Reader Rwanda Murambi Genocide

The United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights says:
There are new rounds of massacres
in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A large number of people have been massacred in North Kivu since early August 2012.
A significant number of people -- most of them women and children --
were slaughtered in the region near the border with Rwanda.
The sheer viciousness of these murders is beyond comprehension.
In some cases, the attacks against civilians may constitute crimes against humanity.
Some of the attacks had been conducted by the
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)
which includes fighters who took part in
the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.

RWANDAN GENOCIDE IN CONGO NOW

"I am an eyewitness", shouts the man.
"They came and killed people and burned houses,
and there was no outside intervention.
We are telling you,
MONUSCO was right there and NGOs were right there
while people were being killed.
The population should be protected,
but people were killed in the presence of the U.N.
The FDLR are the law in these areas,
without intervention from MONUSCO
or the FARDC [Kabila government forces].
Civilians are always targeted by the FDLR
because they do not have any means of defense."

On September 3, 2012, while on a wildlife tour of Rwanda and Tanzania, my niece and I visited the Murambi Hill Genocide Memorial Museum. Need I say more?

I just want you to know that you are not the only one to go there. You are not the only one to be moved by the juxtaposition of the green hills of Africa and this terrible latter-day Babi Yar.

Thanks for letting me know you read my MURAMBI MASSACRE MEMORIAL and MOURNING IN MURAMBI articles describing my visits there in 2006 and 2007 respectively.

I also toured some of the wildlife aspects of Rwanda, ie I saw gorillas in the northwest volcanic mountains; hippopotamuses, giraffes, zebras, baboons and an elephant in the northeast savannah; and monkeys (well, one running across the road) in the southwestern forest -- which is on the way to Cyangugu from Murambi.

Lots has happened in Rwanda since I was there five years ago, ie now the refugee situation is almost reversed. Where once Rwandans ran next door to Congo for protection from the genocidaires, now Congolese run to Rwanda for protection from those same genocidaires.

I used to admire and respect Kagame for leading the anti-government rebellion against Habyarimana and stopping the genocide of Tutsi by Hutu in Rwanda in 1994 and for fighting the genocidaires in the Congo in subsequent years. But then, four years ago -- in January 2009 -- Kagame kidnapped Nkunda, the Tutsi Congolese general who was leading a successful anti-government rebellion against Kabila and stopping the genocide of Tutsi in Congo by the same Hutu army -- the FDLR -- who'd escaped into Congo after perpetrating the Rwandan genocide.

Now, since Nkunda's gone from Congo, the Kivu area he protected -- which included the gorillas in Virunga as well as hundreds of thousands of villagers toiling on their farms in the breadbasket of the nation -- is under control of Hutu genocidaires who, with help from Kabila's army, have been massacring humans and gorillas -- and destroying the habitat of every living thing -- unimpeded.

This Congolese genocide goes on while MONUSCO, the largest so-called "humanitarian" peacekeeping mission in the world -- run by BIG BROTHER UNITED NATIONS -- is feeding off the misery to the tune of nine BILLION dollars -- and climbing -- so far. There are 19,000 UN personnel -- including soldiers and aid workers -- who stand around doing nothing -- except run refugee camps -- while Congolese civilians are massacred on a daily basis.

I was in Goma -- the Congolese city on Lake Kivu that borders Rwanda -- in 2006, when that area was under the protection of Nkunda. There were no refugee camps there then, whereas in 1994 it held the biggest camp in the world where over a million Rwandan refugees were fed, clothed and housed, by the UN, after committing the Rwandan genocide. Those so-called "refugees" -- who in fact were Rwandan Hutu fugitives from justice -- are the group Nkunda had to fight ten years later when he began his rebellion.

Now Goma is home again to one of the biggest refugee camps in the world -- again run by the UN and paid for by Western World taxpayers -- only this time the refugees are "internally displaced" Congolese -- escaping from genocide in their own homeland.

So, in answer to your question, "Will there ever be a time with no more crimes against humanity?" I say "No, there never will be a time because whenever a good leader arises to stop it, he's either corrupted, imprisoned or killed".

It's time for Kagame to release Nkunda from wherever it is he's holding him and let Nkunda return to his Congolese people to protect them.

RWANDAN GENOCIDE IN CONGO NOW

Mass slaughter of Tutsi by Rwandan Hutu in Congo
(17,000 UN soldiers doing nothing to stop it)
Email/AFP, Nov 17, 2012
NKUNDA CONGO'S ONLY PROTECTOR

FREE NKUNDA TO FIGHT FOR CONGO
watch NKUNDA LAST CONGO INTERVIEW
(people living in farming villages not in UN camps)
watch NKUNDA PILGRIMAGE OF RECONCILIATION
& 12.War is Peace

Mass slaughter of civilians, children in DR Congo, AFP, Nov 15, 2012
Armed groups in DR Congo's war-torn east province slaughtered more than 200 people including scores of children between April and September, hacking some to death and burning others alive, the UN said Wednesday. "At least 264 civilians, including 83 children, were arbitrarily executed by armed groups in more than 75 attacks on villages between April and September this year," the office of the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights said as it published a report into abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo's resource-rich east. Investigators focusing on the southern town of Masisi in North Kivu province uncovered evidence of victims being hacked to death with machetes. Others were burnt alive in their homes, investigators found, blaming the majority of the killings on two armed groups, Raia Mutomboki and their allies the Mayi Mayi. Raia Mutomboki is a homeland defence militia whose agenda is to ethnically cleanse the region, forcing all Kinyarwanda speakers out of DR Congo. But it has also seized the villagers it purports to be protecting, using them as porters.

Fighters from an ethnic Hutu militia called Nyatura were also responsible for killings and other human rights abuses, the UN said, along with the Rwandan Hutu group the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which Kigali suspects includes fighters who took part in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. Following publication of the report -- the result of six missions and more than 160 interviews with victims and witnesses -- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay condemned the killings as "the most serious (human rights violations) we have seen in recent times in the DRC". The number of killings could be considerably higher, the UN agency said, lamenting that security concerns had prevented investigators from probing other reported violations...

DR Congo's Silent Ordeal, World Press, Nov 15, 2012
On May 14, 2012 at 2:45 a.m. in the Kamananga village in Sud-Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, the village is asleep, but not for long. At 3:00, unidentified militiamen enter the village. They are gone by 6:00 a.m. The pictures of what occurred during those three hours are horrific. According to the Justice and Peace Commission of the Archdiocese of Bukavu, at least 32 people were killed, some hacked to death with machetes. At least one woman, Stefania Furaha, was burned alive in her house, and others were sexually abused before they were killed. Children were not spared. A second report, by the independent Congolese human rights organization CADDHOM, counts the number dead at 35. The CADDHOM report adds that 19 people were injured, 45 houses were burned, and numerous objects were pillaged. According to the diocesan report, this was the third such massacre in a month. Both reports implicate the FDLR militia group -- Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda, ideological descendants of the Interahamwe militias responsible for the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. The FDLR is one of several domestic, foreign or foreign-backed armed groups threatening to tear the country apart.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission MONUSCO has been here since 1999. There are 19,000 U.N. military and civilian personnel mandated to keep a hold on order, however precarious, in this country nearly the size of Western Europe. Just over 17,000 are soldiers....The Bunyakiri massacre occurred approximately 3 kilometres from a mobile MONUSCO base. The CADDHOM report names two people, a man and a woman, as being shot and injured by peacekeepers in the hours after the massacre. Various Congolese blogs report that they were among dozens of angry villagers who marched on the base the following morning to protest U.N. inaction, injuring 11 peacekeepers with rifles and stones. U.N. spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai, based in the capital, Kinshasa, says he doesn't have specific information on the events of Bunyakiri. He says the peacekeepers are allowed to use force to protect civilians from an imminent threat or in self-defense, but they cannot patrol every locality. That's not good enough for the diocese. "All these deaths for nothing," reads the text accompanying the photos. "MONUSCO needs to go". This July, a rally in South Kivu called for the mission's departure. It was not the first or the last. "We understand the reaction of the public, who are frustrated for many reasons," sighs the U.N. spokesman. "Especially in the east, MONUSCO is the most organized group in existence, as there is no police and a fear of soldiers. They [civilians] hope for MONUSCO to resolve all their problems, and when we can't do everything, they get frustrated. It's not a MONUSCO problem and it's not their problem; it is the problem of the absence of the state and of justice. We understand, and we just have to live with it."...

Severe humanitarian crisis in Congo, says UN, Xinhua All Africa, Oct 25, 2012
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Tuesday said the humanitarian situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was critical, with over 2.4 million internally-displaced people and persistent insecurity and poverty. South Kivu is home to the largest internally-displaced population with over 800,000 displaced people, while North Kivu had the highest number of new displacements, according to OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke. Insecurity in recent weeks caused by a breakaway group of soldiers from the national army was regarded as a main factor for this huge number of displacement, he said. UN agencies and NGOs have been supporting thousands of people with water, food, health care, protection, emergency education and other relief services across the country, notably in the east. However, funding remains a major challenge for relief work, Laerke said. A humanitarian action plan for DRC made an appeal for 791-million US-dollars and was slightly less than half funded.

DR Congo’s revolving door of refugee life, SaudiGazette, October 20, 2012
On muddy grounds at the foot of an active volcano, tarpaulin shelters cluster like mushrooms at a makeshift camp where thousands of Congolese driven from their homes by conflict find themselves in an all too familiar situation. “I was already here in 2008”, said 55-year-old Mburano about the Kanyarucinya camp 10 kilometers (six miles) from Goma, capital of the unstable North Kivu province...since May. The camp is just 17 miles from a frontline that has plunged the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo into yet another humanitarian crisis.“It’s the third time I’ve been displaced by rebellion,” he said, referring to earlier revolts by the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) in the country’s same eastern region. “That’s life. We’re forced to live through this, but our wish is to return home”, he added. Mburano is one of the camp’s 55,000 residents, most of whom are women and children, who have come over in waves since July to escape a conflict that has forced more than 300,000 people to leave their homes or take refuge in neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. The residents are no strangers to the volatile region’s chronic unrest, which sees old rebellions crop up under new names....

Amid this cycle of conflict, the Congolese find themselves in a revolving door of refugee life, in which they return home from camps only to have to flee again years later.... With the wet season starting up, the camp is now at the mercy of pouring rain, which seeps through the tarpaulin roofs and pools in large puddles on the ground, increasing the risk of disease. The water is where the camp’s children play to pass the time. “Here, we live like parasites, we have nothing to do. We’re jobless”, said 22-year-old Elias, voicing a common worry at the camp. When they fled to the camp, the residents abandoned their fields and livestock. Many were urgently in need of food upon arrival — and still are — according to the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), which issued a call for additional funding last month.... Between June and October, the WFP distributed energy biscuits, food items such as flour, beans, salt and oil and food vouchers to the camp. But residents said it was not enough.... The NGOs and UN agencies in the region are looking at improving the camp’s conditions, but Merlin, the UN worker, casts doubt on the feasibility of an upgrade. “It’s not good to have a camp this big, and conditions like access to water and security are not met”, he said....

Many civilians massacred in fresh Congo violence: UN, Press TV, Aug 29, 2012
...The DRC recently asked the UN peacekeeping mission in the country to eliminate rebel groups in the east of the country. Since early May, as many as 200,000 civilians have fled their homes. Most of them have resettled inside Congo, but tens of thousands have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.5 million people dead.

Rwanda & Uganda benefited from Gaddafi's support, Uganda Monitor, Aug 23, 2011
...One of the little-known facts of Great Lakes history is that Gaddafi also funded the RPF rebels (Kagame's Rwandese Patriotic Front) after they invaded Rwanda in 1990. He provided them arms that were flown into Uganda, then handed to the RPF by the Museveni regime.... Go to KILLING GADDAFI LIKE JFK-LUMUMBA

United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC)
('helping bring peace and stability in the DRC', says UN)
Following the signing of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement in July 1999 between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and five regional States in July 1999, the [UN] Security Council established the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) by its resolution 1279 of 30 November 1999, initially to plan for the observation of the ceasefire and disengagement of forces and maintain liaison with all parties to the Ceasefire Agreement. Later in a series of resolutions, the Council expanded the mandate of MONUC to the supervision of the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement and assigned multiple related additional tasks. In accordance with Security Council resolution 1925 of 28 May 2010, MONUC was renamed as of 1 July the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) to reflect the new phase reached in the country. MONUC/MONUSCO Strength as of 30 June 2010: 20,586 total uniformed personnel; 18,653 troops; 704 military observers; 1,229 police; 973 international civilian personnel; 2,783 local civilian staff; 641 United Nations Volunteers. MONUC/MONUSCO Cost (from donations made by Western nations) as of June 2010: US$8.73 BILLION dollars...