The DRC Armed Group Leader Sheka Handed Over by MONUSCO to the Congolese Authorities (07.08.2017)

Sheka has been wanted since 2011 by the Congolese justice system for crimes against humanity, including mass rape and child recruitment.

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 7, 2017 – Ntabo Ntaberi Sheka, leader of the armed group Nduma Defense of Congo (NDC), was transferred on Friday August 4th to Kinshasa and was handed over by MONUSCO to the Congolese judicial authorities. Sheka has been under MONUSCO supervision in Goma since his surrender on 26 July.

He is accompanied by two alleged NDC combatants who also surrendered and are subject to judicial warrants of arrest for crimes against humanity including rape and child recruitment. The individuals will be detained, awaiting trial, in a location where MONUSCO will have access to ensure that relevant international human rights standards are observed.

The United Nations, through the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, called on the DRC government to “take all necessary measures to ensure that Sheka is promptly tried in adherence to basic standards of due process and that the charges against him appropriately correspond to all the crimes committed”.

Sheka surrendered to MONUSCO in the village of Mutongo about ten kilometers north of Walikale in full knowledge of the fact that he is the subject of an arrest warrant and will be brought to justice. Sheka has been wanted since 2011 by the Congolese justice system for crimes against humanity, including mass rape and child recruitment. NDC fighters are alleged to have raped almost 400 civilians, including 300 women, 23 men and 61 children, in 13 villages on the Kibua-Mpofi axis in the Walikale (North Kivu) between 30 July and 2 August 2010. United Nations have also documented the alleged recruitment of at least 154 children by this rebel group.

“Sheka’s surrender is a positive sign. A fair trial would be a significant step in the fight against impunity and a victory for victims of abuses by armed groups who have the right to justice”, said Maman Sidikou, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in the DRC.

RDC: Declaration Politique Conjointe des Forces Politiques et Sociales Soutenant la Candidature de Moise Katumbi (05.08.2017)

Opinion: President Kagame won with 98.66%, just like his predecessors Kayibanda and Habyarimana!

Its been 17 years of RPF rule and will be 7 more years with President Paul Kagame. The ones that thought differently has lived under a rock and thought the whole world would stop spinning. The world stop and the hearts would stop pumping if there was a different result at this point. This was massaged and made ready for the world. The whole campaign and the race to the polls. You don’t manage a race of significance and get 98% by coincidence, that is measured and made sure off. Just like the Presidents before him.

Incumbent President Paul Kagame took a major early lead in Friday’s presidential polls with 5,433,890 votes (98.66 per cent) of the total votes counted by 12:30am. By press time (around 1am), the National Electoral Commission had managed to count about 80 per cent of the votes cast (5,498,414 votes) from 1,732 polling stations. There were 2,340 polling stations across the country. Independent candidate Phillippe Mpayimana was in a distant second having just garnered 39,620 votes (about 0.72 per cent). Frank Habineza, of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, trailed with a measly 24,904 votes, which is 0.45 per cent of the votes counted” (Mwai, 2017).

Because if looks into the Rwandan election history, it is not like the history isn’t telling of similar elections like the one seen this week. Not like the Republic of Rwanda has different results. If you go back to voting on the monarchy in September 25th 1961, if the Kingdom should be preserved it got 78,5%. So the people abolished it 1961 and the other ballot if the King Kigeri V to remain king or had to abdicate, the result that day was 79,60 % who voted him to become a civilian. So even in the 1960s the now Republic voted in high numbers for one thing.

The President George Kayibanda was voted for in 1965 election and he was elected unopposed with 100% support. The same happen in 1969. When Kayibanda was reelected. Then again it took sometime before the next election.

In an unopposed election of President Juvenal Habyarimana in the 24th December 1978, where he got 98,99 %. Again on the 19th December 1983 he got reelected and was unopposed who got 99,97%. The third election with President Habyarimana, again went unopposed on the 19th December 1988, that time he got 99,98%.

After that, there been lots of issues and the civil war, that ended in genocide in 1994. When the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), who became the leading party Rwanda Patriotic Front. In the first Presidential election after the genocide, it was in 2003, when President Paul Kagame got 95,05%. So 7 years later in 2010, the incumbent President got 93,08%.

Now in 2017 and unleashing yet another term for the Rwandan President, who follows his predecessors. The ones that was overthrown and killed. These took so much control that they created a violent legacy. Certainly, President Kagame doesn’t want that, but he is following the footsteps of the leaders in the past. Nothing with is different from them, just another name and another time, but with the same controlling state and dark secrets. Kagame got this year 98,66% in the Presidential Election in 2017. Which, is very much alike like Habyarimana, who was shot down while flying in the 1990s. While the death of Kayibanda is still unknown. Therefore, if Kagame follows his predecessors it will end in genocide and a horrible assassination.

Not that we wish that, but the history repeats itself, as seen with the election and state control of society. As well, as internal affairs are controlled from the state. To way that even banished the World Bank from studying the poverty and analyze it to create programs to fight it. This was because the Rwandan state wanted to control the numbers and make sure the propaganda was fitting the vision of Kagame. Therefore, nothing is surprising.

That Kagame got 98% in the election was waited, just like the generations in the past expected Habyarimana and Kayibanda to win with overwhelming numbers. It is all repeating itself and going in circles. To overlook that is to be blind and trying to overshadow the history, which is the propaganda of the state. But that is to be expected. Peace.

Reference:

African Elections – ‘Elections in Rwanda’ link: http://africanelections.tripod.com/rw.html

Mwai, Collins – ‘Kagame wins presidential poll’ (05.08.2017) link: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/217433/

RDC: Communique du Gouvernement – “Sur le rapport nouvellement publié de l’OCHA sur la violence à Kasai” (04.08.2017)

DRC: Victims’ harrowing accounts indicate Government complicity in ethnic-based massacres in Kasai – UN report (04.08.2017)

GENEVA (4 August 2017) – Violence in the Kasai provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo appears to be taking on an increasing and disturbing ethnic dimension, a report by the UN Human Rights Office has warned. Information gathered by a team of UN human rights investigators* suggests that some of the violations and abuses committed in the Kasais may amount to crimes under international law.

The report is based on interviews with 96 people who had fled to neighbouring Angola to escape the violence in Kamonia territory in Kasai. The UN team was able to confirm that between 12 March and 19 June some 251 people were the victims of extrajudicial and targeted killings. These included 62 children, of which 30 were aged under eight. Interviewees indicated that local security forces and other officials actively fomented, fuelled, and occasionally led, attacks on the basis of ethnicity. The UN Mission in the DRC has identified at least 80 mass graves in the Kasais.

The team saw people who had been seriously injured or mutilated, including a seven-year-old boy who had had several fingers cut off and his face totally disfigured. A woman whose arm had been chopped off recounted how she managed to escape, hiding for several days in the forest before reaching the Angolan border and being airlifted to hospital. Some of the refugees pleaded with the UN team to be heard, and two of the people they interviewed died shortly afterwards from their injuries.

“Survivors have spoken of hearing the screams of people being burned alive, of seeing loved ones chased and cut down, of themselves fleeing in terror. Such bloodletting is all the more horrifying because we found indications that people are increasingly being targeted because of their ethnic group,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. “Their accounts should serve as a grave warning to the Government of the DRC to act now to prevent such violence from tipping into wider ethnic cleansing.” 

“I call on the Government to take all necessary measures to fulfil its primary obligation to protect people from all ethnic backgrounds in the greater Kasai area,” he added.

The fighting began in August 2016 between the Kamuina Nsapu militia and the Government. The UN team was able to confirm that another militia, called the Bana Mura, was formed around March/April 2017 by individuals from the Tshokwe, Pende and Tetela ethnic groups. It was allegedly armed and supported by local traditional leaders and security officials, including from the army and the police, to attack the Luba and Lulua communities who are accused of being accomplices of the Kamuina Nsapu.

According to the report, “the Bana Mura allegedly undertook a campaign aimed at eliminating the entire Luba and Lulua populations in the villages they attacked.” In many of the incidents reported to the team, FARDC soldiers were seen leading groups of Bana Mura militia during attacks on villages.

“The Government’s responsibility includes ensuring that those who organised, recruited and armed the Bana Mura or other militias are identified and prosecuted,” the High Commissioner stressed.

Many Luba and Lulua witnesses and victims said that the Bana Mura militia carried out what appeared to be well-planned attacks on several villages in Kamonia territory in April and May. Wearing white bandanas made from mosquito nets and bracelets of leaves, the Bana Mura attacked Luba and Lulua inhabitants, beheading, mutilating and shooting victims; in some cases burning them alive in their homes.

In one of the most shocking attacks, in the village of Cinq, 90 patients, colleagues and people who had sought refuge in a health centre were killed, including patients who could not escape when the surgical ward was set on fire.

Victims’ accounts included a woman who told the team how the militia killed her husband, attacked her daughter with machetes, and shot her and her 22-month-old son, who later had to have his leg amputated at a hospital in Angola. The team also heard accounts of rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence.

People also told the UN team that the Kamuina Nsapu militia carried out targeted killings, including against the military, police, and public officials.

In all incidents documented by the team, the Kamuina Nsapu were reported to have used boys and girls, many aged between seven and 13, as fighters. Witnesses also said groups of girls called “Lamama” accompanied the militia, shaking their straw skirts and drinking victims’ blood as part of a magic ritual that was supposed to render the group invincible. All the refugees interviewed by the team said they were convinced of the magical powers of the Kamuina Nsapu.

“This generalised belief, and resulting fear, by segments of the population in the Kasais may partly explain why a poorly armed militia, composed to a large extent of children, has been able to resist offensives by a national army for over a year,” the report says.

Given the situation in the Kasais, the report highlights the need for the team of international experts on the situation in the Kasais, established in June by the UN Human Rights Council, to be granted safe and unrestricted access to information, sites and individuals deemed necessary for their work.

This report will be put at the disposal of the international experts, as well as any other judicial institution addressing the human rights situation in the Kasais, in an effort to advance accountability efforts in this regard.

RDC: Communique du Rassemblement – “Memo a l’Attention de Monsieur Corneille Nanga, President de la Commission Electorale Nationale Independante (CENI).” (03.08.2017)

RDC: CENI – “Portant Suspension du Processus de l’Election des Gouverneur et Vice-Gouverneur dans les Provinces du Kasai” Central et de la Mongala (02.08.2017)

RDC: Antoine-Gabriel Kyungu Wa Ku Mwanza – “Declaration a la suite de la journee de la marche du 31 juillet 2017 (02.08.2017)

MONUSCO underlines the need for the respect of fundamental freedoms and rights and urges all Congolese stakeholders to exercise restraint (02.08.2017)

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 2, 2017 – Maman S. Sidikou, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of MONUSCO, expresses concern over the arbitrary arrests and detentions which occurred in different parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), following peaceful civil society mobilization to protest delays in the publication of the electoral calendar and call for the holding of elections before the end of the year. On 31 July 2017, the United Nations documented over 120 arrests or detentions in Kinshasa, Goma, Lubumbashi, Beni, Butembo, Bukavu and Mbandaka. Among those detained were eight media representatives, including a journalist from Okapi and two members of the international press, who were released following MONUSCO’s intervention. Crowds were also forcefully dispersed in Kisangani and in Bukavu, where the PNC used live ammunition, resulting in three persons injured.

“I am concerned by the restrictions imposed on peaceful assembly and arrests of those who seek to express their political views, as well as by the targeting of journalists and the confiscation of their materials. I call on the national and local authorities to fully uphold the fundamental rights and freedoms as enshrined in the Congolese Constitution. I also underline the need for all political stakeholders, irrespective of their partisan affiliations, to refrain from any statement or action that could heighten tension and further polarize the political landscape”, said Maman Sidikou.

The Special Representative recalls that respect of fundamental freedoms, as well as a commitment by all stakeholders to exercise restraint and uphold the spirit of dialogue and compromise, are critical for the creation of an environment conducive to the implementation of the 31 December Agreement, culminating in the holding of peaceful and credible elections.

RDC: Moise Katumbi – “Declaration a la Suite de la Journee de Mobilisation du 31 Juillet 2017 (01.08.2017)