MISNA
6 June 2008
A French court issued a three-month suspended prison sentence against Colonel Mohamed Bacar, the former president of the Island of Anjouan ousted last March in a joint military operation with the African Union (AU) forces. The verdict, which regarded also 22 members of Bacar’s guard, was issued by the Court of Appeals of Reunion for “import or possession of weapons” on the French Island of Mayotte, where the group sought asylum after fleeing Anjouan on arrival of the Comorian national forces and AU troops. The Court today will also examine an extradition request presented by the federal government of the Comoros, which wants to try Bacar on a number of charges. On April 6 France’s office for the protection of refugees and stateless persons (OFPRA) denied asylum to Bacar, however ruling out that he be repatriated to the Comoros because of a serious risk of “persecution”. The developments of the case involving Bacar, whose re-election last June was rejected both at home and by most of the international community, hampered relations the Comoros and France.
07 June, 2008
UN PROSECUTOR FINALLY ADMITS TO RPF CRIMES DURING 1994.
Hirondelle News Agency
6 June 2008
The Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Justice Hassan Jallow, has for the first time confirmed that some soldiers of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) had committed atrocities during 1994.
Justice Jallow’s predecessor, Swiss Carla Del Ponte, was the first to disclose over the RPF investigations during her tenure as the ICTR prosecutor between 1999 and 2003.
“It has been established that on 5 June, 1994, RPF soldiers had killed 13 clergymen and two other civilians at Gitarana[central Rwanda]”, Mr Jallow told the UN Security Council on Wednesday when tabling his six-monthly report of the Court’s exit strategy. RPF is currently in power under President Paul Kagame.
Some of the perpetrators are reportedly to have died, while others are now serving within the Rwanda army, he said, adding that the Rwandan Prosecutor General, Martin Ngoga, had claimed that he would shortly indict the implicated soldiers. “The Prosecutor’s Office will monitor those proceedings,” he stated.
Rwanda shared concurrent jurisdiction with the tribunal over such offences.
The Rwandan government in the past has been furious over the investigations and even reached a boiling point by refusing to co-operate with the UN tribunal and once even denied entry visa to Carla Del Ponte.
Mr Jallow has also asked the Security Council to extend the exit strategy by a year, up to next year, because of recent three new arrests and to allow smooth conclusion of pending cases.
“Due to the new circumstances, an extension of the trial mandate should now be granted to 2009,” he urged.
6 June 2008
The Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Justice Hassan Jallow, has for the first time confirmed that some soldiers of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) had committed atrocities during 1994.
Justice Jallow’s predecessor, Swiss Carla Del Ponte, was the first to disclose over the RPF investigations during her tenure as the ICTR prosecutor between 1999 and 2003.
“It has been established that on 5 June, 1994, RPF soldiers had killed 13 clergymen and two other civilians at Gitarana[central Rwanda]”, Mr Jallow told the UN Security Council on Wednesday when tabling his six-monthly report of the Court’s exit strategy. RPF is currently in power under President Paul Kagame.
Some of the perpetrators are reportedly to have died, while others are now serving within the Rwanda army, he said, adding that the Rwandan Prosecutor General, Martin Ngoga, had claimed that he would shortly indict the implicated soldiers. “The Prosecutor’s Office will monitor those proceedings,” he stated.
Rwanda shared concurrent jurisdiction with the tribunal over such offences.
The Rwandan government in the past has been furious over the investigations and even reached a boiling point by refusing to co-operate with the UN tribunal and once even denied entry visa to Carla Del Ponte.
Mr Jallow has also asked the Security Council to extend the exit strategy by a year, up to next year, because of recent three new arrests and to allow smooth conclusion of pending cases.
“Due to the new circumstances, an extension of the trial mandate should now be granted to 2009,” he urged.
06 June, 2008
CHAMBER TRYING TO MOVE FASTER IN THREE EX-MRND TOP LEADERS TRIAL.
Hirondelle News Agency
4 June 2008
The Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has given one of the defendants in the trial of three former top party officials a maximum of 40 days to complete his defence case as part of efforts to accelerate the trial, reports Hirondelle Agency.
The defendant, Edouard Karemera, is the former Vice President of the ruling National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), who is accused of genocide alongside the former party President Mathieu Ngirumpatse and ex-Secretary General, Joseph Nzirorera. All have pleaded not guilty.
“The Chamber believes that 40 days of hearings, at a rate of six hours per day, should be sufficient for the presentation of the defence case of Karemera”, according to the judges decision on Monday. However, the Chamber has said that if justice demanded more time, it was ready to show flexibility.
To determine the 40-day timeframe, the Chamber took into consideration various factors, including the prosecutor’s 169 days of hearings for 29 witnesses.
The Chamber also noted certain repetition between the testimonies suggested for Karemera’s defence and has urged the defence counsels to proceed only with witnesses which they still really needed.
Suspended since 15 May, the trial is expected to resume on 30 June.
Karemera, first to present his defence case in the trial, already had ten days, (between on 21 April and 15 May), a period during which he called nine witnesses.
Opened in September 2005, the proceedings are before Dennis Byron (presiding), who is also President of the Tribunal. The defendants have been in custody for almost since 10 years.
Judge Byron has already recognized that the proceedings in the case would not be finished by the end of the year, date scheduled by the Security Council to complete all first instance trials.
4 June 2008
The Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has given one of the defendants in the trial of three former top party officials a maximum of 40 days to complete his defence case as part of efforts to accelerate the trial, reports Hirondelle Agency.
The defendant, Edouard Karemera, is the former Vice President of the ruling National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), who is accused of genocide alongside the former party President Mathieu Ngirumpatse and ex-Secretary General, Joseph Nzirorera. All have pleaded not guilty.
“The Chamber believes that 40 days of hearings, at a rate of six hours per day, should be sufficient for the presentation of the defence case of Karemera”, according to the judges decision on Monday. However, the Chamber has said that if justice demanded more time, it was ready to show flexibility.
To determine the 40-day timeframe, the Chamber took into consideration various factors, including the prosecutor’s 169 days of hearings for 29 witnesses.
The Chamber also noted certain repetition between the testimonies suggested for Karemera’s defence and has urged the defence counsels to proceed only with witnesses which they still really needed.
Suspended since 15 May, the trial is expected to resume on 30 June.
Karemera, first to present his defence case in the trial, already had ten days, (between on 21 April and 15 May), a period during which he called nine witnesses.
Opened in September 2005, the proceedings are before Dennis Byron (presiding), who is also President of the Tribunal. The defendants have been in custody for almost since 10 years.
Judge Byron has already recognized that the proceedings in the case would not be finished by the end of the year, date scheduled by the Security Council to complete all first instance trials.
REGIONAL AGREEMENT TO RESUME FIGHT AGAINST REBELS.
MISNA
5 June 2008
“The negotiations are no more, the man (Kony) doesn’t know what he wants and we have resolved to go the military way”, said Ugandan army spokesman Maj Paddy Ankunda in announcing a resumption of hostilities, maybe already this month, against rebels of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), founded and headed by Joseph Kony. The decision was taken in a meeting between security representatives of the Great Lakes Region held in Kampala. Ankunda specified that officials of Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (where some rebels fled) reached an agreement on the strategy to combat the armed movement, because the peace talks conducted in South Sudan failed due to Kony’s refusal to sign any accord. The LRA chief negotiator James Obita said the decision to attack thwarts peace efforts, adding that “any sensible person considers such an agreement by those parties to use military option against the LRA as not good for peace. Let them give us the last chance”.
5 June 2008
“The negotiations are no more, the man (Kony) doesn’t know what he wants and we have resolved to go the military way”, said Ugandan army spokesman Maj Paddy Ankunda in announcing a resumption of hostilities, maybe already this month, against rebels of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), founded and headed by Joseph Kony. The decision was taken in a meeting between security representatives of the Great Lakes Region held in Kampala. Ankunda specified that officials of Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (where some rebels fled) reached an agreement on the strategy to combat the armed movement, because the peace talks conducted in South Sudan failed due to Kony’s refusal to sign any accord. The LRA chief negotiator James Obita said the decision to attack thwarts peace efforts, adding that “any sensible person considers such an agreement by those parties to use military option against the LRA as not good for peace. Let them give us the last chance”.
04 June, 2008
UN Kosovo mission to be reconfigured soon - spokesman.
RIA Novosti
4 June 2008
A decision on reorganizing the United Nations mission in Kosovo will be taken in the next few days, a UN spokesman said on Wednesday.
"We will give detailed information on the UN's future presence in Kosovo when we receive corresponding instructions," said Alexander Ivanko, a spokesman for the UNMIK mission in the Balkan region which declared unilateral independence from Serbia in February.
The UN mission, stationed in the area since the end of an interethnic conflict in 1999, plans to reconfigure itself after June 15, when Kosovo adopts its first constitution and its government takes on the mission's powers.
Kosovo, with a 90% ethnic-Albanian majority, has been formally recognized as a sovereign state by 42 countries including the U.S. and most EU members.
Russia, Serbia's long-time ally and a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, has refused to recognize Kosovo's independence.
The UNMIK is expected to hand over its authority to the European Union, which plans to deploy a 2,000-strong police and justice mission in Kosovo. Russia opposes these plans, saying the move would be in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and "must be stopped immediately".
4 June 2008
A decision on reorganizing the United Nations mission in Kosovo will be taken in the next few days, a UN spokesman said on Wednesday.
"We will give detailed information on the UN's future presence in Kosovo when we receive corresponding instructions," said Alexander Ivanko, a spokesman for the UNMIK mission in the Balkan region which declared unilateral independence from Serbia in February.
The UN mission, stationed in the area since the end of an interethnic conflict in 1999, plans to reconfigure itself after June 15, when Kosovo adopts its first constitution and its government takes on the mission's powers.
Kosovo, with a 90% ethnic-Albanian majority, has been formally recognized as a sovereign state by 42 countries including the U.S. and most EU members.
Russia, Serbia's long-time ally and a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, has refused to recognize Kosovo's independence.
The UNMIK is expected to hand over its authority to the European Union, which plans to deploy a 2,000-strong police and justice mission in Kosovo. Russia opposes these plans, saying the move would be in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and "must be stopped immediately".
Canada Turns Down UN Request for Commander.
The Toronto Star
4 June 2008
Canada turned down a United Nations request to take command of the peacekeeping mission in Congo and will instead devote its resources to Afghanistan.
"Finding a lieutenant-general at this time can be a challenge, especially with Afghanistan going on," said Maj. Denys Guay, deputy military attaché at Canada's permanent mission to the UN in New York.
Guay confirmed in an interview that Canada was approached by the UN secretariat's department of peacekeeping operations about six weeks ago to submit a candidate to take charge of the massive UN force in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Canada was asked for a two-star general and limited support staff, not a contingent of troops.
The request was forwarded to the department of foreign affairs and defence department for review, Guay said, but Canada opted to contribute to Afghanistan instead of the mission in Congo.
Canada's former ambassador to the UN, Robert Fowler, said the decision signals Ottawa has all but given up on traditional peacekeeping.
"It is such a pity that we have withdrawn from UN peacekeeping to this extent when this used to be a signature for us, a Canadian brand," said Fowler, who was a special adviser on Africa to both Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin and is now a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa.
Canada is now tied with Malawi as the 53rd largest UN peacekeeping contributor, Fowler noted.
The Congo force, known by the acronym MONUC, has nearly 17,000 troops from more than a dozen countries and at a price tag exceeding $1 billion a year is the biggest UN mission ever.
More than 5.4 million people died in Congo's five-year civil war and its aftermath, mainly from disease and starvation. The conflict officially ended with a peace deal in 2002.
One Canadian military insider who asked not to be identified said Canada's decision makes clear that we have all but abandoned traditional peacekeeping in places like Africa in favour of "playing with the big boys" in Afghanistan.
The Congo mission is huge but has been relatively ineffectual, the military insider said, in part because of a fractured leadership structure that pits divisional commanders against the force commander. The UN is finally moving to fix the command structure and had hoped for Canada to take charge.
The current commander, Senegalese Gen. Babacar Gaye, is nearing the end of his term and the UN is keen to replace him. The UN turned to Canada after several other nations declined the invitation.
"What they wanted was a francophone, from a country with no colonial or political baggage," said the military insider. "Canada could have made a real difference here."
This is not the first time Canada has turned down a UN request to take charge of the Congo mission. In February 2003 – at the start of its involvement in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan – Canada rejected a UN plea to lead the fragile peacekeeping force in Congo.
4 June 2008
Canada turned down a United Nations request to take command of the peacekeeping mission in Congo and will instead devote its resources to Afghanistan.
"Finding a lieutenant-general at this time can be a challenge, especially with Afghanistan going on," said Maj. Denys Guay, deputy military attaché at Canada's permanent mission to the UN in New York.
Guay confirmed in an interview that Canada was approached by the UN secretariat's department of peacekeeping operations about six weeks ago to submit a candidate to take charge of the massive UN force in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Canada was asked for a two-star general and limited support staff, not a contingent of troops.
The request was forwarded to the department of foreign affairs and defence department for review, Guay said, but Canada opted to contribute to Afghanistan instead of the mission in Congo.
Canada's former ambassador to the UN, Robert Fowler, said the decision signals Ottawa has all but given up on traditional peacekeeping.
"It is such a pity that we have withdrawn from UN peacekeeping to this extent when this used to be a signature for us, a Canadian brand," said Fowler, who was a special adviser on Africa to both Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin and is now a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa.
Canada is now tied with Malawi as the 53rd largest UN peacekeeping contributor, Fowler noted.
The Congo force, known by the acronym MONUC, has nearly 17,000 troops from more than a dozen countries and at a price tag exceeding $1 billion a year is the biggest UN mission ever.
More than 5.4 million people died in Congo's five-year civil war and its aftermath, mainly from disease and starvation. The conflict officially ended with a peace deal in 2002.
One Canadian military insider who asked not to be identified said Canada's decision makes clear that we have all but abandoned traditional peacekeeping in places like Africa in favour of "playing with the big boys" in Afghanistan.
The Congo mission is huge but has been relatively ineffectual, the military insider said, in part because of a fractured leadership structure that pits divisional commanders against the force commander. The UN is finally moving to fix the command structure and had hoped for Canada to take charge.
The current commander, Senegalese Gen. Babacar Gaye, is nearing the end of his term and the UN is keen to replace him. The UN turned to Canada after several other nations declined the invitation.
"What they wanted was a francophone, from a country with no colonial or political baggage," said the military insider. "Canada could have made a real difference here."
This is not the first time Canada has turned down a UN request to take charge of the Congo mission. In February 2003 – at the start of its involvement in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan – Canada rejected a UN plea to lead the fragile peacekeeping force in Congo.
FIGHTER JETS AND HELICOPTERS PATROL BORDER WITH KENYA.
MISNA
4 June 2008
War planes and military helicopters continued also today to fly at low altitude over some areas of South Somalia’s Lower Juba province along the border with Kenya. According to local sources the overflights began yesterday and continued throughout this morning, causing tension among residents of the villages of the area and particularly in the areas of Dadajabula and Doblai, where many stores remained closed today. Reports circulating in the media indicate that they are Kenyan military jets and helicopters. In the past days, unidentified gunmen attacked a Kenyan border police post, seizing weapons and a military vehicle. The provincial commissioner of Kenya's Northeastern Province, according to the Somali press, demanded the immediate return of the arms and vehicle, threatening unspecified “measures”. Elders of both Kenyan and Somali local communities are mediating with the armed group for the return of the stolen material.
4 June 2008
War planes and military helicopters continued also today to fly at low altitude over some areas of South Somalia’s Lower Juba province along the border with Kenya. According to local sources the overflights began yesterday and continued throughout this morning, causing tension among residents of the villages of the area and particularly in the areas of Dadajabula and Doblai, where many stores remained closed today. Reports circulating in the media indicate that they are Kenyan military jets and helicopters. In the past days, unidentified gunmen attacked a Kenyan border police post, seizing weapons and a military vehicle. The provincial commissioner of Kenya's Northeastern Province, according to the Somali press, demanded the immediate return of the arms and vehicle, threatening unspecified “measures”. Elders of both Kenyan and Somali local communities are mediating with the armed group for the return of the stolen material.
Chinese oil firm inks deal with Niger.
AFP
3 June 2008
Niger has granted China's national oil company rights to prospect, explore and produce petroleum in the northern Agadez region, state radio reported Tuesday.
The pact, signed Monday between the Niger government and the China National Oil and Gas Development and Exploration Corporation (CNODC), will see the company invest about 300 million dollars (194 million euros) to explore and drill 18 new wells in the coming eight years.
Western companies have been prospecting for oil in Niger's Agadem region in the northern area of Agadez since 1985.
They have concluded that the estimated 324 million barrels there were not lucrative enough to prospect and drill.
The Chinese firm has also pledged to invest 1.2 billion dollars in Niger's petroleum sector to build a pipeline and a refinery near the second city of Zinder with a daily capacity of 20,000 barrels.
It will sell a part of its production locally at "affordable" prices, according to the contract.
Since 2006, China has reinforced its economic ties with Niger helping the former French colony to tap its vast uranium wealth, one of the largest in the world.
3 June 2008
Niger has granted China's national oil company rights to prospect, explore and produce petroleum in the northern Agadez region, state radio reported Tuesday.
The pact, signed Monday between the Niger government and the China National Oil and Gas Development and Exploration Corporation (CNODC), will see the company invest about 300 million dollars (194 million euros) to explore and drill 18 new wells in the coming eight years.
Western companies have been prospecting for oil in Niger's Agadem region in the northern area of Agadez since 1985.
They have concluded that the estimated 324 million barrels there were not lucrative enough to prospect and drill.
The Chinese firm has also pledged to invest 1.2 billion dollars in Niger's petroleum sector to build a pipeline and a refinery near the second city of Zinder with a daily capacity of 20,000 barrels.
It will sell a part of its production locally at "affordable" prices, according to the contract.
Since 2006, China has reinforced its economic ties with Niger helping the former French colony to tap its vast uranium wealth, one of the largest in the world.
U.S. Wants Closer Niger Ties.
African News Agency
3 June 2008
US Deputy Secretary of State for West Africa Todd Moss, Tuesday called for the strengthening of relations between the US, Niger and West African nations in general.
Moss was speaking on the Nigerien state-owned radio following an audience with president Mamadou Tandja.
"I came to the Sahel to visit our friends and I seized the opportunity to talk and discuss with President Tandja on the existing friendly relations especially between Niger and the United States of America," he said.
The American diplomat said he discussed with Tandja on "democracy and how to develop our relations toward strengthening peace, security and, in general, prosperity in West Africa."
"The purpose of the visit is to maintain close relations between Niger and the United States of America, especially in a number of programmes, particularly the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a program targeted on educating the girl child," he added.
The US last March gave 23 million dollars to Niger under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to support programmes strengthening certain social sectors and promoting good governance.
According to Moss, "the programme is essential for the development of a country."
The MCC is a three-component programme on improving poverty alleviation; streamlining for free trade and land rights procedures; and girls’ schooling in primary education.
3 June 2008
US Deputy Secretary of State for West Africa Todd Moss, Tuesday called for the strengthening of relations between the US, Niger and West African nations in general.
Moss was speaking on the Nigerien state-owned radio following an audience with president Mamadou Tandja.
"I came to the Sahel to visit our friends and I seized the opportunity to talk and discuss with President Tandja on the existing friendly relations especially between Niger and the United States of America," he said.
The American diplomat said he discussed with Tandja on "democracy and how to develop our relations toward strengthening peace, security and, in general, prosperity in West Africa."
"The purpose of the visit is to maintain close relations between Niger and the United States of America, especially in a number of programmes, particularly the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a program targeted on educating the girl child," he added.
The US last March gave 23 million dollars to Niger under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to support programmes strengthening certain social sectors and promoting good governance.
According to Moss, "the programme is essential for the development of a country."
The MCC is a three-component programme on improving poverty alleviation; streamlining for free trade and land rights procedures; and girls’ schooling in primary education.
03 June, 2008
Kurdistan PM Barzani Says Oil Talks with Baghdad to Continue.
by Stefania Bianchi Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday, June 03, 2008
DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones), Jun 03, 2008
Kurdistan's Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said Tuesday talks with Baghdad about a long-awaited new federal oil law would continue within two weeks.
"We will be traveling to Baghdad to start negotiations on the oil law in two weeks. It's important that we agree on the law otherwise foreign companies won't come to invest in our region," Barzani told reporters on the sidelines of a press conference in Dubai.
Disputes between the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan and Iraq's central government have delayed the law for more than a year.
Barzani said the Kurds were proposing a single package covering oil law, revenue sharing law, Iraqi oil ministry and an Iraqi national oil company to be presented to parliament.
"Baghdad has different views. It's not about Kurdistan and Baghdad, it's an economic matter. It's about state-run and private. We're supporting private and a free-market economy," he added.
Talks with Baghdad will also revolve around deals struck between the Kurdish Regional Government, or KRG, and Austria's OMV AG (OMV.VI) and South Korea's SK Energy (096770.SE) after Baghdad said the deals were illegal, Barzani said.
The KRG has signed 15 oil and gas contracts with 20 international companies since it passed its own hydrocarbons law in August, causing tensions with the Iraqi government, which is seeking centralized control over the country's oil resources.
The Kurds maintain the deals are in line with the Iraqi constitution.
However, the contracts are considered illegal by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which has threatened to exclude and blacklist participating international oil companies from future opportunities elsewhere in Iraq.
Iraq's Oil Ministry has already ended crude oil supply contracts with SK Energy and OMV.
"We will discuss the OMV and SK issue with Baghdad when we go there. We don't think it has the right to stop the deals," Barzani said.
The Kurdish PM also said Iraq should boost crude oil export capacity to 6 million barrels a day, three times the amount the country is exporting presently.
"We think Iraq needs to export more oil. Iraq has capacity to export 6 million barrels a day, but they're happy with 2 million," Barzani said.
Kurdistan's own plans involve boosting crude output to 1 million barrels a day, Barzani said.
"We are ready to pump 150,000 barrels a day, but we hope to increase this to 1 million barrels a day in two years," he said.
DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones), Jun 03, 2008
Kurdistan's Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said Tuesday talks with Baghdad about a long-awaited new federal oil law would continue within two weeks.
"We will be traveling to Baghdad to start negotiations on the oil law in two weeks. It's important that we agree on the law otherwise foreign companies won't come to invest in our region," Barzani told reporters on the sidelines of a press conference in Dubai.
Disputes between the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan and Iraq's central government have delayed the law for more than a year.
Barzani said the Kurds were proposing a single package covering oil law, revenue sharing law, Iraqi oil ministry and an Iraqi national oil company to be presented to parliament.
"Baghdad has different views. It's not about Kurdistan and Baghdad, it's an economic matter. It's about state-run and private. We're supporting private and a free-market economy," he added.
Talks with Baghdad will also revolve around deals struck between the Kurdish Regional Government, or KRG, and Austria's OMV AG (OMV.VI) and South Korea's SK Energy (096770.SE) after Baghdad said the deals were illegal, Barzani said.
The KRG has signed 15 oil and gas contracts with 20 international companies since it passed its own hydrocarbons law in August, causing tensions with the Iraqi government, which is seeking centralized control over the country's oil resources.
The Kurds maintain the deals are in line with the Iraqi constitution.
However, the contracts are considered illegal by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which has threatened to exclude and blacklist participating international oil companies from future opportunities elsewhere in Iraq.
Iraq's Oil Ministry has already ended crude oil supply contracts with SK Energy and OMV.
"We will discuss the OMV and SK issue with Baghdad when we go there. We don't think it has the right to stop the deals," Barzani said.
The Kurdish PM also said Iraq should boost crude oil export capacity to 6 million barrels a day, three times the amount the country is exporting presently.
"We think Iraq needs to export more oil. Iraq has capacity to export 6 million barrels a day, but they're happy with 2 million," Barzani said.
Kurdistan's own plans involve boosting crude output to 1 million barrels a day, Barzani said.
"We are ready to pump 150,000 barrels a day, but we hope to increase this to 1 million barrels a day in two years," he said.
Iran set to build oil pipeline to supply global markets.
RIA Novosti
3 June 2008
Iran intends to build an oil pipeline to run across its territory to pump crude to global markets, Hossein Noghrehkar Shirazi, an Iranian deputy oil minister said on Tuesday.
The oil pipeline is planned to run from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf and is expected to pump 1 million barrels of oil per day, Shirazi told the English-language Press TV channel but declined to specify the project cost or its timeframe.
"The pipeline will link the port of Neka in the country's north with the port of Jask in southern Iran," Shirazi said.
Seyyed Reza Kasaeizadeh, an Iranian deputy oil minister, said on Monday that the Islamic Republic also planned to start work this year on the construction of a pipeline as part of the Western-backed Nabucco project designed to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe bypassing Russia.
The Nabucco project is intended to pump 20-30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Central Asia, under the Caspian Sea, then through Azerbaijan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline is expected to begin in 2010 and be completed by 2013.
"The feasibility study of Iran's possibilities in this project has almost been concluded. The Iranian gas pipeline will become a part of the Nabucco project, to supply natural gas to Europe from Iran's largest Southern Pars gas field [in the Persian Gulf]," Kasaeizadeh said.
Some analysts, however, say that without the support of Turkmenistan, a major natural gas producer in Central Asia, the Nabucco project is unrealistic.
Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and more recently Iraq, have been seen as possible suppliers for the project. Iraq's bid is backed by the United States.
Russia is skeptical over the Nabucco pipeline, saying that in the foreseeable future it will have insufficient gas supplies.
In what was widely seen as a major blow to the Nabucco project, Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan signed a deal in December to supply the Asian states' Caspian gas via Russia. Moscow also reached deals with Bulgaria and Serbia earlier this year on the South Stream pipeline to pump Central Asian gas to Europe.
3 June 2008
Iran intends to build an oil pipeline to run across its territory to pump crude to global markets, Hossein Noghrehkar Shirazi, an Iranian deputy oil minister said on Tuesday.
The oil pipeline is planned to run from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf and is expected to pump 1 million barrels of oil per day, Shirazi told the English-language Press TV channel but declined to specify the project cost or its timeframe.
"The pipeline will link the port of Neka in the country's north with the port of Jask in southern Iran," Shirazi said.
Seyyed Reza Kasaeizadeh, an Iranian deputy oil minister, said on Monday that the Islamic Republic also planned to start work this year on the construction of a pipeline as part of the Western-backed Nabucco project designed to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe bypassing Russia.
The Nabucco project is intended to pump 20-30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Central Asia, under the Caspian Sea, then through Azerbaijan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline is expected to begin in 2010 and be completed by 2013.
"The feasibility study of Iran's possibilities in this project has almost been concluded. The Iranian gas pipeline will become a part of the Nabucco project, to supply natural gas to Europe from Iran's largest Southern Pars gas field [in the Persian Gulf]," Kasaeizadeh said.
Some analysts, however, say that without the support of Turkmenistan, a major natural gas producer in Central Asia, the Nabucco project is unrealistic.
Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and more recently Iraq, have been seen as possible suppliers for the project. Iraq's bid is backed by the United States.
Russia is skeptical over the Nabucco pipeline, saying that in the foreseeable future it will have insufficient gas supplies.
In what was widely seen as a major blow to the Nabucco project, Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan signed a deal in December to supply the Asian states' Caspian gas via Russia. Moscow also reached deals with Bulgaria and Serbia earlier this year on the South Stream pipeline to pump Central Asian gas to Europe.
One Iranian killed, two injured by Azerbaijani border guards.
RIA Novosti
3 June 2008
One Iranian national was killed and another two wounded as they reportedly attempted to illegally cross the border with Azerbaijan early on Tuesday, the Lider Azerbaijani TV channel said.
The injured Iranians were detained by Azerbaijani border guards and taken to the Jalilabad city hospital in a serious condition. Another Iranian managed to escape.
Azerbaijan's State Border Service claimed the Iranians were smugglers and that an investigation had been launched into the incident.
3 June 2008
One Iranian national was killed and another two wounded as they reportedly attempted to illegally cross the border with Azerbaijan early on Tuesday, the Lider Azerbaijani TV channel said.
The injured Iranians were detained by Azerbaijani border guards and taken to the Jalilabad city hospital in a serious condition. Another Iranian managed to escape.
Azerbaijan's State Border Service claimed the Iranians were smugglers and that an investigation had been launched into the incident.
NATO chief urges withdrawal of Russian rail troops from Abkhazia.
RIA Novosti
3 June 2008
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Tuesday Russia should pull its unarmed railroad troops out of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia.
"These forces should be withdrawn, and both Russia and Georgia should engage quickly in a high-level and open dialogue to de-escalate tensions," he said in a statement on Tuesday.
The unarmed troops were deployed to the region on May 31 to repair rail tracks "fully in line with Russian-Georgian agreements," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"This deployment is clearly in contravention of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," said the NATO head however.
The presidents of Russia and Georgia discussed the issue over the telephone earlier Tuesday.
"Russia's aid in repairing railroad tracks in Abkhazia using its railroad troops was discussed. The necessary clarifications were provided on the issue," the Kremlin press service said, adding that Dmitry Medvedev and Mikheil Saakashvili had agreed to resume discussions on the sidelines of an economic forum in St. Petersburg due on June 6-8.
Tensions between Russia and Georgia have been consistently strained since Western-leaning President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the South Caucasus country in early 2004.
The long-running row over Georgian breakaway regions, along with Tbilisi's plans to join NATO, have been major factors behind the dispute. In a recent development, Georgia accused Russia of shooting down an unmanned reconnaissance plane over Abkhazia on April 20. Moscow denies involvement in the incident.
3 June 2008
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Tuesday Russia should pull its unarmed railroad troops out of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia.
"These forces should be withdrawn, and both Russia and Georgia should engage quickly in a high-level and open dialogue to de-escalate tensions," he said in a statement on Tuesday.
The unarmed troops were deployed to the region on May 31 to repair rail tracks "fully in line with Russian-Georgian agreements," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"This deployment is clearly in contravention of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," said the NATO head however.
The presidents of Russia and Georgia discussed the issue over the telephone earlier Tuesday.
"Russia's aid in repairing railroad tracks in Abkhazia using its railroad troops was discussed. The necessary clarifications were provided on the issue," the Kremlin press service said, adding that Dmitry Medvedev and Mikheil Saakashvili had agreed to resume discussions on the sidelines of an economic forum in St. Petersburg due on June 6-8.
Tensions between Russia and Georgia have been consistently strained since Western-leaning President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the South Caucasus country in early 2004.
The long-running row over Georgian breakaway regions, along with Tbilisi's plans to join NATO, have been major factors behind the dispute. In a recent development, Georgia accused Russia of shooting down an unmanned reconnaissance plane over Abkhazia on April 20. Moscow denies involvement in the incident.
Iran to launch gas pipeline construction under Nabucco project.
RIA Novosti
3 June 2008
Iran will start work this year to build a pipeline as part of the Western-backed Nabucco project designed to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe bypassing Russia, an Iranian oil official said.
The Nabucco project is intended to pump 20-30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Central Asia, under the Caspian Sea, then through Azerbaijan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline is expected to begin in 2010 and be completed by 2013.
"The study of Iran's possibilities in this project has almost been concluded. The Iranian gas pipeline will become a part of the Nabucco project, to supply natural gas to Europe from Iran's largest Southern Pars gas field [in the Persian Gulf]," Deputy Oil Minister Reza Kasai Zadeh said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the board of the Nabucco Gas Pipeline Company decided on May 31 to raise the project's cost from 5 billion euros ($7.8 billion) to 7.9 billion euros ($12 billion) due to growth in oil prices and strong demand for steel for the implementation of large-scale international projects.
Some analysts say that without the support of Turkmenistan, a major natural gas producer in Central Asia, the Nabucco project is unrealistic.
Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and more recently Iraq, have been seen as possible suppliers for the project. Iraq's bid is backed by the United States.
Russia is skeptical over the Nabucco pipeline, saying that in the foreseeable future it will have insufficient gas supplies.
In what was widely seen as a major blow to the Nabucco project, Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan signed a deal in December to supply the Asian states' Caspian gas via Russia. Moscow also reached deals with Bulgaria and Serbia earlier this year on the South Stream pipeline to pump Central Asian gas to Europe.
3 June 2008
Iran will start work this year to build a pipeline as part of the Western-backed Nabucco project designed to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe bypassing Russia, an Iranian oil official said.
The Nabucco project is intended to pump 20-30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Central Asia, under the Caspian Sea, then through Azerbaijan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline is expected to begin in 2010 and be completed by 2013.
"The study of Iran's possibilities in this project has almost been concluded. The Iranian gas pipeline will become a part of the Nabucco project, to supply natural gas to Europe from Iran's largest Southern Pars gas field [in the Persian Gulf]," Deputy Oil Minister Reza Kasai Zadeh said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the board of the Nabucco Gas Pipeline Company decided on May 31 to raise the project's cost from 5 billion euros ($7.8 billion) to 7.9 billion euros ($12 billion) due to growth in oil prices and strong demand for steel for the implementation of large-scale international projects.
Some analysts say that without the support of Turkmenistan, a major natural gas producer in Central Asia, the Nabucco project is unrealistic.
Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and more recently Iraq, have been seen as possible suppliers for the project. Iraq's bid is backed by the United States.
Russia is skeptical over the Nabucco pipeline, saying that in the foreseeable future it will have insufficient gas supplies.
In what was widely seen as a major blow to the Nabucco project, Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan signed a deal in December to supply the Asian states' Caspian gas via Russia. Moscow also reached deals with Bulgaria and Serbia earlier this year on the South Stream pipeline to pump Central Asian gas to Europe.
Azerbaijan plans to produce 50 mln tons of oil in 2008.
RIA Novosti
3 June 2008
Azerbaijan plans to produce some 50 million metric tons (370 million bbl) of oil this year, an increase of 20% from 2007, the country's president Ilham Aliyev told an oil and gas conference in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku on Tuesday.
Oil production in Azerbaijan grew 14.1% year-on-year in January-April to 15.8 million metric tons (116.1 million bbl).
The president added that a further 20% increase in the country's oil output, to 60 million metric tons (444 million bbl), would follow in 2009.
Azerbaijan holds vast oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea, which it exports to neighboring Georgia, Turkey, and Europe through three pipelines - Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan via Georgia to Turkey, Baku-Novorossiisk, which links the Azeri capital with the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, and Baku-Supsa to Georgia.
Azerbaijan's oil exports stood at 17.2 million metric tons (126.4 million bbl) of oil in January-April 2008, up 4.7 million metric tons (34.5 million bbl), or 37.8% year-on-year, the country's State Customs Committee earlier said.
3 June 2008
Azerbaijan plans to produce some 50 million metric tons (370 million bbl) of oil this year, an increase of 20% from 2007, the country's president Ilham Aliyev told an oil and gas conference in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku on Tuesday.
Oil production in Azerbaijan grew 14.1% year-on-year in January-April to 15.8 million metric tons (116.1 million bbl).
The president added that a further 20% increase in the country's oil output, to 60 million metric tons (444 million bbl), would follow in 2009.
Azerbaijan holds vast oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea, which it exports to neighboring Georgia, Turkey, and Europe through three pipelines - Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan via Georgia to Turkey, Baku-Novorossiisk, which links the Azeri capital with the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, and Baku-Supsa to Georgia.
Azerbaijan's oil exports stood at 17.2 million metric tons (126.4 million bbl) of oil in January-April 2008, up 4.7 million metric tons (34.5 million bbl), or 37.8% year-on-year, the country's State Customs Committee earlier said.
Russian Navy ready to head for Somalia - Dygalo.
RIA Novosti
3 June 2008
If a decision is made, Russian naval ships are ready to head for the Somali coast where pirates recently seized a Dutch ship, an aide to the Russian Navy commander said Tuesday.
The cargo vessel the Amiya Scan, sailing under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda, was captured by Somali pirates on May 26 with four Russians and five Filipinos on board. Somali authorities sent military forces two days later to mount a rescue attempt. The pirates have threatened to kill the crew if any rescue attempt is made.
"If the country's leadership decides to send Russian military ships to the Somali coast, the navy will of course carry out this decision," Captain 1st Rank Igor Dygalo said, adding however that "the use of force in this case would be an extreme measure."
Following reports that the Somali government was ready to use force to rescue the ship's crew, Russia urged Somalia not to take any action that could put the lives of the crew in danger.
Dygalo reiterated on Tuesday that any action against the pirates should not put the lives of the captives in danger. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Monday permitting countries to enter Somali territorial waters to combat "acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea."
Ahmed Said Ownur, fisheries and water resources minister of Puntland, a breakaway region in the northeast of the African state, confirmed last week that a mission had been launched to release the ship by force and a request had been made to the ship's owner, Reider Shipping, not to pay a ransom.
Puntland security forces were involved in the rescue of a hijacked vessel from the United Arab Emirates last month, killing at least one pirate. Seven pirates were arrested.
The waters off the east African nation are considered among the most dangerous in the world. According to the United Nations, 26 pirate attacks on civilian ships have occurred in the area since the start of this year.
On April 4, after a French yacht and its 30 crew were seized by pirates in Somali waters, the French government conducted a military operation there resulting in the arrest of six pirates.
Somalia's transitional government was established with UN assistance in 2004, but it has failed to establish control over the territory following a 17-year civil war. Many regions are under the control of bandits or extremist groups.
3 June 2008
If a decision is made, Russian naval ships are ready to head for the Somali coast where pirates recently seized a Dutch ship, an aide to the Russian Navy commander said Tuesday.
The cargo vessel the Amiya Scan, sailing under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda, was captured by Somali pirates on May 26 with four Russians and five Filipinos on board. Somali authorities sent military forces two days later to mount a rescue attempt. The pirates have threatened to kill the crew if any rescue attempt is made.
"If the country's leadership decides to send Russian military ships to the Somali coast, the navy will of course carry out this decision," Captain 1st Rank Igor Dygalo said, adding however that "the use of force in this case would be an extreme measure."
Following reports that the Somali government was ready to use force to rescue the ship's crew, Russia urged Somalia not to take any action that could put the lives of the crew in danger.
Dygalo reiterated on Tuesday that any action against the pirates should not put the lives of the captives in danger. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Monday permitting countries to enter Somali territorial waters to combat "acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea."
Ahmed Said Ownur, fisheries and water resources minister of Puntland, a breakaway region in the northeast of the African state, confirmed last week that a mission had been launched to release the ship by force and a request had been made to the ship's owner, Reider Shipping, not to pay a ransom.
Puntland security forces were involved in the rescue of a hijacked vessel from the United Arab Emirates last month, killing at least one pirate. Seven pirates were arrested.
The waters off the east African nation are considered among the most dangerous in the world. According to the United Nations, 26 pirate attacks on civilian ships have occurred in the area since the start of this year.
On April 4, after a French yacht and its 30 crew were seized by pirates in Somali waters, the French government conducted a military operation there resulting in the arrest of six pirates.
Somalia's transitional government was established with UN assistance in 2004, but it has failed to establish control over the territory following a 17-year civil war. Many regions are under the control of bandits or extremist groups.
BURUNDI REFUTES UN ALLEGATIONS OVER TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE ARRANGEMENT.
Hirondelle News Agency
2 June 2008
A Burundian government spokesman said that accusations in the United Nations report over country’s violation on creation of transition mechanisms are unclear.
“This report talks about a violation but it is not clear. I think that it is a river which does not flow smoothly”, Presidential Spokesman, Leonida Hatungimana,told a press conference over the weekend in response to a report of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon released last week.
Mr Ban stressed that “no progress had been accomplished over the creation of the mechanisms of transitional justice”.
He also criticized the government for demanding an excessively big role within the tripartite management committee on the consultations for the establishment of transitional justice.
The spokesperson added that contact was going to be made with the United Nations to clear the air.
However, according to him, the government had already named two persons as national directors to support the national consultations.
Envisaged by an agreement signed between the UN and the Burundian government last November, the consultation for the creation of the mechanisms of transitional justice (Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Court) still have not started whereas they were planned to have completed their work by March 2008.
2 June 2008
A Burundian government spokesman said that accusations in the United Nations report over country’s violation on creation of transition mechanisms are unclear.
“This report talks about a violation but it is not clear. I think that it is a river which does not flow smoothly”, Presidential Spokesman, Leonida Hatungimana,told a press conference over the weekend in response to a report of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon released last week.
Mr Ban stressed that “no progress had been accomplished over the creation of the mechanisms of transitional justice”.
He also criticized the government for demanding an excessively big role within the tripartite management committee on the consultations for the establishment of transitional justice.
The spokesperson added that contact was going to be made with the United Nations to clear the air.
However, according to him, the government had already named two persons as national directors to support the national consultations.
Envisaged by an agreement signed between the UN and the Burundian government last November, the consultation for the creation of the mechanisms of transitional justice (Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Court) still have not started whereas they were planned to have completed their work by March 2008.
OPENING OF THE FIRST TRIAL OF THE MASSACRES IN MUYINGA IN JULY 2006.
Hirondelle News Agency
2 June 2008
Twenty four Burundian soldiers appeared Monday before military auditors in the first trial on the massacres in Muyinga, where more than thirty people were killed in July 2006, reports Hirondelle Agency.
The victims accused of belonging to Palipehutu-FNL, which has just signed an accord with the government, were killed and thrown in the Ruvubu River as they were detained in the “Mukoni” military camp in northern Burundi. Several communal administrators and the head of the intelligence services in Muyinga took part in their arrest.
Of the 24 soldiers indicted, two have been discharged. Only 14 were present, six of them being prisoners. The trial is being held in the same military camp that detained the victims before they were murdered.
From the beginning of the hearing, the court raised an exception in connection with the two discharged soldiers, who should theoretically be tried by a civilian court. The decision of the chamber, presided by Colonel Leonidas Nkurunziza, will be rendered Tuesday. According to one of the counsels for the plaintiffs, Nsabimana Lambert, both discharged soldiers should be tried by civilian courts in application of the Burundian Constitution which says that “no civilian can be tried before a military court”.
The main defendant seems to have fled abroad. Colonel Vital Bangirimana, commander of the 4th Military region at the time of the facts, is prosecuted for murder and kidnapping. An international arrest warrant has been issued against him and the legal assistant informed the court that it does not have any news about him. His co-indictees are accused of various violations: murder as a co-author, complicity to murder and failure in public solidarity.
Also Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, President of the Association for the Promotion of Human Rights and Prisoners (APRODH), who quickly denounced these massacres, qualified this trial as a “joke”. "Why start this trial after the escape of the alleged main figure?”.
2 June 2008
Twenty four Burundian soldiers appeared Monday before military auditors in the first trial on the massacres in Muyinga, where more than thirty people were killed in July 2006, reports Hirondelle Agency.
The victims accused of belonging to Palipehutu-FNL, which has just signed an accord with the government, were killed and thrown in the Ruvubu River as they were detained in the “Mukoni” military camp in northern Burundi. Several communal administrators and the head of the intelligence services in Muyinga took part in their arrest.
Of the 24 soldiers indicted, two have been discharged. Only 14 were present, six of them being prisoners. The trial is being held in the same military camp that detained the victims before they were murdered.
From the beginning of the hearing, the court raised an exception in connection with the two discharged soldiers, who should theoretically be tried by a civilian court. The decision of the chamber, presided by Colonel Leonidas Nkurunziza, will be rendered Tuesday. According to one of the counsels for the plaintiffs, Nsabimana Lambert, both discharged soldiers should be tried by civilian courts in application of the Burundian Constitution which says that “no civilian can be tried before a military court”.
The main defendant seems to have fled abroad. Colonel Vital Bangirimana, commander of the 4th Military region at the time of the facts, is prosecuted for murder and kidnapping. An international arrest warrant has been issued against him and the legal assistant informed the court that it does not have any news about him. His co-indictees are accused of various violations: murder as a co-author, complicity to murder and failure in public solidarity.
Also Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, President of the Association for the Promotion of Human Rights and Prisoners (APRODH), who quickly denounced these massacres, qualified this trial as a “joke”. "Why start this trial after the escape of the alleged main figure?”.
Burundi massacre trial hits snag.
IOL News
3 June 2008
Burundi's military court on Tuesday said it could not try suspects accused of massacring civilians in 2006 on the grounds that two of them have since quit the army, a judicial source said.
"The military tribunal has just declared itself incompetent to handle this case because of two of the suspects have since returned to civilian life," defence lawyer Deo Ndikumana said.
"The court subsequently asked the military prosecutor to transfer the case to a civilian court," he said.
In July 2006, civilians accused of collaborating with the rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) were detained in the eastern Burundian military camp of Mukoni. Thirty-one were killed.
"We are not satisfied. The court should have taken into account the fact that these men were soldiers at the time... and we reserve the right to appeal this decision," Ndikumana said.
Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, who chairs the Association for the protection of detainees and human rights (APRODEH) saw the move as a trick to drag out the proceedings on a highly sensitive case.
Burundi is trying to foster a fragile reconciliation process following a civil war that has killed 300 000 people in 15 years.
In late May, the FNL - Burundi's last active rebel group - and the government signed a cessation of hostilities following fresh clashes, with both signs promising the war was definitively over.
3 June 2008
Burundi's military court on Tuesday said it could not try suspects accused of massacring civilians in 2006 on the grounds that two of them have since quit the army, a judicial source said.
"The military tribunal has just declared itself incompetent to handle this case because of two of the suspects have since returned to civilian life," defence lawyer Deo Ndikumana said.
"The court subsequently asked the military prosecutor to transfer the case to a civilian court," he said.
In July 2006, civilians accused of collaborating with the rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) were detained in the eastern Burundian military camp of Mukoni. Thirty-one were killed.
"We are not satisfied. The court should have taken into account the fact that these men were soldiers at the time... and we reserve the right to appeal this decision," Ndikumana said.
Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, who chairs the Association for the protection of detainees and human rights (APRODEH) saw the move as a trick to drag out the proceedings on a highly sensitive case.
Burundi is trying to foster a fragile reconciliation process following a civil war that has killed 300 000 people in 15 years.
In late May, the FNL - Burundi's last active rebel group - and the government signed a cessation of hostilities following fresh clashes, with both signs promising the war was definitively over.
Burundi massacre trial hits snag.
IOL News
3 June 2008
Burundi's military court on Tuesday said it could not try suspects accused of massacring civilians in 2006 on the grounds that two of them have since quit the army, a judicial source said.
"The military tribunal has just declared itself incompetent to handle this case because of two of the suspects have since returned to civilian life," defence lawyer Deo Ndikumana said.
"The court subsequently asked the military prosecutor to transfer the case to a civilian court," he said.
In July 2006, civilians accused of collaborating with the rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) were detained in the eastern Burundian military camp of Mukoni. Thirty-one were killed.
"We are not satisfied. The court should have taken into account the fact that these men were soldiers at the time... and we reserve the right to appeal this decision," Ndikumana said.
Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, who chairs the Association for the protection of detainees and human rights (APRODEH) saw the move as a trick to drag out the proceedings on a highly sensitive case.
Burundi is trying to foster a fragile reconciliation process following a civil war that has killed 300 000 people in 15 years.
In late May, the FNL - Burundi's last active rebel group - and the government signed a cessation of hostilities following fresh clashes, with both signs promising the war was definitively over.
3 June 2008
Burundi's military court on Tuesday said it could not try suspects accused of massacring civilians in 2006 on the grounds that two of them have since quit the army, a judicial source said.
"The military tribunal has just declared itself incompetent to handle this case because of two of the suspects have since returned to civilian life," defence lawyer Deo Ndikumana said.
"The court subsequently asked the military prosecutor to transfer the case to a civilian court," he said.
In July 2006, civilians accused of collaborating with the rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) were detained in the eastern Burundian military camp of Mukoni. Thirty-one were killed.
"We are not satisfied. The court should have taken into account the fact that these men were soldiers at the time... and we reserve the right to appeal this decision," Ndikumana said.
Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, who chairs the Association for the protection of detainees and human rights (APRODEH) saw the move as a trick to drag out the proceedings on a highly sensitive case.
Burundi is trying to foster a fragile reconciliation process following a civil war that has killed 300 000 people in 15 years.
In late May, the FNL - Burundi's last active rebel group - and the government signed a cessation of hostilities following fresh clashes, with both signs promising the war was definitively over.
Critics Concerned About U.S. Military Command in Africa.
Inter Press Service
3 June 2008
In just a few months, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) -- Washington's latest military oversight structure for the continent -- is expected to be fully operational.
Streamlining the image of the command is proving every bit as demanding as putting personnel and equipment in place, however. Controversy has surrounded AFRICOM on both sides of the Atlantic since the start of the initiative, and appears unlikely to fade any time soon.
The fledgling command, set to be up and running by October, was announced by the Department of Defense in February 2007 as a new body to co-ordinate U.S. military and security interests on the continent; previously, these interests were managed by three regional commands. AFRICOM has been operating under the United States European Command since October 2007, for the transition.
What officials portrayed as a simple organisational realignment, many African and U.S. observers saw as the start of an increased U.S. military presence in Africa to secure resources, check China's rising power and bolster counter-terrorism efforts.
The United States imported nearly 21 percent of its petroleum from Africa in 2007 -- more than came from the Persian Gulf -- according to data from the Energy Information Administration, the United States' official source of energy statistics. The National Intelligence Council, a government think tank, estimates that figure will rise to 25 percent by 2015.
"There's a steady flow of African countries that are exploring (for) oil" that creates a "pull factor towards Africa and push factor away from the Middle East," said Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), noting technological advances in offshore drilling and the discovery of new oil deposits in certain countries. These include Ghana, Mauritania and Chad.
FPIF is a liberal think tank headquartered in Washington that has been vocal in its opposition to the command.
China is now the world's second largest consumer of oil after the United States, and has aggressively expanded its presence in Africa to secure natural resources. In 2007 trade between China and Africa was valued at 73 billion dollars -- up substantially from two billion dollars in 1999 -- and is expected to hit 100 billion dollars by 2010, said Khalid Malik, the United Nations resident co-ordinator for China. His comments were made during a speech delivered in April at the China-Africa Business Forum, held in Tanzania.
Vince Crawley, the head of public affairs for AFRICOM, acknowledged that oil is a motivating factor in creating the command, but said the potential for a direct role for the U.S. military in protecting oil supplies is greatly exaggerated. So too, he said, is the idea that the command would counter the efforts of China.
"I don't wake up thinking about how to counter China," Crawley observed. "If there are interests that are consistent, like good governance or security, there's no reason we (the United States and China) can't work together."
The establishment of AFRICOM is a more ominous development for other observers, such as those under the umbrella of 'Resist AFRICOM', a coalition against the command formed by U.S.- and Africa-based organisations. AFRICOM is described on the coalition's website as " a piece of a broader shift in U.S. foreign policy -- a foreign policy that places an emphasis on defense above diplomacy."
The command has vigorously rejected such assertions. "What's happened with AFRICOM is it put the spotlight on the U.S. military in Africa, but it (the military) was there already. It's fairly boring and bureaucratic when you look at it," said Crawley.
U.S. military officials initially indicated that AFRICOM would combine military assistance with humanitarian efforts, a novel role for a U.S. military command.
However, this development left certain analysts more troubled than reassured.
Beth Tuckey, associate director of Program Development and Policy at the Africa Faith and Justice Network, a Washington-based advocacy group, has concerns about " the blending of military and civilian agencies and the overreach of the Department of Defense" that she believes could be brought about by AFRICOM.
Woods, in turn, sees AFRICOM as "putting a velvet glove of humanitarian aid over the fist of the military."
To others, these concerns are misplaced. "The Pentagon (the headquarters of the defense department) is not trying to take over other agencies. It's trying to learn from mistakes and trying to use AFRICOM as a test for better integration," said Mauro De Lorenzo of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-minded think tank in Washington.
Still, the U.S. government has since minimised the humanitarian role the command will play, emphasising AFRICOM's involvement in military co-operation and downplaying associations with aid work.
Ostensibly, the U.S. military will now focus on training African security forces to deal with terrorism and other concerns. This could, for example, enable the African Union's (AU) African Standby Force (ASF) to intervene more effectively in conflicts, or help Nigerian security forces prevent militants from disrupting oil flow in the troubled Niger Delta.
But certain analysts have not ruled out the possibility of AFRICOM taking a more active part in the affairs of African countries.
"Sending in the Marines to ensure oil supply is the next logical step," said Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project in Washington -- and the author of numerous articles on U.S. security policy and African security issues.
"The U.S. would very much prefer for Nigeria and other countries to handle this on their own, just like humanitarian disasters, but there's an understanding that that may not work."
Few welcome mats
The possibility of an AFRICOM headquarters on the continent has also proved controversial, even though, said Crawley, "Neither the U.S. Department of Defense nor U.S. Africa Command have asked any African nation to host any element of the command."
African countries have apparently understood the headquarters to involve putting more U.S. troops on the ground, this despite AFRICOM envisaging the creation of an administrative centre.
Even traditional U.S. allies like Ghana and Nigeria rejected hosting the headquarters, and several African states have publicly renounced the U.S. military presence in Africa, although they continued to collaborate with Washington on security programmes.
Shehu Barde, a spokesman for the Nigerian embassy in Washington, said Abuja would prefer that the U.S. instead support regional military co-operation initiatives, like the AU's ASF.
"Nigeria is not among the countries that have called for the physical presence of AFRICOM on its territory, but would certainly wish that going forward whatever decision prevails on the subject reflects the consensus of the African countries," he noted.
For its part, the Southern African Development Community indicated in an August 2007 statement that "it is better if the United States were involved with Africa from a distance rather than be present on the continent."
Some commentators were even more direct. "U.S. military involvement in Africa has historically proven inimical to the interests of the African people," said Ezekiel Pajibo, director of the Center for Democratic Empowerment (CEDE), citing U.S. support for Liberian dictator Samuel Doe in the 1980s and 1990s and recent U.S. backing of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. "It would be a disaster for any African country to host AFRICOM."
CEDE is a non-governmental organisation that operates from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
These views notwithstanding, Liberia said it would be willing to host the headquarters, an offer Washington never officially responded to but is believed to have declined because of widespread regional opposition to hosting AFRICOM, especially from Nigeria.
"The prevailing mood on the continent is to keep AFRICOM out," said Wafula Okumu, head of the African Security Analysis Programme at the Institute for Security Studies, based in the South African capital -- Tshwane. "Due to this overwhelming opposition, the U.S. has decided to host AFRICOM in Stuttgart for now."
Camp Lemonier -- a 1,500-person outpost in Djibouti that was established in 2003 -- remains the sole U.S. military base in Africa.
During his five-country tour of Africa in February, U.S. President George Bush found himself having to allay fears about U.S. military activities in Africa.
"I know there's rumours in Ghana, 'All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here'," he told journalists in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.
"That's baloney."
But then came a hint that AFRICOM may yet establish a centre on the continent: "That doesn't mean we won't develop some kind of office somewhere in Africa. We haven't made our minds up. This is a new concept."
3 June 2008
In just a few months, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) -- Washington's latest military oversight structure for the continent -- is expected to be fully operational.
Streamlining the image of the command is proving every bit as demanding as putting personnel and equipment in place, however. Controversy has surrounded AFRICOM on both sides of the Atlantic since the start of the initiative, and appears unlikely to fade any time soon.
The fledgling command, set to be up and running by October, was announced by the Department of Defense in February 2007 as a new body to co-ordinate U.S. military and security interests on the continent; previously, these interests were managed by three regional commands. AFRICOM has been operating under the United States European Command since October 2007, for the transition.
What officials portrayed as a simple organisational realignment, many African and U.S. observers saw as the start of an increased U.S. military presence in Africa to secure resources, check China's rising power and bolster counter-terrorism efforts.
The United States imported nearly 21 percent of its petroleum from Africa in 2007 -- more than came from the Persian Gulf -- according to data from the Energy Information Administration, the United States' official source of energy statistics. The National Intelligence Council, a government think tank, estimates that figure will rise to 25 percent by 2015.
"There's a steady flow of African countries that are exploring (for) oil" that creates a "pull factor towards Africa and push factor away from the Middle East," said Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), noting technological advances in offshore drilling and the discovery of new oil deposits in certain countries. These include Ghana, Mauritania and Chad.
FPIF is a liberal think tank headquartered in Washington that has been vocal in its opposition to the command.
China is now the world's second largest consumer of oil after the United States, and has aggressively expanded its presence in Africa to secure natural resources. In 2007 trade between China and Africa was valued at 73 billion dollars -- up substantially from two billion dollars in 1999 -- and is expected to hit 100 billion dollars by 2010, said Khalid Malik, the United Nations resident co-ordinator for China. His comments were made during a speech delivered in April at the China-Africa Business Forum, held in Tanzania.
Vince Crawley, the head of public affairs for AFRICOM, acknowledged that oil is a motivating factor in creating the command, but said the potential for a direct role for the U.S. military in protecting oil supplies is greatly exaggerated. So too, he said, is the idea that the command would counter the efforts of China.
"I don't wake up thinking about how to counter China," Crawley observed. "If there are interests that are consistent, like good governance or security, there's no reason we (the United States and China) can't work together."
The establishment of AFRICOM is a more ominous development for other observers, such as those under the umbrella of 'Resist AFRICOM', a coalition against the command formed by U.S.- and Africa-based organisations. AFRICOM is described on the coalition's website as " a piece of a broader shift in U.S. foreign policy -- a foreign policy that places an emphasis on defense above diplomacy."
The command has vigorously rejected such assertions. "What's happened with AFRICOM is it put the spotlight on the U.S. military in Africa, but it (the military) was there already. It's fairly boring and bureaucratic when you look at it," said Crawley.
U.S. military officials initially indicated that AFRICOM would combine military assistance with humanitarian efforts, a novel role for a U.S. military command.
However, this development left certain analysts more troubled than reassured.
Beth Tuckey, associate director of Program Development and Policy at the Africa Faith and Justice Network, a Washington-based advocacy group, has concerns about " the blending of military and civilian agencies and the overreach of the Department of Defense" that she believes could be brought about by AFRICOM.
Woods, in turn, sees AFRICOM as "putting a velvet glove of humanitarian aid over the fist of the military."
To others, these concerns are misplaced. "The Pentagon (the headquarters of the defense department) is not trying to take over other agencies. It's trying to learn from mistakes and trying to use AFRICOM as a test for better integration," said Mauro De Lorenzo of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-minded think tank in Washington.
Still, the U.S. government has since minimised the humanitarian role the command will play, emphasising AFRICOM's involvement in military co-operation and downplaying associations with aid work.
Ostensibly, the U.S. military will now focus on training African security forces to deal with terrorism and other concerns. This could, for example, enable the African Union's (AU) African Standby Force (ASF) to intervene more effectively in conflicts, or help Nigerian security forces prevent militants from disrupting oil flow in the troubled Niger Delta.
But certain analysts have not ruled out the possibility of AFRICOM taking a more active part in the affairs of African countries.
"Sending in the Marines to ensure oil supply is the next logical step," said Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project in Washington -- and the author of numerous articles on U.S. security policy and African security issues.
"The U.S. would very much prefer for Nigeria and other countries to handle this on their own, just like humanitarian disasters, but there's an understanding that that may not work."
Few welcome mats
The possibility of an AFRICOM headquarters on the continent has also proved controversial, even though, said Crawley, "Neither the U.S. Department of Defense nor U.S. Africa Command have asked any African nation to host any element of the command."
African countries have apparently understood the headquarters to involve putting more U.S. troops on the ground, this despite AFRICOM envisaging the creation of an administrative centre.
Even traditional U.S. allies like Ghana and Nigeria rejected hosting the headquarters, and several African states have publicly renounced the U.S. military presence in Africa, although they continued to collaborate with Washington on security programmes.
Shehu Barde, a spokesman for the Nigerian embassy in Washington, said Abuja would prefer that the U.S. instead support regional military co-operation initiatives, like the AU's ASF.
"Nigeria is not among the countries that have called for the physical presence of AFRICOM on its territory, but would certainly wish that going forward whatever decision prevails on the subject reflects the consensus of the African countries," he noted.
For its part, the Southern African Development Community indicated in an August 2007 statement that "it is better if the United States were involved with Africa from a distance rather than be present on the continent."
Some commentators were even more direct. "U.S. military involvement in Africa has historically proven inimical to the interests of the African people," said Ezekiel Pajibo, director of the Center for Democratic Empowerment (CEDE), citing U.S. support for Liberian dictator Samuel Doe in the 1980s and 1990s and recent U.S. backing of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. "It would be a disaster for any African country to host AFRICOM."
CEDE is a non-governmental organisation that operates from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
These views notwithstanding, Liberia said it would be willing to host the headquarters, an offer Washington never officially responded to but is believed to have declined because of widespread regional opposition to hosting AFRICOM, especially from Nigeria.
"The prevailing mood on the continent is to keep AFRICOM out," said Wafula Okumu, head of the African Security Analysis Programme at the Institute for Security Studies, based in the South African capital -- Tshwane. "Due to this overwhelming opposition, the U.S. has decided to host AFRICOM in Stuttgart for now."
Camp Lemonier -- a 1,500-person outpost in Djibouti that was established in 2003 -- remains the sole U.S. military base in Africa.
During his five-country tour of Africa in February, U.S. President George Bush found himself having to allay fears about U.S. military activities in Africa.
"I know there's rumours in Ghana, 'All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here'," he told journalists in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.
"That's baloney."
But then came a hint that AFRICOM may yet establish a centre on the continent: "That doesn't mean we won't develop some kind of office somewhere in Africa. We haven't made our minds up. This is a new concept."
Rwanda: The Untold Story.
Catholic World News
By Michael S. Rose
Oct. 17, 2001
Editor's Note: While I do not agree with all of the points in this article, there is crucial information contained herein.
Unspeakable horrors have plagued the tiny African country of Rwanda for better than a decade now. The effects of this conflict, to put it mildly, are profound and far-reaching. "We are the walking dead," says Baptiste Senzira*, a native Rwandan who has lived in the U.S. since 1990 and is now seeking political asylum here. "At best, we are the walking wounded." Baptiste left Rwanda to attend college in Washington on an academic scholarship. The day he left his home is the last time he saw any member of his family. All but his youngest sister, who is now 16, were slaughtered in the spasm of violence that ripped through the country in 1994. His sister, he is told, has been imprisoned for more than a year now.
Baptiste's story is similar to the many other Rwandan refugees who have made it to the United States in one way or another. "Everyone has lost family and friends--everyone," he emphasizes. In 1995 Baptiste moved to a small Midwestern city, where he has set up a temporary residence for refugee families. Since then, he has seen more than 50 refugees come through his house before finding a more permanent residence.
Although the brutality of the massacre in 1994 shocked the world community, Rwanda's situation may be one of the most misunderstood problems of the late 20th century. According to the refugees interviewed by this reporter, the Western media has consistently misrepresented or profoundly miscalculated the situation since the beginning of the conflict. Contrary to Western reportage, they say, Rwanda was a relatively peaceful country until 1990. Although ethnic tensions existed, Baptiste explains, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes lived together remarkably well under the dictatorship of President Juvenal Habyarimana. "There were problems, yes," he admits, but there was no indication of ethnic tension on a scale that would lead an observer to predict the diabolical acts that followed the president's assassination. On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana's plane was shot down near Kigali, Rwanda's capital city. In the roughly 3 months following the assassination, an estimated 1 million Rwandans--nearly one-seventh of the country's entire population--were slaughtered by guns, machetes, hammers, and spears.
Victor and Solange, Rwandans who are now living in the US with their four children, affirm the peacefulness of the ethnic co-existence that they knew before the terror broke out in 1994. Victor, a Hutu, married Solange, a Tutsi, without incident, and without objection from their family members. The Rwandan couple affirmed that, among the people who are not involved in the military forces of the country, there was little recognizable animosity between the two major tribes. The portrayal of the conflict in Rwanda as a "civil war" sparked simply by ethnic hatred, has visibly upset these refugees.
"Nothing can be further from the truth," says Antoni Nyandwi, a college professor teaching in the U.S. "There is a serious lack of understanding of what has transpired."
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The refugees all seem to agree: The real war in Rwanda--which was not a civil war, they emphasize--did not begin with the assassination of the president, as has been almost univerally reported in the West. The conflict actually began four years earlier, when 3,000 Rwandan Tutsi troops from the Ugandan army invaded their ancestral homeland under the banner of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The story of Rwanda from 1990 to 1994 is one of a bloody battle for power between the RPF--backed by the US and Britain--and the country's Hutu government, led by Habyarimana and backed by France and Belgium. Although both sides were responsible for bloodshed, Rwandan refugees in the US say the massacres of 1994 would never have erupted were it not for the RPF's invasion in 1990, which was carried out under the false pretense of bringing democracy to the country.
To understand the RPF invasion, one must recall the circumstances underlying Rwanda's revolution in 1959. For centuries the minority Tutsi tribe (which accounts for about 15 percent of Rwanda's population) had dominated the country, with a monarchy rule that effectively enslaved the majority Hutus. Following the World War I the Germans were forced to give Rwanda over to the Belgians, who sent missionaries to Rwanda. In the decades that followed, the country became largely Catholic; it now boasts the highest proportion of Catholic population in any African country.
The Belgian missionaries recognized that the Tutsi ruling class had failed to protect Hutu human rights; consequently, the missionary clergy helped the Hutus to gain equal representation and eventually to overthrow the minority-led monarchy. In November of 1959 the country's first democratic elections were held, supervised by the United Nations, and the ousted Tutsi leaders fled for Uganda, Burundi, and other neighboring countries.
Today, the RPF is mainly composed of Tutsis who are children or grandchildren of those refugees who had flocked to Uganda between 1959 and 1962. The men who now control Rwanda's government attended Ugandan schools and learned to speak English as a second language (unlike the Rwandans, who were taught French). During the 1980s the RPF soldiers trained with the Ugandan army and helped them wage a civil war in 1986. The current RPF leader and president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, was formerly Chief of Army Intelligence in the Ugandan army and received advanced weapons training at the US Army Command and Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
A FOREIGN INVASION
Victor says that it is fiction to consider the 1990-94 conflict, started by Ugandan soldiers, a "civil war." The historical record proves otherwise, he argues: Rwanda was invaded by a foreign aggressor, the Ugandan Tutsis.
This invasion, carefully planned and organized, was followed by a four-year war which ended with the military victory of the RPF in July 1994. At the time when the RPF took power, the Western view of Rwanda was completely dominated by the recent mass killings, and little attention was paid to the plans of the rebel leadership. Subsequently, some facts have emerged about the RPF strategy, but these facts have been largely ignored in the Western media.
Christophe Hakizabera was one of the original RPF members. After a struggle with the group's leadership, however, he fled the country in 1995, fearing for his life. He told investigators from the UN that as early as 1991, RPF leaders had decided to attack the Hutu regime in Kigali "on all fronts: military, political, and media." Hakizabera also revealed that RPF leaders decided:
… to make false accusations against the Church, because it preaches equality of all men and helps to educate the people; to eliminate Hutu priests, and then replace them with Tutsi priests; to terrorize missionaries and force them to leave the country; to kill the older missionaries who know the history of Rwanda, because they are held responsible for what happened in 1959, when the Tutsis lost power to the Hutus.
Baptiste Senzira describes RPF soldiers as "hard-core monarchists," whose goal was nothing short of a revival of the old Tutsi monarchy. He argues that most Rwandans had no idea how avidly the RPF thirsted for absolute power. The rebels arrived in the country at a time when there was a considerable push for democratization. Consequently, some Rwandans supported the RPF drive to diminish the power of the Habyarimana government. Activists working toward democracy in Rwanda made alliances with the Ugandans, not realizing that the RPF had no real interest in building democratic institutions.
The RPF claimed to be returning to Rwanda to "liberate" the country from the Habyarimana dictatorship. But many Rwandans did not greet the RPF troops as liberators. On the contrary, thousands of Rwandans fled in advance of the RPF arrival, and become displaced persons in their own country. Thus the refugee crisis that still troubles Rwanda began with the RPF invasion. And the presence of foreign troops divided the country into two factions: those who supported the RPF and those who supported Habyarimana's government.
RWANDA FAILED BY THE WEST
Under mounting pressure from the West, the Habyarimana government reluctantly agreed to peace terms with the RPF leadership, and signed the Arusha Accords in August 1993. By doing so, Habyarimana opened up his government to include a recognized opposition, allowing Tutsi participation. The UN-supervised peace accords were drafted to allow for shared power between the Hutu and the Tutsis--which, in practice, meant sharing between the RPF and the Habyarimana government. The two armies that had fought against one another for three years were now supposed to be fused together under joint command. The RPF was to contribute 40 percent of the country's new military force, and play an essential role in the new national government.
When UN troops arrived in December of 1993 to supervise the implementation of the accords, one of their first actions was to escort an RPF battalion to UN headquarters in the heart of Kigali. By this time, Rwandan civilian society was thoroughly polarized between the government and RPF supporters, but in the interest of peace, Habyarimana allowed 600 RPF soldiers to reside at the National Assembly building; these soldiers established themselves in Kigali under the pretext of "protecting" the Ugandan Tutsis who were returning to settle in the Rwandan capital.
For the most part President Habyarimana was willing to abide by the terms of the Acusha Accords, reports Baptiste Senzira, "but the RPF wanted nothing less than absolute control of the country." The RPF, he insists, merely acted as if they would cooperate in the system of shared powers stipulated by the UN-supervised treaty. But he points out that the RPF surely must have known that if popular democratic elections were held, they would never be elected.
There were also widespread reports that the RPF was surreptitiously violating the terms of the agreement. Although the official count of RPF soldiers stationed in the capital city was set at 600, Victor says that Ugandan military men dressed in civilian clothes kept coming into Kigali. The RPF were also smuggling in arms and other supplies, concealed in shipments of firewood, he claims.
These charges, suggest the rising tension between the supporters of the two political blocs. That tension came to a head with the assassination of Habyarimana. The death of the president is commonly regarded as the event which precipitated the mass murders of 1994. Habyarimana was shot down along with Burundi's Hutu president Cyprien Ntaryamira while their plane was preparing to land at the Kigali airport--which was protected at that time by UN troops.
With one rocket, the Habyarimana government was virtually wiped out. (Several other important Hutu officials were also aboard.) Although the Western media speculated that "extremist Hutus" were responsible, Victor reports that most Rwandans felt sure the RPF were responsible for the attack: "They had already made two failed assassination attempts on the president," he reasons. "They were the only ones who had anything to gain by the attack."
PANDEMONIUM
Most reports on Rwanda, even to this day, state that the plane crash remains "unexplained." What these reports consistently fail to acknowledge is that the civil pandemonium of 1994 would never have taken place had the RPF not launched its invasion from Uganda and sought to install an undemocratic minority government.
And pandemonium did ensue, almost immediately. The previous four years of unrest had already resulted in a state of lawlessness. Bloodshed now became commonplace. Victor and Solange, who were living just two blocks from the RPF-occupied parliament building in Kigali at the time of the missile attack, were eyewitnesses to the outbreak of violence that would last for months to come.
Victor was prepared to go into work at the airport, where he was employed as a mechanic. "The RPF were slaughtering people in the streets," he recalls, describing in detail the mayhem he witnessed. The rebels had been living in the neighborhood for several months and had come to know who opposed them, he explains. "These were the first targeted for slaughter."
The fighting was initially between RPF soldiers and government soldiers, but later involved civilians in the area. Victor and Solange, together with other refuges, stress that the ethnic animosity that divided the country was not a serious problem within the common civilian population; it began at the military level. "It was a battle for power," Baptiste explains--"RPF power against government power." Although UN troops were present at the outbreak of violence, they did nothing. Claiming that they had no mandate to intervene, they withdrew from Rwanda on the very day that the massacres began.
Victor, too, fled with his family, afraid that the RPF would kill them all. "We left everything we had behind that day, even our car," he says, explaining that if they had driven away they would probably have been stopped at roadblocks and shot. Instead, they walked five miles before taking refuge at a relative's home in the countryside. Two months later they were refugees in Zaire (now Congo).
"The refugee camp was awful," Solange recalls with visible disgust. Most refugees were living in makeshift huts in very poor sanitary conditions and with little food. "God was with us," say as they explain how, with the assistance of a friend, they were able to leave for Zimbabwe, and later for the US. They left all their relatives behind. Most of them were killed in RPF raids on refugee camps.
When the rebel soldiers entered the camps, they report, they slaughtered everyone, except for the few who escaped into the dense rain forests. Solange explains that two of her sisters were among those who were able to flee. They had no clothes and no food. For the next six months they lived on snails and roots they could dig up to eat. They walked more than 800 miles before they were discovered by the Red Cross in central Zaire. Her sisters are now in Zambia and may be reunited with Solange later this year.
During the years before the assassination of President Habyarimana, the Hutu military trained the young men of Rwanda to defend their families and formed civil defense militas. Consequently, by the time the president's plane was shot down, many were armed with machetes and spears, and primed to defend their country from the invading RPF. The threat of attack by the RPF, they had been told, was imminent. Refugees explain that the young men were primed for a fight, and when they received word that the president had been killed, their fury was unleashed and a general slaughter ensued.
One commonly held thesis in Rwanda, says Baptiste, is that the RPF leaders knew that if they shot down Habyarimana's plane, the Hutus would retaliate against the Tutsis. But although they would later be portrayed as defenders of the Rwandan Tutsis, Baptiste believes that the Tutsi leaders of the RPF, most of them born and bred in Uganda, had no compunctions about unleashing the Hutu violence against their ethnic Tutsi brothers. He explains:
"It was all a part of their plan to assume total control of Rwanda and beyond. They acted with total disregard to the common Tutsis who they knew would be killed."
Once the slaughter began, the RPF were in a position to appear as liberators who would restore peace to the country. And indeed this is how the Western media reported the situation--much to the consternation of Rwandans in the diaspora, who say that what had actually transpired was a bloody coup d'etat.
Since the horrendous violence of 1994, the RPF has consistently repeated that the Hutus were engaged in a "planned, orchestrated genocide" to rid the country of its entire Tutsi population--approximately 15 percent of the people of Rwanda. The refugees--both Hutus and Tutsis alike--deny the existence of any such heinous plan.
Such a genocidal program would have been impossible, observes Baptiste, because prior to 1994 the Hutus and Tutsis got along quite well, and communicated with each other constantly. Intermarriage was common, and if the Hutus had planned a genocide against the Tutsis, everyone would soon have known about it. "The country is too small," he adds, "for something of that magnitude to go undetected." Furthermore, the idea that the Habyarimana-led government could quietly plan the systematic execution of an entire tribe--at a time when that same government could not even organize the sale of coffee beans--seems a bit absurd.
No one denies that a massacre took place, but while government militia massacred civilians in terrible circumstances, this was not a premeditated genocide of one tribe by another. In fact, on closer examination, it appears that the killings were motivated more by the victims' military allegiances (both real or suspected) than by their ethnic identities. Those who were targeted by the government militia were often Tutsis (and sometimes Hutus) who were suspected of supporting the RPF invasion. Likewise, those targeted by the RPF were often suspected of opposing the invasion. Both sides were guilty of bloodshed.
Nevertheless, the RPF's claim to credibility with the world community is the claim that the Hutus were executing a pre-arranged genocidal plan. Consequently, the world's focus on the genocide has both classified an entire ethnic community as criminal and obscured the real causes of the Rwandan tragedy.
ANOTHER KIND OF TERROR
The current government, under the leadership of the guerilla warrior Paul Kagame, constantly displaying evidence of the 1994 massacres. In interviews with the influential Western media Kagame has said, "We need to preserve the remains of the genocide so that people will not forget. It is fair to those who died and to those who remain." Kagame's Tutsi-dominated government in Rwanda currently is disinterring hundreds of thousands of bodies from mass graves around the country and laying them out in piles for the public to see and remember.
In an effort to implicate the Church in the alleged plans for genocide, Kagame decided to confiscate ten Catholic church buildings and convert them into memorials for the 1994 victims. After a strong protest from Church officials, a compromise was reached: the buildings could continue to function as churches, but signs would be erected to memorialize those killed in the slaughter. The remains of those killed would be buried in church crypts.
Other public places, such as schools, are also being turned into "genocide memorials" for Westerners to tour. A school in Gikongoro in southern Rwanda, for instance, has thousands of slain bodies laid out in its former classrooms.
Today, the official obsession with the need to punish those guilty of the "genocide" has resulted in a country that is still polarized, and still gripped by fear. The Hutus who carried out the killings of 1994 were responding to foreign aggression--launched by Ugandan troops wearing Ugandan uniforms, carrying Ugandan arms, and riding in Ugandan army trucks. And while those who committed atrocities should be held accountable, the RPF has replaced the search for real justice with a one-sided zest for punishment.
Many of those who have been arrested on genocide charges in Rwanda in recent years have been implicated on the word of one or two accusers. In Rwanda today, "if you don't like your neighbor, or would like his land, the thing to do is accuse him of involvement in the genocide," says one refugee. The fate awaiting those who are accused is grim. Even if they escape summary execution, they are thrown into overcrowded jails, in which people are almost literally rotting to death for want of space.
Amnesty International reported in 1995 that in Gitarama Prison nearly 7,000 Rwandans, including more than 100 children accused of genocide, were being held in a building that allows adequate space for only 600. Sylvester Niyigena, another refugee now living in the US with his wife and one of his four sons (two were killed in Rwanda, one escaped to Belgium), laments the inhuman prison conditions. He reports that in one of the Rwandan prisons, the inmates--most of them innocent civilians, he believes--are sometimes made to stand in water up to their ankles or knees for days at a time. The swelling of their legs that results is both painful and incapacitating. Justice in Rwanda today under the RPF regime means revenge, the refugees charge. "Rwanda is now a country run by criminals," Baptiste laments.
THE KILLING CONTINUES
However, what few in the West know, say refugees, is that the RPF itself has been engaged in massive and systematic killing of civilians, out of sight of the cameras and foreign observers. There is substantial evidence that the RPF has massacred tens of thousands of unarmed persons. While most of the killing took place during 1994, it has continued on a smaller scale.
The refusal of the West to see the RPF government for what it is--a violent military dictatorship--is the product of a severe form of "political correctness," which the RPF hopes to fully exploit by continuing to play the genocide card, to hide its own past and current crimes. One of the most unhappy consequences of the focus on the genocide is that continuing human-rights abuses by the RPF are now being tolerated, and even justified, by Western human-rights groups and journalists. Killings such as the RPF massacre of 13 priests and two bishops in June of 1994, are presented to the international community as understandable acts of revenge.
When asked what drives the RPF, Baptiste says he believes they want to even up the numbers of Hutus and Tutsis in the country. "And to do that you need to kill a lot of Hutus." That is what continues to happen each month in Rwanda, he says. "It is an untold story."
The RPF, say refugees, is known to call meetings where political officials distribute food to the people. Once a large number of people have gathered, militiamen surround the place and toss in grenades. After the 1994 genocide, wherever the RPF militias went, the pattern was the same: meetings, killings, then burning of the bodies and burial. They were killing innocent people, and--the refugees now insist--they continue to do so to this day. "The kind of slaughters that keep happening every few months seem like indiscriminate killings," Baptiste comments. "Most have no real rhyme of reason, except to kill."
LONELY VOICES
One Rwandan bishop last year called attention to human-rights abuses perpetrated by the RPF. He was virtually ignored by the West--except for the Vatican. Bishop Kizito Bahujimihigo of Ruhengeri accused the government of putting ethnic Hutu families in concentration camps, claiming that it is "for their own protection." The bishop asked, "People are turned out of their homes to rot in a makeshift hut, and this is called progress?" He said the Kigali government has decided to confine Hutu families in "protected sites," to save them from imaginary attacks from anti-government groups. These sites, he said, are little short of concentration camps, in which to keep control of Rwanda's Hutu ethnic majority.
The refugees describe a similar situation: In some cases helicopters have destroyed whole towns and villages. The villagers were rounded up by the RPF, told that they would no longer be living in their own houses, and sent to a larger city to build new houses. Many families could not build, however, because they had neither the resources nor the manpower to do so. So many men have been killed during the past decade that most families are now fatherless.
Baptiste believes that it may never be possible to reunite Rwanda after what has happened in the past ten years. This is a "deep tragedy," he says. Many people, he reports, have literally lost their sanity as a result of the mayhem. Baptiste can understand how people are driven to such extremes. "How can they go on living, how can they sit down to eat, how can they go to sleep at night, knowing that their family has been slaughtered?" he asks.
The key to establishing peace in his country, Baptiste asserts, is alerting the West to what has really transpired in the small African country. This is difficult to do, adds Jean-Marie, another Rwanda refugee, "because the US is participating in the terrorization of Rwanda." Baptiste explains that Madeleine Albright is a "staunch ally" of Uganda and that the US has long backed the Ugandans and the RPF, who are now looking to add the mineral-rich Congo to their growing political base.
When President Habyarimana was Rwanda's dictator, the military leader "basically preached peace for the country," says Baptiste. He favored allowing the minority Tutsis to have rights. "He helped and protected the minorities," Baptiste explains. "The country was truly on its way to unity. Now, all of that is destroyed."
Michael S. Rose is the editor of St. Catherine's Review, and the author of The Renovation Manipulation.
By Michael S. Rose
Oct. 17, 2001
Editor's Note: While I do not agree with all of the points in this article, there is crucial information contained herein.
Unspeakable horrors have plagued the tiny African country of Rwanda for better than a decade now. The effects of this conflict, to put it mildly, are profound and far-reaching. "We are the walking dead," says Baptiste Senzira*, a native Rwandan who has lived in the U.S. since 1990 and is now seeking political asylum here. "At best, we are the walking wounded." Baptiste left Rwanda to attend college in Washington on an academic scholarship. The day he left his home is the last time he saw any member of his family. All but his youngest sister, who is now 16, were slaughtered in the spasm of violence that ripped through the country in 1994. His sister, he is told, has been imprisoned for more than a year now.
Baptiste's story is similar to the many other Rwandan refugees who have made it to the United States in one way or another. "Everyone has lost family and friends--everyone," he emphasizes. In 1995 Baptiste moved to a small Midwestern city, where he has set up a temporary residence for refugee families. Since then, he has seen more than 50 refugees come through his house before finding a more permanent residence.
Although the brutality of the massacre in 1994 shocked the world community, Rwanda's situation may be one of the most misunderstood problems of the late 20th century. According to the refugees interviewed by this reporter, the Western media has consistently misrepresented or profoundly miscalculated the situation since the beginning of the conflict. Contrary to Western reportage, they say, Rwanda was a relatively peaceful country until 1990. Although ethnic tensions existed, Baptiste explains, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes lived together remarkably well under the dictatorship of President Juvenal Habyarimana. "There were problems, yes," he admits, but there was no indication of ethnic tension on a scale that would lead an observer to predict the diabolical acts that followed the president's assassination. On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana's plane was shot down near Kigali, Rwanda's capital city. In the roughly 3 months following the assassination, an estimated 1 million Rwandans--nearly one-seventh of the country's entire population--were slaughtered by guns, machetes, hammers, and spears.
Victor and Solange, Rwandans who are now living in the US with their four children, affirm the peacefulness of the ethnic co-existence that they knew before the terror broke out in 1994. Victor, a Hutu, married Solange, a Tutsi, without incident, and without objection from their family members. The Rwandan couple affirmed that, among the people who are not involved in the military forces of the country, there was little recognizable animosity between the two major tribes. The portrayal of the conflict in Rwanda as a "civil war" sparked simply by ethnic hatred, has visibly upset these refugees.
"Nothing can be further from the truth," says Antoni Nyandwi, a college professor teaching in the U.S. "There is a serious lack of understanding of what has transpired."
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The refugees all seem to agree: The real war in Rwanda--which was not a civil war, they emphasize--did not begin with the assassination of the president, as has been almost univerally reported in the West. The conflict actually began four years earlier, when 3,000 Rwandan Tutsi troops from the Ugandan army invaded their ancestral homeland under the banner of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The story of Rwanda from 1990 to 1994 is one of a bloody battle for power between the RPF--backed by the US and Britain--and the country's Hutu government, led by Habyarimana and backed by France and Belgium. Although both sides were responsible for bloodshed, Rwandan refugees in the US say the massacres of 1994 would never have erupted were it not for the RPF's invasion in 1990, which was carried out under the false pretense of bringing democracy to the country.
To understand the RPF invasion, one must recall the circumstances underlying Rwanda's revolution in 1959. For centuries the minority Tutsi tribe (which accounts for about 15 percent of Rwanda's population) had dominated the country, with a monarchy rule that effectively enslaved the majority Hutus. Following the World War I the Germans were forced to give Rwanda over to the Belgians, who sent missionaries to Rwanda. In the decades that followed, the country became largely Catholic; it now boasts the highest proportion of Catholic population in any African country.
The Belgian missionaries recognized that the Tutsi ruling class had failed to protect Hutu human rights; consequently, the missionary clergy helped the Hutus to gain equal representation and eventually to overthrow the minority-led monarchy. In November of 1959 the country's first democratic elections were held, supervised by the United Nations, and the ousted Tutsi leaders fled for Uganda, Burundi, and other neighboring countries.
Today, the RPF is mainly composed of Tutsis who are children or grandchildren of those refugees who had flocked to Uganda between 1959 and 1962. The men who now control Rwanda's government attended Ugandan schools and learned to speak English as a second language (unlike the Rwandans, who were taught French). During the 1980s the RPF soldiers trained with the Ugandan army and helped them wage a civil war in 1986. The current RPF leader and president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, was formerly Chief of Army Intelligence in the Ugandan army and received advanced weapons training at the US Army Command and Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
A FOREIGN INVASION
Victor says that it is fiction to consider the 1990-94 conflict, started by Ugandan soldiers, a "civil war." The historical record proves otherwise, he argues: Rwanda was invaded by a foreign aggressor, the Ugandan Tutsis.
This invasion, carefully planned and organized, was followed by a four-year war which ended with the military victory of the RPF in July 1994. At the time when the RPF took power, the Western view of Rwanda was completely dominated by the recent mass killings, and little attention was paid to the plans of the rebel leadership. Subsequently, some facts have emerged about the RPF strategy, but these facts have been largely ignored in the Western media.
Christophe Hakizabera was one of the original RPF members. After a struggle with the group's leadership, however, he fled the country in 1995, fearing for his life. He told investigators from the UN that as early as 1991, RPF leaders had decided to attack the Hutu regime in Kigali "on all fronts: military, political, and media." Hakizabera also revealed that RPF leaders decided:
… to make false accusations against the Church, because it preaches equality of all men and helps to educate the people; to eliminate Hutu priests, and then replace them with Tutsi priests; to terrorize missionaries and force them to leave the country; to kill the older missionaries who know the history of Rwanda, because they are held responsible for what happened in 1959, when the Tutsis lost power to the Hutus.
Baptiste Senzira describes RPF soldiers as "hard-core monarchists," whose goal was nothing short of a revival of the old Tutsi monarchy. He argues that most Rwandans had no idea how avidly the RPF thirsted for absolute power. The rebels arrived in the country at a time when there was a considerable push for democratization. Consequently, some Rwandans supported the RPF drive to diminish the power of the Habyarimana government. Activists working toward democracy in Rwanda made alliances with the Ugandans, not realizing that the RPF had no real interest in building democratic institutions.
The RPF claimed to be returning to Rwanda to "liberate" the country from the Habyarimana dictatorship. But many Rwandans did not greet the RPF troops as liberators. On the contrary, thousands of Rwandans fled in advance of the RPF arrival, and become displaced persons in their own country. Thus the refugee crisis that still troubles Rwanda began with the RPF invasion. And the presence of foreign troops divided the country into two factions: those who supported the RPF and those who supported Habyarimana's government.
RWANDA FAILED BY THE WEST
Under mounting pressure from the West, the Habyarimana government reluctantly agreed to peace terms with the RPF leadership, and signed the Arusha Accords in August 1993. By doing so, Habyarimana opened up his government to include a recognized opposition, allowing Tutsi participation. The UN-supervised peace accords were drafted to allow for shared power between the Hutu and the Tutsis--which, in practice, meant sharing between the RPF and the Habyarimana government. The two armies that had fought against one another for three years were now supposed to be fused together under joint command. The RPF was to contribute 40 percent of the country's new military force, and play an essential role in the new national government.
When UN troops arrived in December of 1993 to supervise the implementation of the accords, one of their first actions was to escort an RPF battalion to UN headquarters in the heart of Kigali. By this time, Rwandan civilian society was thoroughly polarized between the government and RPF supporters, but in the interest of peace, Habyarimana allowed 600 RPF soldiers to reside at the National Assembly building; these soldiers established themselves in Kigali under the pretext of "protecting" the Ugandan Tutsis who were returning to settle in the Rwandan capital.
For the most part President Habyarimana was willing to abide by the terms of the Acusha Accords, reports Baptiste Senzira, "but the RPF wanted nothing less than absolute control of the country." The RPF, he insists, merely acted as if they would cooperate in the system of shared powers stipulated by the UN-supervised treaty. But he points out that the RPF surely must have known that if popular democratic elections were held, they would never be elected.
There were also widespread reports that the RPF was surreptitiously violating the terms of the agreement. Although the official count of RPF soldiers stationed in the capital city was set at 600, Victor says that Ugandan military men dressed in civilian clothes kept coming into Kigali. The RPF were also smuggling in arms and other supplies, concealed in shipments of firewood, he claims.
These charges, suggest the rising tension between the supporters of the two political blocs. That tension came to a head with the assassination of Habyarimana. The death of the president is commonly regarded as the event which precipitated the mass murders of 1994. Habyarimana was shot down along with Burundi's Hutu president Cyprien Ntaryamira while their plane was preparing to land at the Kigali airport--which was protected at that time by UN troops.
With one rocket, the Habyarimana government was virtually wiped out. (Several other important Hutu officials were also aboard.) Although the Western media speculated that "extremist Hutus" were responsible, Victor reports that most Rwandans felt sure the RPF were responsible for the attack: "They had already made two failed assassination attempts on the president," he reasons. "They were the only ones who had anything to gain by the attack."
PANDEMONIUM
Most reports on Rwanda, even to this day, state that the plane crash remains "unexplained." What these reports consistently fail to acknowledge is that the civil pandemonium of 1994 would never have taken place had the RPF not launched its invasion from Uganda and sought to install an undemocratic minority government.
And pandemonium did ensue, almost immediately. The previous four years of unrest had already resulted in a state of lawlessness. Bloodshed now became commonplace. Victor and Solange, who were living just two blocks from the RPF-occupied parliament building in Kigali at the time of the missile attack, were eyewitnesses to the outbreak of violence that would last for months to come.
Victor was prepared to go into work at the airport, where he was employed as a mechanic. "The RPF were slaughtering people in the streets," he recalls, describing in detail the mayhem he witnessed. The rebels had been living in the neighborhood for several months and had come to know who opposed them, he explains. "These were the first targeted for slaughter."
The fighting was initially between RPF soldiers and government soldiers, but later involved civilians in the area. Victor and Solange, together with other refuges, stress that the ethnic animosity that divided the country was not a serious problem within the common civilian population; it began at the military level. "It was a battle for power," Baptiste explains--"RPF power against government power." Although UN troops were present at the outbreak of violence, they did nothing. Claiming that they had no mandate to intervene, they withdrew from Rwanda on the very day that the massacres began.
Victor, too, fled with his family, afraid that the RPF would kill them all. "We left everything we had behind that day, even our car," he says, explaining that if they had driven away they would probably have been stopped at roadblocks and shot. Instead, they walked five miles before taking refuge at a relative's home in the countryside. Two months later they were refugees in Zaire (now Congo).
"The refugee camp was awful," Solange recalls with visible disgust. Most refugees were living in makeshift huts in very poor sanitary conditions and with little food. "God was with us," say as they explain how, with the assistance of a friend, they were able to leave for Zimbabwe, and later for the US. They left all their relatives behind. Most of them were killed in RPF raids on refugee camps.
When the rebel soldiers entered the camps, they report, they slaughtered everyone, except for the few who escaped into the dense rain forests. Solange explains that two of her sisters were among those who were able to flee. They had no clothes and no food. For the next six months they lived on snails and roots they could dig up to eat. They walked more than 800 miles before they were discovered by the Red Cross in central Zaire. Her sisters are now in Zambia and may be reunited with Solange later this year.
During the years before the assassination of President Habyarimana, the Hutu military trained the young men of Rwanda to defend their families and formed civil defense militas. Consequently, by the time the president's plane was shot down, many were armed with machetes and spears, and primed to defend their country from the invading RPF. The threat of attack by the RPF, they had been told, was imminent. Refugees explain that the young men were primed for a fight, and when they received word that the president had been killed, their fury was unleashed and a general slaughter ensued.
One commonly held thesis in Rwanda, says Baptiste, is that the RPF leaders knew that if they shot down Habyarimana's plane, the Hutus would retaliate against the Tutsis. But although they would later be portrayed as defenders of the Rwandan Tutsis, Baptiste believes that the Tutsi leaders of the RPF, most of them born and bred in Uganda, had no compunctions about unleashing the Hutu violence against their ethnic Tutsi brothers. He explains:
"It was all a part of their plan to assume total control of Rwanda and beyond. They acted with total disregard to the common Tutsis who they knew would be killed."
Once the slaughter began, the RPF were in a position to appear as liberators who would restore peace to the country. And indeed this is how the Western media reported the situation--much to the consternation of Rwandans in the diaspora, who say that what had actually transpired was a bloody coup d'etat.
Since the horrendous violence of 1994, the RPF has consistently repeated that the Hutus were engaged in a "planned, orchestrated genocide" to rid the country of its entire Tutsi population--approximately 15 percent of the people of Rwanda. The refugees--both Hutus and Tutsis alike--deny the existence of any such heinous plan.
Such a genocidal program would have been impossible, observes Baptiste, because prior to 1994 the Hutus and Tutsis got along quite well, and communicated with each other constantly. Intermarriage was common, and if the Hutus had planned a genocide against the Tutsis, everyone would soon have known about it. "The country is too small," he adds, "for something of that magnitude to go undetected." Furthermore, the idea that the Habyarimana-led government could quietly plan the systematic execution of an entire tribe--at a time when that same government could not even organize the sale of coffee beans--seems a bit absurd.
No one denies that a massacre took place, but while government militia massacred civilians in terrible circumstances, this was not a premeditated genocide of one tribe by another. In fact, on closer examination, it appears that the killings were motivated more by the victims' military allegiances (both real or suspected) than by their ethnic identities. Those who were targeted by the government militia were often Tutsis (and sometimes Hutus) who were suspected of supporting the RPF invasion. Likewise, those targeted by the RPF were often suspected of opposing the invasion. Both sides were guilty of bloodshed.
Nevertheless, the RPF's claim to credibility with the world community is the claim that the Hutus were executing a pre-arranged genocidal plan. Consequently, the world's focus on the genocide has both classified an entire ethnic community as criminal and obscured the real causes of the Rwandan tragedy.
ANOTHER KIND OF TERROR
The current government, under the leadership of the guerilla warrior Paul Kagame, constantly displaying evidence of the 1994 massacres. In interviews with the influential Western media Kagame has said, "We need to preserve the remains of the genocide so that people will not forget. It is fair to those who died and to those who remain." Kagame's Tutsi-dominated government in Rwanda currently is disinterring hundreds of thousands of bodies from mass graves around the country and laying them out in piles for the public to see and remember.
In an effort to implicate the Church in the alleged plans for genocide, Kagame decided to confiscate ten Catholic church buildings and convert them into memorials for the 1994 victims. After a strong protest from Church officials, a compromise was reached: the buildings could continue to function as churches, but signs would be erected to memorialize those killed in the slaughter. The remains of those killed would be buried in church crypts.
Other public places, such as schools, are also being turned into "genocide memorials" for Westerners to tour. A school in Gikongoro in southern Rwanda, for instance, has thousands of slain bodies laid out in its former classrooms.
Today, the official obsession with the need to punish those guilty of the "genocide" has resulted in a country that is still polarized, and still gripped by fear. The Hutus who carried out the killings of 1994 were responding to foreign aggression--launched by Ugandan troops wearing Ugandan uniforms, carrying Ugandan arms, and riding in Ugandan army trucks. And while those who committed atrocities should be held accountable, the RPF has replaced the search for real justice with a one-sided zest for punishment.
Many of those who have been arrested on genocide charges in Rwanda in recent years have been implicated on the word of one or two accusers. In Rwanda today, "if you don't like your neighbor, or would like his land, the thing to do is accuse him of involvement in the genocide," says one refugee. The fate awaiting those who are accused is grim. Even if they escape summary execution, they are thrown into overcrowded jails, in which people are almost literally rotting to death for want of space.
Amnesty International reported in 1995 that in Gitarama Prison nearly 7,000 Rwandans, including more than 100 children accused of genocide, were being held in a building that allows adequate space for only 600. Sylvester Niyigena, another refugee now living in the US with his wife and one of his four sons (two were killed in Rwanda, one escaped to Belgium), laments the inhuman prison conditions. He reports that in one of the Rwandan prisons, the inmates--most of them innocent civilians, he believes--are sometimes made to stand in water up to their ankles or knees for days at a time. The swelling of their legs that results is both painful and incapacitating. Justice in Rwanda today under the RPF regime means revenge, the refugees charge. "Rwanda is now a country run by criminals," Baptiste laments.
THE KILLING CONTINUES
However, what few in the West know, say refugees, is that the RPF itself has been engaged in massive and systematic killing of civilians, out of sight of the cameras and foreign observers. There is substantial evidence that the RPF has massacred tens of thousands of unarmed persons. While most of the killing took place during 1994, it has continued on a smaller scale.
The refusal of the West to see the RPF government for what it is--a violent military dictatorship--is the product of a severe form of "political correctness," which the RPF hopes to fully exploit by continuing to play the genocide card, to hide its own past and current crimes. One of the most unhappy consequences of the focus on the genocide is that continuing human-rights abuses by the RPF are now being tolerated, and even justified, by Western human-rights groups and journalists. Killings such as the RPF massacre of 13 priests and two bishops in June of 1994, are presented to the international community as understandable acts of revenge.
When asked what drives the RPF, Baptiste says he believes they want to even up the numbers of Hutus and Tutsis in the country. "And to do that you need to kill a lot of Hutus." That is what continues to happen each month in Rwanda, he says. "It is an untold story."
The RPF, say refugees, is known to call meetings where political officials distribute food to the people. Once a large number of people have gathered, militiamen surround the place and toss in grenades. After the 1994 genocide, wherever the RPF militias went, the pattern was the same: meetings, killings, then burning of the bodies and burial. They were killing innocent people, and--the refugees now insist--they continue to do so to this day. "The kind of slaughters that keep happening every few months seem like indiscriminate killings," Baptiste comments. "Most have no real rhyme of reason, except to kill."
LONELY VOICES
One Rwandan bishop last year called attention to human-rights abuses perpetrated by the RPF. He was virtually ignored by the West--except for the Vatican. Bishop Kizito Bahujimihigo of Ruhengeri accused the government of putting ethnic Hutu families in concentration camps, claiming that it is "for their own protection." The bishop asked, "People are turned out of their homes to rot in a makeshift hut, and this is called progress?" He said the Kigali government has decided to confine Hutu families in "protected sites," to save them from imaginary attacks from anti-government groups. These sites, he said, are little short of concentration camps, in which to keep control of Rwanda's Hutu ethnic majority.
The refugees describe a similar situation: In some cases helicopters have destroyed whole towns and villages. The villagers were rounded up by the RPF, told that they would no longer be living in their own houses, and sent to a larger city to build new houses. Many families could not build, however, because they had neither the resources nor the manpower to do so. So many men have been killed during the past decade that most families are now fatherless.
Baptiste believes that it may never be possible to reunite Rwanda after what has happened in the past ten years. This is a "deep tragedy," he says. Many people, he reports, have literally lost their sanity as a result of the mayhem. Baptiste can understand how people are driven to such extremes. "How can they go on living, how can they sit down to eat, how can they go to sleep at night, knowing that their family has been slaughtered?" he asks.
The key to establishing peace in his country, Baptiste asserts, is alerting the West to what has really transpired in the small African country. This is difficult to do, adds Jean-Marie, another Rwanda refugee, "because the US is participating in the terrorization of Rwanda." Baptiste explains that Madeleine Albright is a "staunch ally" of Uganda and that the US has long backed the Ugandans and the RPF, who are now looking to add the mineral-rich Congo to their growing political base.
When President Habyarimana was Rwanda's dictator, the military leader "basically preached peace for the country," says Baptiste. He favored allowing the minority Tutsis to have rights. "He helped and protected the minorities," Baptiste explains. "The country was truly on its way to unity. Now, all of that is destroyed."
Michael S. Rose is the editor of St. Catherine's Review, and the author of The Renovation Manipulation.
02 June, 2008
Somaliland Minerals Ministry Starts Selling New Oil Blocks.
Somaliland Times
Issue # 332
31 May 2008
The Somaliland ministry of Water Mineral Resources has started awarding concessions to interested oil companies.
According to the director general of the ministry, Ahmed Ibrahim Suldan, a UK-based Norwegian-owned company called Asante Oil has already purchased rights to a new oil block.
Mr. Suldan disclosed to Jamhuuriya newspaper on Friday that the deal with Asante Oil was negotiated during a recent trip that he and the minister of Water and Minerals Qassim Yusuf, have made to the UK and the USA.
It was only last month when Somaliland president Dahir Riyale Kahin told Reuters that one of his priorities for this year was an auction for oil exploration licenses pending the wrapping up of a data seismic survey by TGS-Nopec, a Norwegian oil service company.
In a subsequent statement issued also in April, the Somaliland ministry of Water and Mineral Resources said that the survey was completed and the data was being processed for an international bid round planned for late 2008.
The data acquired by TGS was not expected to be made available to clients before the third quarter of this year.
However in yesterday’s Jamhuuriya interview, the director general of the MW&MR gave no explanation for what prompted the government to cut a deal with Asante Oil before the release of data survey results except to say that the company was eager to stay one jump ahead of others.
Mr. Suldan said that he hopes drilling for oil in Somaliland will commence by 2009.
He made no mention of the amount of money that Asante Oil agreed to pay for its acquisition in Somaliland.
The granting of concessions for oil and minerals exploration in Somaliland is often done in secrecy.
Only Minister Qassim is allowed to represent the Somaliland side in any negotiations concerning the financial aspects of such deals. All agreements however have to be endorsed by Qassim’s boss, Riyale.
Under Qassim, the MW&MR is known to have signed about a dozen of oil and minerals exploration agreements with foreign firms and individuals. None of these agreements have been submitted to parliament for ratification as required by the Somaliland law.
Both Qassim and Riyale have so far paid no heed to repeated calls by the parliament that the administration should seek ratification for exploration agreements it had concluded with foreign companies.
Issue # 332
31 May 2008
The Somaliland ministry of Water Mineral Resources has started awarding concessions to interested oil companies.
According to the director general of the ministry, Ahmed Ibrahim Suldan, a UK-based Norwegian-owned company called Asante Oil has already purchased rights to a new oil block.
Mr. Suldan disclosed to Jamhuuriya newspaper on Friday that the deal with Asante Oil was negotiated during a recent trip that he and the minister of Water and Minerals Qassim Yusuf, have made to the UK and the USA.
It was only last month when Somaliland president Dahir Riyale Kahin told Reuters that one of his priorities for this year was an auction for oil exploration licenses pending the wrapping up of a data seismic survey by TGS-Nopec, a Norwegian oil service company.
In a subsequent statement issued also in April, the Somaliland ministry of Water and Mineral Resources said that the survey was completed and the data was being processed for an international bid round planned for late 2008.
The data acquired by TGS was not expected to be made available to clients before the third quarter of this year.
However in yesterday’s Jamhuuriya interview, the director general of the MW&MR gave no explanation for what prompted the government to cut a deal with Asante Oil before the release of data survey results except to say that the company was eager to stay one jump ahead of others.
Mr. Suldan said that he hopes drilling for oil in Somaliland will commence by 2009.
He made no mention of the amount of money that Asante Oil agreed to pay for its acquisition in Somaliland.
The granting of concessions for oil and minerals exploration in Somaliland is often done in secrecy.
Only Minister Qassim is allowed to represent the Somaliland side in any negotiations concerning the financial aspects of such deals. All agreements however have to be endorsed by Qassim’s boss, Riyale.
Under Qassim, the MW&MR is known to have signed about a dozen of oil and minerals exploration agreements with foreign firms and individuals. None of these agreements have been submitted to parliament for ratification as required by the Somaliland law.
Both Qassim and Riyale have so far paid no heed to repeated calls by the parliament that the administration should seek ratification for exploration agreements it had concluded with foreign companies.
Somaliland government signs agreement with UK Oil company.
The Republican
1 June 2008
The Somaliland Ministry of Water and Natural Resources has confirmed that the government of Somaliland has signed an oil exploration agreement with Asante Oil (UK) Limited.
According to the Director-General of the Ministry of Water and Natural Resources, Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim Suldan, Asante Oil (UK) Limited recently purchased the report from the seismic survey conducted in Somaliland by TGS of Norway, and has subsequently agreed to begin drilling towards the end of 2008.
Speaking to reports from the Republican at his office in Hargeisa, Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim also refuted recent rumours that Range Resources and African Oil which are currently conducting similar exploration in the Puntland region of Somalia may encroach into Somaliland territory.
Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim, Director-General of the Somaliland ministry of Water and Natural Resources described these rumours as baseless and stated that the government of Somaliland will protect the natural resources of the country, and described the current exploration in Puntland as merely an attempt by Range Resources and African Oil to sell shares in their companies in order to generate money.
Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim described the recent survey by TGS in Somaliland as extensive one which drawn lots of interest at the recent petroleum convention in San Antonio, Texas.
1 June 2008
The Somaliland Ministry of Water and Natural Resources has confirmed that the government of Somaliland has signed an oil exploration agreement with Asante Oil (UK) Limited.
According to the Director-General of the Ministry of Water and Natural Resources, Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim Suldan, Asante Oil (UK) Limited recently purchased the report from the seismic survey conducted in Somaliland by TGS of Norway, and has subsequently agreed to begin drilling towards the end of 2008.
Speaking to reports from the Republican at his office in Hargeisa, Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim also refuted recent rumours that Range Resources and African Oil which are currently conducting similar exploration in the Puntland region of Somalia may encroach into Somaliland territory.
Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim, Director-General of the Somaliland ministry of Water and Natural Resources described these rumours as baseless and stated that the government of Somaliland will protect the natural resources of the country, and described the current exploration in Puntland as merely an attempt by Range Resources and African Oil to sell shares in their companies in order to generate money.
Eng. Ahmed Ibrahim described the recent survey by TGS in Somaliland as extensive one which drawn lots of interest at the recent petroleum convention in San Antonio, Texas.
SOLDIERS PROTEST: CALM RETURNS AFTER CLASHES WITH PRESIDENTIAL GUARD.
MISNA
30 May 2008
The shooting ceased last night around the military barracks of Conakry, where the mutinous soldiers began receiving the back wages they had been demanding for days, said MISNA sources from the Guinean capital Conakry. The main markets are open, with the small stands working, but the larger stores, ransacked over the past days by the soldiers, remain closed along with the gas stations; traffic is also at a minimum. Pushed by fear of a military coup attempt, it appears that the President, the elderly general Lansana Conté, decided to open a direct negotiation. A presidential emissary met with the soldiers asking for a list of their demands.
Tension was particularly high yesterday, with clashes between some mutinous soldiers and the presidential guard, the well known ‘red berets’, at the ‘November 8’ bridge, a strategic crossing with the Kaloum peninsula, where the presidential palace is located. Around ten people were reportedly wounded in the fighting. Since the start of the protest, at least three civilians and four soldiers were killed. Commander Korka Diallo, finance chief of the Alpha Yaya Diallo base, also died from wounds sustained on the first day of the mutiny. The protest began with demands for arrears, then transforming into a serious revolt and demands for the removal of all generals. The Defence minister, general Mamadou Bailo Diallo, was sacked a few days ago.
30 May 2008
The shooting ceased last night around the military barracks of Conakry, where the mutinous soldiers began receiving the back wages they had been demanding for days, said MISNA sources from the Guinean capital Conakry. The main markets are open, with the small stands working, but the larger stores, ransacked over the past days by the soldiers, remain closed along with the gas stations; traffic is also at a minimum. Pushed by fear of a military coup attempt, it appears that the President, the elderly general Lansana Conté, decided to open a direct negotiation. A presidential emissary met with the soldiers asking for a list of their demands.
Tension was particularly high yesterday, with clashes between some mutinous soldiers and the presidential guard, the well known ‘red berets’, at the ‘November 8’ bridge, a strategic crossing with the Kaloum peninsula, where the presidential palace is located. Around ten people were reportedly wounded in the fighting. Since the start of the protest, at least three civilians and four soldiers were killed. Commander Korka Diallo, finance chief of the Alpha Yaya Diallo base, also died from wounds sustained on the first day of the mutiny. The protest began with demands for arrears, then transforming into a serious revolt and demands for the removal of all generals. The Defence minister, general Mamadou Bailo Diallo, was sacked a few days ago.
TALIBAN SEIZE RASHIDAN DISTRICT.
MISNA
30 May 2008
Taliban insurgents captured the Rashidan district in the central Ghazni province, taking hostage eight policemen and the district officials, as reported to the international press by the provincial police chief and a Taliban spokesperson. The Taliban referred that three people were killed in last night’s attack, while all the prisoners are alive. Rashidan, situated 120km south-west of the capital Kabul, is not the first district to be seized by the Taliban, who in most cases maintain their position for days or months until they are repelled by the international and Afghani forces. Some areas however remain under their control: the NATO in fact said that five districts in the southern provinces remain in the hands of the Taliban. Meanwhile, the US coalition reported that it killed “several militants” and captured 16 others last night in Ghazni province; the Andar governor, Abdul Rahimd Daisiwal, confirmed the operation, but said that a civilian man and a young boy were killed while 17 other people were arrested. The governor added that he is investigating if the detained and dead were in any way linked to the Taliban or other militant groups.
30 May 2008
Taliban insurgents captured the Rashidan district in the central Ghazni province, taking hostage eight policemen and the district officials, as reported to the international press by the provincial police chief and a Taliban spokesperson. The Taliban referred that three people were killed in last night’s attack, while all the prisoners are alive. Rashidan, situated 120km south-west of the capital Kabul, is not the first district to be seized by the Taliban, who in most cases maintain their position for days or months until they are repelled by the international and Afghani forces. Some areas however remain under their control: the NATO in fact said that five districts in the southern provinces remain in the hands of the Taliban. Meanwhile, the US coalition reported that it killed “several militants” and captured 16 others last night in Ghazni province; the Andar governor, Abdul Rahimd Daisiwal, confirmed the operation, but said that a civilian man and a young boy were killed while 17 other people were arrested. The governor added that he is investigating if the detained and dead were in any way linked to the Taliban or other militant groups.
DARFUR: SLA-M COMMANDER RESUMES COMBAT.
MISNA
30 May 2008
One of the top commanders of the SLA-M led by Minni Minnawi, the one Darfur rebel group that signed a peace deal with the government of Sudan in May 2006, has abandoned the group to resume fighting, joining the most active faction of the movement, which was born two years ago in open opposition to the agreement that was signed. According to a note issued by the SLA-M wing still involved in the Darfur conflict (Sla-m Unity Faction) Jibril Jaber Jibril joined the group last May 28 along with an unspecified number of men and a dozen military vehicles. The same note suggests that behind Jibril’s decision to leave Khartoum to resume fighting in Darfur there is the realization “of the failure of the peace accord and its substantial failure to be applied”. At the end of 2007, about twenty military commanders from Minnawi’s SLA-M defected. Jaber Jibril is considered the brain behind the SLA-M’s military successes. Two years ago, the SLA-M was the most important anti-government force present in Darfur.
30 May 2008
One of the top commanders of the SLA-M led by Minni Minnawi, the one Darfur rebel group that signed a peace deal with the government of Sudan in May 2006, has abandoned the group to resume fighting, joining the most active faction of the movement, which was born two years ago in open opposition to the agreement that was signed. According to a note issued by the SLA-M wing still involved in the Darfur conflict (Sla-m Unity Faction) Jibril Jaber Jibril joined the group last May 28 along with an unspecified number of men and a dozen military vehicles. The same note suggests that behind Jibril’s decision to leave Khartoum to resume fighting in Darfur there is the realization “of the failure of the peace accord and its substantial failure to be applied”. At the end of 2007, about twenty military commanders from Minnawi’s SLA-M defected. Jaber Jibril is considered the brain behind the SLA-M’s military successes. Two years ago, the SLA-M was the most important anti-government force present in Darfur.
Armed Groups Kill Four Kenyan Soldiers Along Border.
Shabelle News Network
1 June 2008
Reports from Liboi town on the Kenyan-somali border say that unknown armed Somali groups have shot dead four Kenyan soldiers Sunday morning according to the officials.
Initial reports from the killing say that the soldiers were disjointedly shot dead in Liboi and an area called Dajabula that lies between Kenya and Somalia.
The killing of these soldiers came as the Kenyan Security personnel in the bordering Mandera town and its environs have been put on high alert following the increasing numbers of refugees entering the country from war torn Somalia.
Mandera residents say that the government has deployed security officers along the Kenya Somalia border amid escalating fighting in Somalia's Bulla Hawa region about two kilometers from Mandera town.
Addressing the security officers in Mandera town, Mungathia urged the officers to stamp out banditry along the common border of Kenya and Somalia.
He said that the government was vigilant to ensure that illegal firearms did not enter into the country.
He also asked members of the public to volunteer information about suspicious individuals to help prevent incursions by militia from Somalia.
There has been increasing unrest in Somalia with US warplanes killing an Islamist rebel leader Thursday.
1 June 2008
Reports from Liboi town on the Kenyan-somali border say that unknown armed Somali groups have shot dead four Kenyan soldiers Sunday morning according to the officials.
Initial reports from the killing say that the soldiers were disjointedly shot dead in Liboi and an area called Dajabula that lies between Kenya and Somalia.
The killing of these soldiers came as the Kenyan Security personnel in the bordering Mandera town and its environs have been put on high alert following the increasing numbers of refugees entering the country from war torn Somalia.
Mandera residents say that the government has deployed security officers along the Kenya Somalia border amid escalating fighting in Somalia's Bulla Hawa region about two kilometers from Mandera town.
Addressing the security officers in Mandera town, Mungathia urged the officers to stamp out banditry along the common border of Kenya and Somalia.
He said that the government was vigilant to ensure that illegal firearms did not enter into the country.
He also asked members of the public to volunteer information about suspicious individuals to help prevent incursions by militia from Somalia.
There has been increasing unrest in Somalia with US warplanes killing an Islamist rebel leader Thursday.
US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships.
Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian
June 2 2008
Amphibious assault vehicles leave the USS Peleliu, which was used to detain prisoners, according to a human rights group.
The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.
Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.
Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.
The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.
It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.
According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.
Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.
Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.
At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.
The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."
Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.
"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."
Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.
"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time. Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."
The Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly."
A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as "prison ships".
The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.
CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.
In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.
The Guardian
June 2 2008
Amphibious assault vehicles leave the USS Peleliu, which was used to detain prisoners, according to a human rights group.
The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.
Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.
Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.
The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.
It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.
According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.
Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.
Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.
At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.
The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."
Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.
"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."
Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.
"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time. Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."
The Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly."
A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as "prison ships".
The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.
CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.
In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.
US seeks Mauritius’ participation in is regional military command.
African Press Agency
1 June 2008
The American government has urged Mauritius to take an active role in Africom, the American Military and Civilian Unified Command Centre for Africa which comes into operations next October.
Meeting the press on Monday at his office in Port Louis the capital, Iswar Ramparsad, head of the Mauritius police force disclosed that at the invitation of the American embassy in Mauritius, senior police officials and the police special mobile force took part in a symposium last Friday in Port Louis to discuss the issue.
Organised by the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS), the theme of the meeting was: Meeting Maritime Security Challenges for Mauritius in the 21st century. Ramparsad added that the ACSS had delegated four senior officials of the organisation, namely, the director of Community Outreach and Public Affairs, Clifford Bernath, the Community Affairs Specialist for North East and Southern Africa, Mary McGurn and Jennifer Doyle and Dr Augustus Vogel, representatives of the US naval forces in Europe to conduct the symposium.
Ramparsad further indicated that the aim was to give a global view of the new measures that Mauritius and the United States could undertake in common so as to respond to problems on maritime security and fight effectively against illegal fishing in the exclusive economic zone of Mauritius.
Additionally, Ramparsad said civilian and military academic and technical assistance as well as communications support, including satellite data for the surveillance of the ocean economic zone will be put at the disposal of Mauritius. In return, he said the US expects that a network of officials of the civilian and military as well as state organisations of Mauritius and the US be established in order to assist American decision makers in the formulation of an effective African policy. The network will also involve other African countries that will show an interest in its work, he said.
The police chief observed that it will be up to the government to take the final decision as to the collaboration with the American military authorities, but that many African countries have expressed their reservations to be associated with the project.
1 June 2008
The American government has urged Mauritius to take an active role in Africom, the American Military and Civilian Unified Command Centre for Africa which comes into operations next October.
Meeting the press on Monday at his office in Port Louis the capital, Iswar Ramparsad, head of the Mauritius police force disclosed that at the invitation of the American embassy in Mauritius, senior police officials and the police special mobile force took part in a symposium last Friday in Port Louis to discuss the issue.
Organised by the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS), the theme of the meeting was: Meeting Maritime Security Challenges for Mauritius in the 21st century. Ramparsad added that the ACSS had delegated four senior officials of the organisation, namely, the director of Community Outreach and Public Affairs, Clifford Bernath, the Community Affairs Specialist for North East and Southern Africa, Mary McGurn and Jennifer Doyle and Dr Augustus Vogel, representatives of the US naval forces in Europe to conduct the symposium.
Ramparsad further indicated that the aim was to give a global view of the new measures that Mauritius and the United States could undertake in common so as to respond to problems on maritime security and fight effectively against illegal fishing in the exclusive economic zone of Mauritius.
Additionally, Ramparsad said civilian and military academic and technical assistance as well as communications support, including satellite data for the surveillance of the ocean economic zone will be put at the disposal of Mauritius. In return, he said the US expects that a network of officials of the civilian and military as well as state organisations of Mauritius and the US be established in order to assist American decision makers in the formulation of an effective African policy. The network will also involve other African countries that will show an interest in its work, he said.
The police chief observed that it will be up to the government to take the final decision as to the collaboration with the American military authorities, but that many African countries have expressed their reservations to be associated with the project.
01 June, 2008
US Investigators 6 Months into Petroleum Industry Probe.
by David Ivanovich
Houston Chronicle
May 30, 2008
Federal regulators -- in a highly unusual move -- revealed Thursday they have been conducting a wide-reaching probe into oil trading practices for the last six months.
And in response to growing concerns about the role speculators may be playing in driving up oil prices, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it will require energy traders to begin providing more information so the government can better assess what effect they may be having on the markets.
"Perhaps the CFTC has gotten some religion," said Michael Masters, of Masters Capital Management LLC, who has called for tighter regulation. Although, he added, "it's just a start."
With oil futures diving more than $4 Thursday, the commission went public about its probe. It is examining the purchase, transportation, storage and trading of crude oil and futures contracts -- agreements to buy or sell commodities at a later date that are central to the energy markets.
The agency provided no other details about the investigation.
"Although the commission ordinarily conducts enforcement investigations on a confidential basis, the commission is taking the extraordinary step of disclosing this investigation because of today's unprecedented market conditions," agency officials said in a prepared statement.
"Unprecedented" remained the theme Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange as futures contracts for light, sweet crude for July delivery shot up as high as $132.90 a barrel after the Energy Department announced a surprise drop in oil supplies, only to then plunge later to settle at $126.62, down $4.41 for the day.
"The daily ranges are mind-numbing," said Kyle Cooper, director of research for IAF Advisors in Houston.
Adding to volatility Thursday was a blunder by the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy, which posted petroleum data prematurely on its Web site.
"EIA is investigating this event and its causes," the agency said.
Answers in demand
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has come under fire in recent weeks, with lawmakers demanding answers to why oil prices have more than doubled in the last year.
Before a Senate panel last week, Masters called on policymakers to focus on the pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors -- including the University of Texas and the state's teacher retirement system -- that have poured billions into the commodities market in the past few years as a hedge against inflation and a weak dollar.
Through transactions with large investment banks, these institutional investors have been able to circumvent speculative limits when investing in commodity index funds, Masters and other experts argue.
Masters said these institutional investors have helped move oil prices higher because nearly all are betting the same way -- that the price will keep rising.
But that argument is controversial.
Just last week the commission was attributing the oil price increase to market fundamentals of supply and demand -- not speculative trading.
On Thursday, the commission said it would require energy traders to provide monthly reports on their index trading "to help the CFTC further identify the amount and impact of this type of trading."
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., said he was disappointed that the agency did not propose closing the loophole that allows some institutional investors to circumvent the speculative limits.
"The failure to corral this rampant speculation is not only ravaging consumers, but harming businesses such as airlines, trucking and auto manufacturers," Dingell said.
Slow to see impact
Critics have argued that regulators have been slow to see the real impact of the institutional investors' commodity trading activity because of the way the agency classifies these trades.
The commission said it will review its trade classifications, which the critics say understate the activities of institutional investors.
New York Mercantile Exchange officials have disputed the arguments about the role index traders may be playing, arguing Thursday that such "sweeping assertions" are based on "distorted and patently erroneous information."
Foreign markets included
The CFTC also announced Thursday it has reached an agreement with Britain's Financial Services Authority to beef up surveillance of U.S. oil contracts traded on a London exchange.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the commission has not had information as to whether "traders subject to U.S. speculation limits were circumventing them by trading in London."
Levin and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., recently introduced legislation designed to ensure that energy commodities traded on foreign exchanges using trading terminals located in the United States be subject to the same speculative trading limits and reporting requirements as those traded on U.S. exchanges.
"It appears that the CFTC is acting administratively to accomplish some of the goals of this bill," Feinstein said.
Congress recently passed legislation granting the commission authority to regulate electronic energy trading on the Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange.
Houston Chronicle
May 30, 2008
Federal regulators -- in a highly unusual move -- revealed Thursday they have been conducting a wide-reaching probe into oil trading practices for the last six months.
And in response to growing concerns about the role speculators may be playing in driving up oil prices, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it will require energy traders to begin providing more information so the government can better assess what effect they may be having on the markets.
"Perhaps the CFTC has gotten some religion," said Michael Masters, of Masters Capital Management LLC, who has called for tighter regulation. Although, he added, "it's just a start."
With oil futures diving more than $4 Thursday, the commission went public about its probe. It is examining the purchase, transportation, storage and trading of crude oil and futures contracts -- agreements to buy or sell commodities at a later date that are central to the energy markets.
The agency provided no other details about the investigation.
"Although the commission ordinarily conducts enforcement investigations on a confidential basis, the commission is taking the extraordinary step of disclosing this investigation because of today's unprecedented market conditions," agency officials said in a prepared statement.
"Unprecedented" remained the theme Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange as futures contracts for light, sweet crude for July delivery shot up as high as $132.90 a barrel after the Energy Department announced a surprise drop in oil supplies, only to then plunge later to settle at $126.62, down $4.41 for the day.
"The daily ranges are mind-numbing," said Kyle Cooper, director of research for IAF Advisors in Houston.
Adding to volatility Thursday was a blunder by the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy, which posted petroleum data prematurely on its Web site.
"EIA is investigating this event and its causes," the agency said.
Answers in demand
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has come under fire in recent weeks, with lawmakers demanding answers to why oil prices have more than doubled in the last year.
Before a Senate panel last week, Masters called on policymakers to focus on the pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors -- including the University of Texas and the state's teacher retirement system -- that have poured billions into the commodities market in the past few years as a hedge against inflation and a weak dollar.
Through transactions with large investment banks, these institutional investors have been able to circumvent speculative limits when investing in commodity index funds, Masters and other experts argue.
Masters said these institutional investors have helped move oil prices higher because nearly all are betting the same way -- that the price will keep rising.
But that argument is controversial.
Just last week the commission was attributing the oil price increase to market fundamentals of supply and demand -- not speculative trading.
On Thursday, the commission said it would require energy traders to provide monthly reports on their index trading "to help the CFTC further identify the amount and impact of this type of trading."
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., said he was disappointed that the agency did not propose closing the loophole that allows some institutional investors to circumvent the speculative limits.
"The failure to corral this rampant speculation is not only ravaging consumers, but harming businesses such as airlines, trucking and auto manufacturers," Dingell said.
Slow to see impact
Critics have argued that regulators have been slow to see the real impact of the institutional investors' commodity trading activity because of the way the agency classifies these trades.
The commission said it will review its trade classifications, which the critics say understate the activities of institutional investors.
New York Mercantile Exchange officials have disputed the arguments about the role index traders may be playing, arguing Thursday that such "sweeping assertions" are based on "distorted and patently erroneous information."
Foreign markets included
The CFTC also announced Thursday it has reached an agreement with Britain's Financial Services Authority to beef up surveillance of U.S. oil contracts traded on a London exchange.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the commission has not had information as to whether "traders subject to U.S. speculation limits were circumventing them by trading in London."
Levin and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., recently introduced legislation designed to ensure that energy commodities traded on foreign exchanges using trading terminals located in the United States be subject to the same speculative trading limits and reporting requirements as those traded on U.S. exchanges.
"It appears that the CFTC is acting administratively to accomplish some of the goals of this bill," Feinstein said.
Congress recently passed legislation granting the commission authority to regulate electronic energy trading on the Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange.
Colombian vice-president to discuss bilateral ties in Moscow.
RIA Novosti
1 June 2008
Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos is arriving in Russia on Sunday to discuss political aspects of bilateral relations, and also economic and cultural cooperation with Russian leaders.
Santos who will stay in Russia until June 9 will hold meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Alexy II and other officials to strengthen the climate of trust existing in relations between the two countries, Colombia's ambassador to Moscow Diego Tobon said.
Santos will also meet with Russian businessmen to demonstrate the Andean country's investment potential, the ambassador said.
At the same time, military and defense cooperation will not be top of the agenda during the Colombian vice-president's visit to Moscow, the ambassador said.
"Military cooperation between Russia and Colombia will be discussed only as one out of a range of issues in Russian-Colombian relations," Tobon earlier said.
The Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday that Colombia was seeking to expand military and defense ties with Russia in an apparent attempt to counter the growing military might of neighboring Venezuela.
In the last three years, Venezuela has bought 24 Su-30MK2V fighters, Tor-M1 air defense systems, 31 Mi-type helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles from Russia. It is also planning to conclude several contracts with Russia next month on the purchase of military equipment worth at least $2 billion, including transport planes, submarines and attack helicopters.
"Such interpretation of Russian-Colombian and Colombian-Venezuelan relations offers a distorted picture," the ambassador said. "Colombia never wanted the diplomatic crisis that hit the region in March to grow into an international military confrontation," he went on.
1 June 2008
Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos is arriving in Russia on Sunday to discuss political aspects of bilateral relations, and also economic and cultural cooperation with Russian leaders.
Santos who will stay in Russia until June 9 will hold meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Alexy II and other officials to strengthen the climate of trust existing in relations between the two countries, Colombia's ambassador to Moscow Diego Tobon said.
Santos will also meet with Russian businessmen to demonstrate the Andean country's investment potential, the ambassador said.
At the same time, military and defense cooperation will not be top of the agenda during the Colombian vice-president's visit to Moscow, the ambassador said.
"Military cooperation between Russia and Colombia will be discussed only as one out of a range of issues in Russian-Colombian relations," Tobon earlier said.
The Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday that Colombia was seeking to expand military and defense ties with Russia in an apparent attempt to counter the growing military might of neighboring Venezuela.
In the last three years, Venezuela has bought 24 Su-30MK2V fighters, Tor-M1 air defense systems, 31 Mi-type helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles from Russia. It is also planning to conclude several contracts with Russia next month on the purchase of military equipment worth at least $2 billion, including transport planes, submarines and attack helicopters.
"Such interpretation of Russian-Colombian and Colombian-Venezuelan relations offers a distorted picture," the ambassador said. "Colombia never wanted the diplomatic crisis that hit the region in March to grow into an international military confrontation," he went on.
UN COURT NOT SATISFIED WITH RWANDA’S JUDICIARY RECORD.
Hirondelle News Agency
31 May 2008
A Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has turned down Prosecutor’s motion of transfer of genocide accused former businessman, 73-year-old Yusuf Munyakazi, to stand a trial in Kigali as part of the UN Court’s completion strategy.
In a decision rendered on Wednesday, the three-bench judges ruled that they were not convinced that the accused would get a fair trial in Kigali. ”The Chamber is not satisfied that the accused, if transferred to Rwanda at the present time, will receive a fair trial,” stated Judges Weinberg de Roca of Argentina (presiding), Lee Muthoga (Kenya) and Robert Fremr (Czech).
Kigali last year abolished the capital punishment, but the judges ruled that Rwanda’s penalty structure such as life imprisonment in isolation, does not respect internationally recognized standards.
In the light of the past actions of the Rwandan government, the Chamber was also not convinced that Kigali respects the independence of the judiciary. “The Chamber is concerned that this situation may lead to direct or indirect pressure being exerted on judges to produce judgements in line with the wishes of Rwandan government’’, they noted.
However, the Chamber would like to emphasise that it has taken notice of the positive steps taken by Rwanda to facilitate referral, read the decision, adding that if Rwanda continues along this path, the tribunal will hopefully be able to refer future cases to Rwandan courts.
“We are studying the decision. I will decide eventually whether to appeal or not,” ICTR Prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, told Hirondelle Agency.
In another development, the trial of Protais Zigiranyirazo, brother-in-law of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, has now reached the judgement stage after two days of closing arguments by both the prosecution and the defence.
The prosecutor requested life in prison for the accused whereas the defence called for an outright acquittal.
The defence considered that the prosecutor had not provided evidence that would make it possible for the Chamber to convict the 70-year-old Zigiranyirazo.
The Zigiranyirazo trial began on 3 October 2001. As at the opening of his trial, the defendant, who was authorized to address the Chamber, considered it regrettable that the ICTR had still not investigated the attack against the plane of Habyarimana.
“Why this total disinterest of the international community vis-a-vis an attack which cost the life of two democratically elected presidents, and in the course of the performance of their duties, whereas it hastened to order investigations into the attack against the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Why two different standards? ”, questioned Zigiranyirazo.
Habyarimana was killed together with the Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, who were both returning in the same plane from a regional peace meeting in Tanzania when it was shot down on April 6, 1994.
31 May 2008
A Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has turned down Prosecutor’s motion of transfer of genocide accused former businessman, 73-year-old Yusuf Munyakazi, to stand a trial in Kigali as part of the UN Court’s completion strategy.
In a decision rendered on Wednesday, the three-bench judges ruled that they were not convinced that the accused would get a fair trial in Kigali. ”The Chamber is not satisfied that the accused, if transferred to Rwanda at the present time, will receive a fair trial,” stated Judges Weinberg de Roca of Argentina (presiding), Lee Muthoga (Kenya) and Robert Fremr (Czech).
Kigali last year abolished the capital punishment, but the judges ruled that Rwanda’s penalty structure such as life imprisonment in isolation, does not respect internationally recognized standards.
In the light of the past actions of the Rwandan government, the Chamber was also not convinced that Kigali respects the independence of the judiciary. “The Chamber is concerned that this situation may lead to direct or indirect pressure being exerted on judges to produce judgements in line with the wishes of Rwandan government’’, they noted.
However, the Chamber would like to emphasise that it has taken notice of the positive steps taken by Rwanda to facilitate referral, read the decision, adding that if Rwanda continues along this path, the tribunal will hopefully be able to refer future cases to Rwandan courts.
“We are studying the decision. I will decide eventually whether to appeal or not,” ICTR Prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, told Hirondelle Agency.
In another development, the trial of Protais Zigiranyirazo, brother-in-law of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, has now reached the judgement stage after two days of closing arguments by both the prosecution and the defence.
The prosecutor requested life in prison for the accused whereas the defence called for an outright acquittal.
The defence considered that the prosecutor had not provided evidence that would make it possible for the Chamber to convict the 70-year-old Zigiranyirazo.
The Zigiranyirazo trial began on 3 October 2001. As at the opening of his trial, the defendant, who was authorized to address the Chamber, considered it regrettable that the ICTR had still not investigated the attack against the plane of Habyarimana.
“Why this total disinterest of the international community vis-a-vis an attack which cost the life of two democratically elected presidents, and in the course of the performance of their duties, whereas it hastened to order investigations into the attack against the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Why two different standards? ”, questioned Zigiranyirazo.
Habyarimana was killed together with the Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, who were both returning in the same plane from a regional peace meeting in Tanzania when it was shot down on April 6, 1994.
Exiled Anuak confront Ethiopian official in Minn.
AFP
By MARTIGA LOHN
30 May 2008
Only five questions were allowed, but that was enough for exiled members of Ethiopia's Anuak minority to put Omot Obang Olom on the spot.
Omot went to the community meeting Saturday hosted by an Anuak organization in Minneapolis to urge emigrants to return home and help develop the Gambella region, where he heads the regional government.
But most of the 125 Anuak community members who turned out had a more pressing issue on their minds: the Dec. 13, 2003, massacre that human rights groups say killed more than 400 of their kin. Omot was then in charge of security for the regional government, and many in Minnesota's Anuak exile community believe he played a role in the attack.
"We are supposed to talk about peace before we talk about development," said Ojoye Akane, a 31-year-old Anuak student who clutched an open notebook during his turn at the microphone. "You can't talk about development before you talk about peace."
Ojoye said that his sister's 15-year-old son was shot and killed shortly before the massacre, and that the government has done nothing to help his sister. He and others listened intently as Omot responded to their questions and accusations, first in Amharic, Ethiopia's official language, and then in Anuak. Like most of the audience members, Omot is Anuak.
"We could not stop those killings," Omot said, according to translator Magn Nyang, a 33-year-old Anuak who lives in Spring Lake Park and was openly skeptical of much of what Omot said.
Omot blamed the killings on weak regional leadership in Gambella at the time and said he tried to stop the bloodshed. He said allegations that he gave up names of Anuak to be targeted were an unfounded rumor.
Omot appealed to the Anuak diaspora to return to Gambella. He said conditions in southwestern Ethiopia region have improved.
Some Anuak community members boycotted the event because they say that Omot should be brought to justice, and that they did not expect an open dialogue at the meeting.
The Anuak Justice Council in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, has been pushing U.S. and Canadian authorities to arrest and try Omot for war crimes. He is expected to continue on to Canada next week. But advocates haven't been able to confirm whether he's traveling on a diplomatic visa that would grant him wide-ranging immunity.
State Department spokesman Bill Strassberger confirmed that Omot received a visa, but said that because visa records are confidential, he could not discuss the application. He also declined to discuss whether Omot had a role in the 2003 killings.
A message left Saturday for officials at the Ethiopian embassy in Washington was not immediately returned.
Associated Press writer Fred Frommer contributed to this report from Washington.
By MARTIGA LOHN
30 May 2008
Only five questions were allowed, but that was enough for exiled members of Ethiopia's Anuak minority to put Omot Obang Olom on the spot.
Omot went to the community meeting Saturday hosted by an Anuak organization in Minneapolis to urge emigrants to return home and help develop the Gambella region, where he heads the regional government.
But most of the 125 Anuak community members who turned out had a more pressing issue on their minds: the Dec. 13, 2003, massacre that human rights groups say killed more than 400 of their kin. Omot was then in charge of security for the regional government, and many in Minnesota's Anuak exile community believe he played a role in the attack.
"We are supposed to talk about peace before we talk about development," said Ojoye Akane, a 31-year-old Anuak student who clutched an open notebook during his turn at the microphone. "You can't talk about development before you talk about peace."
Ojoye said that his sister's 15-year-old son was shot and killed shortly before the massacre, and that the government has done nothing to help his sister. He and others listened intently as Omot responded to their questions and accusations, first in Amharic, Ethiopia's official language, and then in Anuak. Like most of the audience members, Omot is Anuak.
"We could not stop those killings," Omot said, according to translator Magn Nyang, a 33-year-old Anuak who lives in Spring Lake Park and was openly skeptical of much of what Omot said.
Omot blamed the killings on weak regional leadership in Gambella at the time and said he tried to stop the bloodshed. He said allegations that he gave up names of Anuak to be targeted were an unfounded rumor.
Omot appealed to the Anuak diaspora to return to Gambella. He said conditions in southwestern Ethiopia region have improved.
Some Anuak community members boycotted the event because they say that Omot should be brought to justice, and that they did not expect an open dialogue at the meeting.
The Anuak Justice Council in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, has been pushing U.S. and Canadian authorities to arrest and try Omot for war crimes. He is expected to continue on to Canada next week. But advocates haven't been able to confirm whether he's traveling on a diplomatic visa that would grant him wide-ranging immunity.
State Department spokesman Bill Strassberger confirmed that Omot received a visa, but said that because visa records are confidential, he could not discuss the application. He also declined to discuss whether Omot had a role in the 2003 killings.
A message left Saturday for officials at the Ethiopian embassy in Washington was not immediately returned.
Associated Press writer Fred Frommer contributed to this report from Washington.
UPDF accused of plunder in Kenya.
Daily Monitor
By David Mafabi
31 May 2008
Kenya Pokot and Transnzoia District Commssioners have accused the Uganda People’s Defence Forces(UPDF) of destroying the international boundary marks and illegally entering 15 kilometres into Kenyan territory.
According to Transnzoia DC, Mr Josephat Kisingisi, the UPDF has destroyed the 209 international boundary pillar and is edging towards Gishu camp in Kanyerusi thereby violating the international territorial integrity of Kenya.
Mr Kisingisi told a cross border meeting on Thursday in Suam (Kenya side) that the Pokot have accused UPDF of gross human rights abuse, plundering of Kenya’s natural resources like timber and stealing of cattle from Kenya government farms.
The meeting chaired by DC Angiyo was attended by the Ugandan security team headed by RDC Bukwo, Mr Chepkrui Songol, Sebei sub-region army sector commander, Maj. Godfrey Kakooma, DPC Michael Nambafu and the district chairman, Mr Reuben Chelimo.
Sources that attended the meeting held deep inside Elgon Forest said that although it was initially intended to sort out the issue of cross border raids and see the handover of the 37 head of cattle recently raided from Kenya by Sabiny warriors, it concentrated mainly on the security concerns caused by UPDF presence in Kenya.
The Kenyan leaders accused the Ugandan army of staging a raid from Kanyerusi on May 22 to raid the 37 exotic cattle from Transnzoia Kenya Government Agricultural Development Centre, a livestock and horticulture farm.
The LCV chairman for Bukwo, Mr Reuben Chelimo said the DC Transnzoia told the meeting that his people had given the UPDF 14 days to leave.
“The DC, spoke like a child, can you imagine he told us that more than six UPDF soldiers were going to be killed in 14 days if they did not leave Kenya,” said Mr Chelimo.
The army’s 3rd the Division Operations and Training Officer, Col. Paul L’Oketch told Sunday Monitor these accusations are mere allegations intended to spoil the good reputation of the UPDF.
“True, our troops have been at the Uganda-Kenya border ever since violence broke out in Mt. Elgon zone but they have not destroyed any international boundary pillar and do not have the intention of doing such a thing,” Col. L’Oketch said on Friday.
He said the UPDF deployed at the border after a wave of violence and fighting erupted in Mt Elgon region, Cheptaisi Division of Western Kenyan between Saboat Land Defence Forces and Kenya government security units forcing many Kenyans to flee into Uganda.
He said although UPDF has been involved in firefights with Kenyan Pokot warriors on many occasions when they illegally enter Uganda to raid animals from the Sabiny, they are not plundering Kenya’s natural resources.
Col. L’Oketch revealed that 3rd Division is preparing a team that will visit Western Kenya to establish if indeed the boundary pillars have been destroyed.
“And immediately the report comes out, we shall bring it out to the public and if we find any culprits, they shall face the law,” he said.
Army spokesman, Maj. Paddy Ankunda, however, confirmed that he has received information that the UPDF destroyed Boundary Pillar 209, entered into Kenya and that they are allegedly plundering Kenya resources.
“Yes, I have this information on my desk, it is a rumour and authorities on both sides of Uganda and Kenya are going to verify whether any pillars have been destroyed,” said Maj. Ankunda.
By David Mafabi
31 May 2008
Kenya Pokot and Transnzoia District Commssioners have accused the Uganda People’s Defence Forces(UPDF) of destroying the international boundary marks and illegally entering 15 kilometres into Kenyan territory.
According to Transnzoia DC, Mr Josephat Kisingisi, the UPDF has destroyed the 209 international boundary pillar and is edging towards Gishu camp in Kanyerusi thereby violating the international territorial integrity of Kenya.
Mr Kisingisi told a cross border meeting on Thursday in Suam (Kenya side) that the Pokot have accused UPDF of gross human rights abuse, plundering of Kenya’s natural resources like timber and stealing of cattle from Kenya government farms.
The meeting chaired by DC Angiyo was attended by the Ugandan security team headed by RDC Bukwo, Mr Chepkrui Songol, Sebei sub-region army sector commander, Maj. Godfrey Kakooma, DPC Michael Nambafu and the district chairman, Mr Reuben Chelimo.
Sources that attended the meeting held deep inside Elgon Forest said that although it was initially intended to sort out the issue of cross border raids and see the handover of the 37 head of cattle recently raided from Kenya by Sabiny warriors, it concentrated mainly on the security concerns caused by UPDF presence in Kenya.
The Kenyan leaders accused the Ugandan army of staging a raid from Kanyerusi on May 22 to raid the 37 exotic cattle from Transnzoia Kenya Government Agricultural Development Centre, a livestock and horticulture farm.
The LCV chairman for Bukwo, Mr Reuben Chelimo said the DC Transnzoia told the meeting that his people had given the UPDF 14 days to leave.
“The DC, spoke like a child, can you imagine he told us that more than six UPDF soldiers were going to be killed in 14 days if they did not leave Kenya,” said Mr Chelimo.
The army’s 3rd the Division Operations and Training Officer, Col. Paul L’Oketch told Sunday Monitor these accusations are mere allegations intended to spoil the good reputation of the UPDF.
“True, our troops have been at the Uganda-Kenya border ever since violence broke out in Mt. Elgon zone but they have not destroyed any international boundary pillar and do not have the intention of doing such a thing,” Col. L’Oketch said on Friday.
He said the UPDF deployed at the border after a wave of violence and fighting erupted in Mt Elgon region, Cheptaisi Division of Western Kenyan between Saboat Land Defence Forces and Kenya government security units forcing many Kenyans to flee into Uganda.
He said although UPDF has been involved in firefights with Kenyan Pokot warriors on many occasions when they illegally enter Uganda to raid animals from the Sabiny, they are not plundering Kenya’s natural resources.
Col. L’Oketch revealed that 3rd Division is preparing a team that will visit Western Kenya to establish if indeed the boundary pillars have been destroyed.
“And immediately the report comes out, we shall bring it out to the public and if we find any culprits, they shall face the law,” he said.
Army spokesman, Maj. Paddy Ankunda, however, confirmed that he has received information that the UPDF destroyed Boundary Pillar 209, entered into Kenya and that they are allegedly plundering Kenya resources.
“Yes, I have this information on my desk, it is a rumour and authorities on both sides of Uganda and Kenya are going to verify whether any pillars have been destroyed,” said Maj. Ankunda.
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