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Saturday 18 August 2012

The Hague:opposition groups want P.Kagame investigated for war crimes

Opposition groups want Rwandan president Paul Kagame investigated for war crimes

Stephen Chernin / AFP / Getty Images
Stephen Chernin / AFP / Getty Images Rwandan and Congolese groups are calling for the International Criminal Court to investigate Rwandan President Paul Kagame for war crimes for allegedly backing rebel groups in eastern Congo.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Rwandan and Congolese groups opposed to Rwandan President Paul Kagame's rule asked the International Criminal Court on Friday to investigate him for war crimes for allegedly backing rebel groups in eastern Congo.
A small group gathered outside the court in The Hague, Netherlands, with banners reading "Kagame Assassin," and "Freedom for Congo."
The gesture is symbolic, as Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has not said whether she has any plans to investigate Kagame — though she is already probing members of the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo that formed this April with alleged ties to his regime across the border. Kagame denies involvement.
Christopher Block, a lawyer for the groups that want Kagame investigated, said Friday that Bensouda need only turn to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to launch a case against Kagame, asserting it has a "mountain" of evidence against him in its archives. Kagame has been an important military leader in Rwanda since 1990 and its president since 2000.
The Rwanda tribunal itself, based in Tanzania, never pressed any charges against Kagame.
Kagame, an ethnic Tutsi, has a history of intervention in eastern Congo. Rwanda first invaded its neighbour to the west in 1996, pursuing Rwandan Hutus who fled after committing the 1994 Rwandan genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It took Kagame a year to admit that his troops had invaded eastern Congo. They deployed after U.N. and Western powers failed to act, as the "genocidaires" used the cover of massive refugee camps to arm themselves and make incursions into Rwanda.

Alexander Joe / AFP / Getty Images / Files
Displaced Tutsis at a refugee camp in Kabgayi May 28, 1994.
Remnants of the genociders in Congo formed the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, which is at the heart of a never-ending cycle of violence in eastern Congo, and which Kagame's government fears will one day invade Rwanda.
In response, Kagame orchestrated a rebellion of Congolese Tutsis led by Rwandan soldiers that toppled Congo's longtime dictatorship and precipitated back-to-back civil wars that drew in the armies of eight African nations in a scramble for Congo's massive mineral resources. Some 5 million people died before the war ended in 2003.
After Rwandan troops withdrew under international pressure, Kagame turned to proxies, supporting a Congolese Tutsi-led rebellion that engulfed east Congo in 2008. To end that insurgency, Congo's President Joseph Kabila signed a pact allowing the rebels to integrate into the army and for Rwandan troops to come into Congo for three months to again hunt down the FDLR. The mutinying soldiers who began this year's insurgency were once part of the 2008 rebellion.
Protestors outside the International Criminal Court Friday seemed most concerned with Kagame's possible involvement in events of the 1990s, especially leading up to and after the 1994 genocide. But the ICC would only have jurisdiction over any war crimes he committed after it came into being in 2002.
Kagame has long been seen as key ally for Western powers in central Africa.
But Friday's demand for action follows a report issued by the U.N. in July that accused high-ranking Rwandan officials of helping to create, arm and support the current M23 rebellion within Congo.
A bipartisan group of U.S. legislators on Aug. 3 also sent a strongly worded letter to Kagame saying they are "absolutely convinced that Rwanda is involved in supporting the unrest" in eastern Congo.
Several Western countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, have suspended some aid to Rwanda as a result.

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Associated Press/nationalpost.com, August 17, 2012

"Rwandan and Congolese groups opposed to Rwandan President Paul Kagame's rule asked the International Criminal Court on Friday to investigate him for war crimes for allegedly backing rebel groups in eastern Congo…"

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/17/opposition-groups-want-rwandan-president-paul-kagame-investigated-for-war-crimes/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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DRC: Children, young men flee M23 recruitment


 
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96117/DRC-Children-young-men-flee-M23-recruitment

DRC: Children, young men flee M23 recruitment

MONUSCO reports that more than 150 children have been recruited by armed groups in eastern DRC since the beginning of 2012 (file photo)
KINSHASA, 16 August 2012 (IRIN) - Thousands of children and young men are fleeing rebel-held areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North Kivu Province to escape forced recruitment by the insurgents, NGOs say. 

"One day, five rebels of M23 stormed our town [Rugari, north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu]. They went to the chief asking him to show them all houses where they can find young men. The chief resisted, they tied him up and went on searching into houses until they arrested 36 children and [took] them away to train as fighters," said Barthelemy Schilogolo, head of local the NGO, Paix et Justice pour la Reconciliation, told IRIN. 

M23 - a group of former DRC national army (FARDC) soldiers who mutinied in April - is fighting government troops in North and South Kivu; the conflict has caused the displacement of close to half a million people. A number of other local militias - known as Mai Mai - are involved in the conflict and have also been accused of human rights abuses. 

According to Schilogolo, M23 fighters are under pressure to increase recruitment. "Every two days, commanders of M23 come from Bunagana [an M23-held town on the DRC-Uganda border] to Rugari for regular patrols to control how their fighters are keeping positions. I've witnessed areas where a front commander is forcefully picked up when he failed to show how many recruits he recruited," he said. 

The NGO World Vision recently highlighted the issue, reporting that nearly 200 children had been forced to join the fighting. The group says the majority of refugees - an estimated 57,000, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - fleeing into neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda are children, with some reporting that they were fleeing recruitment into armed groups. 

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has also documented over 100 civilians forcibly recruited by M23 over the past four months, most of whom were young men aged 24 and under. 

Auguy Sebisimbo was forcefully recruited alongside 15 other youths - including children as young as 12 - by M23 in July in his home area of Rutshuru, the main town in the area controlled by M23. 

"They took us to Bunanga, gave us arms and military uniforms without any training apart from a few exercises to show us how to shoot a gun," he told IRIN. 

A week into his capture, he fled during a fierce, day-long battle between M23 and FARDC forces; now back at home, he says the conflict continues to make his life difficult. "We are existing but feeling like we are not, because if the rebels recruit you by force and send you to the front line you may die. If not, it is not easy to endure the heavy gunshots that traumatize you. It is like you are dead," he said. 

''They took us to Bunagana, gave us arms and military uniforms without any training apart from a few exercises to show us how to shoot a gun''
According to a statement by the UN Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), at least 26 children are documented as having been forcibly recruited by M23 since April 2012, although reports indicate that the actual number is significantly higher; overall, the mission reports that more than 150 children have been recruited by armed groups in eastern DRC since the beginning of 2012. Individuals interviewed described how they were forced to carry looted goods, supplies and ammunition over long distances. Upon arrival at their destinations, they were handed uniforms and weapons and underwent military training in camps. 

It added that there were also reports of the execution of civilians who resisted recruitment. 

"Whilst forced recruitment by various armed groups has long characterized conflict in the DRC, numbers have increased substantially since the upsurge of recent hostilities in the east, and in particular the actions of the M23 in Rutshuru territory, North-Kivu Province," Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of MONUSCO Roger Meece said in the statement. "Using children and youth in armed conflict will create generations trained in violence, tearing apart the fabric of Congolese society." 

pc/kr/rz 

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
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Remembering Habyarimana’s tragic end: How the United States all along knew exactly what happened

Remembering Habyarimana's tragic end:  How the United States all along knew exactly what happened
The way the British and American  Media and politicians have been supporting  Paul Kagame of Rwanda during and after  genocide demonstrates that they were involved in the preparations of the Rwandan genocide through the assassination of former President Habyarimana of Rwanda.


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