AP 13 Sept 2005 Genocide survivors urge world leaders to protect civilians from massacres By VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press Writer September 13, 2005, 4:48 PM EDT NEW YORK -- Pregnant and with three small children in tow, Grace Mukagabiro ran for her life after her husband was beheaded and their house burned down. On Tuesday, the Rwandan survivor of the attack on her Tutsi village joined former Irish President Mary Robinson and other activists begging the United Nations summit of more than 160 world leaders to endorse a U.N. measure that would protect civilians from mass killings. "I survived the Rwandan genocide. Almost a million others did not," the 42-year-old mother of four said, a decade after the massacres led by the Hutu government. She still lives in Kigali, Rwanda, working as program coordinator for the global aid agency Oxfam. Mukagabiro spoke at an Oxfam-sponsored news conference in the Church Center opposite the United Nations headquarters, where the summit was to begin Wednesday. Then the group walked several blocks to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, where a mock graveyard was erected, with 100 white tombstones that read, "NEVER AGAIN?" U.N. member nations are trying to reach consensus on a document enabling the world body to tackle major issues of the 21st century. It would reaffirm nations' obligation to protect their people from genocide _ a crime under the U.N. convention first adopted in 1948. But the document has been significantly watered down from earlier drafts, which might have given the international community the firm responsibility to protect victims by overriding the sovereignty of local governments and taking direct action. "That would mean nations wouldn't have to ask the question again, as they did in Sudan, 'Is this genocide?"' said Robinson, a lawyer and former U.N. high commissioner for human rights who chairs the Council of Women World Leaders, a Washington-based nonprofit. Robinson, president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, said formalizing an international response against genocide is only part of the answer to stopping the ethnic violence now bloodying every continent. "It's only one leg of a stool _ the other two are having control of small arms and development," she told The Associated Press. "On these other two problems, I'm very disappointed with the United Nations. If people have arms and they're poor, it's difficult to control genocide." Robinson founded the New York-based Ethical Globalization Initiative, a human rights group that is helping her lobby U.N. members on these three issues. With the summit hours away, tensions are running high at U.N. headquarters over the final document. Some nations are leaning toward a pro-active response, with both human forces and funds pledged to stopping genocide; others disagree, citing prohibitive costs. To Mukagabiro and another survivor, the U.N. goal should be simple. Said Kemal Pervanic, a 37-year-old Bosnian Muslim who was tortured for seven months in two Serb-run camps: "You live day-to-day, keeping your head down in case you catch a guard's eye; seeing men called out who never return; hearing their tortured screams and the shots that kill them." A U.N. measure defining an international plan to deal with genocide, he said, "could prevent people like me from going through this sort of ordeal."

AP 4 Sept 2005 U.N. Members Divided Over Summit Document By EDITH M. LEDERER The Associated Press Sunday, September 4, 2005; 9:16 PM UNITED NATIONS -- There is a growing sense of crisis as the United Nations prepares for history's biggest gathering of world leaders next week. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants the leaders to take action to tackle poverty, reform the United Nations and address global security. But the 191 member states are deeply divided on what the summit should accomplish, and negotiators have not agreed on a single key issue. "We are in a crisis situation at the moment," said Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram. "There has to be something for the heads of state and government to adopt, but obviously we're not going to reach a conclusion by doing what we've been doing." Others, including U.S. Ambassador John Bolton and Dutch Ambassador Dirk Jan van den Berg, said it was too early to talk about a crisis, saying some progress had been made. But no one played down the gaps to be bridged and the short time to do it before more than 170 world leaders arrive for the Sept. 14-16 summit. Seven issues are snagging talks: poverty and development, terrorism, collective action to prevent genocide, disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation, a new Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, a new Peacebuilding Commission to help countries emerging from conflict; and the overhaul of U.N. management. Diplomats involved in the negotiations said the United States, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela had taken hard-line positions on different issues. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are continuing. In March, Annan laid out his blueprint for the most sweeping changes to the United Nations administration in its 60-year history along with proposals to achieve U.N. development goals that world leaders adopted at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. General Assembly President Jean Ping then began consultations with the 191 member states to turn Annan's vision into a document for leaders to adopt at the summit marking the world body's 60th anniversary. His first draft was issued in June and the last _ 39 pages long _ in early August. The United States submitted hundreds of proposed amendments after every draft but they were never made public. When Bolton sent every ambassador similar amendments to the latest text, the Bush administration came under intense criticism, drawing accusations it was entering the negotiations late and was trying to sabotage the talks. Ping chose a "core group" of 32 countries Aug. 26 to try to reach consensus on a final text. He hoped they would reach agreement by Friday, so he could submit the text to member states Monday for approval. Instead, ambassadors from the 32 countries met Saturday to take stock of progress by small negotiating groups. With serious gaps remaining, Indian Ambassador Nirupam Sen said Ping sent the small groups back to negotiate Sunday and Monday. Ping is then expected to prepare a new text that would include any agreements and put all the remaining outstanding issues on the table for tough final negotiations. "There's much yet to be done, but I'm heartened that all of the secretary-general's major proposals are still on the table and being taken seriously," U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr told The Associated Press. Bolton told reporters: "The negotiating process ... is like making sausage. It isn't necessarily pretty. It takes a long time, and that's the process we're engaged in." He also said negotiators had made some progress. "I wouldn't describe it as spectacular, but I think this is what you have to do to bridge the significant differences that still exist." Van den Berg, the Dutch ambassador, said about 125 countries supported Ping's latest 39-page text, including the 25-nation European Union. India's Sen said that differences remained on all the key issues and that some "are insurmountable," citing disarmament and nonproliferation and intervention in another country in case of genocide or war crimes. Nonetheless, many ambassadors remained hopeful they could agree on a serious document for their leaders to adopt. "I believe we'll have a substantive statement," said Brazilian Ambassador Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, noting there have been down-to-the-wire negotiations at the last summit and many U.N. conferences.

Press Trust of India 9 Sept 2005 www.outlookindia.com UN-SURVIVORS Endorse UN draft on mass killings: Genocide survivors NEW DELHI, SEP 9 (PTI) Survivors of the holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda came together here today to ask the Indian Government to endorse a UN initiative to establish a new international standard to prevent mass killings. The proposal, to be discussed at the United Nations next week, says countries will share the "responsibility to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner to protect civilians suffering from grave atrocities like genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes when the government of the people concerned is unwilling to do so or is unable to do so." India, along with Pakistan, the US, Cuba, Russia and Brazil are calling for amendments in the proposal. Susan Pollock, a survivor of the massacre of Jews by Germans during the Second World War, said "we understand that India has its reservations as it can address these issues at a domestic level because it is a vibrant democracy. "However, this draft must be passed because not all countries have means of redressal," she told reporters here. However, she pointed out that force should be the last option to be used in case of a genocide. "The agreement will force the international community to act if there is another Rwanda," said Grace Mukagabiro, who lost her husband in the Rwanda genocide of 1994 during which nearly 10 lakh people were butchered in 100 days.

New York Times 10 Sept 2005 Clash by Diplomats at U.N. Over Reform Bares Divisions By WARREN HOGE UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 9 - Diplomats working on a pivotal document on the management overhaul of the United Nations and updated approaches to terrorism, development and human rights have locked horns just days before it is to be presented to more than 170 world leaders for their endorsement. Deep divisions persist despite crisis talks involving 32 ambassadors chosen to try to reach consensus, and there is looming embarrassment for the United Nations in having another failure on the heels of this week's report by the commission investigating the Iraqi oil-for-food program. The report, by a commission led by Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, called for the kind of fundamental changes that the document puts forward. Once imagined as a visionary statement of the most far-reaching changes since the United Nations was created in San Francisco 60 years ago, the document instead is exposing the debilitating internal conflicts that often doom the organization to inaction. "Trying to reach the ambitions we had for it back in January as San Francisco II has rapidly become unrealistic," Mark Malloch Brown, Secretary General Kofi Annan's chief of staff, said in an interview Friday. "Now people are crimping it out of shape; they're emptying it of a lot of content," he said. "If this is just brinkmanship, we can still pull it out, but if not, my deepest fear is that we'll end up with a summit of empty words and broken promises." That would be a great setback for Mr. Annan, who first proposed the changes, and whose future is increasingly being tied to whatever success he can have with pushing them forward. Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who has repeatedly called for Mr. Annan's resignation because of the oil-for-food scandal, came to the United Nations on Friday to reiterate his position. "The secretary general is in no position to let that reform happen," he said. "If the guy leading the charge is stained with a record of incompetence, of mismanagement, of fraud, it's going to make it very hard for him to do the very heavy lifting required." Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, rejected the notion, however, saying that Mr. Annan "is the first to recognize the need for the fiscal and administrative reforms at the institution that Congress has called for. Therefore, calls for him to step down are misguided and do him an injustice." Stalling progress is a basic disagreement between nations that want to see more power vested in the office of the secretary general and the 15-member Security Council and others, from the developing world, who want to retain power in the 191-member General Assembly. Abdallah Baali, Algeria's ambassador, said, "On management reform, you have one side basically saying that the secretary general should be empowered and should have all flexibility as a kind of C.E.O. and the other side saying that it is not ready to give up the prerogative of the General Assembly and would like to keep a close eye on the work of the secretary general." Also in dispute are measures to define terrorism as action against civilians that can never have any political justification, to enable the United Nations to take action in countries that do not protect their citizens from genocide. A clash over development was defused Tuesday when the United States withdrew an earlier demand to eliminate all mention of the so-called millennium development goals and compromised on language covering the Kyoto Protocols on climate change and the goal of devoting 0.7 percent of gross national product to development aid. The original document went through refinements in the spring and summer and appeared headed to general acceptance. In late August, though, the new United States ambassador, John R. Bolton, made public more than 400 amendments and deletions and insisted that the matter be taken away from lower ranking representatives and given to ambassadors to work out. Other nations saw that as an opportunity to bring their wishes to the table, and the ensuing talks have sometimes sharpened the divisions. A senior United Nations official, speaking anonymously because of the need to maintain neutrality among member states, identified the principal spoilers as Cuba, Egypt, India, Jamaica, Pakistan and the United States. "There is progress on a lot of small stuff, but no deals on the big stuff," he said. "Clearly everyone is waiting, and the game is for very high stakes. The spoilers are taking hostage the rest of the world, because Africa, Europe, large swatches of Asia, Latin America all want this deal, but the unholy alliance are holding out for their pet projects."

www.dailytimes.com.pk 11 Sept 2005 India and Pakistan to block UN legislation on genocide By Iftikhar Gilani NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan have joined hands at the United Nations to block measures designed to prevent future genocides. An agreement to prevent mass killings and genocide could be finalised at the United Nations World Summit next week. India, Pakistan, Russia and Brazil have come together demanding major cuts to the agreement. The NGOs running the campaign for such an agreement say these cuts will render the legislation completely ineffective. Oxfam International and the Aegis Trust, which had brought survivors of genocides here, urged the governments of India and Pakistan to protect civilians facing genocide or other mass killings. “If endorsed in its current form, the commitment on protection would establish a new international standard that could prevent future Rwandas,” said Aditi Kapoor, Oxfam South Asia regional media coordinator. Under the agreement states would share “responsibility to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner” to protect civilians facing grave atrocities like genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes when the governments concerned would be unwilling or unable to do so. India and Pakistan say it will amount to interference in the government activities and want this clause scrapped. “I was 13 years old when German troops came to my village of Felsogod, Hungary, and took my father. I never saw him again. Then they came for me and my family rounded us up and sent us to Auschwitz. My mother was gassed to death as soon as we arrived. I survived Auschwitz, slave labour, selection at the hands of Doctor Josef Mengele and a death march to Belsen before I was 15 years old. In my mind I can still see the mountains of corpses at Auschwitz,” said Holocaust survivor Susan Pollack who was here in New Delhi to launch the campaign against genocide. Aditi Kapoor asked the governments of Pakistan and India to help make genocide a thing of the past. Grace Makagabiro, a Rwandan who survived the horrors of the 100-day genocide, which left around one million people dead, was also in Delhi to urge the Indian government support the legislation. “I survived the Rwandan genocide, but my husband and most of my family were killed,” said Mukagabiro. “When the troops came to my village they beheaded my husband. My name was on a list of those to be killed the next day. At midnight I escaped, carrying my three small children and two others whose parents had also died. I was pregnant and my youngest child was 11 months old. We walked 18 kilometres to a small town called Nyanza, where two sisters agreed to hide us in their home and we survived. Almost a million others did not,” she told media persons.

NYT 13 Sept 2005 Envoys Reach Compromise on Scaled-Back U.N. Reform Plans By WARREN HOGE UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 12 - Faced with the imminent arrival of more than 170 presidents and prime ministers, negotiators agreed Monday to resolve differences blocking acceptance of the centerpiece document for this week's summit meeting on combating poverty and reforming the United Nations. The breakthrough, ending three weeks of tense day and night talks, occurred late Monday when ambassadors adopted compromise language across a range of issues. The changes undercut the ambitions and scope of the 45-page document, but brought an end to an impasse that had threatened the United Nations with fresh embarrassment just a week after findings of mismanagement and corruption in the oil-for-food program were reported by Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who headed an investigation into the program. The final version was expected to emerge Tuesday, the eve of the three-day gathering of world leaders. "What we can say now is that we will have a document that will reflect what is politically possible right now among 191 members," said Gunter Pleuger, the German ambassador. "It may not be the great reform idea that Kofi Annan put into the world two years ago and might not meet with the excitement of all member states and of the press, but it will be an important step in the direction of a basic reform of the U.N.," he said. Jean-Marc de la Sablière, the French ambassador, said, "The text is not an ideal text, but there is enough substance in it for us to have a good summit." The United States delegation also tried to put a good face on the outcome, though it expressed disappointment in not obtaining pledges for thorough management reform. Noting that the proposals fell far short of "the kind of cultural revolution that we need in United Nations management and governance," John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said: "Reform is not a one-night stand. Reform is forever. That's why we're going to continue to work on it." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters and editors at The New York Times, said, "If there's a concern right now with the U.N., it is that we really do need a strong reform agenda on the key issues - management reform, secretariat reform." [Click here to read a transcript.] The draft document addresses seven main issues: a new human rights council to replace the discredited human rights commission; steps to promote development and reduce poverty; a new peace-building commission; a management overhaul; nuclear nonproliferation; terrorism and a measure to allow international intervention when countries fail to protect their populations from genocide. In many cases, the solution was to substitute specific goals with broad statements of principle, leaving the details to the upcoming yearlong General Assembly session. Progress had stalled over management reform because of resistance by some countries to proposals by the United States, Europe and other big donor countries to vest more power and executive flexibility in the secretary general's office. The nations of the developing world say they are reluctant to cede power from the General Assembly. Max Lawson, a policy adviser for the aid organization Oxfam International, said groups like his were let down by watered-down language on development assistance. "We are really depressed," he said. "We are left clawing our way back to commitments made three years ago. When we start defining success as simply standing still, that's a terrible situation to be in."

www.theepochtimes.com Oxfam Calls for Greater ‘Responsibility to Protect’ Start of United Nations World Summit marks historic opportunity for global cooperation on human rights issues Shelly Zhang Epoch Times New York Staff Sep 14, 2005 NEW YORK - On the eve of the 60th annual United Nations General Assembly, the human rights organization Oxfam International called on member states to support a “Responsibility to Protect” agreement to prevent future genocides and mass killings. In a joint press conference with the International Crisis Group and the Aegis Trust, a U.K. organization working for the prevention of genocide, Oxfam urged the international community to endorse the historic measure. The general assembly meeting, dubbed the “World Summit,” brings a record 150 head of state together for 3 days at the United Nations headquarters here. Part of the World Summit’s outcome document, the draft version of the “Responsibility to Protect” agreement states that each nation “has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.” It also includes provision that if a nation fails in its responsibility, the international community will be “prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner.” “For too long civilians have been massacred while world leaders refused to live up to their moral and legal obligations to prevent genocide, despite the Genocide Convention of 1948,” said Juan Mendez, U.N. Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide during the press conference. According to Oxfam spokesperson Brendan Cox, many nations have been hiding behind the “fig leaf” of arguing about the definition of genocide instead of taking action to stop it. The main differences between the “Responsibility to Protect” agreement and the 1948 Genocide Convention are its broadening to protect civilians from mass killings of any kind, and its firm acknowledgement of international responsibility to stop such killings. While Cox recognizes that the agreement won’t solve anything overnight, he believes that it sets a new precedent by increasing moral pressure on the international community, and as a result it will lead to long-term action. While the majority of governments support the measure, Oxfam continues to encourage more nation states to fall into step, following the organization’s belief that there can be no compromise on an issue of such importance. In addition to the press conference, Oxfam set up a mock cemetery on the north side of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza containing 120 white Styrofoam tombstones, each with “Never Again?” inscribed in bold red letters, referring to their hope that the United Nations will take the first steps to stop the mass murder of civilians. “We want this agreement to make ‘Never Again’ a reality,” said Cox. “It’s still a question mark so far, but hopefully by tomorrow or the day after, it will be ‘Never Again,’ full stop."

Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa 13 Sept 2005 www.mg.co.za Diary of the UN World Summit: Part one Grace Mukagabiro | New York, United States 13 September 2005 09:54 Grace Mukagabiro This week, the largest meeting of world leaders in history will take place in New York at the United Nations. Governments are to look at the agreements they made five years ago, in 2000, as part of the Millennium Declaration and agree key measures on ending poverty, stopping genocides, terrorism, peace-building and human rights. The decisions made by world leaders at the UN World Summit this week in New York affect all of us and are a crucial chance for UN reform. As a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, I arrived on Monday ahead of the summit and am very excited to be here. I am here to do my best as part of Oxfam's team for the summit, to make sure that governments agree that they have a responsibility to protect civilians facing large-scale atrocities -- such as genocide and ethnic cleansing -- when the government of the people concerned is failing to do so. This could prevent the terrible atrocities that happened in my country from every happening again. The meeting is a crucial chance for countries to commit truly to ending the terrible poverty, injustice and suffering that kill millions of people every year. We are now less than two days away from the summit, during which crucial final negotiations on the summit outcome document are taking place. Unless leaders commit to poverty reduction and their responsibility to protect civilians, the summit will fail. Usually the details of the agreement are worked out far in advance of an international meeting, but two days before the summit there is still no agreement. Today, Tuesday, we are all waiting for the latest draft of the negotiations to arrive to see if governments have moved any closer to reaching an agreement. We are nervous that they will be back-tracking on previous international agreements. It seems that diplomats who want a good outcome for the summit are now fighting just to maintain those earlier agreements. We might not move any closer toward seeing the outcomes that we all know must be achieved. Officials worked late into the night and over the weekend to reach an agreement, but it never came. We were told on Monday that there was a real opportunity that governments may agree to protect civilians from genocide, but the situation changes so quickly that we are not sure if that will still happen. We were all hoping to hear from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at a press conference earlier on Tuesday what he thought of the negotiations, but it was cancelled. I will be meeting with colleagues and officials to continue to press for changes to ensure that genocide never happens again. On Wednesday, I am taking part in a press conference to share my experiences and tell people that what happened in my country must never happen again. I have seen in my work for Oxfam in Rwanda that it is possible even for communities that have been torn apart by genocide to resolve their differences and live together in peace. I just hope that the UN ambassadors can find a way to bridge their differences and make commitments that will help millions of people around the world. Hopefully, we will see more progress and results on Wednesday. Grace Mukagabiro, from Rwanda, works for Oxfam and is reporting from the UN World Summit in New York

 Africa

Algeria

KATU 2 16 aug 2005 www.katu.com News - Portland, Oregon www.katu.com Gresham machete attack has racial overtones August 16, 2005 - GRESHAM, Ore - Gresham police took four people into custody late Sunday night on charges of intimidation, menacing and attempted assault following an alleged attack involving a machete outside a convenience store. Police officials say the suspects fled in an SUV just as police were arriving, but officers quickly apprehended four people. Gresham Police officer Grant McCormick said that "this case involved racial issues due to the victims being African-Americans and some of the suspects claiming to be white supremacists." One of the suspects had a swastika tattooed under her left eye, and racist graffiti was scrawled on nearby buildings. Witnesses say the suspects used racial taunts, pulled out a machete and tried to start a fight while in front of a 7-11 store at 1825 NE Division Street in Gresham, officer McCormick said. Police identified the suspects as Christian Lee Coats, Dennis Lloyd Mothersbaugh, and Ariane Elizabeth Celis. The suspects did not claim affiliation with any specific white power groups. The four suspects were being held in the Multnomah County Jail as the investigation continues. One suspect, Dennis Lloyd Mothersbaugh, is also being held for a parole violation related to prior drug charges. He has also been arrested for stabbing a black man in 2003. Police called that incident a hate crime. Local residents expressed worry and dismay that racial violence might be taking place near their homes.

AP 16 Aug 2005 Hate crime growing in Russia AP in Moscow Tuesday August 16, 2005 The Guardian Racism and xenophobia are growing at an alarming rate in Russia, civil rights groups said yesterday, fuelled by economic hardship and the government's failure to come up with a plan for reducing ethnic tensions. An EU-funded study by the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights said 10 people had been killed and another 200 victimised as a result of hate crime in the first half of 2005. The number of fatal attacks was nearly three times higher than last year. A nationwide opinion poll, meanwhile, found that 58% of respondents either fully or partially supported the concept "Russia for Russians". A similar poll last year found 53% held that view. Growing extremist sentiments are rooted in Russia's economic problems and the Soviet collapse, which sent thousands of migrants from poorer former republics to Russia seeking jobs. Experts also accused political parties of openly using racially tinged messages to appeal to voters sceptical of foreigners.

english.pravda.ru 16 Aug 2005 Russian storm troopers: myth or reality? 08/16/2005 12:54 Referring to 50 thousand skinheads, it is just a phantom Moscow Bureau for Human Rights made a report, which said that "there are about 15 thousand adult fighters and up to 50 thousand teenage skinheads under arms of Russian nationalistic organizations" and "these groups are already responsible for several terrorist acts and riots." Sixty-five thousand fighters is a whole army. Hitler had about ten times less storm troopers in 1933 not to mention a handful of Russian Bolsheviks in 1917. If such an army existed for real in Russia it would have occupied Moscow long time ago and solved the national question. It is obvious that such an organization that forms armed groups and organizes operations would not be left unnoticed. In fact there is no such army or regiment or battalion of skinheads in Russia. This conclusion can be drawn from the report itself. To advance a slogan is one thing, but to support it with facts is absolutely different. It is not clear what was meant by the terrorist acts in the report. There was no incident mentioned in the report, which can be regarded as such. There are some examples: several buildings where Gypsies lived were burnt in the Novosibirsk region, a so-called "Che Guevara squad" smashed several cars, which presumably belonged to drug dealers in Yaroslavl, Cossacks sacked local Armenians' houses near Novorossiysk. Three Polish people were beaten in Moscow. There is more: "nationalists in the Komi Republic threatened with massacre to several scientists and human rights activists, whom they accused of espionage for the US." Those are certainly crimes. However, it is a lame argument to prove the existence of 65-thousand-strong army. Human rights activists themselves almost admit that they made up this figure. In fact, it is hardly possible to count the number of armed nationalists. Suppose, that 15 thousand were deduced by simple calculation of members of seven nationalistic parties and movements - Russian National Unity, Brown Season and others. However, it was nationalists themselves, who counted their members. It is obvious that they did so in order to show off. It is unclear why the human rights advocates believe them though. Referring to 50 thousand skinheads, it is just a phantom. The report clearly states: "there is no unified skinheads organization in Russia, they are scattered in small groups." It continues with "their number is estimated at 10 thousand to 50 thousand people." The second figure is meant to impress, of course. It is stated in the beginning of the report, but afterwards it is admitted that the figure cannot be proved. A gap of 40 thousand is too much. It is impossible to count all the people who belong to these bands and gangs (not the troops). How can you differentiate between mere street thugs and devoted skinheads? Moscow Bureau for Human Rights statements that 10 people were killed by skinheads and more than 200 were beaten in the first half of 2005 can be proved neither by facts nor by testimonies. Seems like the responsibility for any crime can be shifted on skinheads. It would be wrong to deny that that there is enough scum in Russia who loathe Caucasians, Gypsies, Chinese, Jews and who are ready to beat and even kill foreigners. But there is such a scum in every society. They must be fought. And they are fought in fact! The human rights activists said, "During the first half of 2005 there were 6 trials. As a result 21 extremists were sentenced to 4-19 years in prison for committing grave crimes on the ground of national hatred." Those are the real figures. Igor Dmitriev Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/politics/2005/1/5/398/20572_SKINHEAD.html (Translated by: Dmitry Sudakov)

MoscowTimes.com August 24, 2005. Issue 3237. Page 3. Deputy Calls for NGO to Be Closed By Carl Schreck Staff Writer The Prosecutor General's Office said Tuesday that it was considering an appeal by an ultranationalist State Duma deputy to shut down the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights, which the deputy accused of using foreign funding to wage a political war against the state. The NGO's director, Alexander Brod, said that Liberal Democratic Party Deputy Nikolai Kuryanovich was trying to settle a personal score and to curry favor with the Kremlin. The Moscow Bureau of Human Rights presented a report titled "Racism, Xenophobia, Ethnic Discrimination and Anti-Semitism in Russia" on Aug. 15 that identified Kuryanovich as one of several politicians who consistently used xenophobic language. The report also named Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. On Aug. 16, Kuryanovich sent a letter to Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, Kremlin chief of staff Dmitry Medvedev and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov that accused the NGO of "living off of money from U.S. intelligence" to portray Russia as a "Nazi society." The opening paragraph of the letter quoted President Vladimir Putin's statement at a meeting with human rights activists in the Kremlin last month that Russia would not tolerate foreign funding for the political activities of NGOs. Kuryanovich called on Ustinov, Medvedev and Ivanov to "take all necessary measures to liquidate" Brod's organization, which he described as "extremist" and "seditious." A Prosecutor General's Office spokesman said Kuryanovich's complaint was being examined and that a decision on what action, if any, to take would be made by Sept. 16. Brod said Kuryanovich was upset about the report. "Kuryanovich is riding on that ideological wave and doing everything he can to make the powers that be like him," he said by telephone. Brod said his organization was completely transparent and that it received funding from the European Commission, the Dutch Embassy and the St. Petersburg Mayor's Office, as well as from private Russian donors. Kuryanovich insisted on Tuesday that his rhetoric did not promote xenophobia. "We are supporting Russian patriotism, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with racism and xenophobia," he said by telephone. Kuryanovich made headlines earlier this year by co-authoring legislation that would exile Russians and strip them of their citizenship if they married foreigners. "Our women, the most beautiful and best in the world, are going abroad. By doing this, they are wasting the most valuable thing we have -- the gene pool of our nation," Kuryanovich said on Ekho Moskvy radio in June.

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 5, Number 33 (August 26, 2005) Volume 5, Number 33 Friday, August 26, 2005 BIGOTRY MONITOR ) Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, DC - Aug 26, 2005 6. HUMAN RIGHTS BUREAU MAY BE SHUT DOWN. On August 23, the Prosecutor General's Office disclosed that it was considering an appeal by ultranationalist State Duma member Nikolai Kuryanovich to shut down the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights, which the deputy accused of using foreign funding to wage a political war against the state, “The Moscow Times” reported. The NGO's director, Alexander Brod, said that Liberal Democratic Party Deputy Kuryanovich was trying to settle a personal score and to curry favor with the Kremlin. In its report, titled “Racism, Xenophobia, Ethnic Discrimination, and Antisemitism in Russia,” the Bureau identified Kuryanovich as one of several politicians who consistently used xenophobic language. The report also named Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. On August 16, Kuryanovich sent a letter to Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, Kremlin chief of staff Dmitry Medvedev, and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov that accused the NGO of “living off of money from U.S. intelligence” to portray Russia as a “Nazi society.” * * * *

Burundi

www.crisisgroup.org 25 Aug 2005 Elections in Burundi: A Radical Shake-up of the Political LandscapeCrisis Group 25 Aug 2005 Burundi's general elections are a welcome step toward a lasting peace, but the political sea change also brings significant risks. Some of the dangers now facing Burundi appeared during the election period itself. The polls have left key political figures with uncertain futures, and for the first time since independence, the Hutu-Tutsi interethnic conflict has been eclipsed by a violent power struggle between two traditionally Hutu parties, the CNDD-FDD, the poll's victors, and FRODEBU, the former governing party, which was a major loser. Most Tutsis in power now belong to traditionally Hutu parties, but it is crucial that the CNDD-FDD preserve the spirit of the Arusha Agreement by also involving the main Tutsi parties in the administration. All parties must also focus on resolving the ongoing war with PALIPEHUTU-FNL. Crisis Group reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.crisisgroup.org

UN News Centre 30 Aug 2005 New Burundian Government faces challenge of high voter expectation, says UN official Nureldin Satti briefs correspondents 30 August 2005 – The newly elected Burundian Government, led by former rebels, faces the challenges of voter expectations for an improved economy, the reduction of high unemployment and an end to Tutsi-Hutu ethnic strife and persistent impunity for massacres and military coups, a senior United Nations official said today. "The first 100 days of this Government are going to be the real test of the credibility of the new Government in Burundi,” the Principal Deputy Special Representative for Burundi, Nureldin Satti, told journalists in New York, referring to newly elected President Pierre Nkurunziza and his National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD), a Hutu-dominated group. The people’s expectations included expanding their livelihoods, conducting a successful economic recovery, improving the standards of living and reducing poverty and unemployment, he said after speaking to the Security Council in closed session. Many of the wars in recent Burundian history were caused by the growth of unemployment, making unemployed youth vulnerable to calls for armed rebellion, Mr. Satti said, and the social and political strife that had engulfed the country for the past four decades entailed consequences. Meanwhile, many Burundians have been accused of crimes against humanity, genocide and other serious crimes, but no one had gone to jail, he said. He added that the Arusha peace agreement had stipulated that ending immunity and establishing a truth and reconciliation process should go hand-in-hand. Linked to those issues were law and order, democracy, respect for human rights, and finalizing the integration of former rebels into the army and the police force. Mr. Nkurunziza, Burundi’s first democratically-elected President since the start of the civil war in 1993, was sworn in on 26 August and had chosen two vice-presidents yesterday, one from a Tutsi party and the other from CNDD-FDD, while consultations were taking place to form his cabinet today or tomorrow, Mr. Satti said. Having played a major role in helping along Burundi’s peace process, the international community should remain committed to aiding the country, he said. For that reason, consultations were under way between the Government of Burundi, the UN and other international institutions on putting in place a follow-up mechanism to assist the country in tackling its main challenges. In addition, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would chair a mini-summit on Burundi on 13 September to finalize a mechanism to suceed the Arusha Agreement Implemntation Monitoring Committee, Mr. Satti said.

IRIN 31 Aug 2005 President Names Cabinet, New Faces Abound UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS August 31, 2005 Posted to the web August 31, 2005 Bujumbura Burundi's new president, Pierre Nkurunziza, appointed a new and more streamlined cabinet on Tuesday with all but one of the 20 ministers coming into government for the first time. Eleven of the ministers are Hutus and nine Tutsis, in accordance with the country's constitution which calls for a 60-40 ratio of Hutus to Tutsis. Nkurunziza, 40, is a Hutu who had headed the former Hutu-dominated rebel group; the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD). Tutsis will head some of the most important ministries, including the Ministry for National Defence and Former Combatants, which will go to former army chief of staff Maj-Gen Germain Niyoyankana. Seven women are to hold ministerial posts, in accordance with a requirement in the new constitution that at least 30 percent of personnel in all levels of government be women. Some of the most senior posts, such as the minister for justice; the minister for commerce and industry; the minister for external relations and international cooperation will be women - the first in Burundi's history. Nkurunziza's ruling CNDD-FDD party holds 12 ministries, among them the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security. Three ministries will be headed by the members of the party of former President Domitien Ndayizeye, the Front pour la democratie au Burundi (FRODEBU). These are the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock; the Ministry of Public Health; and the Ministry of Land Management, Environment and Tourism. FRODEBU spokesman Frederic Bamvuginyumvira said his party was not consulted before the announcement of the appointments. One member from each of four other parties were appointed ministers including one from the former ruling Tutsi-dominated Parti de l'unite pour le progrès national (UPRONA). She is Marie Goreth Nizigama, who will be minister of development planning and national reconstruction However, UPRONA Chairman Jean Baptiste Manwangari denied that Nizigama was a member of UPRONA. "I am in the best place to know the party members and to my knowledge no minister from UPRONA is in the cabinet," Manwangari said. Nkurunziza has eliminated six ministerial posts of the former cabinet. The only minister to be retained, Francoise Ngendahayo, will be minister of national solidarity, human rights and gender which combines three previous ministries. The new ministers are due to be sworn in on Thursday. Following is the ministerial list: Minister of Interior and Public Security - Salvator Ntacobamaze (CNDD-FDD) - male Minister of National Defence and Former Combatants - Maj-Gen Germain Niyoyankana (independent) - male Minister of Development Planning and National Reconstruction - Marie Goreth Nizigama (UPRONA: But party chairman denies membership) - female Minister of Public Works and Equipment - Potame Nizigire (CNDD-FDD)- male Minister of Energy and Mines - Herman Tuyaga (CNDD-FDD) - male Minister of External Relations and International Cooperation - Antoinette Batumubwira (CNDD-FDD) - female Minister of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications - Jean Bigirimana (CNDD-FDD) - male Minister of Finance - Dieudonne Ngowenubusa (CNDD-FDD) - male Minister of Good Governance and General Inspection of the State and Local Administration - Joseph Ntakirutimana (CNDD-FDD) - male Minister of Information, Communication, Relations with Parliament and Government Spokesman - Karenga Ramadhani (CNDD-FDD) - male Minister of Public Health - Dr Barnabe Bonimpa (FRODEBU) - male Minister of Commerce and Industry - Denise Sinankwa (CNDD-FDD) - female Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals - Clotilde Niragira (CNDD-FDD) - female Minister of Agriculture and Livestock - Elie Buzoya (FRODEBU) - male Minister of National Solidarity, Human Rights and Gender - Francoise Ngendahayo (Inkinzo) - female Minister of Public Service and Social Security - Juvenal Ngowenubusa *(MRC) - male Minister of Youth and Sports - Jean-Jacques Nyenimigabo (CNDD-FDD) - male Minister of Land Management, Environment and Tourism - Odette Kayitesi (FRODEBU) - female Minister at the Presidency in charge of AIDS - Dr Triphonie Nkurunziza **(PARENA) - female Minister of National Education and Culture - Saidi Kibeya (CNDD-FDD) - male * MRC - Mouvement pour la réhabilitation du citoyen ** Parti pour le redressement national (PARENA) [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]

Xinhua 5 Sept 2005 South Africa to withdraw peacekeepers from Burundi www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-05 20:50:29 JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- South African Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said on Monday his country would withdraw its 369-strong peacekeeping and protection unit troops from Burundi. "We try to get out of there now. We think we have done what we could," Minister Lekota said in Pretoria, the administrative capital in the country's northeast. He said that the first priority was securing the withdrawal of the peacekeeping unit, which has been guarding the safety of Burundian leaders during peace talks leading to the country's political transition. The minister said he would start negotiations this week to achieve that. As for the 1,266 South African peacekeeping troops deployed in Burundi under a United Nations mandate, Lekota disagreed with the UN assessment that they should stay a while longer. "The UN continues to have a sense that they would like to allowfor a period of time to see there is stabilization and that the stability is sustained for a period of time. We think actually that the atmosphere is so positive now that we can withdraw," he said. "Unfortunately, the mission of the UN can only be decided upon by the UN. The protection unit was our deployment and that we can take a decision on," he added. Lekota said the South African deployment was instrumental in achieving a democratic dispensation for Burundi. The South African National Defense Force, which was the first to deploy troops in that country, has gained valuable peacekeeping experience, he added. Former rebel chief Pierre Nkurunziza, a Hutu, was sworn in as Burundi's first post-transition president last month following national elections which began in June. Burundi's conflict, which has claimed an estimated 300,000 lives, erupted 12 years ago when the country's first democratically elected president, a member of the Hutu majority, was assassinated by the Tutsi-dominated military.

United Nations Operation in Burundi http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/onub/ Current strength (31 July 2005)5,601 total uniformed personnel, including 5,316 troops, 182 military observers and 103 civilian police, supported by 340 international civilian personnel and 378 local civilian staff and 153 United Nations Volunteers Fatalities 12 military personnel 12 Total Approved budget: 1 July 2005 - 30 June 2006: $307.69 million (gross)

Chad

BBC 7 Sep 2005 CAR refugees flee mystery attacks By Stephanie Hancock BBC News, southern Chad Hungry people clutching ration cards crowd into a food distribution centre in Amboko refugee camp in southern Chad. A sack of sorghum must last this man's family 25 days These refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) are anxious to get their sack of sorghum which will have to last them for the next 25 days, until ration-time comes around again. Until a few weeks ago, the population at Amboko was just under 14,000, but since violence broke out in CAR in early June, more than 8,000 new refugees have arrived. In total, there are now more than 40,000 refugees in this part of Chad. Terrorising villagers It is unclear who is behind the violence that is making people flee their homes. They took all our belongings - our food, our clothes, our shoes CAR refugee But all the refugees tell a very similar story: unidentified groups of armed men are storming villages in the far north of CAR, shooting randomly, looting homes and terrorising villagers. "It was 9 August. I was at home alone," says a refugee, who didn't want to give his name, describing the arrival of the armed men. "I don't know where they'd come from. They broke down the door and began asking me questions I couldn't understand. They took all our belongings - our food, our clothes, our shoes. "Then they forced me to carry the belongings they'd stolen for some way, before they finally let me go. I fled immediately with my wife and children." 'Surprise' With these new arrivals, Amboko camp has almost reached its maximum capacity of 27,000, and the United Nations refugee agency is struggling to cope with demand. This woman holding her ration card if one of some 40,000 who have fled violence in CAR UN guidelines say each refugee should have 20 litres of water a day, but currently they can only provide 12 litres per person. And while it's also difficult providing enough food for these refugees, there are more stuck in villages near the border, awaiting help. In remote Mballa village a woman from CAR explains how she had been working in the fields when her children ran to tell her of shooting in the village. "I just had time to grab some water and we ran straight from the fields. "I was so surprised; I didn't have time to go home to collect anything," she says. Limbo UN staff have visited Mballa to register these 800 new arrivals, and each refugee wears a white bracelet which means they are on a list to be transferred to Amboko camp. Sometimes women take pity on us when my children cry, and give us peanuts Monica, CAR refugee But until a delivery of tents arrives, these refugees cannot be moved and are living in limbo. "Since we arrived here we haven't eaten a single proper meal," says Monica, who has slept under a tree for the last month with her four children. "Sometimes women take pity on us when my children cry, and give us peanuts. I give these to my children though, I'm just been drinking hot water." Sharing To make matters worse, local villagers are also suffering because this year's crop has failed. "We're right on the border, so we're obliged to take these refugees in. But we've been hit by famine ourselves, so it's very hard. There's nothing to eat," says Beosso Simon, the district chief. Some refugees are relying on the charity of local villagers "Everything we eat, we've been sharing with the refugees. But we must support them - tomorrow it could be us in this situation." The UN says it is doing all it can but its resources are limited and its staff overwhelmed. "Should there be new refugees, we don't have resources to respond," George Menze, UN head of operations in the region, says. "We have an urgent need for shelter, cooking equipment, health, water and everything necessary for an adequate life." As news comes in that the delivery of tents is finally about to arrive, there are also reports that more than 2,000 new refugees have just crossed the border. With no-one able to predict when the refugees will stop coming, the pressure here in southern Chad is mounting daily.

Côte d'Ivoire

UN News Centre 25 Aug 2005 western militias reportedly ready to disarm 25 August 2005 – The United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) reported today that four militia groups in the western part of the war-divided country have agreed to join in a ceremony marking their intention to disarm and demobilize. The mission reported the actual weapons transfer will begin as soon as the National Programme for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration works out the details and secures the necessary funds. This past July, UNOCI joined Ivorian authorities in the west for patrols in and around the major cocoa marketing town of Duékoué, where brutal attacks by unidentified armed elements have left scores dead and wounded. The Security Council strongly deplored the massacres and urged authorities to conduct the inquiry so the perpetrators could quickly be brought to justice and condemned. Fighting erupted in Côte d'Ivoire in 2002 when rebels seeking to oust President Laurent Gbagbo seized the north, dividing the world's largest cocoa producer in two. Last year the Security Council set up UNOCI, which, along with French Licorne forces, maintains a ceasefire between Government forces, ruling the south of the country, and the major rebel group, Forces Nouvelles, controlling the north.

Congo, DR

www.csmonitor.com 25 Aug 2005 Digging for 'tainted gold' in Congo By Abraham McLaughlin | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor MONGBWALU, CONGO - "I dig every day to help my family," says 12-year-old gold miner Eric Tanguda, as he scrambles through the ankle-deep mud in a yawning open-pit mine in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. This region, in Africa's heartland, has some of the world's biggest gold deposits. But for years competition to reap its riches - with the labor of men and boys like Eric - has helped fuel armed conflict, including a 1998-2003 war that resulted in up to four million deaths. But now there are growing efforts to halt the region's resource-related troubles. A June report by the international group Human Rights Watch shed light on the role of local militias, which apparently have ties to neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. They were using proceeds from gold mining to buy weapons to further their battle over control of the most productive mining areas, the report said. In the process, they killed thousands of civilians and extorted many poor local miners. The militias also got financial and logistical support, the report charged, from a South-Africa-based multinational mining firm, AngloGold Ashanti. The company admits that a militia extorted about $9,000 from its staff near the mining town of Mongbwalu. But it has reviewed its operations and vowed to prevent any more extortion, even as it continues its gold exploration with an eye toward opening a full-scale mine here. "At the moment, we think it's possible for AngloGold Ashanti to do business in Mongbwalu in a way that's consistent with our values and principles," says spokesman Steven Lenahan. "If it were brought to our attention that there was a breakdown, we would immediately take [our staff] out." A major force preventing a breakdown - and allowing miners like Eric to make money for themselves - is the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo, which now has a battalion in Mongbwalu. The militias' overt presence has receded. Security is improving, which could also make it possible for locals to vote in national elections, expected next year. Also, the Human Rights Watch report prompted a Swiss firm, Metalor Technologies, to forswear buying "tainted gold" from Congo, which is typically smuggled out via Uganda. Yet the digging continues. The war destroyed most other employment options, so many locals go to "the holes." Many diggers are ex-militia members, including young men and boys, who use picks and shovels now. At one mine near Mongbwalu, roughly 40 percent of the workers are under 18. About 25 percent are 12 to 14 years old. Each miner gets paid in mine muck, usually three buckets for a full day's work, and all the gold that may or may not be in it. One 12-year-old, who didn't give his name, says he works only for himself. "Both my parents were killed in the war," he says, walking along with a bucket of mud balanced on his head. Global Witness Exposing and breaking the links between natural resource exploitation, human rights abuses, conflict and corruption. www.globalwitness.org/.

IRIN 8 Sept 2005 Army to start expelling foreign fighters on 30 September [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] KINSHASA, 8 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - The army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will on 30 September begin using force to expell all foreign rebel fighters in the country, a spokesman for President Joseph Kabila said on Thursday. "To do this we need logistics support from [the UN Mission in the DRC] MONUC and the international community," Kasongo Kudura, the spokesman, said. The deadline for the rebels to leave voluntarily or face expulsion was set during a meeting on Tuesday with President Joseph Kabila, representatives of the country's Independent Electoral Commission, and those of the International Committee in Support of the Transition; known as CIAT. The committee includes ambassadors from Angola, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, France, Russia, South Africa, the United States, Zambia, the African Union, the European Union, and MONUC. "President Kabila had already decided to disarm the foreign armed groups especially the Interhamwe," Kudura said, referring to one of the Rwandan Hutu armed groups that fled to eastern Congo following the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, "but we did not have the operational capacity." MONUC spokeswomen Rachel Eklou said on Thursday UN troops would support the army operation. "Already we have joint operations, for example at Kahuzi Biega Park [in the east of DRC's South Kivu Province]," she said. Eklou also said the head of MONUC, William Swing, would soon be going to the towns of Beni and Butembo in the northeast. "He may get to speak with NALU," Eklou said, referring to the rebel National Army for the Liberation of Uganda which has its base in the area.

www.gorkhapatra.org.np 14 Sept 2005 Kathmandu Yalathow Ekadashi Thanks To MONUC, The Worst Is Over In Congo By Sunil KC The Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as Zaire) is a classic example of how political instability, regressive economic and political policies and conflict of interests of different communities, both internal and external, can degenerate and disintegrate a society. It is also the result of corruption, mismanagement and internal forces seeking outside support for ethnic and partisan interests in terms of controlling natural and mineral resources. Moreover, the conflict is beyond ethnic. The ethnic communities are being used as fronts to loot, pillage, plunder and rob the natural resources by outsiders. The humanitarian crisis in Congo has been called the worst since WWII with about 3.8 million deaths by the end of 2004, although majority of them by disease, famine and hunger, since the civil war started in the late 90s. The eastern side of Congo, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi were the sites where three-fourths of all killings had taken place and 90 per cent of Congo’s internally displaced people come from that part. The small district of Ituri, lying northeast of Congo bordering Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda was the scene of the most savage fighting, arson, torture and killings that were provoked, fuelled and propelled from outside. The toll of the ethnic violence in the district was 50,000 killed and more than 200,000 displaced in six years, earning it the notoriety as the bloodiest corner of Congo. Taking advantage of the anarchy and lawlessness, even smaller neighbouring countries such as Uganda and Burundi, especially the former, took advantage by sending troops and forming and arming militias of different ethnic groups. For example, Uganda had occupied Ituri, the area rich in mineral resources such as gold, diamond and other precious metals and potentially a major source of oil, from 1998 to May 2003. It withdrew its troops only under heavy international pressure. Similarly, Rwanda, in the pretext of the Hutu militias who had fled the country and taken refuge in Congo in the aftermath of the ethnic massacre of 1994, control the eastern Congo for four years. In the meantime, in 1999/2000, according to a report presented at the UN Security Council, Rwanda had taken away Coltan, a metal which is a key component in everything from mobile phones, computer chips, stereos and VCRs and costs about US$ 200 a kilo, at the rate of 100 tons a month. Both during and after their occupations, the countries armed and provided military training to different ethnic groups, propagating the local conflict. During the height of conflict, Uganda alone was backing and supporting at least six militia groups of both the ethnic communities. During those days, there were more than a dozen major militia groups, who were splitting and joining and changing allegiances for financial gains. The conflict between these two ethnic communities had risen to such intensity that all other communities had to choose one or the other. The situation was like if you are not with us, you are the enemy, and dealing with the enemies was in the most brutal way. A report of the Human Rights Watch details how combatants tortured and summarily executed opponents and raped women of rival ethnic groups. They also engaged in such inhumane acts as the mutilation of bodies and even cannibalism. The reports compiled by the Human Rights watch group tell the gruesome tale of how torture, rape and murder were meted out. To cite an example, the following is an excerpt of a woman describing how her 20-year-old daughter was killed: …four heavily armed combatants came to our house at 9 p.m. Everyone in the neighborhood had fled. I wanted to hide my children, but I didn’t have time. They took my husband and tied him to a pole in the house. My four-month-old baby started crying and I started breastfeeding him and then they left me alone. They went after my daughter, and I knew they would rape her. But she resisted and said she would rather die than have relations with them. They cut off her left breast and put it in her hand. They said, “Are you still resisting us?” She said she would rather die than be with them. They cut off her genital labia and showed them to her. She said, “Please kill me.” They took a knife and put it to her neck and then made a long vertical incision down her chest and split her body open. She died with her breast in her hand. The photographs found by MONUC also show the extraordinary cruelty like people, including children and babies, roasted alive when their houses were torched keeping them inside; militias beheading people and carrying the heads on poles on the streets and them mutilating bodies and biting off the chopped limps of the victims to terrorize people. In Ndrele, about 20 kilometres from Mahagi, when the Nepalese troops chased the militias from a camp, they found several mass graves within it. The camp is now used by the locals and they are developing it as a coffee processing unit. Keeping peace in an area, which had seen the worst kinds of murder, arson, torture and other atrocities is a difficult task. The difficulty is compounded because of total breakdown of the law and order situation, complete absence of the state machinery, and armed militias belonging to different tribes bent on finishing the other off. When the UN mission came to Ituri as part of the interim multinational contingent about 21 months ago, the situation was grim with extreme violence, including systematic murder, sexual abuses, forced labour and forced recruitment of minor. Mohammad Abdul Wahab, chief at the Press Information Centre of MONUC headquarters in Bunia, said that until September 2003, there was bloodbath with inter- and sometimes intra-ethnic violence and no one would dare even two kilometres after dusk. “There were corpses all around. It was a challenge to provide security to the people in such a situation.” Sebastien Lapierre, a member of the UN Observation in Aru, said that it was very important to understand the complexity of peacekeeping in Congo. “Nothing like this had been undertaken (by the UN) because of the size and the involvement of so many players.” But the situation had changed to a great extent by the middle of 2004. Monsignor Marcel Utembi, Bishop at the Church in Mahagi, has all praise for MONUC and the Nepali troops, who are stationed there. “We are really satisfied with the Nepali troops’ presence here,” he said. Before the Nepali troops came all the 25,000 people of Mahagi had fled and there were only priests, the church and three militias groups fighting each other. The peace enforcement campaign had gained momentum after the UN authorized MONUC to use ‘all necessary means’ to fulfill its mandate. With the use of force, the militias were gradually pushed to the back. Still biggest challenge before MONUC was disarming the militias. After the DCR (Disarmament and Community Reintegration) programme was launched in September 2004, more than 15,500 militias were disarmed. They were either reintegrated to civilian life or were conscripted in the national army. Still there are remnants of some militias groups, who have refused to give up arms. But they are in complete minority and their attacks and atrocities are few and far between. The contribution of the RNA battalion has been significant with about half of those were disarmed were in the areas where RNA has been stationed. Now, the next step of bringing peace to the troubled land has started. The campaign for voters’ registration has begun in Ituri and the primary job of the MONUC soldiers was to supply registration materials to the registration centers. Ultra-modern computerized registration system has been adopted to prepare the registration cards and to avoid duplicate and forgery. As of July, about 23,000 people have registered in Bunia and Mahagi alone. If all goes well, the people of Congo will cast votes for the first time in 45 years for provincial and national election in March and May next year. Chief administrator of the Aru territory Faustin Drakana says because of what MONUC did, the worst is over Congo.

Liberia see Nigeria

Crisis Group 7 Sept 2005 INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT Liberia's Elections: Necessary but Not Sufficient Liberia's presidential and legislative elections in October represent welcome progress but it would court disaster to consider them the end of the country's transformation. The process can still easily fail if Liberians refuse to implement an intrusive economic governance mechanism or international partners pull out early. The UN, U.S., EU and World Bank need to stay the course. Working with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union, they must rebuild shattered institutions and infrastructure and ensure Liberia's security through maintenance of the UN peacekeeping mission and the gradual training of new Liberian security forces. Long-term issues also need to be addressed, including citizenship, reintegration of ex-combatants, decentralisation of government, transitional justice, judicial reform and possibly constitutional reform. Elections are just one step on a long road to recovery. ------------------------------------- Crisis Group reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.crisisgroup.org

Rwanda See Norway

www.thetablet.co.uk 1 Sept 2005 Mass murder without a cause Darfur: the ambiguous genocide Gérard Prunier Hurst & Co, £15.95 Tablet bookshop price £14.40. One of the little-noticed effects of the Asian tsunami of last December was that it ended the Darfur famine. A humanitarian crisis that had dominated print and broadcast media for most of that year suddenly evaporated from the face of the earth, at least the part of the earth that is on camera. We are talking media reality here, of course, not reality per se. But as Gérard Prunier observes towards the end of this excellent and authoritative analysis of the continuing Darfur catastrophe, we live in a time when things are not seen as they are, but “in their capacity to create brand images, to warrant a ‘big story’, to mobilise TV time high in rhetoric”. The media can only handle one emotion-laden story at a time, Prunier points out, and the tsunami was “much more politically correct” than the suffering of the people of Darfur. In other words, the tsunami tragedy was heavy on emotion and light on actual politics. This year’s African horror story is, of course, unfolding in Niger: news of the famine there broke on television screens with awkward timing immediately after the Live8 concerts. Yet the very mention of the country that was last month suddenly “hit by hunger” illustrates how much we need books like Prunier’s. Niger is the latest (though already fading) African disaster story. It is a humanitarian crisis that demands a response and charities and donors have duly responded. But explanations of the causes of the crisis are thin on the ground, and not always convincing. The media’s – and therefore the public’s – understanding of the Darfur catastrophe was marginally less rudimentary than its apparent understanding of the Niger crisis. Ethnic cleansing was going on in Darfur, certainly. People were being driven out of their villages, and they ended up in camps where they needed feeding. The people doing the “cleansing” saw themselves in some way as Arab, while the people who were “cleansed” were African rather than Arab. So there was a racial factor. The objective of the “cleansing” was difficult to discern as there was no evidence that the aggressors – who conducted their campaign on horseback, in the manner of conflicts in the American Wild West – ever settled the land from which they drove people. They laid waste villages, raped and murdered indiscriminately and that was that. There were strong suggestions that these militias were in the pay of the government in Khartoum, but why the Sudanese Government would want them to behave like this was again something of a mystery. They just did. It was Africa, after all. The question of the role of the government in the killings, however, led directly to a whole set of further questions about whether what was happening could be categorised as genocide. Prunier, a research professor at the University of Paris who has also written books on the Rwandan genocide and on the Congolese conflict that followed it, addresses this issue head on, with refreshing clarity and with due recognition of its complexities. Part of the reason why the violence in Darfur reached genocidal proportions, he says, was the climate within the Sudanese Government, which was one of “complete contradiction and infighting” among its various cliques, as it responded to an insurgency whose causes reached back – as Prunier demonstrates in forensic detail – to the time of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium and before. The resulting impression of confusion was partly a deliberate ploy by the Sudanese Government: by issuing completely contradictory statements they could never be held to be in the wrong. “This is a factor”, writes Prunier, “which the international community finds very difficult to understand in its dealings with Khartoum.” For Europeans, he says, the extreme evil of genocide or ethnic cleansing is “a very serious business”. The fact that it could be carried out in haphazard conditions was “unthinkable” for the international community. “The grotesque is not part of its conceptual equipment,” he points out, “and only late in the day did foreigners begin to realise that the horror was far from coherent.” This book is worth reading for that insight alone. The genocidal model for Europeans is of course the Nazi Holocaust, but this model does not transfer neatly to Africa. There was no Sudanese equivalent of the Wannsee Conference of 1942, in which the top brass of the Nazi regime sat down at a table and decided on the modalities of the Final Solution to the “Jewish question”. The question of intent in the Sudanese context is not so clearcut. Prunier, to his credit, deals brusquely with the semantics of death. The December 1948 International Convention on the prevention and Punishment of Crimes of Genocide defines genocide as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. By this definition, he writes, events in Darfur should certainly qualify as genocide. But Prunier employs another definition, the one that he previously used in his book on Rwanda, according to which genocide would require “a coordinated attempt to destroy a racially, religiously or politically predefined group in its entirety”. By this definition, he argues, the slaughter and deliberate starvation of the inhabitants of Darfur does not constitute genocide. It is a measure of the jaded cynicism of our times, Prunier says, that killing 250,000 in a genocide is perceived to be more serious and a greater tragedy than killing 250,000 people in non-genocidal massacres. The media must take much of the blame: Prunier draws attention to this example of lazy journalists copying each other and reproducing obsolete data without verification –the routine repetition of a figure of 70,000 dead in Darfur in 2004. While he admits that it is difficult to be completely certain, he makes a convincing case for a figure of 280,000 to 310,000 dead by the beginning of 2005. Others too come in for incisive criticism. The United Nations Special Envoy for Sudan, Tom Vraalsen, made statements of “almost surreal” optimism and credulousness, calling President Omar el-Beshir’s promise of “unimpeded access” for humanitarian aid a “breakthrough”. (Finally Vraalsen “sobers up”, pointing out that there is a “systematic” denial of access.) Manipulating aid was all part of the programme of destruction in Darfur. The Americans were preoccupied with extracting what information they could from Osama bin Laden’s former hosts in Khartoum, and then so obsessed with making sure the peace deal with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the South was finally signed, that the Khartoum Government could all too easily pull the strings to its own advantage. But the most poisonous role by far was that played by the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, whose furtherance of his Arabist fantasies by interference in neighbouring countries brought untold suffering to millions. The first chapters of this book offer a detailed and dispassionate account of the history of Darfur. Prunier’s horrific facts speak for themselves and the tone is restrained. The later chapters are a searing indictment of those who must be held responsible for suffering and death on an unimaginable scale. And that means most of us. As long as tragedies such as these can unfold without anyone stopping them, then humanity itself is on trial. James Roberts

Xinhua 3 Sept 2005 Ex-minister denies part in Rwandan genocide www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-03 14:28:11 DAR ES SALAAM, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The former Rwandan minister of family and women affairs has denied the allegation that she harbored an ideology of discrimination between Hutus and Tutsis during a trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the only woman indicted for the Rwandan genocide and crimes against humanity in 1994, told the United Nations court that she had never exercised discrimination as her parents had come from these two ethnic groups. The prosecution alleged that Nyiramasuhuko, appointed minister in 1992, had encouraged local pro-Hutu militia to kill Tutsis and rape Tutsi women and girls in Butare in southern Rwanda. Nyiramasuhuko pleaded innocent to the charges, according to reports reaching here Saturday from the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha where the UN court is based. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, with its mission to expire in 2008, has so far convicted 22 people and acquitted three, with 25 suspects currently under trial and 16 currently in custody awaiting trial. Fourteen suspects are still on the run from the UN court. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda killed some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

BBC 6 Sept 2005 Genocide arrest of Rwanda general About 800,000 people died in Rwanda's 100-day genocide in 1994 An army general has been arrested at the order of a Rwandan local 'gacaca' court collecting evidence about the 1994 genocide, a court official says. Maj-Gen Laurent Munyakazi denies accusations by witnesses that he was involved in killing people taking refuge at churches in the capital. Domitille Mukantaganzwa confirmed his detention for war crimes and said he would appear before a court martial. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the genocide. Community-based gacaca courts began in March the process of identifying the victims and perpetrators of massacres. Correspondents say it is the first time an officer of such seniority has been detained on the orders of a gacaca court. 'Witness intimidation' "He was put in detention by the gacaca... which will transfer his case to the court-martial, that is the requirement of the law," gacaca court official Ms Mukantaganzwa told AFP news agency. 'Gacaca' courts are being held in villages across Rwanda She confirmed reports that the general had also been arrested on suspicion of intimidating witnesses and attempting to tamper with evidence at the gacaca hearing in May at which he appeared. His alleged war crimes would put him in the "first category" of genocide perpetrators, she said, meaning he is thought to have planned some of the killings. Maj-Gen Munyakazi served as a lieutenant colonel in the Hutu-led army during the genocide. He has made no comment since his detention. First category suspects are tried by Rwanda's formal justice system. Some 12,000 gacaca courts were set up because the country's conventional courts were overwhelmed with genocide suspects and unable to try all those responsible.

BBC 8 Sept 2005 Genocide arrest of Belgian priest Many Rwandan Catholics believe the Church let them down A Belgian Catholic priest has been arrested at the airport in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide. Guy Theunis worked as a missionary in Rwanda, a former Belgian colony, from 1970 until 1994. Belgium's Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht has expressed his "astonishment". Several Rwandan priests and nuns have been convicted of participating in the killing of some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Transit Rwandan prosecutor Emmanuel Rukangira told the BBC that Father Theunis had incited Rwandans to commit genocide by republishing articles from extremist publication Kangura in his Dialogue magazine. Former Kangura editor Hassan Ngeze has been sentenced to life in prison by the United Nations court set up to try those responsible for the genocide. Thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered after seeking sanctuary in churches Mr Rukangira said Father Theunis would be tried by the Gacaca village courts set up to deal with genocide suspects. He was in transit through Rwanda from Democratic Republic of Congo when he was arrested. Mr de Gucht said he had asked for an explanation from Rwanda. Some members of the Catholic hierarchy in Rwanda had close ties to extremist politicians and aided Hutu militias in the run-up to the 1994 killings. Thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered after seeking sanctuary in churches. In 2001, a Brussels court convicted two Rwandan Catholic nuns for their roles in the genocide. In the 11 years since the genocide, some Rwandans have converted to Islam, saying the churches let them down. [Fr. Guy Theunis was born in 1945 in Brussels,. Belgium. He became a member of the Société des. Missionnaires d’Afrique (White Fathers) in 1968]

Hirondelle News Agency 9 Sept 2005 RWANDAN GENOCIDE COMES TO HAUNT A SILENT CATHOLIC CHURCH Arusha, September 8th, 2005 (FH) - The arrest this week in Rwanda of a Belgian catholic priest has jarred the church at a time when it is trying to come to terms with some of its own accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Father Guy Theunis, a member of the White Fathers congregation, was arrested Tuesday evening at Kigali airport as he prepared to board a plane to Brussels. The priest had for many years edited a church-backed magazine, Dialogue, and had left Rwanda at the height of the 1994 genocide of Tutsis. According to a statement from the Belgian embassy in Kigali, Rwandan authorities accuse the priest of “crimes against humanity”. He becomes the latest in a long list of priests who have been prosecuted in Rwanda, Belgium and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). As each of the accused enters the courts of law, it appears that it is the Catholic Church in Rwanda, which is being judged by the court of public opinion. Father Athanase Seromba, the former priest in charge of the Nyange parish in Kibuye (western Rwanda), has since September last year been on trial at the ICTR for allegedly taking part in the genocide. Seromba, 41, is accused of ordering bulldozers to demolish his church in Nyange in which Tutsi were hiding during the genocide. Following that attack, an estimated 2,000 Tutsi were buried under the debris or killed by militias around the church grounds. He has denied all the charges. Seromba fled to Italy after Tutsi-led rebels overthrew the government. Despite many calls for his arrest from human rights organizations and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the priest, (then with a new identity: Don Anastasio Sumba Bula) continued to conduct mass at a parish in Florence. As the pressure increased, Seromba turned himself in to the ICTR. In Arusha Tanzania, where the ICTR is based, the Hirondelle news agency has learnt that he has received a visit while in detention, from the apostolic nuncio (the Pope’s representatives) of Rwanda and Tanzania. Other religious leaders have been paraded in court before him; among them pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a leading member of the seventh Day Adventist church in Rwanda who was found guilty by the ICTR in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The 81-year-old pastor was jointly tried and convicted with his son. While stating that there had not been any church policy to support the genocide, the Seventh Day Adventist’s top leadership apologized for the crimes committed by its pastors. The Anglican Church in Rwanda has also apologized for acts of some of its clergy. Also accused at the same court is Father Hormisdas Nsengimana. He was a priest in Nyanza parish (Butare Province) in the South of Rwanda. After the genocide in which he is accused of playing a part in the killing of Tutsi refugees who had taken refuge in the church, he also fled to Italy. He then moved to Cameroon where, like Seromba, he continued to work in a parish despite protests from local and international human rights organizations. Father Nsengimana was finally arrested two years ago in Yaoundé, Cameroon and joins Father Emmanuel Rukundo, a former military chaplain, in custody. In 2001, two Rwandan Benedictine nuns were convicted of genocide by a Belgian court. Sisters Maria Mukabutera and Gertrude Mukangango were found guilty of supplying the gasoline that Hutu attackers used to burn down a garage sheltering 500 Tutsi refugees during the genocide. They were sentenced to 12- and 15-year prison terms, respectively. In a formal statement after their conviction, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls noted that: "The Holy See cannot but express a certain surprise at seeing the grave responsibility of so many people and groups involved in this tremendous genocide in the heart of Africa heaped on so few people." Catholic Church authorities in Rwanda did not make any formal response at the time. In an interview with Hirondelle News Agency, the Archbishop of Kigali, Thaddée Ntihinyurwa, the most senior official of the Catholic Church in Rwanda said, “the Catholic Church is not found in Rwanda alone. Those nuns have a mother organization that can speak on their behalf”. Nor has the Catholic Church in Rwanda anything to say about Seromba, Rukundo and Nsengimana. “We have no responsibility for whatever they may or may not have done. Even though they are priests, they answer any charges as individuals”, responded Archbishop Ntihinyurwa, when asked why the church had remained silent on the cases. Archbishop Ntihinyurwa went on to say, “even if they were to be convicted, we may never say anything”. Some Rwandans and human rights organizations believe that the Catholic Church should at least say something about its senior leaders that were openly close to or involved in MRND, the ruling party at time of the genocide. “Powerful members of the church were active partners in a government that planned and executed a genocide”, says Rwandan historian and commissioner in the Rwandan National Human Rights Commission Tom Ndahiro. “The church says its clergy that participated in the genocide did so as individuals, but we haven’t even heard it condemn them in their individual capacities.” In their report on the genocide ‘Leave none to tell the story’, New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’homme (FIDH) observed that in the run up to the genocide, the Rwandan leadership had “benefited enormously from the support of the Catholic church”. “The archbishop of Kigali, Mgr Vincent Nsengiyumva was an ardent supporter of the president, known for wearing Habyarimana’s portrait pin on his cassock while saying mass”, says the report. Nsengiyumva was also notably a member of the ruling party’s highest decision making organ, the Comité Central for many years. Rwanda, one of the most Christianized countries in Africa is overwhelmingly Catholic. Over 60% of its population identify themselves as Catholic. “By not issuing a prompt, firm condemnation of the killing campaign, church authorities left the way for officials, politicians and propagandists to assert that the slaughter actually met with God’s favour”, says ‘Leave none to tell the story’. Witnesses in various genocide trials have testified about clergy at the height of the genocide announcing before congregations that God had “sacrificed Tutsis the same way he occasionally did Jews”. The human rights report further states, “Four days after the start of the genocide, catholic priests promised their ‘support to the new government’. They asked all Rwandans to ‘respond favourably to calls’ from the new authorities and to help them realize the goals they had set including the return of peace and security”. Almost all members of that government are now on trial at the ICTR, or in custody awaiting trial. The prime minister of that government is locked away in a Malian jail serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to genocide at the ICTR. Veteran Rwandan journalist Jean Paul Tuyisenge, editor of Kinyamateka, a Catholic weekly that is the oldest newspaper in Rwanda agrees that the entire leadership of the church was in the hands of the MRND. “There was no way they were going to denounce themselves. They never denounced anything. The closest they came to denouncing the killings were calls for dialogue between the government and the rebels”, says Tuyisenge. But Tuyisenge supports the Catholic Church’s refusal to apologise for the actions and omissions of its leadership before and during the genocide. “Those were individual actions of leaders and not the Christians”, he explains. “The church could only ask for forgiveness if, as an institution, it had said; ‘go out and kill’”. The Organisation for African Unity (now the African Union) report on the genocide noted that: “since the end of the genocide, several parties have apologized for failing to stop the massacres, including President Clinton, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Prime Minister of Belgium and the Anglican Church”, but pointed out that “no apology had yet come from the French Government or the Catholic Church”. Two years after the genocide, the Pope Jean Paul II said clergy should accept responsibility as individuals. He denied any role or responsibility for the church. Critics of the Vatican argue that while the church has denied any institutional blame, it has paid legal fees for its clergy suspected of genocide, aided fugitives and discouraged its members from cooperating with genocide tribunals. “The church denounces prosecutions or investigations of its clergy as politically motivated, yet it chooses to remain silent when they are convicted”, says human rights activist Ndahiro. “We haven’t heard calls encouraging its followers to assist the courts”. Among some Catholics in Rwanda there is a spiritual crisis. For genocide survivors in particular, they face the dilemma of how to maintain a relationship with God, while wanting to circumvent the clergy or quit the church completely. “My trust in God hasn’t changed”, says Charles Kagenza, one of a handful of people known to have survived the Nyange church massacres. “But I don’t think I will ever look at my priests in the same way I did before the genocide”, he adds. Kagenza lost an eye and has a big scar on his head from the attack on Nyange church during the genocide. He still attends mass in the improvised structure next to the debris of Nyange church where members of his family and friends are buried. There has been no official study on the current numbers of members of the Catholic Church in Rwanda compared to pre-genocide figures. In a rare interview held in 2003, Bishop Augustin Misago of Gikongoro diocese in the south of Rwanda, admitted that there had been a decline in numbers of Catholic Church goers in his diocese of Gikongoro after the genocide. “But the numbers are going up again”, he said. Bishop Misago was tried for genocide in Rwanda and acquitted in 2000. Joseline Mukamuganga is not one of those Catholics that will not be returning to her Church. She has moved to a Pentecostal church. “The Catholic Church did nothing to help us or even to remain neutral. There’s no way I could stay in such a church”, says Mukamuganga.

Hirondelle News Agency 9 Sept 2005 FEMALE GENOCIDE SUSPECT NYIRAMASUHUKO TAKES AIM AT EXPERT WITNESS (WEEKEND FEATURE) Arusha September 9th, 2005 (FH) - Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the former Rwandan minister of gender who is on trial for genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), has decided to focus her attacks on French academician Professor Andre Guichaoua. Guichaoua has appeared several times as an expert witness for the prosecution. According to Nyiramasuhuko’s lawyer, Nicole Bergevin, the French expert has described her client as an intellectually weak woman who only managed to go up the political ladder courtesy of her friendship to the president’s family. This was rejected by the accused. “That man is only speculating and he does not know me. The first time he saw me was here in court and it was also my first time to see him”, said Nyiramasuhuko. A graduate of the school of social studies of Karubanda (Butare, Southern Rwanda), she was appointed minister in 1992 after a late entry into university where she had obtained a law degree a year earlier. She also dismissed allegations that she had entered late into university in order to fulfil the requirements to be appointed minister. “I made the best choice possible that would allow me to continue my social work”, Nyiramasuhuko assured the court. She continued that she was appointed “on merit because I had the necessary education and experience”. Before being appointed minister, Nyiramasuhuko had first worked as a social worker for about 20 years and had attended training abroad including in Israel. She continued that she had been appointed with “no prior planning” – contrary to the claims by Guichaoua. The prosecution maintains that Nyiramasuhuko was one of the most influential members within the ruling Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement (MRND). According to the French expert, she also played a parallel role within the MRND in her hometown of Butare (south). “It is an outrage that a professor like Guichaoua could state falsehoods”, protested the accused who now sat in the witness box. “I was a simple civil servant who was in charge of receiving people’s complaints”, she said. At one moment, the accused told the chamber that she was hurt by what the French expert said about her. ”He wrote many books without mentioning my name and yet when the prosecutor brought him here, he started focusing on me”, stated Nyiramasuhuko. The former minister chose to testify in her mother tongue Kinyarwanda, though sometimes she would mix in some French. She is the first woman to be indicted by the ICTR where she is accused of the massacres of Tutsis in Butare as well as inciting rape between April and July 1994. She is being tried together with her son Shalom Arsene Ntahobali who is alleged to have been a militia leader, as well as two former préfets (governors) and two former bourgmestres (mayors). All have pleaded not guilty. The trial which opened in June 2001, is presided over by Judge William Hussein Sekule from Tanzania.

South Africa

www.dispatch.co.za 7 Sept 2005 Our Opinion September 7 - never again Gqozo calls in SADF, screamed the Daily Dispatch headline on August 4, 1992. Exactly a month later, another headline reverberated: Remove Gqozo from power, ANC urges FW. The same report went on to say that the ANC had called for the replacement of Ciskei's Brigadier Gqozo with an interim administration "acceptable to all parties". With the subsequent declaration of "unrest areas" in the then Border Corridor, however, the battle lines were drawn. Today, 13 years later, one can be forgiven for looking back on those turbulent years with disbelief at what started out as a peaceful march - only to end in tragedy when Ciskei soldiers opened fire, killing 29 civilians and one soldier, and wounding hundreds of others. South Africans and the world reacted with horror to an event that was televised throughout the world. The Commonwealth Secretariat at the time called the action "wholly unjustified". The tragedy of what many called "South Africa's own Tiananmen Square" unfolded before the world's eyes - the tragedy of a nation at war with itself. For weeks after the massacre families searched for the missing, others buried their dead and Ciskei went up in flames as people vented their anger against anyone associated with Ciskei authority. That an almost unknown dictator in a tiny "independent" South African homeland such as Oupa Gqozo was being propped up by apartheid South Africa's army was untenable in the view of most observers. After all, the ANC had been unbanned for more than a year and talks between the two sides were well under way. That the order to open fire was given by SADF generals to Ciskei soldiers was even more shocking. The Bhisho Massacre stands alongside other events in this country's history that brought the country to the brink - the Sharpevilles, the Sebokengs, the Boipotongs and the assassination of Chris Hani - moments when the country teetered on the edge. At the time future and current leaders rose to the challenge and steered South Africa away from the abyss towards the democracy we enjoy today. Today's stories on page six bear witness to ordinary people like Nomutile Nontshinga who lost her son Headman on that fateful day and who commemorates the anniversary of his death by dusting off his academic gown and looking at photographs. Headman had recently graduated with a science degree. He was 29 with his whole life before him. No-one should have died that day. We owe it to the memory of those whose lives were cruelly cut short 13 years ago today to ensure that South Africans never have to die again in defence of an evil system imposed by the few on the majority.

BBC 9 Sept 2005 Retrial for SA's 'Doctor Death' An appeal court refused to overturn his acquittal The Constitutional Court in South Africa has ruled that a high profile apartheid-era criminal case against the man dubbed "Dr Death" can be reopened. The court said ex-biological weapons head Wouter Basson, should face trial on charges of crimes against humanity. Mr Basson has been accused of being involved in a number of plots to poison anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, using deadly bacteria. However, he was acquitted of murder and other charges by a judge in 2002. The South African Court of Appeal refused to overturn the acquittal. But the country's highest court said the original judge had erred when ruling that the original charges fell outside South African law because they involved crimes allegedly committed outside the country. In an unanimous decision, the high court said the country was obliged under international law to prosecute charges amounting to crimes against humanity. Many of the original charges stemmed from horrific testimonies during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. Prosecutors estimate a retrial could begin within three months.

Sudan

AFP 2 Sep 2005 AU envoy secures Sudan commitment to solve Darfur crisisKHARTOUM, Sept 2 (AFP) - The African Union mediator in the Darfur conflict secured Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir's commitment to support upcoming peace talks as he wrapped a three-day official visit Friday. Beshir "unequivocally reiterated the commitment by the government of Sudan to supporting the inter-Sudanese peace talks scheduled for September 15 in Abuja," Nigeria, a spokesman for AU envoy Salim Ahmed Salim told AFP. The spokesman quoted Salim as saying he was "encouraged by this commitment." Beshir was quoted by local media as calling on the AU to "assume firm stances with regards to commitment by all parties to the ceasefire agreement and to locating the positions of feuding parties for creating a conducive atmosphere for the forthcoming negotiations." The AU's 6,000-strong peacekeeping force is monitoring an April 2004 ceasefire between Khartoum-backed militias and Darfur rebels, which has repeatedly been breached. The Sudanese president also requested "accelerated negotiations in Abuja, particularly as the country is presently implementing the (north-south) Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which stands an evidence of the government's sincerity towards reaching peace and stability to the people of Darfur." Salim met during his visit with leaders from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) -- the main Darfur rebel group -- and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). He said he also obtained their support for the peace talks. According to some estimates, up to 300,000 have died and more than two million been displaced in the 30-month-old Darfur conflict. Although the humanitarian situation has improved and the violence receded in recent months, incidents continue to plague peace initiatives and efforts to repatriate the displaced. The UN mission in Sudan on Thursday quoted a government report alleging that five troops had been killed in an ambush earlier this week in Darfur.

American Prospect Online 2 Sept 2005 www.prospect.org Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide by Gerard PrunierCornell University Press (September 1, 2005), 240 pages http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801444500/104-4021169-3971956?v=glance Review: The Unintended Genocide: The first essential history of Darfur just hit the shelves. By Kyle Mantyla American Prospect Online www.prospect.org Web Exclusive: 09.02.05 Gérard Prunier, a professor at the University of Paris, has performed an unusual feat: He has managed to produce the earliest book-length analyses of two African genocides. Just one year after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Prunier published The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide; now, 10 years later, while Africa is experiencing yet another genocide, Prunier is again the first out of the gate with his analysis, this time Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. The fact that his book is being published while the genocide is still going on speaks volumes about the international community’s ability and willingness to effectively deal with the death and destruction occurring in western Sudan. While an estimated 400,000 people have died, the world has focused its efforts elsewhere, primarily on reaching, and then implementing, the Naivasha peace agreement in hopes of ending the two-decade-long war between Khartoum’s National Islamic Front (NIF) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. While certainly a worthwhile goal, the distraction it has created and the leverage it granted to the genocidal regime in Khartoum has generated a situation where, according to the international aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières, millions of lives are now “dangling by the thin thread that is humanitarian aid.” As Prunier explains, this is no accident. When Darfur first began to receive media coverage in 2004, politicians around the world sought to portray it as a “humanitarian crisis” as opposed to the “political crisis” it truly is. Whereas a political crisis would require a political response, a humanitarian crisis requires merely a humanitarian response. Prunier notes that the United Nations and the rest of the world quickly passed the responsibility for the situation off to humanitarian organizations on the ground, expecting them “not to complement political action but themselves to be substitutes for what the politicians should have done.” They have, in essence, succeeded in creating an “impression that something is being done without that ‘something’ being political.” Prunier examines the history of the Darfur region, going back to the 17th century, as he describes just how the current situation came to pass. While that history is dense and complex, Prunier manages to effectively convey the point that the current “Arab vs. African” context in which the genocide is taking place is not a distinction that appeared until shortly after Sudan became independent in the late 1950s. Darfur had always been neglected and marginalized by the rulers in Khartoum, but with independence came elections, and with elections came “electoral tactics” that exaggerated the “racial-cultural” nature of the region. Amid years of drought and famine, those seeking electoral support told the “African” agricultural tribes that the region’s woes were the fault of “the Arabs,” while those seeking the support of the more nomadic “Arab” tribes claimed that it was the “Africans” who were cutting them off from lands that were rightfully theirs and destroying their way of life. At the same time, Darfur was being used as a pawn and battleground in a three-way struggle between Chad, Libya, and the regime in Khartoum. Libyan dictator Muammar Quaddafi, who harbored dreams of an “Arab Union” in the region, had set off a border dispute with Chad, and soon began using Darfur as a launching pad for attacks. Weapons and soldiers flooded the region while various political and military alliances were made and broken. As Prunier writes, while “Darfur did not seem to matter enough to be taken seriously at the level of good governance … it certainly mattered enough to become an increasingly racialized battleground between Khartoum, Tripoli and N’djamena.” By the early 1990s, the regime in Khartoum had been overthrown by the NIF, while the Libyan-backed General Idriss Deby had likewise overthrown the government in Chad. When all was said and done, Darfur “had been left in a state of total chaos.” And so it remained for more than a decade. Following the attacks of September 11, writes Prunier, “Khartoum was quick to understand that for a born-again Christian president, a repented sinner would be more valuable than a routine ally” in the war on terrorism, and soon became an important intelligence asset to the CIA -- a relationship that continues to this day. Around the same time, President Bush began to take an interest in the north-south peace process, in part because it was an issue important to his religious political base. All the while, Khartoum continued to ignore the needs of the people of Darfur until 2003, when two rebel movements -- the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement -- launched a coordinated raid in which they managed to kill more than 30 Sudanese soldiers, destroy a handful of military planes and helicopters, and capture the commander of an air-force base. Khartoum responded by launching attacks, not against the rebels themselves but against their perceived supporters in Darfur. Russian-built Antonov aircraft were used to bomb villages, an utterly reckless tactic considering that the Antonovs are transport planes, not bombers. As such, the bombs couldn’t actually be aimed -- and, in many cases, weren’t actually bombs at all. Instead, they were mostly “old oil drums stuffed with a mixture of explosives and metallic debris” that were simply rolled out of the plane’s open rear ramp, “completely useless from a military point of view” but effective as “terror weapons aimed solely at civilians,” writes Prunier. As part of its “counterinsurgency” campaign, Khartoum also recruited, trained, paid, and coordinated with Arab militias known as the Janjaweed. Mostly criminals, former soldiers, and jihadists, the Janjaweed were given the task, once the bombs had stopped falling, of sweeping in on horseback and killing, looting, and raping, as well as burning the villages to the ground. The attacks continued for more than a year, but it was not until thousands had died, and hundreds of thousands of others had fled, that the world began to even take notice -- though it still did next to nothing. The UN Security Council passed several resolutions demanding that Khartoum stop its attacks and disarm the Janjaweed, which Khartoum routinely ignored. People debated whether what was taking place was “genocide,” as the United States finally declared the situation in September of 2004. Not that it made any difference. Prunier reports that he was informed by a high-ranking member of the Bush administration in October 2004 that then-Secretary of State Powell had essentially been ordered to use the term “genocide,” but to follow it with a declaration that it “did not obligate the United States to undertake any sort of drastic action” -- which is exactly what Powell did. The UN sent a commission of inquiry to Sudan in the latter part of 2004, and though it reported that it could find no genocidal “intent” on the part of those responsible for the death and destruction in Darfur, it did find overwhelming evidence of “indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur.” The names of those responsible for these crimes were then handed over to the International Criminal Court for prosecution -- and just happen to be many of the same people the world was counting on to carry out the Naivasha peace agreement and end 20 years of civil war. In 2004, the African Union (AU) agreed to provide some 300 troops to patrol Darfur, a region the size of France, though their mandate was limited to protecting their own cease-fire monitors. Since then, the AU has expanded the size of its mission to roughly 4,000, but its mandate remains more or less the same. The AU is ill-equipped and unprepared to bring peace to Darfur, but the rest of the world has been more than happy to let it take the lead. As Prunier explains, the mantra of “‘African solutions to African problems’” [has] become the politically correct way of saying ‘We do not really care.’” The AU has been set up to fail, given a “‘Mission Impossible’ type of situation” that it cannot handle in order