World Refugee Day

Photo and caption via Reuters: "A Sudanese refugee girl sits in the shadow of her hut as they celebrate Refugee Day at Ikafe camp in northwest Uganda near the borders of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo June 20, 2005. Marking World Refugee Day with his first overseas trip in the role to Ikafe camp, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said on Monday that nations like Uganda that host hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighbouring African conflicts should serve as a lesson to the West, where asylum policies are increasingly restrictive. (Reuters/Radu Sigheti)"

Note, "celebrate" is not a word I would use in connection with World Refugee Day. Not sure what the new UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres is getting at when he says Sudanese refugees in Uganda should serve as a lesson to the West. What is he suggesting, that millions of people from the Sudan, DR Congo, and Uganda, to name a few countries in Africa, be given residency in tiny countries like England with the British taxpayer footing the bill?

I suggest the lesson lays with African people and their leaders - not the West. African countries are rich in oil and other natural resources. Billions of dollars of taxpayers money have gone from the West to Africa. It is the fault of corrupt African leaders and African people not getting their act together for so many years that is the problem. For too long poor people in Africa have been marginalised and denied access to the law and land/property ownership. And too many are coming to the West to get educated and not returning home to spread their knowledge, training and skills. The fault lays with African people and their leaders, not the West. They need to wake up. The population of Africa will double in 27 years time. If Africa does not pull itself up by its bootstraps like many Asian countries have done so admirably, it will become unmanageable for the rest of the world. African people must get educated and get rid of despotic dictators who spend Africa's wealth on arms and decades of continual war.

New danger from Ugandan rebel group ADF based in DR Congo? ADF leader Jamil Mukulu next Bin Laden of Africa?

June 6, 2005 report via ReliefWeb from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) by Fawzia Sheikh in Kampala, Uganda:

An Islamic guerrilla group previously thought to be a spent force is regrouping and rearming, according to Ugandan security officials.

Security officials in Uganda are warning that the country faces a real threat from an Islamic group that many believed had been defeated.

Most foreign reporting on Uganda's security problems focuses on the Lord's Resistance Army, LRA, a guerrilla force which professes Christian values but has pursued a particularly brutal insurgent war in northern Uganda for two decades.

But there is growing concern about another group, the Allied Democratic Forces, ADF, a resurgence of which could again threaten Uganda's southwestern flank.

The ADF's base in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, places it among the many cross-border security problems facing the Great Lakes region.

The fact that the United States government is planning to help monitor the activity of armed Ugandan and Rwandan factions operating out of the DRC seems to reflect the growing concern in the White House about the potential for African instability to breed international terrorism.

US interest in Great Lakes security grew after the 1997 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and a failed plot to attack its Kampala mission.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US government added the LRA to its list of terrorist organisations. It subsequently established the 100-million-dollar East Africa Counterterrorism Initiative, intended to provide regional states with a range of tools from police training to methods of countering money-laundering and other financial abuses by illegal organisations.

"There is a general interest on the part of the United States and members of the international community to help reduce the level of internal violence in Africa," said Dr Calestous Juma, professor of international development at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Concerns over the spread of terrorism are only a part of the equation."

Yet while it is still concerned about the LRA, the US recently dropped the Islamic ADF from its list of designated terrorist organisations.

From 1996 onwards, the ADF grew into an increasingly potent rebel force - assisted by the Sudanese government - but in 1999 the Ugandan armed forces began to gain the upper hand and by 2001, they had effectively defeated the group.

Now it's back, according to security officials interviewed by IWPR.

"The long absence of a central government in Congo [DRC], hampered by a UN peacekeeping force without a strong mandate to disarm and reintegrate fighters, has given the ADF time to regroup there," said Lieutenant-Colonel James Mugira, Uganda's acting chief of military intelligence.

According to Mugira, the ADF has been receiving funding, operational training, and weapons such as Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and bomb-making equipment from Islamic fundamentalist groups in Muslim countries.

Captain Joseph Kamusiime, operations officer in charge of Uganda's joint anti-terrorism unit, says that while the ADF has reportedly received help from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, one of its main supporters is Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the Sudan-based National Islamic Front.

Kamusiime believes Turabi wants to see the "Islamicisation" of Sudan's neighbours including Uganda.

Earlier this year, the ADF's leader, Jamil Mukulu, began distributing tape recordings of religious sermons in which he incited members to attack the government of President Yoweri Museveni, and criticised ADF members who had surrendered to the army.

Captain Kamusiime said the sermons preached that "Muslims should kill non-Muslims, and kill also Muslims who are not fighting for jihad".

In another recording, continued Kamusiime, Mukulu takes aim at the West, saying, "Let curses be to Bush, Blair, the president of France - and more curse goes to Museveni and all those fighting Islam."

Kamusiime concluded, "This is mujahedin kind of propaganda, and we think it's dangerous, especially if the message is conveyed to someone who's not educated." He added that 50 per cent of Uganda's population is illiterate.

Kamusiime estimates that there between 650 and 1,000 armed ADF fighters based at two camps in eastern DRC, and said that Mukulu has recently sent funds to these groups to help them recruit new members.

The United Nations mission in DRC is less convinced about the threat posed by the Ugandan rebel group. It comes up with a similar estimate of 1,000 fighters in the country, but its deputy spokesman Mamadou Bah says that "some of them are camp-followers or other kinds of people who make the ADF fighters seem much more than they actually are".

Under a tripartite agreement designed to disable the various DRC-based insurgent forces, the US, Uganda and Rwanda share information about rebel activity both with each other and with the DRC government. The groups under scrutiny include the Interahamwe, the remnants of the Hutu forces responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Within Uganda, the US government remains especially concerned about the LRA, which Ugandan intelligence and army sources say received military training at al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's farm in Sudan in the mid-Nineties.

The US provides Museveni's government with non-military assistance such as vehicles and radios to help it combat the LRA.

Even though the LRA is avowedly Christian in outlook, it has received backing from Sudan's Islamic government, which has traditionally been opposed to Museveni because it alleged he was helping the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the rebel force which made peace with the Khartoum government only this year.

Despite the fact that the LRA still has a place on the US list of terrorist organisations while the ADF no longer does so, Ugandan officials insist that Mukulu's group is may be more of a menace to the international community as well as to the country itself.

"The LRA is an insurgent group which is using terrorist targets to further their cause. They're not targeting Americans [or] Israelis," said Kamusiime.

"The ADF, however, is motivated by Islamic fundamentalists - more in line with al-Qaeda ideology like other African terrorist organisations with global reach, such as the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and Somalia's Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya."

Four years ago, the Ugandan government unsuccessfully tried to get an international arrest warrant issued for Mukulu, and now it plans to post his photo on the internet in a bid to capture him.

"We know he's going to be a very, very dangerous person," said Mugira.

"We think he'll become the next Bin Laden of Africa."

Fawzia Sheikh is a Canadian journalist based in Kampala.

[Cross-posted at Uganda Watch blog]

Uganda, Congo and Khartoum facing war crimes probe

A BBC report today confirms the International Criminal Court at The Hague is to launch an inquiry into alleged war crimes in Darfur, western Sudan.

The ICC plans other trials later this year against alleged perpetrators of war crimes in two other African nations, Uganda and Congo, a BBC correspondent says.

Castrate the rapists or do something to stop rape being used as a weapon of war

The following comments were received from Cynthia and an anonymous person in response to a recent post here at Congo Watch entitled Women take brunt of human rights abuse: Amnesty.

As the post also appeared at my other blog Uganda Watch, I have today cross-posted this at Uganda Watch. My reply to the comments took as long to write as a post, so I am using it as an entry for today's post here. Thanks to Cynthia and the anonymous poster. Much appreciated. Although, goodness knows what they or any other readers will think of my reply. I bashed it out quickly and posted it right away without a second thought, incase I talked myself out of publishing it.

Cynthia said...
I agree too that women should rule the world since men have made an utter mess of things. There is no way women can do worst...

6:23 AM
Anonymous said...
I am a man and am so sick of hearing how we should send billions of dollars to Africa to treat AIDS. Very simple: if someone rapes or molests a woman - castrate them! Women are under enormous pressure to have sex even by husbands, and when the husband carries aids from his girlfriend, of course women will be infected at higher rates. How does throwing more money at simple BAD BEHAVIOR change the problem????? Wake up people! I'm sick of paying for crap like this.

12:14 AM
Cynthia said...
You know Mr. Anonymous, I looked at the AIDS number, and they don't add up. African behavior is no worst than all the crap that Americans and Europeans do and they are not bombarded with these fictitious numbers that can’t even be verified. The Internet can attest to these facts. I, on the other hand, get so sick and tire of all the inappropriate moral outrage about things that are not even true. It's all propaganda.

6:31 AM
Ingrid said...
Hey anonymous: castrate them yay! In the olden days there used to be eunuchs. And I've read somewhere that Salt Peter used to be given to prisoners, sailors and troops to stop their "urges". What I am saying here is, now that such actions against men have ceased, what is the alternative within today's society?

I wish more men would speak up about rape like you have but I guess nothing will be sorted because it's not in mens' interest. Imagine if it were the men getting raped by men - no doubt things would get sorted quickly.

Cynthia, if you ever get time to look deeper into what you have just written, I would be interested in writing a post on it. There is so much propaganda around in other spheres, especially when it comes to Africa, I am not surprised it might be used with AIDS too.

It seems to me the sources of propaganda stem from those with a vested interest commercially - and activists - mainly from America. Every day I get steamed up reading American news reports especially when they are connected somehow to organisations that are based on the East Coast of America - to such an extent that I am actually trying to avoid reading American news now.

These days, whenever I read a piece by religious and/or political led organisations, Washington Post, NY Times, Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group and London-based Amnesty International, I start questioning the degree self interest and political motivation behind each story. UN and aid agencies add to the caucophony of outpourings of emotion in their quaterly fundraising drives.

Please understand, I am not suspecting these organisations of not having good intentions - what I am saying is if you follow the money you will find them on the trail and things get mighty blown out of proportion on the way, sort of like a Chinese Whisper, where everyone adds in their own two cents and interepretation along the way and it gets read as fact.

Much worse things - and the death toll is much greater - in Uganda and DR Congo than is currently happening in Darfur Sudan and yet the spotlight is still on Darfur and hardly alight on the world's worst/most neglected humanitarian crises in northern Uganda and DRC where for starters at least four million people have perished.

These days one has to be so careful talking about Arabs, Muslims, Jews and Africans for fear of being misinterpreted or accused of being racist - it is more trouble than it is worth. [So in a sense, it seeems to me they are suppressing freedom of speech] Frankly, I am starting to add Americans into that mix.

Within the blogosphere I've noticed over the past two years, most Americans take any sort of criticism of their blinkered and insular thinking as an afront to everything they stand for - like an attack on everything that is great and good about America - they get pretty aggressive about it and hold grudges. Sort of reminds me of the story of the Emperor and his clothes...

The point I am making here is there is so much political propaganda in the American media that Americans aren't even aware because they can't be told anything. Sorry, that's putting it bluntly but I have felt this way for the past year.

Another thing too is, this mushrooming of do-good agencies and chartitable organisations and PR companies issuing press releases to mainstream media has to be seen to be believed. I am starting to see people that probably wouldn't fit in elsewhere, starting on a issue, getting donations, and creating a little world for themselves that essentially lines their own pockets, puts food on their table. In some cases I see it as exploitation of people's emotions and misfortunes.

The other point I am making here is in answer to Anonymous: **how does throwing more money at simple bad behaviour change the problem?** It doesn't but it certainly lines a lot of peoples pockets on the journey to Africa. Humanitarian relief supplies and aid workers represent a multi billion dollar industry that nobody is really looking at. "So, what?" I ask myself - what does it matter, at least someone is providing relief to those who are most in need. My answer is, well yes, if it was true. Aid is not reaching those most in need. There is a great deal of super fantastic work being done - but there is a lot of incompetence too that causes wastage like money grows on trees. I get annoyed at the waste and easy come, easy go attitude with nobody questioning it. It's like they are unaccountable.

Right now for Darfur the UN World Food Programme is talking about using costly air drops of food because of lack of trucks and problems of insecurity related to the trucks.

This has now been going on a year. Who knows if the amount of money they'd spent on air drops last year could have been used to buy trucks accompanied by its own security minders. They used air drops last year because, and they admitted this themselves, they were too slow to react before the annual rainy season.

This year, after a whole year of warning and planning, they are using air drops again. China and Russia on the UN Security Council are blocking taking action against Sudan (because they have oil and arms interests in Sudan) and the genocidal regime in Khartoum is blocking African Union troops from being armed to protect civilians (because Khartoum sees foreign troops as a threat to its power base).

In essence, what I am saying here is, when it comes to Africa there is a whole load of corruption and propaganda when it comes to Africa - from within and outside Africa.

It's time people in Africa (and Africans living outside of it too) start working hard and putting their backs into sorting it out themselves and stop taking from the West.

Seems they love meeting and chewing the cud and sitting around talking - or fighting. They need to realise that without education they are going nowhere. If they would stop fighting and stop spending all their wealth on arms, they could afford to get educated over the next 15 years.

HRW on DR Congo: Gold fuels massive human rights atrocities

Johannesburg, June 2, 2005 Human Right Watch report. Excerpt:

The lure of gold has fuelled massive human rights atrocities in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said in a new report published today. Local warlords and international companies are among those benefiting from access to gold rich areas while local people suffer from ethnic slaughter, torture and rape.

Corporations should ensure their activities support peace and respect for human rights in volatile areas such as northeastern Congo, not work against them.

The Curse of Gold Report

HRW June 2 - The 159-page report, "The Curse of Gold," documents how local armed groups fighting for the control of gold mines and trading routes have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity using the profits from gold to fund their activities and buy weapons.

The report provides details of how a leading gold mining company, AngloGold Ashanti, part of the international mining conglomerate Anglo American, developed links with one murderous armed group, the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), helping them to access the gold-rich mining site around the town of Mongbwalu in the northeastern Ituri district.

The Human Rights Watch report also illustrates the trail of tainted gold from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to neighboring Uganda from where it is sent to global gold markets in Europe and elsewhere.

The report documents how a leading Swiss gold refining company, Metalor Technologies, previously bought gold from Uganda. After discussions and correspondence with Human Rights Watch beginning in December 2004, and after the report had gone to press, the company announced on May 20 that it would suspend its purchases of gold from Uganda. The Metalor statement was welcomed by Human Rights Watch. Read full report.

DRC: Women take brunt of human rights abuse: Amnesty

In no way do I see myself as a feminist but I do feel strongly that women should be in charge of African countries for a change. To nurture peace and help heal. Africa needs mothering. By great innovative women such as:

Wangari Maathai in Kenya
Gertrude Mongella in Tanzania
Winnie Byanyima in Uganda

Last year, Bishop Desmond Tutu said women should rule the world. Media baron Ted Turner said men have made such a mess of things, women should rule for 100 years. Note AFPs report on the latest from London-based Amnesty International. Here is a copy:

Women and girls faced "horrific" levels of abuse in 2004 worldwide, Amnesty International said in its annual human rights review, blaming widespread rape and violence on a mix of "indifference, apathy and impunity".

From honour killings carried out by the victims' families to sexual violence used as a weapon of war, abuse frequently went unpunished and survivors were often abandoned by their own communities, the London-based group said.

Amnesty said it had sought in the past year to argue that violence against women in conflict situations was "an extreme manifestation of the discrimination and abuse they face in peacetime", notably domestic violence and sexual abuse.

"When political tensions degenerate into outright conflict, all forms of violence increase, including rape and other forms of sexual violence against women."

The annual report, covering 131 countries, noted abuse across the world but highlighted several grave examples: in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), both armed groups and UN forces are guilty of rape; in Turkey, family abuse of women is widespread; in Darfur, Sudan, gang rape is systemic; and in eastern Europe, economic need fuels the trafficking of women.

In Darfur, where a local rebellion sparked a brutal government backlash, Khartoum-backed militias have staged mass rapes, including of schoolgirls, and "frequently abducted" local women into sexual slavery, Amnesty said.

Tens of thousands of women and girls were also subject to rape and sexual slavery in the DRC, and as in Darfur, victims were often then abandoned by their husbands and families, "condemning them and their children to extreme poverty".

All parties in the ongoing conflicts in the eastern DRC have committed the abuses against women, including military and police officers, and United Nations peacekeepers charged with the protection of civilians.

The two African cases were "not exceptional", Amnesty warned.

Latin America had the highest risk of all types of sexual victimisation, according to UN report findings cited by Amnesty.

In Colombia, the group said, security forces, left-wing rebels and paramilitaries targeted women and girls to "sow terror, wreak revenge on adversaries and accumulate 'trophies of war'."

In Turkey, between one-third and one-half of all women are estimated to be victims of physical violence by their families - raped, beaten, murdered or forced to commit suicide - while the country sorely lacked shelters and legal protection for victims.

Amnesty noted some progress in Ankara, with legal reforms that recognised marital rape as a crime and did away with the possibility that a rapist's prison sentence could be reduced or annulled if he agreed to marry his victim. Still, authorities largely failed to investigate most women's complaints of abuse.

Serbia and Montenegro "remained a source, transit and destination country" for women and girls who were trafficked to the West into forced prostitution, while the problem existed throughout the poorer countries of Eastern Europe.

"With clients including international police and troops, the women and girls are too afraid to escape," Amnesty said. -AFP
- - -

Quotation

"When our resources become scarce, we fight over them. In managing our resources and in sustainable development, we plant the seeds of peace."

WANGARI MAATHAI, of Kenya, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Tags: Congo Wangari+Maathai Winnie+ Byanyima Gertrude+Mongella Africa

DRC: Rwandan rebels abuse Congolese civilians - UN report

Rwandan Hutu rebels based in eastern Congo are responsible for hundreds of summary executions, rapes, beatings and hostage-taking of Congolese civilians in the territory of Walungu, South Kivu Province, the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUC, said on Wednesday in a report documenting the human rights violations.

"The 1,724 accusations of abuse are essentially against two groups of Rwandan combatants," Fernando Castanon, the head of the MONUC section of human rights, said.

He said one group is the Rwandais forces democratiques pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) while the other one, known as the Rastas, consists of Rwandan Hutus and some Congolese.

The report is based on 405 confidential interviews taken from 12 to 29 April by a multidisciplinary team from MONUC. The alleged abuses took place from June 2004 to April 2005. Full Report IRIN, 19 May 2005
- - -

UN mediates in aftermath of conflict in Mbuji-Mayi

The UN is mediating among political parties in Mbuji-Mayi, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai Oriental Province, following last week's violence.

The UN Mission in the country, known as MONUC, sent additional peacekeepers to the city on Friday to beef up security.

"MONUC finds it necessary to have a stronger presence to help diffuse this crisis as well as to ensure against similar crises in the future," Mamady Kouyate, the head of the mediation effort for MONUC, told IRIN on Monday.

Violent demonstrations last week left at least two people dead and 12 others wounded. The offices of all the main political parties in the province were ransacked and burned. Full Story IRIN, 24 May 2005.

Cleaning up corruption in DRC

'This is currently the most expensive UN peacekeeping operation on the globe' writes Jean-Jacques Cornish in a report at Mail & Guardian May 20, 2005.

Corruption is the biggest hurdle in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) transition to its first democratic elections since independence in 1960. The legacy of Mobutu Sese Seko, epitomising African klepto-cracy remains disturbingly alive. This is the view of several European and United Nations officials the Mail & Guardian spoke to in Kinshasa and Goma last week.

The report reveals Ondekane managed in eight months to salt away more than $10-million of money from the UN and the international donor community.

It also says Britain is standing by to contribute to the reintegration process, but is waiting to see a comprehensive plan.

Tags: DR Congo corruption Africa

Media fast for Mojtaba

Excerpt from a post at Committee to Protect Bloggers Thursday, May 19, 2005:

The CPB is asking bloggers and other concerned people to observe next Thursday, May 26 as a Media Fast for Mojtaba.

Mojtaba Saminejad, a blogger from Iran, has declared a hunger strike. He is being held at Tehran's Gohar Dashat prison, which has a reputation for mistreatment of detainees. He is being held in the general population, the overwhelming majority of which are common criminals.

Mojtaba was arrested for reporting the earlier arrest of three of his fellow Iranian bloggers. (Iran has arrested over 20 bloggers over the last year.) Iranian bloggers who have been released have reported being the victims of torture.

Read full story at Committee to Protect Bloggers: Media fast for Mojtaba .

[via Curt with thanks] Tags: Tehran Iran Mojtaba Blog Bloggers Committee+to+Protect+Bloggers

The future of public radio in the age of podcasting: Anybody can create their own public radio online

Note Rebecca MacKinnon's post linking to a live webcast from Harvard's Berkman Center today, May 17, 2005.

Jake Shapiro of the Public Radio Exchange will talk about the future of public radio in the age of podcasting, which enables anybody to create their own public radio online.

Tags: Podcasting Radio Audioblogging MacKinnon Shapiro Berkman Harvard

Open Source. It'll be a radio show. May 30, 2005

Here is a don't miss, must-do: listen to Open Source's pilot on podcasting and bloggers without borders. Hear phone interviews and discussions with Rebecca and Ethan of Global Voices, and several other bloggers, hosted by smooth (and thankfully not-so-fast) talking American Christopher Lydon at Harvad's Berkman.

See Ethan's follow-up post "On hold with Chris Lydon".

Note also GlobalCoordinate.com Geo-Community. Click on the map to zoom in. You can add your own comments, stories, or photos at any location.

Tags: DR Congo Africa Podcasting Blogger

Role of Rwanda's president is questioned

See article by Jonathan Curiel, Staff Writer, San Francisco Chronicle May 15, 2005 entitled No heroes in genocide - Role of Rwanda's president is questioned.

UN soldiers attacked in DR Congo

BBC news today says the UN is trying to disarm the Ituri militias:

"Various militia groups have continuously fought over the Ituri region of the Congo, with backing from Uganda, Rwanda and the Congolese authorities in a struggle to control the gold and other minerals in the area."

Excerpt from report May 13, 2005:

Note, various militia groups have continuously fought over the Ituri region of the Congo, with backing from Uganda, Rwanda and the Congolese authorities in a struggle to control the gold and other minerals in the area. Around 50,000 people have died in the clashes in the region since 1999.

The UN mission has more than 15,000 peacekeepers in the country, but has struggled to keep a lid on violence in the east.

More than 9,000 militamen have been disarmed in Ituri under a UN programme launched in September last year and planned for completion in June.

DRC: UN decries insecurity, malnutrition in Kasai Oriental

NAIROBI, 11 May 2005 (IRIN) - Ongoing insecurity is the cause of deteriorating levels of nutrition among people in the south-central province of Kasai Oriental in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN Mission there known as MONUC, reported on Monday.

"The worst famine-hit areas in the Sankuru District [in Kasai Oriental Province] include Kole, Tchumbe and Lubefu, located within the 500-km range from [the provincial capital] Mbuji-Mayi," Patrice Bogna, the information focal point for MONUC's Humanitarian Affairs Section, said in a statement detailing the mission's weekly humanitarian highlights.

The UN Word Food Programme (WFP) has not confirmed the areas as "famine-hit", but has said that several of its partners have reported high malnutrition rates in Sankuru.

WFP Information Officer Aline Samu told IRIN on Tuesday that the agency had not been able to start food distribution because of "logistics access" and "increased needs in eastern DRC". However, she said WFP was establishing a field office in Mbuji-Mayi.

"This will ease the management of food consignments," she said.

She added that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had just launched several needs assessment missions to the area, in which WFP was participating.

Bogna said a new mission by OCHA and several humanitarian partners was planned for 16 May to 3 June to assess the needs of communities in key areas.

He said that during a recent inter-agency meeting in Mbuji-Mayi, the humanitarian community put the level of malnutrition affecting children from six to 59 months at 24 percent in Sankuru. Food insecurity, he said, continued to worsen with "pillaging, physical violence and other exactions perpetrated by Mayi-Mayi combatants".

He added: "Unconfirmed information also suggests that some 300 Pygmies have fled to neighbouring forests in Lomela, near Mbuji-Mayi, as a result of harassment by armed soldiers."

Therefore, Boga said, MONUC was sending military observers and humanitarian personnel to review the situation.

The so-called pygmies, known as the Batwa, are forest-dwelling hunters-gatherers indigenous to central Africa.

Instapundit's review of BlogNashville Conference - Is big media on the run?

In his post at MSNBC titled "Big media on the run?" Prof Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com writes:

"Do blogs and other alternative media have traditional media organizations running scared? Some people are saying so, but I think there's more going on than fear. Still it's clear that the blogosphere is having an impact.

This past weekend I attended the BlogNashville conference at Belmont University, billed as the largest blogging conference to date. There were some representatives of Big Media organizations there, one of whom said straighforwardly "I'm here out of fear," but others of whom were looking for ways to incorporate blogs, and bloggers, into their operations."

Read full story.

Looks interesting. I'm keeping it aside to read later on. Just wanted to share it here right away. I think professional journalists have lots of reasons to fear blogland. Chewing over and pointing out rubbish in mainstream media, along with the spin, truths, half-truths, downright lies, political propaganda and character assassinations is what we bloggers, around the world, are placed to do well.
- - -

Also today, Instapundit points out Adam Cohen's unimpressive ruminations on blog ethics in today's New York Times - and Virginia Postrel who writes in Forbes, "There's something about blogs that makes a lot of respectable journalists hyperventilate."

Heh.

P.S. Foundations can expect more scrutiny in an age of weblogs, according to this article.

Make Poverty History - Tony Blair chairs G8 summit July 6, 2005

Email just received from Patrick Kielty (pictured below):



Hello,

Over the past few months more than a quarter of a million people have sent a message to Tony Blair and asked him to make poverty history.

It's an achievable aim that has risen up the political and news agendas like never before - thanks to the actions of people like you.

But we are rapidly approaching the critical moment of this campaign - and it really is time to turn up the heat.

After last week's election result we now know for sure that it will be Mr. Blair who sits at that all-important G8 summit table in Scotland on July 6th. Last month, he said he would work "night and day" on this issue until the summit. Now he has the chance to prove it, and the responsibility to deliver.

30,000 children will continue to die needlessly every day unless he succeeds.

So please, if you are in the UK click here [outside the UK click here] and urge Tony Blair to make this his number one post-election priority.

Even if you have emailed him before, now is the time to do so again.

The countdown has begun to the biggest day ever in the fight to end poverty and we need to make sure that our message is getting through loud and clear.

Thank you,

Patrick Kielty

DRC: 30 arrested in alleged Katanga secession plot

IRIN report 9 May 2005:

At least 30 civilians and military personnel suspected of plotting the secession of Katanga Province from the Democratic Republic of Congo have been arrested, Deputy Provincial Governor Chikez Diemu said on Monday.

"They are people of all ages, among them politicians," he said.

He said judicial and security agents had made the arrests on Friday in the southeastern Katanga town of Lubumbashi. The detainees, he added, were being questioned over their participation in a network "whose aim was to destabilise the Congolese institutions".

DRC President Joseph Kabila visited Lubumbashi on Sunday, but his spokesperson declined to confirm whether or not his visit was related to the arrests.

The Katanga-based Centre for Human Rights said hundreds of people had been arrested, but the total number has still not officially confirmed.

Andre Tshombe, son of former Congolese Prime Minister Moise Tshombe, who led Katanga's secessionist war in the 1960s, was also arrested. He is the leader of a local political party. The vast majority of those arrested were members of ethnic groups from southern Katanga, which is the DRC province with the greatest mineral wealth.

Witness - Child Soldiers in the DRC

Via Joi at Global Voices - with thanks:

"WITNESS - Child Soldiers in the DRC

Since 1996, war has ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some four million people have died as a result of the armed conflict and over ten thousand children have been used as child soldiers. Today, the country is in fragile transition, with over ten armed groups still operating in the Eastern region. All parties have recruited and used child soldiers in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law.

In 2004, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced the DRC to be the subject of the Court's first investigation. Under the Court's jurisdiction is the recruitment and use of child soldiers as a war crime. The ICC remains the only competent and impartial Court that can bring justice to the thousands of children whose rights were violated and childhood taken away from them.

Through the voices of child soldiers, "A Duty To Protect" explores the complexity of the war, the issues confronted by girl soldiers including rape and sexual exploitation and the importance of the International Criminal Court to end the rampant impunity reigning in Eastern DRC. The video gives specific recommendations to strengthen the work of the ICC and calls for the international community's engagement to stop the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

Witness is a great organization and shows how intermediaries like this can help get global voices out and is also a great example of using video as a medium."

Technorati tags: Congo DRC Africa

World ignores Republic of Congo's crisis - U.N.

Report by David Lewis in Kinkala, Congo, via Reuters 23 Apr 2005:

Less than 3 percent of funds needed to tackle a humanitarian emergency in the Republic of Congo have been received, highlighting the oil-producer's plight as a forgotten nation in crisis, the United Nations said.

Congo's civil war officially ended in 1999 but sub-Saharan Africa's fourth biggest oil producer has no peacekeeping force and is struggling to disarm former rebels who continue to attack civilians in the Pool region, far from international eyes.
"This is scandalous. We need to have a better response to this emergency," Aurelien Agbenonci, the head of the U.N. in Congo, told Reuters in an interview.

"Of the nearly $22 million needed, just over 20 percent has been promised and under three percent has actually been given," he said. "This is a low-level conflict which appears not to interest people as there is neither war nor peace."

Despite the official truce, clashes in 2002 and 2003 between government soldiers and the rebels, known as Ninjas, rocked the peace process and undermined a disarmament programme in the central African country of three million people.

Thousands of Ninjas, named after ancient Japanese warriors glamourised by Hollywood, who have not been disarmed and are no longer part of a structured rebel movement roam around the Pool region west of the capital Brazzaville.

Known for their trademark purple scarves and Rasta-style dreadlocks, the gunmen live off civilians and reguarly hijack the train that links the landlocked capital to the oil-producing coastal town of Pointe Noire.

There are no international peacekeepers in Congo, a former French colony, and analysts say the government seems unwilling, or unable, to put an end to the attacks in Pool.

The U.N. is due to open an office in Kinkala, a town at the heart of the Pool region, but Agbenonci said media attention on other conflicts around the world had taken its toll and the lack funds meant several aid agencies working in Pool may shut down.

"I also know many aid workers who used to work here but who have ended up being pulled out and sent to Darfur. This is very symbolic of our problem," he said.

According to the U.N., thousands were killed during Congo's war -- some put the toll as high as 10,000 -- and some 150,000 civilians fled the latest bout of violence in March 2003.

Although Congo is rich in oil, Pool is an economic backwater where many schools have remained closed for up to eight years, there are few health facilities and the road to the coast has been reduced to deeply rutted paths cut into the red soil.

Agbenonci said the humanitarian and economic woes of the region needed to be addressed to avoid reigniting the conflict.

"The stability of the Pool is the stability of the whole of Congo but it doesn't seem to be a priority. There are no resources in Pool, just its people," he said. "There is a very free flow of weapons, so there is still a risk of rebellion."

"This place is a time bomb we need to defuse."

Bush Holds Talks with Rwandan Leader at White House

MONUC newswire report via VOA 16 April, 2005:

President Bush met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the White House to discuss efforts to bring peace to Central Africa's troubled Great Lakes region.

They also discussed a host of other regional issues from peacekeeping in southern Sudan and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo to helping bring elections to Burundi.

On all, the Rwandan leader says Mr. Bush vowed to continue his engagement in African affairs. "We requested the president to use his powers to help Africa in different ways, in socioeconomic development, in assuring there is peace and security not only in our region but also in the whole continent. And the president was very supportive of that," he said.

The two presidents also discussed the possible return to Rwanda of ethnic Hutu involved in the country's 1994 genocide of ethnic minority Tutsi.

Many of those responsible for that violence fled to what was then Zaire and continued to destabilize the provinces of North and South Kivu.

Now, some of those former fighters say they are renouncing violence, condemning genocide, and are ready to return home.

Bush administration officials this week welcomed that declaration, urging rebels to demonstrate their commitment to peace by turning over all weapons to U.N. monitors in Congo and proceed without delay to organize their return to Rwanda.

President Kagame, who led a Tutsi rebellion to stop the genocide, says those former adversaries will be welcomed home. "They made a wrong choice of staying in the bush in Congo and earlier on made the wrong choice of associating themselves with the ideology of genocide. We did talk about their offer to disarm and return home, and we will facilitate that," he said.

Ending insecurity in eastern Congo is the biggest reason given by Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda for involving themselves in two civil wars in Congo in the last ten years.