The Congo Held Hostage id DAA06041; Fri, 17 Oct 1997 03:40:24 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source:congo-news@thor.cmp.ilstu.edu Fri Oct 17 00:28:29 1997 The Congo Held Hostage By Andre Mwamba Kapanga Wednesday, October 15, 1997; Page A21 The Washington Post In his Sept. 22 op-ed article, Scott Campbell, consultant to Human Rights Watch, reported that he saw "the remains of tens of thousands of civilian refugees massacred during [Laurent] Kabila's military campaign across the former Zaire." The article lacked the specificity of time and location that is generally required of human rights reports, but its implicit and highly politicized message comes through: The Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), which toppled Mobutu Sese Seko and announced the birth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), now stands accused of murdering in cold blood. Left out of this picture is the fact that the "remains" were discovered in what was and continues to be a war zone. It is well-known that forces opposing Kabila deliberately placed refugees -- including women and children -- in the line of fire, using them as human shields to cover their retreats from the ADFL. Nowhere in the article do we glimpse the traumatic circumstances that made large-scale loss of life inevitable. We are not shown the unimaginable hell of Mobutu's Zaire, rendered even more infernal by the invasion of Hutu extremists and their hapless captives: impoverished Congolese villagers robbed and murdered by armed "refugees," the insupportable burden placed on the local population by the arrival in town of hundreds of thousands of frightened, starving and sick people; the inflammatory atmosphere of ethnic tensions manipulated to murderous extremes by dictators without conscience. Some 45 million Congolese citizens are desperate to begin the reconstruction of their country now, and despite their own ample talent and enterprise, they will require the assistance and goodwill of the international community. The Kabila government has been warmly welcomed by Congo's African neighbors, who have shown their willingness to help in the tasks of reconstruction. Meanwhile, however, Congo's wealthier Western partners seem eager to help with only one thing: investigating human rights violations allegedly committed by the ADFL during the war against Mobutu, his mercenaries and accomplices. The Kabila government's assent to the ever-changing demands of the United Nations investigative team has become the "condition" for the release of multilateral and bilateral assistance to the DRC. Despite a U.N. resolution committing the international body to provide special assistance to countries staggering under the burden of sheltering refugees, the DRC waits for relief in vain. The DRC has sought to cooperate with the U.N. investigative mission but has been frustrated by the mission's frequent failures to meet agreed-upon conditions of the investigation and its repeated attempts to expand its mandate beyond the territory and past the cutoff date that had been agreed to. The extraordinary enthusiasm of the international community for this mission contrasts markedly with the international lassitude prevailing during Mobutu's reign of terror. To put the current situation into perspective, President Kabila has insisted that the mission start its investigation with the year 1993, when Mobutu began ethnic cleansing operations in an attempt to destroy the unity of the Congolese democratic opposition movement. These operations, which Congolese bishops denounced as a "massacre without pity," resulted in the death of more than 10,000 people and the displacement of 500,000 others. In 1994 Hutu extremists in neighboring Rwanda (with whom Mobutu was closely allied) began the systematic slaughter of Tutsi as well as fellow Hutus who would not join in the murder. With Rwanda poised on the brink of genocide, the U.N. Security Council decided to withdraw 2,000 U.N. troops already there, rather than strengthen the contingent to protect innocent civilians targeted for extermination. The remaining 450 troops valiantly defended up to 20,000 Rwandans from certain death; many more could have been protected if the United Nations had increased its presence. Only when the Rwandan Patriotic Front was on the verge of stopping the slaughter did the international community weigh in with "Operation Turquoise." This U.N.-sanctioned intervention created a safe corridor into the Congo through which flowed not only innocent refugees but also tens of thousands of soldiers of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and members of the Interahamwe death squads. These established a government in exile on Congolese territory, headquartered in the refugee camps, where they recruited and trained new cadres and launched raids into Rwanda and against the local population. The international community made no attempt to demilitarize the camps or separate the soldiers from the civilians. Indeed, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and its nongovernmental contractors related to this government of murderers as a legitimate authority, entrusting it with the distribution of food and supplies. Now the United Nations seeks to assign blame. The tug-of-war over the U.N. mission is a distraction from the urgent tasks of reconstruction and stabilization. Members of the international community must ask themselves whether it is truly wise to hold the Congo hostage to their need for a scapegoat. [The writer is the permanent representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the United Nations.] (c) Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytaf-10.17.97-03:40:24-5301