held a marathon press conference of about an hour and a half.
As per usual, the man rambled on and on, lashing out especially at the
UN Mapping Project Report and at those who questioned the official
version of suicide of Armand Tungulu Kudiandambu, the man who stoned
the Raïs motorcade.
Lambert Mende's performance reminded me of that of the spokeswoman of
the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs who recently came out swinging
against the Nobel Committee which saw it fit to award the Nobel Prize
to a common "criminal" and scofflaw.
Likewise, Lambert Mende had nothing but contempt and wrath for those
who carried out the UN Mapping Project who arbitrarily picked and
chose:
1) the coverage period (1993-2003), instead of going as far back as
the 1991 looting of businesses planned by Mobutu and his foreign
backers or the 1960 theft of the country's assets by the colonial
power (Belgium) and the subsequent assassination of elected officials
(Lumumba and others);
2) to include in the Report events that clearly fall outside the
chosen coverage period, like the repression of the Bundu-dia-Kongo
uprising in the Bas-Congo Province while not mentioning for instance
the criminal behavior by some ex-MONUC elements;
3) to conflate countries that had committed aggression against the
Congo (Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda) with those that had been invited as
allies by the Congolese government (Angola, Zimbabwe, etc);
4) to make the false assumption that the systematic rape of women was
facilitated by the rampant sexism embedded in traditional cultural
constructs of the Congo;
5) to make the outlandish claim that the Congolese judicial system is
so dysfunctional that it only stumbles along when pressured by
international NGOs and the international community; and
6) to contradict their own findings in the body of the report with its
conclusions.
***
Lambert Mende angrily brushed off the suggestion that Armand Tungulu
couldn't possibly have killed himself with a pillow as there are no
pillows in Congolese jails.
How could people who hadn't seen the jail cell in question, Lambert
Mende wondered, know for certain there are no pillows in that jail?
(The joke these days on Radio-Trottoir is that Armand Tungulu choked
to death while dining on a pillow in his jail cell.)
It also turns out that Lambert Mende is a self-made psychiatrist. He
diagnosed the late Armand Tungulu of displaying symptoms of
"cyclothymia" during his incarceration--at times very excited and
other times crestfallen! A cyclothymic individual being unpredictable,
the thesis of suicide seems therefore plausible, though the police are
still deeming the cause of death "suspicious"...
***
To his credit, Lambert Mende commended the upcoming women's
demonstrations due to take place in Bukavu.
(Congo's First Lady Olive Lembe has already touched down in the
provincial capital of South-Kivu for the three-day event.)
***
(Sent via BlackBerry)
0 comments:
Post a Comment