(Photo: Alex Engwete)
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1. Rain at long last
The first downpour of the rainy season started falling on the
Congolese capital yesterday at around 4 pm.
The rain was preceded by heavy black clouds that bore down on the city
from the east. Though it rained cats and dogs, the whole disturbance
was mostly quiet--except for one or two lightnings...
Have the Chinese finally opened the floodgates of Kinshasa skies?
2. In a statement released yesterday, Human Rights Watch asked the
Congolese government to arrest Gen Jean-Bosco Ntaganda, the deputy
coordinator of "Opération Amani Leo."
HRW accuses Ntaganda's men of roaming the North-Kivu Province on
search-and-kill missions targeting Laurent Nkunda's loyalists.
Well, I don't give a damn when insane killers plug one another. But
What really exercised me was the response of DRC Communication
Minister Lambert Mende to the HRW call to the Congolese government for
the arrest of this criminal.
Lambert Mende told Radio Okapi that HRW need to learn the basic notion
of the separation of powers in a democracy. Therefore, HRW call had to
be addressed to the Congolese judiciary, not the government!
Is this guy for real?
According to Lambert Mende's absurd reasoning, a military officer
could kill at will without the government raising a finger to stop the
madman.
What's then the use of the "Auditorat Militaire," the Congolese
military justice?
Mende needs to be reminded that Thomas Lubanga is being held and tried
by the ICC because the Congolese government had arrested him in
Kinshasa. As there's an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the ICC
against Ntaganda, the Congolese ought to arrest him too.
Mende's statement is just another installment in the umpteenth
explanations the Congolese has put forth to explain why it has
tolerated within the ranks of the FARDC, the country's armed forces,
war criminals of the ilk of Jean-Bosco Ntaganda who are actively being
sought by the ICC. The real uptake is that Ntaganda is a free agent
operating in FARDC fatigues. The man is armed and dangerous and the
FARDC are incapable of dislodging him from North-Kivu where he and his
men are entrenched. A fact that Mende's clumsy political cant can't
conceal!
3. A few hours before the launch of the 3rd World March of Women in
Bukavu yesterday, a high-level panel of the UN Human Rights Commission
held a press conference at MONUSCO in Kinshasa. The topic was
"Reparation for victims of sexual violence" (Source: Radio Okapi).
The mission had talked to victims of sexual terrorism at sites of mass
rapes in North- and South-Kivu, Orientale and Equateur Provinces and
presented its major findings at that press conference.
Here are the 5 major findings of the panel:
A. The need for peace and security ranked first in the pleas voiced by
victims of sexual violence to the panel.
B. There's an urgent need for reparation for victims of sexual
violence who have been destroyed physically, psychologically, and
materially. Sadly, despite the relative success of some programs set
up to help out survivors, their needs remain largely unmet, especially
in remote areas. Health care and education (for victims and their
children) were among those urgent needs conveyed repeatedly to the
panel by the victims. Access to microcredits could also help victims
rebuild their lives.
C. The trauma of sexual violence is compounded by the social stigma
that follows hard on the heels of rapes. Rejected by their husbands
and families and ostracized by society at large, survivors of sexual
violence are left to fend for themselves and their children.
D. While the fight against impunity and access to justice were another
priority for survivors, most of those victims couldn't seek justice
by themselves or locate the perpetrators. Hence the need for a
mechanism of reparation for survivors. The reparation could take many
forms to fit the victims' needs. These reparations could be individual
or collective. In one instance, for instance, 2003 victims of mass
rape at Songo-Mbuyu formed a survivors' group which, with the help of
UNIFEM, was able to get a boat for the transport of the survivors'
goods down the river. This is the kind of collective reparation that
can be undertaken by the authorities.
E. In those instances where victims were able to positively identify
perpetrators and when the latter were prosecuted and victims awarded
reparations, these condemnations and reparations were oftentimes
hollow. Perpetrators routinely escape from jail and to date no
reparation have been awarded to victims. This undermines the
survivors' confidence in the ability of the judicial system to deliver
justice for them.
The panel will then prepare a report for the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights with a set of recommendations to be presented to the DRC
government.
4. According to Radio France Internationale RFI (its FM signal has
finally been restored by Congolese authorities) monitored this
morning, a Brussels court has ordered Kinshasa to "repatriate" Armand
Tungulu's body within 48 hours. After this deadline, the Congolese
government will be facing a €25,000-fine per day! The complaint was
filed by Tungulu's widow and children. Tungulu's lawyer claims the
body might have already been surreptitiously interred by Congolese
authorities.
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And by the way, TODAY is MOBUTU's BIRTHDAY (he was born this date in
1930 in Lisala, in the Equateur Province). Under his rule, October 14
was Youth Day!
One of Mobutu's sons, Nzanga Mobutu, is one of the DRC Deputy-Prime Ministers.
***
(Sent via BlackBerry)
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