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Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U. S. Role in Congo Genocide
By Glen Ford
A leaked United
Nations report documenting Rwandan atrocities that
“could be classified as
crimes of genocide” in the eastern Congo has created
a political crisis that threatens to disrupt
Washington’s plans to dominate the continent. Rwanda’s
minority
Tutsi regime—a close American client that acts as a
mercenary for U.S. interests in Africa, along with
Uganda—
threatens to withdraw its soldiers from United
Nations “peace-keeping” missions if the report is not
suppressed. The
UN missions in Chad,
Haiti,
Liberia and
Sudan are actually extensions of United States
foreign policy, just as
Ugandan and Burundian troops prop up the
U.S.-backed “government” in Somalia under the guise
of “African Union” forces.
The
Rwanda crisis threatens to reveal the United States’
role as enabler in the deaths of as many as six million
people while Washington’s allies
occupied and looted the eastern regions of the
Democratic Republic of Congo. At stake is not only
the reputation of Rwandan
President Paul Kagame, an alumnus of the U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College, in Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, but the larger American
strategy for militarization of Africa and
exploitation of her riches.
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The
545-page report details crimes committed in
Congo by the Rwandan military and its
allies between March, 1993, and June, 2003,
and reinforces long-standing charges that
Kagame’s forces were also aggressors and
mass murderers during the Rwandan mass
killings of 1994. When
Kagame’s Tutsi rebels—previously based in
Uganda—gained control of Rwanda after
100 days of fighting and ethnic cleansing,
they pursued more than a
million Hutu refugees into neighboring Congo.
There, they hunted down
and killed untold thousands of old men,
women and children in 600 documented
incidents that are, at the least, war crimes
and crimes against humanity. The report’s
authors clearly believe the
Tutsis engaged in outright genocide—the
purposeful eradication of a people—since
Kagame’s men made no distinction between
Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus;
they killed them all. Congolese Tutsis and
kinsmen from Burundi joined Kagame’s Rwandan
Tutsis in the mass murder—confirming the
racial or ethnic nature of the slaughter.
The
Tutsi Rwandan military stayed in eastern
Congo to exploit the rare minerals of
the region, employing slave labor and
selling the booty to multinational
corporations. |
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They were
joined by the Ugandan military, who also set
themselves up as soldier/entrepreneurs on Congolese
soil. The Rwandans and Ugandans remain in the region,
uniformed African gangsters in league with Euro-American
corporations in a killing ground that has swallowed up
possibly six million Congolese. Some estimate
Congolese “excess deaths” in areas controlled by Rwanda,
alone, at three and a half million. Their blood and
stolen heritage has made
Kigali, the Rwandan capital, a bustling beacon of
capitalist enterprise—a “free market” success story.
Carnage on such a
scale could not have occurred were it not for the
connivance of the
United States, which has nurtured Kagame at every
juncture. After training him for major operational
command, the
U.S. funded Kagame’s rebels through its Ugandan client,
President Yoweri Museveni. When Kagame’s rebels
invaded Rwanda, some of them still dressed in Ugandan
uniforms, the Americans dismissed the Hutu president’s
complaints. When the plane carrying the Hutu president
and his Burundian counterpart was shot down by a
missile—almost certainly by Kagame’s men—and mass
killing broke out, the US. forced the United Nations to
withdraw from the country—a move that could only have
been of advantage to Kagame’s well-trained and armed
forces, which quickly conquered all of Rwanda. When
United Nations reports showed
Kagame was killing 10,000 Hutus a month inside Rwanda,
even after the opposition had collapsed or fled, the
United States halted an investigation. Then Kagame’s men
swarmed into Congo, and the larger genocide began.
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The leaked UN report
cannot be put back in the bottle.
Kagame, who labels all critics
“genocidaires” or apologists for
genocide, is exposed as “the greatest mass
killer on the face of the earth, today,” as
described by Edward S. Herman, co-author of
The Politics of Genocide.
Kagame’s
mentors and funders in the U.S. government,
who aided and abetted his genocide in Congo,
must be held equally accountable—if not more
so, since United States corporations derive
the greatest benefit from Congo’s blood
minerals, and the U.S. military gains the
most advantage from Rwandan and Ugandan
services as mercenaries at America's beck
and call in Africa. It would be great
if Kagame pitched a pathological fit and made good on
his threat to withdraw his soldiers from Haiti, Chad,
Liberia and Sudan. But that would seriously
inconvenience the United States, whose interests the UN
“peacekeeping” missions serve. Kagame has no problem
killing Hutus by the millions in Congo, but he will not
dare upset the superpower to which he owes his bloody
career. |
Source:
Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford
is a veteran journalist, executive editor of
blackagendareport.com. In the late ’70s, he
launched America’s Black Forum, a national black
news TV program, and in ’87 he launched the first
nationally syndicated hip-hop music show called Rap
It Up. He also co-founded the weekly political
journal Black Commentator in 2002. Glen Ford has
been a critic of Barack Obama. Glen Ford gave very
positive coverage of Cynthia McKinney, the Green
Party candidate for President. Glenn Ford confessed
that it was easy for even himself to get caught up
in the kind of “Mecca for African Americans” that
was this day of Inauguration for a black president
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
posted 2 September 2010
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Christian Davenport—Rethinking Rwanda, 1994
Christian
Davenport's "Rethinking Rwanda, 1994" at the Kroc
Institute - University of Notre Dame (April 8,
2010). Sixteen years ago, the world watched as
Rwanda descended into large-scale violence that left
up to a million people dead. This was followed by
massive out-migration (nearly half the country),
untold amounts of internal displacement, and a
deluge of articles, TV news features, movies, and
commentary from human rights activists, political
leaders, and ordinary people from around the
world... Dec 15, 2010
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The Politics of Genocide
By
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
In this
impressive book, Edward S. Herman and David
Peterson examine the uses and abuses of the
word “genocide.” They argue persuasively
that the label is highly politicized and
that in the United States it is used by the
government, journalists, and academics to
brand as evil those nations and political
movements that in one way or another
interfere with the imperial interests of
U.S. capitalism. Thus the word “genocide” is
seldom applied when the perpetrators are
U.S. allies (or even the United States
itself), while it is used almost
indiscriminately when murders are committed
or are alleged to have been committed by
enemies of the United States and U.S.
business interests.
One set
of rules applies to cases such as U.S.
aggression in Vietnam, Israeli oppression of
Palestinians, Indonesian slaughter of
so-called communists and the people of East
Timor, U.S. bombings in Serbia and Kosovo,
the U.S. war of “liberation” in Iraq, and
mass murders committed by U.S. allies in
Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. |
One set of rules
applies to cases such as U.S. aggression in Vietnam,
Israeli oppression of Palestinians, Indonesian slaughter
of so-called communists and the people of East Timor,
U.S. bombings in Serbia and Kosovo, the U.S. war of
“liberation” in Iraq, and mass murders committed by U.S.
allies in Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. Another set
applies to cases such as Serbian aggression in Kosovo
and Bosnia, killings carried out by U.S. enemies in
Rwanda and Darfur, Saddam Hussein, any and all actions
by Iran, and a host of others.
With its careful
and voluminous documentation, close reading of the U.S.
media and political and scholarly writing on the
subject, and clear and incisive charts, The Politics of
Genocide is both a damning condemnation and stunning
exposé of a deeply rooted and effective system of
propaganda aimed at deceiving the population while
promoting the expansion of a cruel and heartless
imperial system.
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Protecting Civilians in Congo
Where many see a hopeless situation, Human Rights Watch
sees the need to bring justice to victims and greater
security to all. From our expert researchers documenting
abuses on the ground to our executive director meeting
with Congo's president, we have been waging an
ambitious, multi-pronged campaign to bring about real
change. To learn more, visit:
www.hrw.org
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Profound Evil in the Congo
Perhaps we’ve heard so little
about them because the crimes are so unspeakable, the evil so
profound. For years now, in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
marauding bands of soldiers and militias have been waging a war of
rape and destruction against women.—Bob Herbert
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HBO Exposé Sheds Light on African Country’s Violence
against Women
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Hutu and Tutsi
By
Aimable Twagilimana
Gr 5-9—A Rwandan
linguist explains the people of Rwanda and Burundi. He deals
primarily with Rwanda, and a large portion of the book (17
pages of 60) concerns Hutu/Tutsi politics and violence since
1959. This emphasis tends to obscure the roots of the
problem in the colonial period. Twagilimana accurately
stresses that the Hutu, Tutsi (and Twa) share language,
religion, and space, with their identities having been
somewhat flexible and based on unequal status.
He discusses the European colonials' racial stereotypes but
does not specify the profound impact of European
"scientific" racism, which assumed that Tutsi and Hutu were
different "races," with the Hutu born to be forever
inferior.Western-educated Africans absorbed this view.
Moreover, the Belgians therefore recruited Tutsi to dominate the Church,
army, and civil service; most secondary school places went to the Tutsi
minority; Hutu kingdoms were "Tutsified"; and changes in land rights
benefited the Tutsi. —School
Library Journal |
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As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda
By Catherine Claire
Larson
Rwanda—bloodied,
scarred and nearly destroyed by the 1994 brutality of the
Hutu genocide of Tutsis—is now called an uncharted case
study in forgiveness by author Larson, who was inspired by
the award-winning film As We Forgive. Individual stories
form prototypes: there is Rosaria, left for dead in a pile
of bodies, who forgives her sisters killer. And Chantal,
whose family is brutally murdered yet who forgives her
neighbor for the crimes. Devota, mutilated and left for
dead, survives, forgives and eventually adopts several
orphans. Each story is horrible and deeply personal as
Larson mines the truths of forgiveness deep in each ones
tale. Helpful interludes offer readers hands-on ways to
facilitate forgiveness and take the next step to
reconciliation in their own lives. This isn't an easy book to read or digest, yet its
message is mandatory: Forgiveness can push out the borders of what we
believe is possible. Reconciliation can offer us a glimpse of the
transfigured world to come.—Publishers Weekly |
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Rwanda Ten Years after
Rwanda
Genocide Conference Clinton Administration
The Struggle Odes
Ode #95
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo (Film
Review by Kam Williams)
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Rape Crisis in Congo Tied to Mining Activity—Washington
Eve Ensler, author of
The Vagina Monologues, helped launch an
international awareness raising campaign called V-Day in
2007 to end sexual violence in eastern Congo. UNICEF
estimates that hundreds of thousands of girls have been
raped in the last decade in the two eastern provinces of
North Kivu and South Kivu. "Corporate greed, fueled by
capitalist consumption, and the rape of women have
merged into a single nightmare," Eve Ensler said at U.S.
Senate hearings on May 13. "Women's bodies are the
battleground of an economic war." Ensler said that
international mining companies with significant
investments in eastern Congo value economic interest
over the bodies of women by trading with rebels who use
rape as a tactic of war in areas rich in coltan, gold
and tin.
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"Military solutions are no longer an
option," she said. "All they do is bring
about the rape of more women." The United
States has invested more than $700 million
in humanitarian aid and peacekeeping to
Congo, according to the U.S. Department of
State.
Prendergast said this money will do nothing
to root out the economic causes of eastern
Congo's conflict and sexual violence.
He said
a comprehensive long-term strategy to combat
rape needs to change the economic calculus
of armed groups. Prendergast asked senators
to support the Congo Conflict Minerals Act,
which was introduced by Kansas Sen. Sam
Brownback, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold in April of
this year.
The bill aims to
break the link between resource exploitation and armed
conflict in eastern Congo by requiring companies trading
minerals with Congo or neighboring states to disclose
mine locations and monitor the financing of armed groups
in eastern Congo's mineral-rich areas.
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"The sooner the
illicit conflict minerals trade is eliminated, the
sooner the people of Congo will benefit from their own
resources," said Prendergrast. U.S. consumers,
Prendergrast said, can also help by pressuring major
electronic companies - from Apple to Sony - to certify
that cell phones, computers and other products contain
"conflict-free minerals," a campaign tactic popularized
by the Sierra Leone-based film
Blood Diamonds. Such a process would use a
tracking system for components, similar to that
developed in 2007 under the Kimberly Process. This
international certification scheme ensures that trade in
rough diamonds doesn't fuel war, as it did in Angola,
Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
Sierra Leone during the 1990s.
Germany has already
developed a pilot fingerprinting system for tin that
could be expanded to other minerals and help establish
certified trading chains, linking legitimate mining
sites to the international market.
Truthout
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Congo has attracted
attention in the media [as a place that is suffering]
systematic rape in war. One statistic quoted is 200,000
rapes since the beginning of the war 14 years ago, and
it is certainly an underestimate.
When in Congo, I met government representatives and
particularly women who had been raped and violated. It
was interesting but also disappointing - nothing is
getting better and more and more civilians are
committing rapes.
But I should be fair and say that there has been
progress, the government has introduced laws against
rape, it has a national plan and there is political
will. There is a lot to do to implement the legislation,
but now there is an ambitious legal ground to stand on
to be implemented by the police, judiciary and health
care.
Margot Wallstrom - "There Is Almost Total
Impunity for Rape in Congo"
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How did Rwanda
cut poverty so much?—16 February 2012—The small
African nation of Rwanda recently announced that it had
cut poverty by 12% in six years, from 57% of its
population to 45%. That equals roughly a million
Rwandans emerging from poverty -- one of the most
stunning drops in the world.It's a remarkable
achievement for Rwanda, which has emerged from civil war
and a bloody ethnic genocide in the 1990s. How did it
happen? The Times quizzed Paul Collier, director of the
Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford
University, about the numbers.
How did Rwanda
cut its poverty so much?—There were one or two
helpful events, notably the rise in world coffee prices,
which pumped money into the rural economy, but, of
course, overall the global economy since 2005 has not
provided an easy environment for success. Hence, most of
the achievement is likely due to domestic policies.
Rwanda is the nearest that Africa gets to an East
Asian-style “developmental state,” where the government
gets serious about trying to grow the economy and where
the president runs a tight ship within government built
on performance rather than patronage. There were strong
supporting policies for the rural poor—the “one cow”
program [that distributed cows to poor households free
of charge], which spread assets, and the improvements in
health programs. Alongside this, the economy was well
managed, with inflation kept low, and the business
environment improved, both of which helped the main
city, Kigali, to grow. Growth in Kigali then spread
benefits to rural areas—the most successful rural
districts were those closest to Kigali.
When you say
well managed, what do you mean? What choices did the
government make that were signs of good management?—Basically,
[President Paul] Kagame built a culture of performance
at the top of the civil service. Ministers were well
paid, but set targets. If they missed the targets there
were consequences. Each year, the government holds a
whole-of-government retreat where these performances are
reviewed: good performance rewarded, and poor performers
required to explain themselves.An example is the
strategy to improve Rwanda's rating on the World Bank's
“Doing Business” annual rating, where over the course of
six years the country moved from around 140th to 60th in
the world rankings. Each component of the ratings was
assigned each year to an appropriate minister. So over
time, a cadre of government officials has been built up
who believe in their ability not just to strategize but
to get things done.—
LaTimesBlogs
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's
wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in
1937, after her cousin was falsely accused
of stealing a white man's turkeys and was
almost beaten to death. In 1945, George
Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled
Florida for Harlem after learning of the
grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie
party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing
Foster made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for the
United States Army and couldn't operate in
his own home town." Anchored to these three
stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively
researched study of the "great migration,"
the exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into the
novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling,
and Pershing settling in new lands, building
anew, and often finding that they have not
left racism behind. The drama, poignancy,
and romance of a classic immigrant saga
pervade this book, hold the reader in its
grasp, and resonate long after the reading
is done. |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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