Investigating the Pentagon’s African Holocaust

[Sepka]

I'll confess that I'm not quite politically enlightened enough to fully grasp how kidnapping aid workers on dry land is meant to affect anything, good, bad or indifferent, taking place on the ocean. Nor can I really understand how kidnapping charity representatives, and holding them for ransom, demonstrates humanitarian concern. Are you actually contending that these are just and fair acts?

You should probably try to enlighten the Somali government as well, since they seem as benighted as me.

http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/ ... -hostages/

The Somali government says it supports the U.S. military operation that freed two Western aid workers who had been held hostage in the war-ravaged country.

In a statement released Thursday, Somalia's transitional government said the rescue of Jessica Buchanan, an American, and Poul Thisted, a Dane, was a “great joy” to “right thinking people everywhere.”

[...]

The Somali government said its people “could have no better friends,” and praised Buchanan and Thisted for “risking their lives” to help make the country safe for children.

And although I'm certainly a proponent of Anglo-American exceptionalism, I can't for the life of me see how leaving Somalia full of abandoned landmines for the natives to step on advances the cause of the West, or is productive of any good at all.

[Allegro]

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At least for me, the names Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni are most important when one presupposes The Family's influences in Africa and perhaps The Joshua Project, in particular. Ms. Garrison also mentions Libya and Syria.
More links in original. Highlights mine.

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On the Merger of the Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting
— Ann Garrison | Wed, 02/08/2012 - 10:07

On September 30th, 2010, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) co-sponsored a San Francisco showing of the film, "Earth Made of Glass" by Deborah Scranton, which presents Rwandan President Paul Kagame as the saviour who stopped the Rwanda Genocide. The film also helps Kagame blame France. CIR held a panel discussion afterwards about "documentary filmmaking as investigative reporting."

CIR thus collaborated in a massive cover-up of General Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Army invasion of Rwanda from Uganda, with weapons and training from the U.S., that led to the death of nearly a million people, both Hutu and Tutsi, in Rwanda. Before it was over, hundreds of thousands of Hutu and hundreds of thousands of Tutsi had died in ethnic massacres.

The Rwanda Genocide story has been told, instead, as the story of how Hutu extremists planned and executed a genocide of the Tutsi minority. In U.S. foreign policy statements, it has been likened to the Holocaust. As such, the story became an excuse for Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to invade the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to "hunt down Hutu militias" said to be still threatening Rwanda, in the First Congo War of 1996-1997, the Second Congo War of 1998-2003, and the violent conflict that continues in eastern Congo today, despite the peace treaty signed in 2003. In January 2008, the International Rescue Committee reported 5.4 million war dead in Congo between 1998 and 2008 alone.

This version of the Rwanda Genocide as Hutu extremists' long planned genocide against the Tutsi is codified in the Wikipedia, where any attempt to alter the central entry on the Rwanda Genocide triggers a host of edit alerts urging its defenders to overwhelm dissenters in a Wiki war that can only conclude in no changes to the story. The Rwandan Constitution was also changed, in 2008, to make it a crime, in Rwanda, to speak of the Rwanda Genocide rather than the Genocide Against the Tutsi.

But there is abundant evidence that this is not true. Some of the most accessible evidence is in the Gersony report, generated by a team led by human rights investigator Robert Gersony in 1994, which described the genocide of Hutu people in southern Rwanda by the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army led by General, now President, Paul Kagame. A summary and analysis of the report, the history of its suppression are available on The Proxy Lake, the blog of Rwandan exile Claire Umurungi: Unearthed: “Gersony Report” the U.N. said it never existed.

In 2001, the UN Panel of Experts on Illegal Minerals Trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the first of five reports, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2008, and 2011, reported that militias fighting in Congo were closely allied with Rwanda and Uganda, and that they were smuggling Congolese minerals across the eastern Congolese border into both countries. The experts also reported that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni were then "on the verge of becoming the godfathers of illegal resource exploitation and ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "They have," the UN experts wrote, "indirectly given criminal cartels a unique opportunity to organize and operate in this fragile and sensitive region." In Paragraphs 181 - 190 of the 2001 report, the experts described the complicity and/or collaboration of donor nations, foreign corporations, cargo companies, private banks, and the World Bank. The World Bank, they said, gave the impression of rewarding both Rwanda and Uganda for plundering the Congo, by proposing them for a new debt relief program.

The 2010 UN Mapping Report on Congo atrocities, documented Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Army's genocidal massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees in eastern Congo, many of whom were women and children, and sick and elderly people. It was leaked on August 26th, 2010, before being officially released on October 1, 2010.

It would seem that no one at CIR read any of these UN reports, or no one heeded them, before presenting "Earth Made of Glass" as an example of documentary filmmaking as investigative reporting.

CIR's collaboration in such a massive cover-up of such epic violence and criminality makes me less than optimistic about the merger of the Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which today's Bay Citizen reported to be in the works, awaiting final approval by both Boards, with a Memorandum of Understanding already in place. However, I always try to consider the work of any individual reporter or team on its own, apart from the organization sponsoring it. I wouldn't, myself, want to be held responsible for the rest of the work of every publication I ever wrote for or every broadcast outlet I appeared on or produced for.

I wrote to Phil Bronstein about this film screening and "Filmmaking as Investigative Reporting" panel before it happened. He didn't respond.

This is a serious issue, not a minor issue, although I will acknowledge that it was only one episode, that I know of, in the reporting life of CIR. There may be more that I don't know of, but this is the one I do know of. It is a very serious issue right now, because "stopping the next Rwanda Genocide" was the excuse for the US/NATO invasion of Libya and the overthrow of Muammar Ghadaffi, and now it's close to becoming the excuse for a US/NATO invasion of Syria and the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. It could then become the excuse for the invasion of Sudan and the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir. See/listen to NPR: The 'Responsibility To Protect' In Syria And Beyond.

This is a local issue as well because San Francisco and the Bay Area can't credibly continue to be a world leader in LGBT rights without understanding the much publicized struggle over LGBT rights in Africa within the context of the broader human rights struggle. In that broader struggle, U.S. advocacy for gay rights has become a fig leaf for its militarization of Africa and responsibility for war and genocide.

For more thorough accounts, with evidence citations, see:

"The U.N. Security Council Ad Hoc Rwanda Tribunal: International Justice, or Juridically Constructed 'Victor’s Impunity?" by Law Professor, former ICTR Defense Counsel, and National Lawyer's Guild President Peter Erlinder.

Obama requests immunity for Kagame re Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars.

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Rwandan refugee journalists fear for colleague Jean Bosco Gasasira
— Ann Garrison | KPFA Weekend News, 02.11.2012

Supporters of Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingebire and all Rwandan political prisoners demonstrate outside Dutch Parliament in the Hague, wearing the pink color of Rwandan prison garb.

Transcript | Audio

tag Paul Kagame

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Uganda: Indigenous land evictions ← Transcript
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Sat, 02/18/2012 - 23:07
KPFA Weekend News, 02.19.2012

Koch Guma IDP Camp, 2007. Those who are not orphaned are left alone in the camps for long stretches of time while their parents strike out looking for work. Photo: Joshua Dysart

KPFA Weekend News Anchor Cameron Jones: Last October, President Obama sent 100 Special Operations Forces into Uganda's northern region to, he said, help the Ugandan Army protect the people by hunting down Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, commonly known by its acronym, the LRA. Now, however, many Acholi and other indigenous people of Northern Uganda say that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's attempt to evict them from their land is what really threatens their survival. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.
Audio

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REFER The Prosperity Gospel; Prosperity Theology | Dominion Theology | Reconstructionism | The Joshua Project | 1040 Window | Christian Fundamentalism | Christian Evangelism | Focus on the Family | Family Research Council | The Family

[psynapz]

I'll confess that I'm not quite politically enlightened enough

Granted.

And although I'm certainly a proponent of Anglo-American exceptionalism

On what grounds, exactly?

[Simulist]

I'll confess that I'm not quite politically enlightened enough

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And although I'm certainly a proponent of Anglo-American exceptionalism

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Highlights mine.

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West Africa oil boom overlooks tattered environmental safety net
— By Christiane Badgley | Center for Public Integrity
Updated: 8:34 pm, January 23, 2012

Oil-industry regulation lags behind as Ghana ramps up production

On November 3, 2011, fishermen working near the Jubilee oil field 60 km. off the coast of Ghana spotted a large oil slick floating towards land.

The next day a dark, syrupy ooze arrived onshore, coating beaches of several fishing communities and waterfront hotels in Ghana’s Ahanta West District, the coastal strip closest to the country’s new, deep water oil field.

The fishermen told authorities they suspected the spill came from the offshore operations, but the incident was greeted with seeming indifference. No official clean-up was launched, so the community was left to clean up the mess itself.

“The lack of any clear information about the incident has made many in the coastal communities nervous about the future,” said Kyei Kwadwo Yamoah of the Friends of the Nation, a Ghanaian community development organization.

Even as the Jubilee field was in development, environmentalists warned it was moving too fast. To activists, official silence surrounding the November incident was evidence that Ghana lacked the ability to properly oversee offshore oil operations.

Reports by non-governmental organizations show that the companies that developed the Jubilee field, and the World Bank Group officials who lent hundreds of millions of dollars to jumpstart the project, were aware of the risks from the beginning. What’s also clear is that everyone knew the Ghanaian government lacked adequate monitoring systems, regulators to police the industry and equipment needed to react to spills.

Located along Africa’s Atlantic Coast, Ghana is slipping down the same unregulated slope as other countries that hug the Gulf of Guinea: Promises of economic development along with a lure of easy money have prompted governments to encourage the rapid growth of an industry in a regulatory vacuum.

The oil industry, in effect, is left to monitor itself.

Speedy oil development

Ghana’s Western Region boasts some of the country’s most striking coastline. Rocky coves and tidal pools give way to palm-fringed stretches of sandy beach where dolphins and sea birds dash in and out of crashing surf and where a lucky visitor might spot a nesting turtle.

Historically, the coastal region’s economy has depended on fishing, which benefits 2 million people — 8 percent of Ghana’s population — but is predicted to unduly suffer from pollution generated by oil operations. Government and industry officials acknowledge that they have no compensation fund to support fishing communities in the event of a major spill — the type of response that kick-started recovery in U.S. Gulf Coast states after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

That reality leaves many coastal residents and environmental activists doubting the government’s promise that in Ghana, oil would be a blessing, not a curse.

What they’ve seen instead is a fast embrace of the industry: local boosters quickly adopted the nickname “Oil City” for the coastal region’s capital, Sekondi-Takoradi.

When U.K.-based Tullow Oil announced in June 2007 that it had discovered oil in commercial quantities, no one expected that crude would flow just three and a half years later. At the time, Tullow officials spoke of needing up to seven years to develop the field.

But boosted by $215 million in loans from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) — the private financing arm of the World Bank — Tullow and its partners, the American companies Kosmos Energy and Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, were able to get the $3 billion Jubilee field ready in record time.

Ghana became the latest West African country to share in an oil exploration boom that had taken on new emphasis after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron-Texaco had been major players in Equatorial Guinea, Angola and Nigeria since the 1990s. After the terrorist attacks, the United States looked increasingly to Africa as a “safe” alternative to Middle Eastern oil.

Then-President George W. Bush traveled twice to sub-Saharan Africa and met with a number of African heads of state. Exploration in the Gulf of Guinea was pushed by rising oil prices and advances in deep-water drilling technology. Nine years later the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster gave African offshore development an unexpected boost.

From one gulf to another

“The moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico left a lot of drilling rigs with nothing to do and then the oil companies are faced with these half-a-million-dollar-a-day contracts with nothing to do,” said Stuart Wheaton, development director for Tullow Oil Ghana.

Operators moved rigs from the Gulf of Mexico to oil fields around the world and some made it to West African waters.

In those same waters, Ghana’s offshore development had gotten its head start from the IFC, whose loans served as a “green light” for other potential investors.

Mary-Jean Moyo, the IFC’s country manager for Ghana, said the corporation’s financial backing in 2009 was crucial in attracting other private investors to the Jubilee project.

“This was at the height of the global financial crisis, so IFC played quite a critical role in terms of being a catalyst,” Moyo said. Without the IFC, “it might have been difficult to raise additional international financing.”

Moyo also said the Jubilee project was classified as low risk for Ghana because “this is offshore and there weren’t any onshore impacts in terms of social displacement, in terms of destruction to mangroves.”

But oil industry analysts at Oxfam America, the global relief and development organization, said the IFC agreed to help finance the project before fully addressing safety and environmental concerns. Moyo acknowledged that the IFC loans to Tullow Oil and Kosmos Energy were approved before the required environmental impact studies had been completed. She pointed out that IFC financing followed strict rules, including “adherence to international safety standards in terms of having very good oil spill response plans and adequate safety measures.”

Ian Gary, Oxfam’s top expert on extractive industries, said this sent a bad signal: “Bringing the project to a board vote prior to the completion of the environmental Impact assessment weakens international norms, since one of the basic purposes of an (assessment) is to determine whether, and under what conditions, a project should be supported.”

In a review of environmental documentation prepared by the IFC, the environmental organization Pacific Environment also questioned IFC support for the project, citing: “Inadequate assessment of impacts on endangered species and critical habitats; inadequate assessment of noise impacts on marine mammals, dumping of drilling wastes into the sea,” and a failure to demonstrate compliance with international standards.

Industry officials say the risks of the Jubilee development are manageable.

“It’s fair to say the capacity and capability for national emergency response is low, but we’ll just have to keep working at it as the years go by,” said Tullow Oil’s Wheaton.

“Everything has some sort of risk associated with it, so you try to minimize those risks and if we do have a spill, what we have done is we’ve brought equipment in,” he added.

The company has clean-up equipment on-site and is a member of the industry-funded Oil Spill Response Ltd., an organization that says it can airlift equipment from the U.K. within 24 hours in the event of a major spill.

Mohammed Amin Adam, a government transparency advocate and cofounder of Ghana’s Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas said his country doesn’t even have “the legal … frameworks to respond to these issues.”

Even though Jubilee field production has started, Ghana has yet to update environmental laws governing extractive industries that were written a generation ago. Ghanaian officials said new legislation will be considered this year.

Ghanaian environmental officials also said they are prepared to act in case of a spill.

“There’s a National Security Coordinating Committee involving the military, the navy, the police and local councils … the Ministry, the Maritime Authority,” said Sherry Ayittey, Ghana’s environment minister. “There is an emergency response unit always being trained, so that in the event of a spillage, within 24 hours, we would be able to move to the location and then handle the issue as quickly as possible.”

Regulatory vacuum

Production from the Jubilee field hovers at around 80,000 barrels per day, but that’s expected to increase substantially over the next decade.

At Ghana’s April 2011 Oil and Gas Summit, Willy Olsen, former senior adviser to Norway’s Statoil, predicted Ghana would become the region’s third-largest producer after Nigeria and Angola, “pumping upwards of 500,000 barrels per day.”

As proof of their technical expertise, Ghanaian government and oil company officials have touted the pace at which the Jubilee field was brought to production.

Environmentalists point out that the country’s first deep-water oil project was its first major oil project of any kind.

Amid the ramp-up to commercial production, the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred. The blowout of the Macondo well off the Louisiana coast on April 20, 2010 was an “eye-opener” according to one Ghanaian official, who said the blast prompted the government to review all of its safety procedures.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster did not slow down Jubilee development, however, and the government review has yet to yield any new regulation.

In October 2011, Offshore Magazine reported on a deep-water technology conference in New Orleans where Dennis McLaughlin, Senior Vice President with Kosmos Energy, gave a talk titled, “Reviewing Lessons learned from the Jubilee project.” In it he acknowledged that, “large deep-water projects are inherently difficult and risky,” and then described what it was like to develop the Jubilee field in a country with no regulatory or commercial infrastructure.

During the Jubilee field development Kosmos Energy experienced several mishaps. The company acknowledged spilling toxic drilling mud on three occasions, including a spill of some 600 barrels (25,000 gallons) in December 2009.

Cephas Egbefome an environmental issues researcher for Ghana’s parliament, said the government fined Kosmos $35 million for negligence.

But the fine, which Kosmos challenged as not following Ghanaian law and ultimately did not pay, raised a number of concerns, Egbefome said. The government probe was quick and opaque; the methodology for determining the fine was unclear. “Kosmos openly challenged the legal basis of the fine, describing it as totally unlawful,” he said.

Transparency activist Mohammed Amin Adam takes up the story:

“What the law says is that in the event of a disaster, a spill, the polluter must pay. But the law doesn’t talk about a fine,” he said. “Kosmos spilled mud, a committee was set up to investigate Kosmos and the committee came out with a fine, contrary to our law.

“What government needed to do was to get Kosmos to clean and pay for the cleaning,” Amin Adam said. “We just slapped a fine on them. And so they came to raise legal questions: whether we had the legal mandate, the authority to slap a fine on them.”

Kosmos declined to answer questions about the mud spills.

Instead Jim McCarthy, the media relations representative for the company sent ICIJ a press release on the “amicable” resolution of several issues: “Kosmos and the Ministry of Science, Environment and Technology have agreed to a solution with respect to the accidental mud discharges offshore Ghana earlier this year whereby Kosmos would support the Ministry’s efforts to build capacity in the environmental sector.”

Daniel Amlalo, Ghana’s acting Enviromental Protection Agency director, said the mud spills were properly addressed.

“Lessons have been learned from that and government has put measures in place to ensure that it does not happen again,” he said.

A regional problem

Ghana’s troubled regulation of the offshore oil industry sits against a backdrop of other West African nations with dubious environmental records.

The Nigerian oil industry, already infamous for its disastrous environmental record in the Niger Delta, also has problems offshore. In December, Shell said a spill occurred at its Bonga field, approximately 120 km. off Nigeria’s coast.

This past December 20th and 21st, oil spewed from a ruptured fuel line connecting the Bonga platform to a waiting tanker. Before workers noticed the spill, Shell said that up to 40,000 barrels (1.68 million gallons) had leaked, reportedly making it the worst offshore accident in Nigeria since 1988.

The Nigerian government takes a hands-off approach to clean-up operations, maintaining little in the way of vessels or equipment. Each company operating in the country is required to stockpile clean-up equipment and the industry leaders in Nigeria have also enlisted the U.K.’s Oil Spill Response Ltd.

After the December spills, Nigerian Senator Abubakar Kukola Saraki denounced the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency for having to “rely almost exclusively on the grace and benevolence of the oil companies” in a clean-up effort.

After years of denial, Royal Dutch Shell recently acknowledged that “operational issues” were responsible for two other large spills in Nigeria’s Ogoniland in 2008 – pollution in the Niger Delta that the United Nations Environment Program said would cost $1 billion to clean up.

Shell said sabotage is thwarting clean-up efforts and more than three years later, oil remains in the water and on land. A November 2011 report from Amnesty International says the spills destroyed the livelihoods of 69,000 people.

Angola offers another bad example, said Kristin Reed, an environmental researcher at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reed described Angola’s oil industry as one without any state or independent monitoring or oversight. She said the situation is made worse by Angola’s press restrictions that limit public information about oil operations. Anecdotal news of spills and pollution sometimes spreads via blogs and the Internet but official details on incidents and who’s to blame are rarely available.

And the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea, an oil producer since the mid-1990s, also has no spill response plan, no clean-up equipment or vessels, no independent press and no agreements with neighboring countries to combat pollution.

In Equatorial Guinea, oil companies monitor themselves and handle their own cleanups.

The ICIJ asked ExxonMobil, how the oil companies conduct self-monitoring in the region and to whom they report.

David Eglinton, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, promised a response. He has yet to give one.

Dead whales

In Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana’s “Oil City,” activists from Friends of the Nation [an NGO] work with the communities closest to offshore drilling operations.

In two years of monitoring on behalf of local residents, the group’s Kyei Yamoah, has noted an increase in whale deaths.

“A whale washed ashore in October, bringing the total number of dead whales on our beaches since late 2009 to eight,” Yamoah said.

“After the death of the first whale, (the government) claimed they had taken samples to determine the cause, but they have never made their reports public,” Yamoah said. “Now we have seven more [dead whales].”

This past spring, the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas, a group that includes industry experts, government officials and community activists, issued a “report card” on Ghana’s emerging oil business. Speakers at the report’s unveiling included Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, Ghana’s deputy energy minister, and Ishac Diwan, the World Bank’s Ghana country director.

The report commended the government’s transparency efforts and the passage of an oil revenue management plan, but gave the industry and government regulators a “D” grade on social and environmental issues. The report said pollution controls and environmental regulation of the offshore industry are still just legislative proposals.

Ghanaian transparency advocate Mohammed Amin Adam said the report was designed to draw attention to the potential danger the country faces.

The attention is needed, said Ghanaian government researcher Cephas Egbefome, because the environment and risks in offshore oil production seem to be non-issues for most politicians and the public.

In a country where a significant percentage of the population struggles just to get by, Egbefome said, it’s hard to muster much concern for an oil operation 60 km offshore that few can see.

Christiane Badgley is a journalist and documentary film producer who follows oil development in Africa. This article was produced in cooperation with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Click here to see more of her Ghana oil reports.

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U.S. in Congo: Ongoing support for Kabila? ← Transcript
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Sat, 02/27/2012 - 14:07
KPFA Weekend News, 02.25.2012

The United States gives more money than any single nation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, almost a billion dollars this year, primarily in military and security aid. Last fall, just before the October 28th election, the U.S. Embassy in the country's capital, Kinshasa, announced a $500,000 contribution of police equipment.

On Thursday, the Carter Center, which monitored the election, released its second report on the election, which said that it had not established the legitimate authority of incumbent President Joseph Kabila and his party majority, both of which claimed victory. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.
Audio

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[REFER John F. Tierney]

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REFER The Prosperity Gospel; Prosperity Theology | Dominion Theology | Reconstructionism | The Joshua Project | 1040 Window | Christian Fundamentalism | Christian Dispensationalism | Christian Evangelism | Campus Crusade for Christ | Focus on the Family | Family Research Council | The Family

POST 2051

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Barbara Lee, Sudan, and the African oil wars ← Transcript
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Mon, 04/30/2012 - 19:28
KPFA Evening News, 04.29.2012

Africa advocates fear that California’s Ninth District Congresswoman Barbara Lee may be leading the U.S. into another oil war in Africa, despite her anti-war voting record and good intentions. KPFA asked Ugandan American Black Star News Editor Milton Allimadi what he would most like to say to Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

KPFA Evening News Anchor Anthont [sic] Fest: Earlier this week, Oakland Congresswoman Barbara Lee was [n]amed co-chair of the Congressional Sudan Caucus. The press release announcing her new co-chairmanship said she was concerned with the ongoing human calamity in a number of Sudanese border areas. But some Africa activists fear that Barbara Lee may be unintentionally making way for another oil war in Africa. KPFA’s Ann Garrison asked Milton Allimadi, Ugandan American Editor of the New York City-based Black Star News what he’d like to say to Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

Audio

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REFER Barbara Lee | Baptist

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REFERENCES ARE PERIODICALLY ADDED TO THESE LISTS: The Prosperity Gospel; Prosperity Theology | White Savior Industrial Complex | The Joshua Project | 1040 Window | Campus Crusade for Christ | Focus on the Family | Family Research Council | The Family | Opus Dei | Dominion Theology | Reconstructionism | Christian Fundamentalism | Christian Dispensationalism | Christian Evangelism | Pentecostalism

National Association of Evangelicals | World Vision International | Traditional Values Coalition | International Center for Religion & Diplomacy | National Christian Foundation | Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability | ONE Campaign

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RESOURCE

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INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
Peace Palace, Carnegieplein 2, 2517 KJ The Hague, Netherlands
Tel.: +31 (0)70 302 2323 Fax: +31 (0)70 364 9928
Website: http://www.icj-cij.org
Press Release
Unofficial
No. 2005/26
19 December 2005

Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo
(Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda)

The Court finds that Uganda violated the principles of non-use of force in international relations and of non-intervention; that it violated its obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law; and that it violated other obligations owed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Court also finds that the Democratic Republic of the Congo violated obligations owed to Uganda under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961

PDF http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/116/10521.pdf

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Glencore International’s Child Labor Abuse in Congo
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Tue, 06/12/2012 - 17:53

Glencore International’s exploitation of child mining labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Aired on AfrobeatRadio, on WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York City, wbai.org.
Audio Comments.


Mugo Josphat • Nairobi University

The Congo Government should come up to the rescue of such children. They are supposed to be in school in order to make their future better. Just see them, innocent as they are they need your intervention to have a better future and a better country.
• June 13 at 12:47pm

Ann Garrison

Well, there’s little I can do but write about it and agitate for my own government to stop backing the forces that destabilize Congo, making the State so weak that such abuse is possible. But after I produced this story, i realized that the headline is a bit misleading, that I had been trapped in the “women and children” as victims viewpoint. Though this is very bad, how much better would it be if only the parents of these children were working in such horrendous conditions, while Glencore robs them of their wealth, and exploits their labor at the same time.

Also, this is not just an African problem. After writing this, I read a sickening report on Guatemalan children working on sugar cane plantations on that country’s fertile east coast, where they are paid miserably, and not by the hour, but by how much they harvest. And they also work in miserable, physically debilitating conditions.
• June 13 at 2:17pm

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President Obama, Kase Lawal, and Bosco Ntaganda ← Transcript
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Mon, 06/25/2012 - 15:48
KPFA Evening News, 06.23.2012

In 2011, UN experts reported that one of Obama’s top trade advisors, Nigerian American oil billionaire Kase Lawal, was implicated in a failed attempt to smuggle 4.5 tons of gold out of Congo’s North Kivu Province in collaboration with General Bosco Ntaganda, an East African military commander who has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Audio

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Highlights mine.

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Clinton, Kagame, Rwanda, and Congo ← Transcript
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Wed, 07/25/2012 - 00:53

KPFA Evening News, 07.21.2012

Bill Clinton traveled to Rwanda within weeks of the UN Panel of Experts on Congo’s report that Paul Kagame’s Rwandan regime is behind the M23 militia that has resumed the war in D.R. Congo.

KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenberg: Former president Bill Clinton flew into Kigali, Rwanda this week to, reportedly, officiate at the opening of a cancer prevention and treatment center. Bill Clinton and Paul Kagame in Rwanda, 07.19.2012 Clinton and the Pentagon’s longstanding partnership with Rwanda and Congo think he’s really there to do damage control after the latest report by the UN Panel of Experts, which offered 75 pages of photographic and documentary evidence that Rwanda is behind the M23 militia led by ICC indicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda. It was that militia which resumed the war in eastern Congo in April. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Rwanda Genocide survivor and human rights activist Aimable Mugara about Bill Clinton’s alliance with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Aimable Mugara, how credible do you think it is that Bill Clinton arrived in Kigali, to meet with Paul Kagame and have his picture taken with these children for a charitable enterprise, a cancer hospital, within weeks of the UN report that Kagame is responsible for the M23 militia which has resumed the war in D.R. Congo?

Aimable Mugara: I really don’t think that it’s credible. I don’t think this is a coincidence. I really think that those two genociders are talking about Congo. Ntaganda has been indicted by the United Nations International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Clinton is probably letting Kagame know that their support for Ntaganda’s mutineers in Congo needs to be much more covert, without leaving behind any traces like they recently did and got caught by UN experts. So having Kagame’s support for Ntaganda on record is really not going to do good for their image, both Kagame and Bill Clinton, his enabler.

KPFA: You wrote an essay, “Bill Clinton, the genocider who just might get away,” published in the San Francisco Bay View and the OpEdNews. “Genocider” seemed to be an attempt at an English translation of the French term “genocidaire,” which means “someone who commits genocide.” Could you explain why you gave the piece that title?

Aimable Mugara: Absolutely. The reason why I deeply believe that Bill Clinton is a “genocider” or “genocidaire” is because everything that happened in Rwanda and Congo, the big massacres that happened in Rwanda and Congo were done using the United States government support to General Kagame. And this support was military weapons, financial support, and political support. So without that support by the United States, I really don’t think the Great Lakes Region of Africa would have been transformed into the death ground that it became in the 90s. And even after he was not in power anymore, Bill Clinton continues to support General Kagame, despite so many credible sources that have shown how Kagame’s forces have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible genocide.

KPFA: And, when you say that the U.S. supplied weapons and other forms of support to the wars and massacres in the Great Lakes Region, you’re including not only Rwanda and Uganda’s invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, beginning in 1996, but also General Kagame’s invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, which ended in the ethnic massacres of 1994, which then became the justification for Kagame’s repeated invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Is that right?

Aimable Mugara: Absolutely. Basically, when Kagame invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, that was an international crime of aggression. Typically what happens in those situations is for the aggressor to be sanctioned, but in the case of Kagame, the U.S. government instead protected him at the United Nations against any sanctions, and continued to provide the weapons and training and all kinds of support to his rebels who then went on to cause the largest killings ever in that region.

KPFA: That was Rwanda Genocide survivor and human rights activist Aimable Mugara. His essay, “Bill Clinton the genocider who just might get away” can be found on the website of the San Francisco Bay View, sfbayview.com, as can Paul Rusesabagina’s response to Clinton’s trip to Rwanda, this week.

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War crimes complaint against Rwanda's Kagame delivered to the ICC
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Sun, 08/19/2012, 23:22

On August 17, 2012, Rwandans, Congolese, and international criminal attorney Christopher Black gathered in The Hague to deliver a complaint and documentary evidence to Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, calling upon her to investigate Rwandan President Paul Kagame for war crimes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On the same day, members of opposition parties walked to Kigali's 1930 maximum security prison, where their leaders are incarcerated, in solidarity. KPFA spoke to Alice Muhirwa, treasurer of the United Democratic Forces or FDU-Inking opposition party in Rwanda.

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Ayanda Kota on South Africa 2012 ← Transcript
— Submitted by Ann Garrison | Fri, 08/24/2012 - 20:53

In March this year, WBAI AfrobeatRadio spoke to Ayanda Kota, Chair of the Unemployed People’s Union in Grahamstown, South Africa about South Africa as it is now, in 2012. In this excerpt, he described it as the realization of what slain South African writer and activist Stephen Biko had predicted. His description resonates with news of the police massacre of striking mine workers, on 08.16.2012, at the Lonmin Mining Corporation’s Marikana platinum mine in South Africa. Ayanda Kota had, in March, spoken of almost daily land evictions and, after the Marikana massacre, University of Capetown Professor Gavin Capps told Democracy Now [video below] that its context was land loss, and the destruction of rural communities caused by a platinum mining boom that began in the late 1990s.

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^ Democracy Now! | Massacre in South Africa:
Police Defend Killing 34 Striking Workers at Platinum Mine

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