| The Worst Place [to be a woman or a girl--or a man or a child] The New Republic by The Editors December 31, 2008 The Congo war is killing tens of thousands of people per month and is widely believed to be the world's gravest humanitarian emergency. For that reason alone, we in the West should be doing everything possible to end it. But, in case the people of eastern Congo needed an additional claim on our conscience, they happen to have one: The roots of the current war lie in the Rwandan genocide--perhaps the costliest error of inaction in the recent history of U.S. foreign policy. If we had acted differently in 1994, in other words, Congo might not be suffering now. That year, after slaughtering 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis over a period of three months, Hutu extremists were chased by their country's new Tutsi-led government into eastern Congo (then called Zaire), where they began launching attacks into Rwanda. In response, Rwanda surged over the border to secure a buffer zone--overthrowing Zaire's government (led by the infamous Mobutu Sese Seko) in the process. This event sucked a total of six nations into a pair of wars within Congo's borders (one from 1996 to 1997, the other from 1998 to 2003) that claimed millions of lives. Through it all, the Hutu génocidaires--who now call themselves the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda or FDLR--never disappeared from eastern Congo. And so, today, Rwanda's leaders are supporting a proxy army, the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), whose brutal leader Laurent Nkunda promises to protect the Tutsi diaspora in Rwanda's old buffer zone, even as he also threatens to topple the Congolese government. That government, now led by the son of the man who overthrew Mobutu, has hurled ineffective waves of its own troops at the CNDP while continuing to nurse the FDLR as a counterweight to both Nkunda and the Rwandans. The effect of this fighting on civilians has been horrific. When the armies move, they inevitably kill, loot, rape, and abduct--forcing hundreds of thousands to move to refugee camps where they die of malaria, diarrhea, and wounds from sexual assault. The Congolese army, the FDLR, and the CNDP have all adopted systematic rape as a strategic tool. As a Center for American Progress report put it, "eastern Congo right now is perhaps the worst place in the world to be a woman or a girl. The sexual violence and rape exists on a scale seen nowhere else in the world."... |
| Laurent Nkunda, Congo rebel general arrested Times Online January 23, 2009 Laurent Nkunda, the Congolese general who has been fighting a bloody war against the government was arrested last night in neighbouring Rwanda, the chief of police in the Democratic Republic of Congo said in a statement on Friday. The DR Congo army and Rwandan army "inform the public of the arrest of deposed general Laurent Nkunda Thursday at 10:30 pm while fleeing in Rwandan territory after putting up brief resistance," said the statement. DR Congo and Rwandan troops advanced on Thursday on Nkunda's headquarters at Bunangana in the Nord-Kivu region of the east of the country. Rwanda sent thousands of troops into Congo on Tuesday as part of a joint agreement to eradicate Rwandan Hutu rebels based across the border and quash a revolt by Tutsis against Kinshasa. Nkunda, a Tutsi ex-general, had not been heard from since the top commanders of his National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) movement defected and went over to Congolese forces last week, saying their conflict with Kinshasa was over... The Rwandan army twice occupied eastern Congo in the 1990s in its battle against the rebels of Rwandan Democratic Liberation Forces (FDLR) and its return has sparked alarm among local inhabitants, aid agencies and the UN peacekeeping force MONUC. Rebel chief of staff Bosco Ntaganda claims to have removed Nkunda as the CNDP leader and put his forces at the disposal of the allied armies to fight their common enemy, the FDLR. The rebels control much of eastern Congo but since Tuesday they have been cooperating with the Congolese army. Both countries want to finish off the FDLR, which took refuge in Dr Congo after participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide which saw the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. |
| Genocide in Africa |
| Michelle Obama's cousin is a rabbi Russia Today.com 09 September, 2008, 09:05 Democratic U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has been struggling to gain the Jewish vote, could have taken advantage of his wife’s cousin who’s one of the most distinguished black rabbis in the U.S. Still, this has almost slipped media attention as Obama has been cautious in mentioning his family’s connection. Michelle Obama’s cousin is Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago's South Side. Funnye's mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson) and Michelle Obama's paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister. Funnye is chief rabbi at the Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation. He also serves on the Chicago Board of Rabbis. The rabbi is known for his efforts to bring together the mainstream Jewish population and smaller black Jewish congregations – commonly referred to as Hebrews or Israelites. He has repeatedly called on the larger Jewish community to accept more non-white Jews... |
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