Today, the International Criminal Court at the Hague began the trial of Thomas Lubanga, the former leader of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots or UPC), one of several militias responsible for gross human rights abuses during the 1999 to 2007 conflict in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The conflict claimed some 60,000 of the estimate 6 million lives lost during Congo’s decade-plus and multi-tiered civil war. Lubanga is charged with war crimes, while two other militia leaders from the conflict awaiting trial - Germain Katanga of the Forces de Résistance Patriotique d'Ituri (Patriotic Resistance Forces of Ituri or FRPI) and Mathieu Ngudjolo of the Front nationaliste et intégrationniste (Nationalist and Integrationist Front or FNI) - await trial for war crime as well as crimes against humanity. A fourth militia leader, Bosco Ntaganda, formerly chief of military operations for UPC and now head of a wing of the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (National Congress for the Defence of the People or CNDP) has also been indicted by the ICC for having "committed war crimes of enlistment and conscription of children under the age of 15" and using the children "to participate actively in hostilities in Ituri." A fourth militia leader, the FNI's Floribert Njabu, is currently in detention in Kinshasa.
As a recent Human Rights Watch release makes clear, the crimes of the military actors in Ituri were indeed ghastly and sickening, and I don’t know if I have ever reported on a more disturbing story, whether it be the aftermath of the war there or the complicity of international companies in helping to fuel the violence. As most of the world has been content to ignore the suffering of Africa in general and Congo in particular for far too long, hopefully Lubanga’s trial will point to a new day of accountability for the worst transgressors in the region and, ultimately, those abroad who assist them financially, materially or otherwise in their bloody business.
Showing posts with label UPC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UPC. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, June 27, 2008
A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo
A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo
by Michael Deibert, Special to CorpWatch
June 26th, 2008
In the heart of the war-scarred Ituri region in northeastern Congo, some 200 mud-covered men pan for traces of gold in the muddy brown waters.
Working for the Congolese owners of Manyida camp, the miners are following a map of the site made by the Belgians, the country's former colonial rulers.
"It's very difficult, punishing work," says Adamo Bedijo, a 32 year-old university graduate from the central city of Kisangani. "We are not paid, we work until we hit the vein of gold and hope that will pay us…The government has abandoned us, so I am forced to endure all this suffering."
Bedijo is one of Ituri's estimated 70,000 artisanal miners, some of whom are former employees of state mining concerns that collapsed during the country's long-running civil war. Two years after the first democratic elections in 40 years, informal arrangements such as Manyida are operating alongside the many foreign multinationals rushing in to tap the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) extensive mineral resources.
The way foreign multinationals have gained entry into Congo, and the business methods they use, raise significant questions for a nation at historic crossroads. Will the DRC move forward to become more responsive to its nearly 67 million people scattered across an area as large as Western Europe, or will the tradition of rape-as-governance continue?
Read the full article here.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
DRC: With Rebel Leader's Indictment, a Tentative Step to Accountability
DRC: With Rebel Leader's Indictment, a Tentative Step to Accountability
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, May 1, 2008 (IPS) - The indictment against a militia leader whose alleged abuses span the Democratic Republic of Congo's war-ravaged east was finally made public at the end of April, almost two years after being delivered under seal to war crimes prosecutors.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) alleges that Bosco Ntaganda "committed war crimes of enlistment and conscription of children under the age of 15", using the children "to participate actively in hostilities in Ituri, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from July 2002 until December 2003."
Formerly the chief of military operations for the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC), Ntaganda now serves as military chief of staff of the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (National Congress for the Defence of the People, CNDP).
The warrant was made being made public now because it would "not endanger the witnesses of the DRC cases" at the present moment, the ICC said in a statement.
Read the full article here.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, May 1, 2008 (IPS) - The indictment against a militia leader whose alleged abuses span the Democratic Republic of Congo's war-ravaged east was finally made public at the end of April, almost two years after being delivered under seal to war crimes prosecutors.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) alleges that Bosco Ntaganda "committed war crimes of enlistment and conscription of children under the age of 15", using the children "to participate actively in hostilities in Ituri, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from July 2002 until December 2003."
Formerly the chief of military operations for the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC), Ntaganda now serves as military chief of staff of the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (National Congress for the Defence of the People, CNDP).
The warrant was made being made public now because it would "not endanger the witnesses of the DRC cases" at the present moment, the ICC said in a statement.
Read the full article here.
Friday, April 18, 2008
POLITICS-DRC: Cautious Calm Settles Over War-scarred Ituri Region
POLITICS-DRC: Cautious Calm Settles Over War-scarred Ituri Region
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
BOGORO, April 17, 2008 (IPS) - Wading through the chest-high grass outside of this hamlet in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mathieu Nyakufa gestures to the bones -- still bleaching in the sun -- of those who have been lost to the country's wars.
"I was living just down here in the valley," the 52-year-old farmer says of one terrible morning in February 2003. "They were killing people with guns, with machetes, with spears and arrows. I escaped because I saw people running in my direction. Three of my children were killed in my own house."
An estimated 200 civilians were killed in Bogoro, located in the heart of the Ituri region, when combatants of the Forces de Résistance Patriotique d'Ituri (Patriotic Resistance Forces of Ituri, or FRPI), a militia dominated by the Ngiti and Lendu ethnic groups, attacked this scattered collection of thatched-roof huts and mud dwellings. At the time, Bogoro was a stronghold of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC), an armed group loyal to the Gegere and Hema tribes.
"The UPC told me, 'Papa, run away, don't wait, because the Lendu are killing your people'," says Nyakufa.
The Bogoro massacre was one of many such slaughters that occurred in Ituri, which contains some of the world's most valuable deposits of gold and reserves of timber. A brutal extension of the civil war which engulfed this vast African nation from 1998 until 2003, the conflict in Ituri saw neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda arm militias in an ever-shifting web of alliances, as much for their own designs on Congo's natural resources as for any political solidarity with the Congolese.
Read the full article here.
By Michael Deibert
Inter Press Service
BOGORO, April 17, 2008 (IPS) - Wading through the chest-high grass outside of this hamlet in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mathieu Nyakufa gestures to the bones -- still bleaching in the sun -- of those who have been lost to the country's wars.
"I was living just down here in the valley," the 52-year-old farmer says of one terrible morning in February 2003. "They were killing people with guns, with machetes, with spears and arrows. I escaped because I saw people running in my direction. Three of my children were killed in my own house."
An estimated 200 civilians were killed in Bogoro, located in the heart of the Ituri region, when combatants of the Forces de Résistance Patriotique d'Ituri (Patriotic Resistance Forces of Ituri, or FRPI), a militia dominated by the Ngiti and Lendu ethnic groups, attacked this scattered collection of thatched-roof huts and mud dwellings. At the time, Bogoro was a stronghold of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC), an armed group loyal to the Gegere and Hema tribes.
"The UPC told me, 'Papa, run away, don't wait, because the Lendu are killing your people'," says Nyakufa.
The Bogoro massacre was one of many such slaughters that occurred in Ituri, which contains some of the world's most valuable deposits of gold and reserves of timber. A brutal extension of the civil war which engulfed this vast African nation from 1998 until 2003, the conflict in Ituri saw neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda arm militias in an ever-shifting web of alliances, as much for their own designs on Congo's natural resources as for any political solidarity with the Congolese.
Read the full article here.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Note from Ituri
We picked our way through the tall grass outside of the village of Bogoro in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a farmer, my guide and myself.
This was the place where, in February 2003, at least 200 people were slain when the Ngiti and Lendu-dominated Force des Resistance Patriotique d’Ituri (FRPI) militia attacked this largely Hema town, at the time a redoubt of the Gegere and Hema-led Union des Patriots Congolais (UPC ). The siege was part of the terrible wave of atrocities on both sides that went on, largely with the connivance of neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, until 2005.
As we walked through the field in the strong morning light, the farmer pointed out the scattered bones on the ground. He explains how three of his own children were killed in his house and how “we could not even recognize the skeletons of our children” when he returned to the village because there were so many there. At least 60,000 people are said to heave died in the area’s fighting.
Ituri has the misfortune to have abundant timber, and gold deposits that many experts believe to be among the most promising in the world, and yet so many tens of thousands of its people were sent to die brutal, criminal deaths so that those competing to control those very resources might have a moment of political advantage. Dressed up under the guise of ethnic conflict, the fall of the machete and the report of the rifle, as so often the case here in Africa, represented in the final analysis an expression of monetary greed.
I will write an article about it very soon, but before I do I think it is appropriate to ponder all those who passed.
I remember some lines that the poet Philip Larkin once wrote:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
This was the place where, in February 2003, at least 200 people were slain when the Ngiti and Lendu-dominated Force des Resistance Patriotique d’Ituri (FRPI) militia attacked this largely Hema town, at the time a redoubt of the Gegere and Hema-led Union des Patriots Congolais (UPC ). The siege was part of the terrible wave of atrocities on both sides that went on, largely with the connivance of neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, until 2005.
As we walked through the field in the strong morning light, the farmer pointed out the scattered bones on the ground. He explains how three of his own children were killed in his house and how “we could not even recognize the skeletons of our children” when he returned to the village because there were so many there. At least 60,000 people are said to heave died in the area’s fighting.
Ituri has the misfortune to have abundant timber, and gold deposits that many experts believe to be among the most promising in the world, and yet so many tens of thousands of its people were sent to die brutal, criminal deaths so that those competing to control those very resources might have a moment of political advantage. Dressed up under the guise of ethnic conflict, the fall of the machete and the report of the rifle, as so often the case here in Africa, represented in the final analysis an expression of monetary greed.
I will write an article about it very soon, but before I do I think it is appropriate to ponder all those who passed.
I remember some lines that the poet Philip Larkin once wrote:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
