African genocide."
UN told to deliver humanitarian supplies
In addition, the rebels called on the UN to deliver humanitarian supplies to fleeing civilians, some from razed villages and a number of whom are victims of rape, torture and gunshot wounds.
It added: "These fleeing civilians provide the best testimony of the policy of collective punishment being pursued by the Ethiopian regime in Ogaden.
"The plight of these families shows the world that despite the regimes denials, war crimes continue in Ogaden."
The Ethiopian military launched a crackdown on the region, which was slightly smaller than Britain and had a population of about four million, after an attack by the ONLF rebel group against a Chinese oil venture that left 77 people dead.
Last week, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes denounced Addis Ababa's decision to expel two global charities - the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and International Committee for the Red Cross - from the area.
Predominantly barren, the Ogaden had long been extremely poor, but in recent years the discovery of gas and oil had brought both hopes of wealth, and new causes of conflict.
Ethiopian authorities had accused arch foe Eritrea of supporting the Ogaden separatists. The Eritreans had denied the accusation.
Formed in 1984, the ONLF was fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis in Ogaden, who they said had been marginalised by Addis Ababa.
13 September 07
Ethiopian rebels on Thursday urged the world to bring an end to an army crackdown in the restive Ogaden region, warning that another "African genocide" was unfolding.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) said thousands of displaced civilians had fled to neighbouring Somalia without food and medicine for the past four months.
ONLF said: "We call on donor nations to bear pressure on the Ethiopian regime to end its brutal campaign against our civilian population and allow international journalists and humanitarian organisations to travel and operate freely in Ogaden.
"The United Nations bears a particular responsibility to thoroughly investigate war crimes in Ogaden and halt the unfolding of yet another preventable African genocide."
UN told to deliver humanitarian supplies
In addition, the rebels called on the UN to deliver humanitarian supplies to fleeing civilians, some from razed villages and a number of whom are victims of rape, torture and gunshot wounds.
It added: "These fleeing civilians provide the best testimony of the policy of collective punishment being pursued by the Ethiopian regime in Ogaden.
"The plight of these families shows the world that despite the regimes denials, war crimes continue in Ogaden."
The Ethiopian military launched a crackdown on the region, which was slightly smaller than Britain and had a population of about four million, after an attack by the ONLF rebel group against a Chinese oil venture that left 77 people dead.
Last week, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes denounced Addis Ababa's decision to expel two global charities - the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and International Committee for the Red Cross - from the area.
Predominantly barren, the Ogaden had long been extremely poor, but in recent years the discovery of gas and oil had brought both hopes of wealth, and new causes of conflict.
Ethiopian authorities had accused arch foe Eritrea of supporting the Ogaden separatists. The Eritreans had denied the accusation.
Formed in 1984, the ONLF was fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis in Ogaden, who they said had been marginalised by Addis Ababa.
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