The posture of this Kinshasa contortionist showing off his butt is
emblematic of the general attitude of the Kinois toward the UN Mapping
Project due to be released today.
The report documents acts of targeted atrocities in eastern DRC
against Hutu refugees--helpless women, kids, infants and the elderly.
BBC reports this morning that though "toned down," the report retains
the "charge of genocide" perpetrated against Hutu refugees...
A vindication indeed for the claims made by Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.
I have all along claimed here and elsewhere, based on contemporaneous
press and eyewitness accounts, that there was a systematic "counter-genocide" against Hutu refugees in the DRC... A conclusion widely shared by the Congolese who experienced first-hand the horrific
cruelty of Rwandan and Ugandan troops.
I mentioned the UN report to some Kinois. One of them repeated the
plan dreames by Papa Wemba a few years back of building a long wall
on the border with Rwanda, "just as Israel has done." Another
one told me that if it only depended on him he'd move Rwanda to
Patagonia!
So, if Kinshasa is abuzz today, it's not over the UN Mapping report.
It's all about a freak incident that involved the Rais yesterday in
the Commune of Lingwala, along the avenue re-christened Mulele Pierre
at the fall of Kinshasa to Laurent Kabila's troops, but which the
Kinois stubbornly continue to call "Avenue du 24 Novembre," the date
of Mobutu's infamous coup in 1965.
President Joseph Kabila was driving himself in his SUV as he usually
does when, around the taxi-bus stop called "Rail," a well-dressed
young man (some Kinois claim he just returned from France; others from
the U.S) threw 2 stones at the president's vehicle. One stone landed
on the hood, and the other on the back.
As the crazy guy was being promptly apprehended by the "bana-mura," as
the presidential guards are called by the Kinois, the baffled Rais
stopped and got out of the car to look at the stone-thrower.
Well, the Iraqi shoe-thrower got I think 3 years in jail; this stupid
Kinois scofflaw might have landed himself a long stint at Kinshasa
Makala Prison.
Strangely, though the news of the incident spread yesterday through
the channels of "Radio-Trottoir" (Radio-Sidewalk or Congo's
grapevine), not a single press report has so far mentioned it.
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