UN mapping report on Congo: Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle Hopes for a Hearing

UN mapping report on Congo: Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle Hopes for a Hearing

 

Posted March 3rd, 2011

On March 2, 2001, on Capitol Hill,  in the House of the Representatives, the African Great Lakes Advocacy Coalition (Africa Faith and Justice Network, Friends of the Congo, Foreign Policy in Focus, African Great Lakes Action Network,Foundation for Freedom and Democracy in Rwanda, Congo Global Action Coalition, International Humanitarian Law Institute of St. Paul, Mobilization for Peace and Justice in Congo) held a congressional briefing for Members of the Senate and House and their staffs in order to raise the profile of the UN Mapping Report exercise released on October 1, 2010.   

Representative Ann Marie Buerkle of the 25th Congressional District of New York (pictured, second from left) came and briefly addressed the audience in these terms: "I am on three committees, but I am on Foreign Affairs and I am on the Subcommittee on Africa and Global health issues.  So, these issues are important to me.  I am a registered nurse.  I am very interested in health issues and global health.  So, I look forward to meeting with you. I gave you my contact information so that we can sit down, go over the issues and have a hearing and hopefully get some of the issues brushed out and see what we can do for you."

The goal was to rally U.S. support for justice for the crimes committed during the war against Congo from 1996 to 2003 by the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian armies, their Congolese collaborators and others named in the report.  The briefing  offered some solid background witness and research that would help Congress take a  clear stance on this issue particularly to support the UN Mapping Report recommendation to set up an in-depth investigation to determine whether the targeted and massive killing of Congolese, Burundian, and Rwandan Hutu were a genocide. 

Over 70 people attended this event, including staffers from House offices, press, representatives of the embassies of Congo and Rwanda, Congolese Senator Nkoy Mafuta Bernadette who happened to be visiting the US, documentary producers, bloggers and many activists for peace in the Great Lakes Region on Africa.   

 The African Great Lakes Advocacy Coalition asks the US government to do the following:

1. Hold hearings on the UN Mapping Exercise Report.

2. Call on President Obama to instruct Ambassador Susan Rice to make the UN Mapping Exercise Report a priority and address its recommendations.

3. Investigate whether or not the Leahy Amendment is being violated in the Great Lakes Region. The Leahy Amendment, first introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) as an amendment to the 1997 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, prohibits U.S. security assistance to foreign military or security units "against whom exist credible allegations of gross violations of human rights."

4. Cease military support of Congo's neighbors implicated in the report of having committed mass atrocities, crimes against humanity, war crimes and possibly genocide. Public Law 109-456 Section 105 authorizes the Secretary of State to withhold aid from Congo's neighbors who have been destabilizing the country. We recommend that the Obama Administration fully implement PL 109-456.

5. Support efforts to establish an international tribunal as requested by over 200 Congolese Non-Government Organizations (NGOs).

                                                                   The panel

The coalition also reminded the audience that in support of the UN mapping report, 220 Congolese NGOs had the following recommendations:

1. Establish new general policies of justice that would build on the creation of several complementary mechanisms, judicial and non-judicial.

2. Establish accountability measures in public institutions that would result in the removal from its management people such as General John Bosco Tanganda and General Numbi accused of serious violations or attacks against human rights defenders so they could face prosecution.

3. Institute appropriate mechanisms to ensure justice and shed light on crimes and massive violations of human rights denounced in the report, including:

•     The creation of special courts or special chambers within the Congolese courts,

•     The creation of a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission,

•     The establishment of compensation programs for victims, and

•     The true and thorough reforms of the entire security sector (army, police and Justice).

4. A regional reconciliation mechanism of the peoples of the Great Lakes region, which will accelerate the free movement of people in the region, facilitate cross-border trade, strengthen judicial cooperation, and demilitarize public services at the borders.

5. Support a regional accountability and reconciliation mechanism to address issues of impunity

Africa Faith and Justice Network urges you to ask your Representatives and Senators to join Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle in calling for a hearing on this important issue.  Click here to learn how to contact your elected officials.

Listen to the briefing:  Part I (the volume for the first 4 minutes of this segment is very low, but afterward it is good.)  Part II (Questions and answers).   

Read the UN Mapping report and more here.  Want to know what President kagame  thinks about the report,  click here

Pictured below: Nita Evele, DRC Senator Nkoy Mafuta Bernadette, Fr. Rocco Puopolo

http://afjn.org/focus-campaigns/promote-peace-d-r-congo/71-policy-objectives/936-un-mapping-report-on-congo-rep-ann-marie-buerkle-hopes-for-a-hearing-.html

Fw: *DHR* Forget Gaddafi. Blair's NEW best friend is a despot guilty of even bloodier slaughter

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363166/Forget-Gaddafi-Blairs-NEW-best-friend-despot-guilty-bloodier-slaughter.html#ixzz1IahWVDD0 Forget Gaddafi. Blair's NEW best friend is a despot guilty of even bloodier slaughter Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363166/Forget-Gaddafi-Blairs-NEW-best-friend-despot-guilty-bloodier-slaughter.html#ixzz1Fn7AnVms By Paul Scott Last updated at 12:49 AM on 5th March 2011 One morning a month ago, amid the kind of hearty backslapping and synthetic bonhomie at which he is so adept, Tony Blair played host to a select group of bankers for what is known in the business as a 'billion dollar breakfast'. As is so often the case these days, the principal criterion for gaining admission to the event at a luxurious Swiss hotel — and some much sought-after 'face time' with the great man himself — was that you should be very seriously rich. Mr Blair, tight-grinned and tanned in a trademark open-necked white shirt and dark suit teamed, oddly, with a pair of Australian riding boots, was in his element, holding court as red-waistcoated staff poured Buck's Fizz and coffee for the invited international money men. Scene of horror: The skulls of victims of the Rwandan massacres At the former Prime Minister's side throughout was a rake-thin and bespectacled black man whom Blair was conspicuously keen to introduce to the assembled movers and shakers. Not surprising, perhaps, given that the event — at which Mr Blair was officially the chairman — was arranged in sole honour of Paul Kagame, the president of the African state of Rwanda. And this being Mr Blair, the subject on his lips throughout the stylish meeting, held during the World Economic Forum in Davos, was cold, hard cash. Or, more to the point, how much he could persuade the super-rich investment bankers to plough into businesses in his close friend Mr Kagame's emerging economy. It is a task to which Mr Blair is devoting much of his time. Both he and his wife Cherie are regular guests of Kagame, flying in on a fabulously luxurious private jet (of which more later) and staying in a smart suite at the Rwandan capital Kigali's finest lodgings, the Serena Hotel. Their relationship, it has to be said, is something of a love-in. Mr Blair describes Kagame, a former rebel soldier in the once war-torn country, as a 'visionary leader' and 'great friend'. For his part, the grateful Kagame has called on his people to name their children after his new English chum. Meanwhile, Mrs Blair recently paid a misty-eyed tribute to his regime's promotion of the rights of women. Which, one imagines, must have put an ironic smile on the face of one of Rwanda's leading female journalists, Agnes Nkusi Uwimana, now languishing in Kigali's grim Central Prison. Last month, the newspaper editor began a 17-year sentence for publishing critical articles in the run-up to the country's blatantly fixed presidential elections last August that saw Kagame — the country's leader since 2000 — returned to office with a 93 per cent majority. Friends: Tony Blair greets Rwandan President Paul Kagame inside No 10 in December 2006 while he was still Prime Minister Another writer on her paper was jailed for seven years. Meanwhile, their paper was summarily closed down by presidential order. Indeed, the increasingly dictatorial Kagame has now closed down all the independent media outlets the country once had. No wonder Amnesty International has condemned the jailing, while the White House recently attacked Kagame's growing political suppression. Even so, Miss Uwimana and her journalist colleague can count themselves lucky. Others have suffered much worse fates. The sham elections, at which 53-year-old father-of-four Kagame banned the two major opposition parties from standing and stood against three members of his own ruling coalition, were marred by the mysterious deaths of some of his political opponents and critics. In June, the acting editor of another newspaper was shot in the face and killed. The journalist, Jean-Leonard Rugambage, was silenced because he exposed corruption involving Kagame and claimed he had uncovered the government's involvement in the attempted murder of a former Rwandan army general exiled in South Africa. Worse was to come. A month later, the vice-president of the country's Democratic Green Party, which had been due to stand against the president's Rwandan Patriotic Front ruling party, went missing before his almost decapitated body was discovered. Kagame's government denied any involvement. In October, the woman leader of the central African country's most prominent opposition party, FDU-Inkingi, was jailed under new defamation laws brought in by Kagame to stifle opposition. Then, two months ago, four exiled political rivals who used to be part of Kagame's inner circle, but now accuse him of corruption, were jailed by a court for up to 24 years in their absence. Which makes Mr Blair's congratulatory letter to Kagame, hailing his 'popular mandate' after the vote, seem a bit of a sick joke. Blair's robust backing for his latest dodgy friend bears striking similarities to his long-time support of Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, to whom he shamelessly cosied up during his time as PM, and to whom he has remained close ever since. Presidents Robert Mugabe, centre of Zimbabwe and Paul Kagame, right, at an African Union summit in 2007 But could Kagame prove to be even more of an ill-advised friend? Damning evidence is beginning to emerge that he ordered the systematic genocide of tens of thousands of rival Hutu civilians in revenge for the massacre of up to 800,000 of his Tutsi people in three months of bloodshed in 1994. In October, the United Nations published a damning 550-page report which detailed the mass rape and torture of Hutu civilians after the Tutsi army, led by Kagame, chased fleeing Hutus into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Witnesses to the atrocities claim there were ritual beheadings, while women and children were set alight, bludgeoned with hammers and shot. The UN has said that Kagame may face trial for war crimes. Even so, Blair remains defiantly behind the increasingly despotic leader. Two months ago he launched a passionate defence of him, saying: 'I am a believer in and a supporter of Paul Kagame.' At the same time, he is said to have rolled his eyes when a Washington-based journalist questioned him about the scathing UN report into the Rwandan regime. Blair has installed a team of handpicked advisers from his personal charity, the African Governance Initiative — which he set up in 2008 to assist three African countries — at the very heart of the corrupt president's administration. Massacre: A Rwandan soldier looks at hundreds of skulls displayed at the Bisesero memorial in the west of the country The young team of between eight and ten aides, led by a Yale graduate, have taken up key roles in the President's personal office, working for the country's prime minister, in the cabinet office and on the Rwanda Development Board. Which does rather invite the question — just what is in all this for Blair himself? Well, as is so often the case with the former Labour leader, the line between charity and personal aggrandisement is often more than a little hazy. Take, for example, those flights Blair has made into Rwanda on a sumptuous private jet. The plane is one of two blue-and-white Bombardier BD-700 Global Express jets — costing  £30 million each — owned by the ruler of a country where 60 per cent of the people live in poverty. In a bid to cover up the millions he has splurged on the aircraft, Kagame's government set up a private investment company, registered in South Africa, as a front. However, official records reveal that all the directors of the company, founded in May 2008, work for the president. Just to make the whole thing even more fishy, the planes, whose registrations are ZS-ESA and ZS-XRS, are piloted by South Africa crews and operated by a private jet company based at Lanseria airport near Johannesburg. Blair, who has amassed an estimated £50 million fortune since leaving Downing Street in June 2007, is said to have made at least three flights across three continents in one of the planes. Friends: Blair with Gaddafi at his desert base outside Tropoli while he was Prime Minister in 2007 As long ago as 2009, he was spotted using one of the jets to attend meetings in Israel, Zurich and Abu Dhabi, before being flown into Kigali for a meeting with President Kagame. At the time, Blair had personally corralled a group of European investment bankers in a bid to persuade them to speculate in Rwanda's emerging IT and bio-fuels industries. Quite what Blair was doing accepting the flights, which would have cost in excess of £500,000 if he were paying himself, is anyone's guess. His trips to Israel can be explained by his duties as the West's unpaid Middle East peace envoy. But his regular trips to Switzerland and Abu Dhabi are usually about further lining the pockets of his well-cut trousers. For three years, Blair has acted as £500,000-a-year adviser on 'development and trends in the international political environment' for Swiss insurer Zurich. Meanwhile, he is often required to fly to Abu Dhabi in his £1 million-a-year capacity as consultant to the United Arab Emirates' super-rich sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. None of which sounds exactly charitable. Kagame casts his vote at a polling station in elections last year And there is also further reason to suspect the lines between Blair's twin roles as money-maker and the new self-appointed saviour of Africa are being stretched to something approaching breaking point. Last August, Blair, who pumped millions of pounds of aid into Rwanda during his time as PM, published a lengthy self-congratulatory article about his African charity work — which involves him helping to secure investment — on his personal website. As one of many such glowing tributes to himself, it was, understandably, barely noticed at the time. But hidden away in a question and answer session is a fascinating admission about the structure of his charity, the Africa Governance Initiative. Describing how the charity works in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Mr Blair stressed first that he deals directly with each country's leader. Then he added: 'The second thing is that AGI then hire a team of young people to come and live in the country — from JP Morgan, or they may have been in Downing Street or in the American system.' Seasoned Blair watchers will know, of course, that he is a senior adviser to JP Morgan, a major U.S. investment bank, which pays him a reported £2 million a year to brief it on 'the political and economic changes that globalisation brings'. No doubt his paymasters at the bank are grateful that Mr Blair is able to put its young executives in on the ground floor of the fast-expanding Rwandan economy. In recent months, Mr Blair has come in for flak over the 'opaque' nature of a complex network of companies set up to control his business interests, because they exploit a loophole that means he can keep his earnings from his business interests and his appearances on the international lecture circuit a secret. Figures from one of his charities, however, reveal the scope of his influence. Three months ago, a Sainsbury family charity, the Gatsby Foundation, declared it had paid £992,000 into Blair's Windrush charity. The money was, it said, for charitable projects in Rwanda. Meanwhile, The Gates Foundation, set up by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, says it paid £1.5 million to Windrush in 2008 for similar projects in Sierra Leone. Friends of the former Prime Minister defend him by saying he personally likes Kagame and believes his country's brutal recent history means allowances must be made for him. But one source close to Mr Blair told me this week: 'Tony's got a blind spot when it comes to this guy. He is surprisingly easily charmed, and Kagame has gone out of his way to be a very generous host with plane rides and things. 'But Tony's credibility has taken an absolute kicking over Gaddafi and, frankly, he can ill afford to get tied up with another dangerous nutcase.' Surely, even the discredited and morally dispossessed Mr Blair can see that getting into bed with one bloodthirsty tyrant is regrettable, but two starts to look downright careless. __._,_.___

UK foreign aid re-focused. But, this isn't enough!

It is good news that UK has now re-focused their foreign aid to poorer countries. UK must acknowledge the negative impacts of their foreign aid to developing countries: Over the last   decade, UK has campaigned for promoting the budget support which has contributed to fuel wars and ethnic violence in the African Great lakes Region starting from Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda to Democratic Republic of Congo. UK foreign aid has been used to buy weapons to fight these wars. UK does not recognise the political opposition voices based in the UK and in aid recipient countries. UK aid budget support is used to run foreign governments, the military apparatus and the Parliament whose members are not chosen on the basis of democratic principles. UK  has been campaigning for the  removal of foreign aid conditionalities and the current revolt and  un unrest in several countries is the result of this UK policy. Where the condition of human rights have been clearly specify in memorandums of cooperation between UK and  aid recipients,  UK deliberately ignore human rights abuses and continue to pump  money to governments that are expected to respect all terms and conditions of the foreign aid provided. This is the case in Rwanda. UK  foreign aid benefit local elite than the poorer in many countries  where the Head of the Government  is paid a salary and benefits  five time than the  UK Prime Minister. UK has been providing aid based on competition with other nations rather than on the basis of the real needs of aid recipients and the UK funding capabilities. More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12599969

UN Mapping report on Crimes in D.R.Congo; Capitol Hill Advocacy objectives

UN Mapping report on Crimes in D.R.Congo; Capitol Hill Advocacy objectives

Posted on February 27, 2011

In an interview with Ann Garrison of KPFA radio on the upcoming congressional briefing on March 2, AFJN Policy Analyst, Bahati Jacques said: "Our goal is to rally U.S. support for justice for the crimes committed by the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian armies and their Congolese collaborators in the war against Congo in 1996 to 2003.  Also we want the U.S. to take a clear stand on this issue, supporting the UN Mapping Report recommendations to set up an investigation to determine whether the targeted and massive killing of Congolese, Burundian, and Rwandan Hutu were a genocide." Listen or read the full interview here

(http://afjn.org/focus-campaigns/promote-peace-d-r-congo/71-policy-objectives/935-un-mapping-report-on-crimes-in-drcongo-capitol-hill-advocacy-objectives.html)

Prof. Peter Erlinder and Rwanda

http://afrobeatradio.net/2011/01/24/peter-erlinder-speaks-at-the-brecht-forum-friday-january-28-2011/

Prof. Peter Erlinder is past-President of the National Lawyers Guild from 1993 to 1997, President of ADAD (the UN-ICTR defense lawyers associations, Arusha, TZ), a founding member of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms and the Minnesota Bill of Rights Defense Coalition, established to defend the civil liberties of Muslims. After graduating from Chicago-Kent College of Law, Erlinder pioneered defense of Vietnam Veterans with PTSD facing the death penalty, and has represented many Native American, civil rights, Muslim and political activists facing misuse of government power, including Palestinian activist Dr. Sami al Arian and the Cuban-5.

In May 2010, he was imprisoned in Rwanda while defending Rwandan presidential candidate, Victoire Ingabire, and charged with "genocide denial" for having won the acquittal of his ICTR client on "genocide conspiracy" charges. Many groups, including the National Lawyers Guild, the American Bar Association, and members of the U.S. Senate and House called for his release, which was eventually won by an international grass-roots campaign.

After his release, Erlinder returned to the tenured faculty at William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN. He has also held faculty positions or lectured at the U. of Chicago Law School, IITChgo Kent., Golden Gate U.. Waseda U, Hitosubashi U., U of Wis.. U. of Ill., Columbia U., American U., and others. His articles and commentary have been published by U. of Pennsylvania, Boston College, Northwestern U., U. of Texas, U. of So. Cal., and others, as well as print and electronic media worldwide.

The presentation will draw on Erlinder's experience as a UN-ICTR defense lawyer and Rwandan prisoner to critically analyze the role of U.S. influence over international judicial bodies and the effects on the people of Central Africa, in particular. He will discuss how the ICTR has become a victor's tribunal serving U.S. policy interests, and will argue that the manipulation of international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court have actually become an impediment to reconciliation between African peoples, international justice, and the long-term interests of the American people.