ICC Orders War Crimes Charges Against Former Congo Vice President

The Hague-based International Criminal Court has ordered the Democratic Republic of Congo's former Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba to go on trial on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. A statement from the court said that a panel of judges had found there was sufficient evidence to believe that former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba was criminally responsible for murder, rape and pillaging.

Those atrocities took place in the Central African Republic between 2002 and 2003. Prosecutors claim Bemba sent up to 1,500 troops to CAR to retain control of a Congolese border area. But Bemba's defense attorneys argue that the troops were not under Bemba's command. In an interview with French radio earlier this year, one of Bemba's lawyers, Nkwebe Liriss, laid the blame on former Central African Republic President Ange-Felix Patasse.

Liriss argued that prosecutors had absolutely no proof against Bemba. He said Bemba might have been in telephone contact with the troops, but that all of the orders were given by Patasse and his government. Mr. Patasse, he said, not Bemba, should be on trial in The Hague.

The son of a rich businessman, Bemba ruled over a vast area of northeastern Congo as a warlord. In 2006, he lost to Joseph Kabila in a bitterly disputed Congolese presidential election. A year later, his private militia was routed by government forces and in 2008, Bemba was arrested during a visit to Brussels.

Bemba is the most senior personality in the criminal court's custody. The court has an arrest warrant out for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

VOA News / Jun. 16, 2009 09:36 KST

A faith explosion

by Philip Jenkins

Most Western observers of the Christian scene have learned to take African developments very seriously. They know that Africans will make up an increasing share of most denominations. The thriving churches of Nigeria and Uganda have become familiar to Western journalists through the activity of their leaders in the current Anglican schism. Even so, most people in the Anglo-American world still underplay the importance of the Francophone countries of Africa, especially that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This neglect derives partly from the linguistic gap; also, Western Protestants tend to be less interested in predominantly Catholic nations. The raw numbers on the Congo are impressive. With 66 million people, it is the largest Francophone nation, more populous than France itself. It claims 33 million Catholics, plus 14 million Protestants, and several million more members of independent churches, like the followers of indigenous prophet Simon Kimbangu. Religiously, the country is thus 80 percent Christian. With a fertility rate of 6.28—one of the world's highest—the Congo's population will swell mightily in coming decades, and so will the Christian share of that number. By 2050 the Congo could have 120 million Christians, which would give it the world's fifth- or sixth-largest Chris tian population, close to that of Nigeria. Impressive statistics make for interesting factoids, but those numbers also have weighty implications for the contours of Christianity. For one thing, the Congo's burgeoning churches operate in what by some standards is the world's most lethal region. Over the past 15 years or so the Congo has witnessed a series of extraordinarily savage wars and massacres, which have killed over 5 million people. This is the bloodiest carnage seen on the planet since 1945. The struggles have drawn in various outside nations, and the worst of the conflict—between 1998 and 2003—earned the title of Africa's First World War. For many Congolese Christians, that inconceivably horrible experience is the central fact of daily life, and it shapes their understanding of the Christian message. The Bible, with its tales of war, famine and plague and its core message about a hope that this world cannot supply, has an acute relevance in such a setting. Though the Congo is 80 percent Christian, it is also 100 percent attached to older African faiths. Catholics especially work hard to incorporate into their practice as many of the symbols and assumptions of the old religious regime as they can without crossing the line into syncretism. They heed the pithy warnings of Cameroon's daring Christian thinker Jean-Marc Ela, who died just last year. Ela said repeatedly that inculturation is at the heart of mission: "If Christianity seeks to be anything more than an effort to swindle a mass of mystified blacks, the churches of Africa must all join to come to terms with this question." The success of these efforts matters greatly for Christians who will never set foot in the Congo, because Central Africans have become one of the world's great diaspora communities. Migrants have carried their forms of faith worldwide. As Nigerians are much in evidence throughout the English-speaking world, the Congolese now play a large role in the Francophone world. In both France and Bel gium, the Catholic priesthood maintains its depleted ranks by drawing on recruits from the global South—from Vietnam, but also from the Congo and Cameroon. In the 1980s, amid the tyranny and violence, the Congo became the scene of a charismatic revival that has since spilled across Europe. Congolese-founded Protestant and Pentecostal churches abound in Paris, London and Brus sels, and these are some of Europe's largest and most fervent megacongregations. However chaotic and turbulent the nation is, and however poor and troubled its people, the Congo's churches will play a role far beyond its borders.

Philip Jenkins teaches at Penn State University.

Enough! Promotes War In Central Africa

[Global: Commentary]

On its website, Enough! (www.enoughproject.org) says it’s the project “to end genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Yet it is spearheading a project that could do the exact opposite.

Enough! is advocating yet another invasion of the DR Congo by Ugandan forces supposedly to capture or kill Joseph Kony and his treacherous LRA with additional reinforcement and assistance by the United States.

Enough! Demands for a U.S.-assisted “Operation Lightning Thunder II)”; this follows the dismal failure of “Operation Lightning-Thunder 1”, an attack on LRA positions inside the Congo by Ugandan troops assisted by the U.S. in December 2008, the last month of the George W. Bush government.

For 23 years all military operations against this notorious LRA have failed. Failure means that thousands of innocent people have been killed by both sides. Over a million people have been displaced in Uganda into wretched camps from which more people died of preventable diseases than from the conflict itself, literally in the hundreds of thousands.

Thousands have been killed and displaced in DRC as a result of the Uganda operation aided by Bush. Human rights organizations have reported that women and children have been abducted and subjected to torture and rape if not used as porters and then killed.

The fragile peace that was gained for two years in the region as the LRA and the Ugandan government negotiated peace was destroyed by President Yoweri Museveni’s decision to attack. The talks were undermined, some say because of Museveni’s maneuverings behind the scenes and Kony’s refusal to sign the final peace accords.

Against this background of bloodshed and failed military operations Enough! is propagating yet another invasion of DRC by Uganda’s army, the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF). This time, for it to succeed, the US should take a more active role, Enough! claims.

The whole idea is ridiculous and has only tragic possible outcomes. Enough! would have us believe that this time would be different because civilians would be “protected” and there would be “humanitarian” and “developmental assistance.”

This is preposterous rhetoric for American home consumption. The US has had a terrible record of “protecting civilians” in any of its own wars; how will it be able to ensure the protection of civilians in a Ugandan-army spearheaded war?

President Museveni of Uganda is the author of the abysmal camps in the northern part of Uganda, where the World Health Organization in 2005 reported that up to 1,000 civilians died per week. Apparently left unprotected deliberately, and one could be forgiven for thinking that he intended for as many people to die in the camps as possible because until the very end he did nothing to improve the conditions in which people were forced to live. They were left to die “like grasshoppers trapped in a bottle.” This is a phrase which President Museveni will recognize.

Museveni regarded the Administration of President Bush as his friend and ally. The Museveni government has earned notoriety as being one of the world’s most corrupt regimes. One would have hoped that the present government of the US would distance itself from such regimes. Apparently President Museveni serves the interests of the US.

Now while all these militias, rebel groups, and armies have been causing horrific wars at great cost to human lives in central Africa, so-called developed countries have been enjoying a lifestyle that is sustained in large part by the resources that come from Africa. The DRC supplies the world’s diamonds, coltan, tantalite, oil, and so forth.

DRC diamonds find their way to Western nations through Uganda. Western multinational corporations have no trouble hiring militias or mercenaries who deal with the warlords and militias in order to illegally extract these resources.

The warlords and militias hold the civilian population in what can only be called modern day slavery, human life meaning nothing to those in power or to the corporations.

Western governments know this but turn a blind eye. We rarely hear a peep from Enough! who supposedly oppose crimes against humanity and genocide.

In previous wars perpetrated by Uganda in DRC seven million people died and the UPDF plundered DRC as documented in numerous United Nations report and Human Rights Watch reports--Please see "Ituri Covered In Blood"

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/ituri0703/DRC0703.pdf

In 2005 also the International Court of Justice ruled against Uganda for the Congo crimes and awarded $10 billion to Congo.
Please see: http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/116/10455.pdf

Is there a hidden agenda behind Enough’s! advocating for another U.S.-backed Uganda invasion of Congo? Whose tail is wagging which dog?