Summaries of some current news stories (October 2003):

Canada to Indict Mugabe? Senior members of Canada's three largest parliamentary parties called Wednesday on the Canadian government to indict Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, a case that could be the first real test of Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. A team of lawyers has used the act to craft a wide-ranging indictment that accuses Mr. Mugabe of committing genocide through the deprivation of food. Alliance MP Keith Martin, who has made several trips to Zimbabwe said "In order for it to work, the Minister of Justice has to simply say that this indictment, or one like it, will be used against Mr. Mugabe if he sets foot in Canada or if he's extradited to Canada . . . We'll see whether or not our foreign policy has some muscle or whether its just a lot of hot air."

New massacre in Democratic Republic of Congo killing 65, including 40 children in village of Katchele (Katshelli), 40 miles northeast of the regional capital, Bunia. United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has discovered 65 bodies, mostly children, apparently massacred Monday, October 6. Investigators found 23 bodies in a church, others in a mass grave and some in the bush surrounding the village. According to UN spokesman Fred Eckhard: "From the evidence gathered, a group of Lendu, believed to be from nearby villages, armed with rifles and machetes, attacked early Monday morning.

Israel: Israelis continues to debate the refusal of 29 pilots and former pilots to participate in targeted assassinations, while a Islamic Jihad suicide bomber strikes at the Haifa restaurant "Maxims" killing 19, after first shooting the security guard to enter the building. The dead include 3 generations of two families of Israeli Jews, and 4 Israeli Arabs.

Pakistan: Escalating ethnically targeted violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims claims dozens of lives, including one MP.

Turkey/Switzerland: Turkey canceled a scheduled visit by Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to protest the recent recognition by the Swiss canton Vaud of the Armenian genocide. Vaud became the second Swiss canton to recognize the Armenian deaths as genocide.

USA: The Bush administration sanctions 32 nations for their participation in the International Criminal Court: "In US diplomatic history, this constitutes the first sanction exclusively targeting democracies," said Heather Hamilton of the World Federalist Association. Not covered by the sanctions are NATO allies, of which all but Turkey also support the ICC. Meanwhile the US has agreed to the deployment of 1,000 Serbian troops to Afghanistan. The deployment will be commanded by General Goran Radosavljevic, a.k.a. Guri. During the Kosovo war, Guri led a cluster of antiguerrilla teams called Operative Posse Groups (OPG), suspected of killing 41 ethnic Albanian civilians in the village of Cuska in western Kosovo in May 1999. No indictment has been issued against Radosavljevic. At the same time Kosovo has offered police as peacekeepers, and was politely refused

Other headlines on current violence : "Anti-government protest leaves up to eight dead in Haiti", "Indonesian Aceh crackdown [begun May 19, 2003] has sparked humanitarian crisis: human rights group". Violence continues in Poso, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

Other headlines on past violence: "Argentina Detains More Ex - Army Officers"; " Probe Ties Ex-President to '68 Massacre in Mexico", "Site and design of Famine-Genocide memorial in Ukraine's capital stir controversy among public" A Columbia University history professor Mark von Hagen, hired by The New York Times to make an independent assessment of the coverage of one of the articial famine in the Ukraine during the 1930's said yesterday that the Pulitzer Prize the reporter Walter Duranty received should be rescinded because of his "lack of balance" in covering Stalin's government.

Africa

Panafrican News Agency (PANA) Daily Newswire, October 5, 2003, 50 COUNTRIES SUPPORT ICC DESPITE US AID CUT THREAT Dakar, Senegal (PANA) - Despite US coercion including financial aid cut, more than 50 countries expressed firm support to the International criminal court (ICC) during the Security Council's recent public debate on "Justice and legitimate State", the NGO coalition for an ICC has revealed. These States called for a closer cooperation with the Court at national and international levels. They individually asked the Security Council to support the ICC's work and bring before it "situations involving the States which accepted its jurisdiction," the coalition said Saturday in a statement. The Coalition for an ICC is a network comprises over 2,000 civil society organisations working for the creation of a permanent, just and independent International criminal court. It said the supportive States also asked for concerted efforts toward the ratification and adherence to the Rome Statute establishing ICC. They called for the reinforcement of national jurisdictions to allow States to forward to the court those accused of crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes" as defined in the Statute. In contribution to the debate, DR Congo's ambassador to the UN, Atoki Ileka praised the ICC prosecutor office for recently saying that crimes committed in Congo's eastern Ituri region were currently under examination, for possible investigation. Ileka suggested the creation of an ad hoc criminal court to investigate crimes committed before the Rome Statute came into force on 1 July 2002. "This manifestation of support to the ICC coincides with the deadline set by the US warning countries to sign with it bilateral agreements not to hand over US citizens to the court," the NGO coalition noted. The US denied some 32 countries about $ 46 million in aid from its fiscal 2003 budget. The loss resulted from laws relating to the International military education training (IMET), Foreign military aid (FMF) and Weapon export control. For the fiscal 2004 budget, which began 1 October 2003, the US administration heightened its threat to cut military aid for States that resisted its pressure aimed to ensure immunity for US citizens from prosecution at the ICC. According to the American threat, defiant countries would lose the entire US 2004 military assistance, estimated at $ 89.28 million. If they uphold their defiance, nine African States stand to be affected by the measures. South Africa could lose $ 7.6 million, Benin $ 500,000, Kenya $ 7.1 million, Lesotho $ 125,000, Mali $ 250,000, Namibia $ 225,000, Niger $ 200,000, Central African Republic $ 150,000 and Tanzania $ 230,000. "In US diplomatic history, this constitutes the first sanction exclusively targeting democracies," said World Federalist Association programme manager Heather Hamilton. "The Bush administration's ideological opposition to the ICC undermines the essential priorities of US foreign policy by placing allies and friendly countries in a difficult situation," she pointed out in a statement.

Botswana

Survivial International 22 Oct 2003 Merafhe admits 'We put these people... where we want them to be' In an astonishing slip, Botswana's Foreign Minister last week admitted that his government had relocated the Bushmen to 'where we want them to be.' Questioned by students after a talk at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, Gen Mompati Merafhe at first denied that the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve had been forced off their land, but then admitted 'We put these people... where we want them to be.' The Minister faced hostile questioning by several students over his government's forced eviction of the Bushmen. In response, Gen Merafhe claimed his government's aspiration for the Bushmen was for them to 'enjoy the better things in life, like driving Cadillacs... Why must they continue to commune with the flora and fauna?' The shocked students have passed the General's comments to Survival. Stephen Corry, Director of Survival, said today, 'The Minister has finally admitted what everybody else has known for months – that the Bushmen have been evicted from their ancestral land against their will.'

Burundi

www.genocideprevention.org 30 Sept 2003 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thousands of Burundian Citizens Displaced without Food and Water: Displaced Women and Young Children Raped ARLINGTON, VA September 30, 2003 - A sharp escalation in fighting between two rebel groups has resulted in intentional murder and rape of hundreds and displacement of thousands of civilians in the east and northwest of Bujumbura. There have also been numerous reports that children under the age of 5 were victims of rape. Specifically civilian women and children who have not complied with rebel demands have been subject to rape. These assaults have been reported consistently since January 2003. The UN reports that at least 43,000 people have fled their homes due to the fighting between Agathon Rwasa's forces nationals de liberation (FNL) rebel faction and soldiers loyal to the counsiel national pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD), the largest rebel faction. The faction Forces pour la defense de la democratie, led by Pierre Nkurunziza, was also reported at Mpanda Commune in the province of Bubanza, 12 km northwest of Bujumbura, the capital. The FNL has resisted participating in the peace process in Burundi These civilians have been displaced without water or food and are desperately in need of humanitarian aid. Reports over the past year have blamed the various rebel movements and the state security forces for murders of Burundian civilians, with rebel movements held responsible for 247 murders and the national army for 117 in a period of five months. Contact Richard O'Brien info@improvetheworld.org

AFP 5 Oct 2003 10 dead in fighting in restless Burundi BUJUMBURA, Oct 5 (AFP) - Five civilians and five rebels were killed in weekend violence in the restless central African state of Burundi, as peace talks with rebels resumed in South Africa, government sources said Sunday. Members of the Hutu tribe serving with the rebel group known as Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) killed the civilians in an overnight attack Saturday on two small communities at Bweru, east of the capital Bujumbura, said provincial governor Isaac Bujaba "They killed five, kidnapped four others and looted nearly all the dwellings," he told AFP. FDD rebels also attacked the community of Ryarusera, but ran into government troops and lost five men, said local government official Sylvain Nzigamiye. Despite a ceasefire last December, the FDD, main rebel movement in Burundi, is continuing an armed campaign against a transitional government set up to restore peace in the country wracked by 10 years of civil war claiming 300,000 lives. Meanwhile new talks began Sunday between the government and the FDD in Pretoria, South Africa, on power-sharing, a condition for implementing the ceasefire.

ICG 7 Oct 2003 Burundi Refugees and Displaced Persons in Burundi – Defusing the Land Time-Bomb While everyone is hoping for a permanent suspension of hostilities in Burundi, too little consideration is being given to what will happen when peace is reached and over one million uprooted Burundians rush home. Burundi’s refugees and displaced persons have been waiting for the dividends of peace ever since the Arusha agreement was signed on 28 August 2000. The foreseeable disappointment of a large number of refugees who will be unable to recover their property upon return offers ideal political opportunities for those opposed to the peace process and risks destabilising any transition to peace right from the outset. - ICG reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.crisisweb.org

BBC 9 Oct. 2003 Burundi foes agree to end war President Ndayizeye, a Hutu, took office under an earlier deal Burundian president Domitien Ndayizeye and the leader of the main rebel group have signed a political and military agreement aimed at ending the country's 10-year civil war. The deal was signed in the early hours of the morning after negotiations mediated personally by South African President Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria. Rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza called for an immediate halt to hostilities, saying his FDD combatants would no longer fight against the people of Burundi. A ceasefire signed last December has failed to end the bitter war, pitting ethnic Hutu rebels against an army dominated by the Tutsi minority. Burundi negotiators are used to lying to each other Pasteur Habimana FNL rebels This agreement spells out the details of how the army would be restructured - a key rebel demand. However, the BBC's East Africa correspondent Ishbel Matheson says the civil war will continue to sputter on as the second smaller rebel group, the FNL, has so far refused to take part in peace negotiations. Climbdown Mr Ndayizeye, a Hutu, became president in April under the terms of an earlier power-sharing agreement, which is supposed to lead to elections next year. Under the agreement, the rebels will now take up 40% of officers' posts in the army. FDD GAINS 4 ministers 40% of army officers 15 MPs Second assembly vice-president Assembly deputy secretary general 2 ambassadors 35% of a new police force 35% of vacant secret service posts FDD fighters to be demobilised Politically they will be given four ministerial positions, and the vice-presidency of the country's national assembly. Our correspondent says the deal represents something of a climbdown for the rebels as it is certainly a lot less than they were demanding at peace talks in Tanzania only a few weeks ago. On the face of it, it is a breakthrough, but much will depend on whether the agreement is implemented on the ground, our correspondent says. But the FNL immediately dismissed the deal. "Burundi negotiators are used to lying to each other," FNL spokesman Pasteur Habimana told Reuters news agency in Burundi's capital, Bujumbura. "They signed the first agreement but this was never achieved," he said.

BBC 9 Oct. 2003 Burundi 'still unsafe for refugees' Many refugees have lost their land Burundi remains too dangerous for hundreds of thousands of refugees to return home despite the latest peace deal, a United Nations official says. "The southern provinces are not safe yet for the refugees to return," said Ivana Unluova, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency in neighbouring Tanzania, which hosts most of Burundi's refugees. The BBC's Prime Ndikumagenge in the capital, Bujumbura, says that people are reserving their judgement until this week's deal between President Domitien Ndayizeye and Pierre Nkurunziza's FDD rebels is put into practice. A ceasefire signed last December by the two sides failed to end the bitter civil war, pitting ethnic Hutu rebels against an army dominated by the Tutsi minority. A final ceasefire... carries the risk that a great many people who were uprooted will return to a country not yet prepared to receive them Francois Grignon International Crisis Group But the editor of the BBC's Great Lakes Service, Laurent Ndayuhurume, says the latest agreement might be different because it goes into such detail. A smaller rebel group, the FNL, has so far refused to take part in peace negotiations and dismissed the peace agreement as a sham. Mr Ndayizeye, a Hutu, became president in April under the terms of an earlier power-sharing agreement, which is supposed to lead to elections next year. 'Lack of planning' In a report released just before the deal was signed, the think-tank International Crisis Group warned that not enough thought was being given to what would happen if peace took hold and the refugees returned - to find that other people were living on their land. "Lack of planning for the eventual mass return of refugees and displaced persons, and the land questions it raises, risk destabilising any transition to peace right from the outset," said Francois Grignon of ICG. "A final ceasefire... carries the risk that a great many people who were uprooted will return to a country not yet prepared to receive them." Some 350,000 refugees, mostly from Burundi are living in UNHCR camps in Tanzania, while the ICG says there are another 300,000 scattered across Tanzania. An estimated 280,000 Burundians are displaced within the country. This agreement spells out the details of how the army would be restructured - a key rebel demand. Under the agreement, the rebels will now take up 40% of officers' posts in the army. Politically they will be given four ministerial positions, and the vice-presidency of the country's national assembly.

BBC 18 Oct 2003 UK-funded troops land in Burundi Ten years of war has led to hundreds of thousands of refugees UK-funded troops sent to disarm rebels in Burundi have arrived in the Central African nation's capital, Bujumbura. The 217-strong Mozambican contingent aims to help end the decade-long civil war that has claimed an estimated 300,000 mainly civilian lives. The UK Government has given Mozambique £3.7m to help implement the 2002 peace deal between the Burundi Government and three of four Hutu rebel groups. Persistent fighting among rebel factions has undermined hope for peace. Minister for Africa Chris Mullin said the deployment was a significant step for Mozambique and Burundi. "We were pleased to provide assistance to the Mozambique Government to enable this deployment to go ahead," he said. "The mission is a significant first for African peacekeeping operations. "It is a concrete example of the commitment of African leaders to establish peace and security in their own continent." At a ceremony at Bujumbura airport to welcome the Mozambicans, head of the African Union peace mission in Burundi, Mamadou Bah, said: ""We are ready to deploy the contingent in the countryside for the task it was called here for." The troops are tasked with providing the warring parties safe passage to designated assembly areas and easing the delivery of humanitarian aid. But a rebel group, the National Liberation Forces, has refused to join peace talks, saying those discussions will do nothing to overturn the long-standing dominance of the Tutsi minority in the country of 6.5 million people. The African Union mission is due to stay for a year, pending the expected deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force.

Chad

Independent UK 17 Oct 2003 Face to face with those he tormented: War crimes trial for tyrant of Chad By Anne Penketh Souleymane Guengueng was a lowly government employee when he was picked up by Chad's political police in August 1988 and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Wrongfully accused of working for the opposition fighting to overthrow President Hissène Habré, he was released two and a half years later when the dictator fled into exile. His family had given up hope of seeing him again. Now the tables have turned, and soon Hissène Habré - darling of the Americans and the French during his bloody eight-year rule - will be facing charges of crimes against humanity and torture. Mr Guengueng and his group, representing 792 victims of the Habré-era atrocities and their surviving relatives, are the accusers. A Belgian investigating magistrate is expected to formally indict the former Chadian leader in a landmark case which will show African dictators they should no longer assume they can commit human rights abuses with impunity. It has been an emotional journey for Mr Guengueng, supported by Human Rights Watch, in his long quest for justice against the man known as the "African Pinochet". After a Chadian Truth Commission accused Habré's regime of 40,000 political murders and systematic torture, the exiled president was placed under house arrest in Senegal three years ago. For a time it looked as though he would be judged there. Mr Guengueng, armed with documents he kept hidden under his house, testified in secret. But the process was halted when the Senegalese courts ruled in 2001 that he could not be tried in the country as his alleged crimes had not been committed there. Mr Guengueng and Human Rights Watch still had another card to play. During the case in Senegal they had sought Habré's extradition to Belgium under its "universal jurisdiction" law. The legislation meant that perpetrators of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity could be tried no matter where the crime was committed, and regardless of their nationality. Belgium, which had also sought to prosecute the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for war crimes over his role in the massacres at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps, repealed its controversial law in July, under US pressure. But because three of the Chadian victims have Belgian nationality, and the investigation by the Belgian magistrate Daniel Fransen had already begun in Chad, Mr Guengueng's case will go ahead. Mr Guengueng, 52, wears thick glasses after almost losing his eyesight in jail. His ordeal included being subjected to total darkness followed by periods of powerful light. "I did not know if it was night or day. There were eight of us in the cell built for a single person: my skin peeled off in the stifling heat." As in the UN war crimes case against the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, the difficulty for the Belgian prosecution will be to produce the "smoking gun" that proves the direct link between Hissène Habré and the atrocities. But Mr Guengueng is confident. "It was Habré who set up the political police. He was kept informed of everything," he says, adding that one of the jails for political prisoners was inside the presidential compound. Backing his claim is a treasure trove of documents discovered in May 2001 by Human Rights Watch in the abandoned offices of the Chadian political police. Mr Guengueng's struggle for justice was honoured at a Human Rights Watch ceremony in London. Reed Brody, the organisation's special counsel for prosecutions, said: "Souleymane Guengueng has harnessed his own suffering into a campaign to break the cycle of impunity [in] his country and all of Africa." Why has Mr Guengueng risked so much campaigning for justice? He lost his job with the Lake Chad Basin Commission in November 2002 after Mr Fransen's visit to the capital, Ndjamena. The victims' association lawyer escaped assassination in a grenade attack apparently ordered by one of the Habré-era security officials who are still in their posts. "I will not feel complete until Habré is in jail," Mr Guengueng says. "I can't have psychological peace. We are doing this to prevent it happening again, for future generations."

Côte d'Ivoire - Also read News Monitors for Côte d'Ivoire from 2002 and 2001

AFP 30 Sept 2003 Ivory Coast signs immunity agreement with US, ABIDJAN Ivory Coast has sealed a bilateral deal with the United States giving their citizens immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), an official statement issued here said Tuesday. The accord, which the statement said was signed into law by President Laurent Gbagbo, exempts US citizens from being extradited from Ivory Coast to The Hague-based ICC. "The signature of this accord is in the obvious interests of Ivory Coast for both financial as military relations with the United States," it said. Washington -- which vehemently opposes the ICC, the world's first permanent tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity -- has secured immunity agreements with more than 60 countries since the court came into existence in July 2002, according to the State Department. The United States fears the court could become a forum for politically motivated prosecutions of US citizens, especially soldiers deployed abroad, and has been on a worldwide campaign to sign bilateral immunity deals. In July, the government of US President George W. Bush suspended nearly 50 million dollars in military aid to 35 countries who had refused to sign non-extradition agreements with it. Four countries later signed the deal, and Washington last week said it would resume aid to them. Ten African countries are among the ICC signatory states who have not accorded immunity to US citizens, according to a State Department count: Benin, Central African Republic, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Niger, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

IRIN 17 Oct 2003 Côte d'Ivoire: Government bans demonstrations for three months, disbands youth group ABIDJAN, 17 October (IRIN) - The government of Cote d'Ivoire has banned public marches and demonstrations for three months to try and cool heads as it tries to persuade rebels occupying the north of the country to resume their seats in the cabinet and start to disarm. It has also ordered the disbanding of one of several hardline youth groups that was associated with violent anti-rebel demonstrations in Abidjan last week. Both measures were announced on Thursday night following a cabinet meeting. The immediate effect of the ban on demonstrations will be to prevent the youth groups, which are close to President Laurent Gbagbo and his Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party, from going ahead with a planned march against the rebels in the central town of Tiebissou on Saturday. Teibissou lies on the frontline between the government-held south of the country and the rebel-held north. The ban will also prevent two of the three main parties represented in parliament from holding a planned demonstration in Abidjan in support of a French-brokered peace agreement between Gbagbo and the rebels signed in January. No date had been set for the march, but the militia-style hardline youth groups, known as "Young Patriots", had threatened to disrupt it. The January peace agreement led to the rebels joining a government of national reconciliation in April, but the rebels suspended their participation in the broad-based coalition on 23 September in protest at Gbagbo's refusal to delegate effective power to independent prime minister Seydou Diarra and his ministerial team. Eight of the nine rebel ministers in the government subsequently withdrew to the rebel capital Bouake in central Cote d'Ivoire. Since then, there has been an uneasy stand-off between the two sides who are kept apart by over 5,000 French and West African peacekeeping troops. However, the "Young Patriots" have become increasingly vocal as the stalemate continues. During demonstrations in Abidjan on Thursday and Friday last week, they attacked the offices of the French-owned water and electricity companies and shops of the French-owned mobile phone company Orange. FPI leaders have repeatedly accused France of favouring the northern based rebels in the civil war which erupted in September 2002. The government ordered the immediate disbanding of one hardline youth group, called the Grouping of Young Patriots (GPP), saying its members had been using identity cards similar to those used by the security forces. The GPP was widely accused of being responsible for the damage caused in last week's demonstrations. However, the government has taken no action against the other "Young Patriot" organisations, which according to diplomatic sources have recruited about 20,000 members in towns throughout the south of Cote d'Ivoire. They openly conduct military-style training and some claim to have access to arms. Many of these hardline youth groups been involved in the harassment of immigrants from other West African countries. Charles Ble Goude, the leader of COJEP, one of the three main federations of "Young Patriots," told IRIN on Friday that he would accept the government ban on demonstrations and call off plans for the March in Tiebissou. Ble Goude, who is often seen in public with police bodyguards, said: "I will obey the decision taken by the council of ministers and last night I asked my friends who were already there to go back to Abidjan because we must respect the institutions of the republic." Charles Groguhet, a leader of the now banned GPP, blamed the trouble caused in last week's demonstrations on "rebel infiltrators" into his movement. Diplomats highlighted the fact that the disbanding of the GPP and the three-month ban on street demonstrations were both measures that had been proposed by the newly appointed ministers of defence and internal security. The two men are political independents and both were now demonstrating their independence from Gbagbo and his FPI, they noted. On 13 September, Rene Amani was appointed Defence Minister and Martin Bleou was appointed Minister of Internal Security, filling portfolios that had remained vacant for six months while Gbagbo argued with the other political parties over who to appoint. Their appointment should have cleared the way for the rebels to begin disarming and permit the return of government administrators to the north of Cote d'Ivoire. However, 10 days later the rebels suspended their participation in government and put the disarmament process on ice. Rebel spokesman Sidiki Konate told IRIN that he was unimpressed by the latest government measures. He particularly criticised the ban on demonstrations. "The existence of a small group which the police or gendarmerie should be able to control is not sufficient reason for banning all demostrations," he said.

DR Congo

MONOC 1 Oct 2003 Pakistani contingent of Ituri Brigade complete, says MONUC KINSHASA, 1 Oct 2003 - With the arrival of some 300 soldiers on Tuesday, the Pakistani contingent of the UN peacekeeping mission's (MONUC) Ituri Brigade is now complete in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, MONUC military spokesman James Pruden said at a news conference in the capital, Kinshasa. "The last group of Pakistani soldiers arrived in Bunia [the main town of Ituri District] on Tuesday, completing the 1,050-strong contingent," he said on Wednesday. Pruden said the force strength of the Ituri Brigade had reached 3,361 soldiers, including men and women, and was ultimately expected to reach 4,800 soldiers. "Large-scale massacres and killings have not been reported in Ituri since the [Ituri Brigade] began its deployment," Pruden said. "In particular, we have been able to stabilise the town of Bunia." He said the Ituri Brigade would progressively deploy from Bunia throughout Ituri District as conditions permitted. UN Resolution 1493 of 28 July 2003 [http://ods-dds-ny.un.org/] authorised MONUC to use force under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter to protect civilians and to disarm militants. It also authorised a total force strength of 10,800 soldiers across the vast central African country, particularly in the turbulent eastern and northeastern regions, where fighting has continued despite the installation of a two-year power-sharing transitional government. In order to achieve this level of deployment, MONUC chief William Swing is due to present the UN General Assembly with a proposed budget of US $672 million for next year's activities, MONUC spokesman Hamadoun Toure reported. Toure added that he was pleased that MONUC's efforts had achieved tangible positive results throughout the country, even in Ituri. "Under the auspices of the mission, armed ethnic militias have established a permanent liaison mechanism that will convene their representatives two times per week in the form of a consultation committee," Toure said. www.monuc.org OR www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/monuc/

Reuters 3 Oct 2003 Congo Cease-Fire Widens KINSHASA, Congo, Oct. 2 Rwandan-backed rebels and tribal Mai Mai warriors have agreed to a cease-fire that should let United Nations forces deploy further into the lawless eastern area of Congo, the United Nations said on Thursday. A spokesman said the accord, reached Wednesday, covered Shabunda town and its surroundings, at the heart of a region racked by fighting despite a peace deal. Congo and foreign-backed rebels signed an accord in April to end nearly five years of war but sporadic fighting has continued in the east. BBC 4 Oct 2003 Israel's history of bomb blasts There have been more than 70 Palestinian bomb attacks aimed at Israelis since the current conflict erupted in September 2000. Below are some of the most deadly.

AP 7 Oct 2003 Tribal Fighters Attack Village in Congo By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:30 p.m. ET KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) -- Dozens of tribal fighters attacked a village in volatile northeastern Congo with assault rifles and machetes, killing at least 65 people, mainly children, looting property and setting huts on fire, U.N officials said Tuesday. U.N. troops who were sent to investigate the attack, which took place Monday in Katchele, found 23 bodies in a church, others in a mass grave and some in the bush surrounding the village, said Fred Eckhard, a U.N. spokesman in New York. Isabelle Abric, a spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Congo, said the victims were from the Hema tribe and fighters from the rival Lendu tribe were suspected of carrying out the attack. The victims found in the bush ``may have been people who went to die in the bush after being injured in the attack,'' Abric said. ``They also could have been hunted down and attacked while hiding in the bush.'' Some 20 people wounded in the attack were being treated in hospitals, she said in a telephone interview from Bunia, the capital of the unstable Ituri province, where Katchele is located. Ituri has been beset by fighting between the Hema and Lendu, and massacres and reprisal killings since 1999, a year after the civil war in Congo erupted. A 3,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force was deployed to the region last month to try to stop the tribal clashes. The attack Monday was the first reported large-scale killing in Ituri since the beefed-up U.N. force replaced a French-led emergency force on Sept. 1. The French-led force was deployed in Bunia in June to stabilize the town after tribal fighting had killed more than 500 people there. Some 70 U.N. soldiers were deployed to Katchele, about 44 miles northwest of Bunia, after the discovery of the massacre, Abric said. Eckhard said the U.N. peacekeepers would search for weapons linked to the killings, as well as suspects in the attack. ``It indicates that the security situation in this particular area of the Congo is still not under control and the increased number of peacekeepers that we have there will have to redouble their efforts to try to get the situation under control,'' Eckhard said. Thomas Lubanga, head of a Hema faction in the region, said Lendu fighters attacked the village between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. Monday after surrounding the area. ``They then attacked using automatic weapons and machetes, setting homes on fire and killing residents,'' he said by telephone. It was not immediately possible to contact Lendu leaders. The Hema and Lendu have traditionally clashed over land and resources in the fertile province rich with timber, gold and the mineral coltan, needed to make cell phones. But the clashes became more deadly in 1999, when the tribal fighters were armed with modern weapons and used as proxies by the Congolese government and rebels fighting in the broader civil war in Congo. At least 50,000 people have been killed and more than 500,000 others displaced by conflict in Ituri since 1999. The war in Congo broke out in August 1998 when Uganda and Rwanda sent troops to back rebels seeking to oust then-President Laurent Kabila. The main fighting ended last year after a series of peace deals took hold. The Congolese government, now led by President Joseph Kabila -- Laurent Kabila's son -- and the main rebel groups are currently working in a fledging transitional government. But Ituri, and large parts of the rest of eastern Congo, remain unstable. For weeks, the United Nations has been trying to broker an effective cease-fire in Ituri as the first step toward the disarmament and demobilization of the tens of thousands of tribal fighters.

IRIN 7 Oct 2003 At Least 55 Killed in Katshelli, Ituri District Nairobi At least 55 people, most of them women and children, were killed in the Katshelli area of Ituri District, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, known as MONUC, reported on Monday. MONUC said it had dispatched a verification mission on Tuesday to establish the circumstances of the killing and identify the culprits so that they could be brought before justice. "This was a hateful crime that runs counter to the process of reconciliation that has begun in Bunia, and which MONUC seeks to extend throughout the rest of Ituri District, with the full cooperation of the Ituri Interim Administration and the members of the consultation committee of armed groups," MONUC said from its headquarters in the national capital, Kinshasa. It said it would use "all means necessary" to ensure that such crimes would not go unpunished. Acting under a Chapter Seven mandate of the UN Charter, MONUC is authorised to take the necessary action "to maintain or restore international peace and security". Katshelli is 15 km southeast of Bule, which is about 60 km northeast of Bunia, the main town of Ituri. At least 50,000 people have died and 500,000 have been displaced in Ituri since the most recent war in the country erupted in August 1998. In July, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said it would make investigation of crimes against humanity in Ituri one of its first priorities.

United Nations (New York) NEWS October 7, 2003 UN Team Finds 65 Bodies in East The United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has discovered 65 bodies, mostly children, apparently massacred Monday, a UN spokesman said today. "From the evidence gathered, a group of Lendu, believed to be from nearby villages, armed with rifles and machetes, attacked Katchele early" Monday morning, the spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said at a press briefing. A unit from the UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC), alerted by local combatants, found 23 bodies in a local church and the others in a mass grave, Mr. Eckhard added. Most of the dead were children. Some 20 other persons were wounded and are being treated in local hospitals. Mr. Eckhard said MONUC had sent a contingent of Pakistani soldiers to Katchele to investigate the massacre and search for weapons. Two weeks ago, Secretary-General Kofi Annan praised "positive developments" in the DRC, including the establishment of a Government of National Unity and Transition. He had convened a meeting of the leaders of countries in the region, who pledged to work together for peace.

Reuters 8 Oct 2003 U.N. SAYS 65 WERE MASSACRED The known death toll from a new massacre in the northeast rose to 65 people, including 40 children, United Nations officials said. A spokesman said United Nations troops had visited the site of the attack, the remote village of Katshelli, 40 miles northeast of the regional capital, Bunia. He said that four or five other villages had also been attacked and that more people might have been killed. The area is predominantly inhabited by the ethnic Hema group. A Hema militia leader has said the killers were from the rival Lendu ethnic group.

UN Security Council 8 Oct 2003Massacre in Katchele: Letter from DR Congo to the UN Security Council S/2003/969 Letter dated 7 October 2003 from the Permanent Representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council On instructions from my Government, I regret to have to convey to you our total indignation and revulsion over the latest massacre perpetrated in Katchele, a village situated about 70 kilometres north-west of Bunia, the main town of the Ituri district. According to the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), 23 civilians, mainly women, children and old persons, were killed there on 6 October 2003 with machetes and automatic weapons. The massacre was accompanied by pillaging. Other local sources are reporting the murder of 32 other persons, who were buried in mass graves before the arrival of the United Nations investigators. My Government urgently requests the Security Council to: 1. Speed up the sending of reinforcements to MONUC in the Ituri district so that it can do more and act more decisively to advance the process of stabilizing and securing the entire district of Ituri that started with the deployment of the Interim Multinational Emergency Force; 2. Conduct a thorough investigation of the unfortunate events that took place in Katchele so as to identify those responsible and bring the perpetrators of these latest human rights violations to justice; 3. Address the unavoidable general issue of the impunity that has for some time now prevailed in the Ituri district, with a view to compelling the warlords who hold sway there, and their outside supporters, to answer for their reprehensible acts before national and international judicial bodies. I should be grateful if you would have this letter circulated as a document of the Security Council. (Signed) Ileka Atoki Ambassador Permanent Representative .

CENTER FOR THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE 8 Oct 2003 www.genocideprevention.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Children and Women Massacred in Ituri ARLINGTON, VA -- It has been confirmed that 40 of the 65 victims slain in Katchele, a Hema village, 60 km northeast of Bunia DRC on Monday (10-6-03) were children. The remaining 25 were mainly women. They were killed either by rifles or machetes. When UN peacekeepers arrived mid-day Tuesday, 23 bodies were found inside a local church and the others in a mass grave not far from town. In addition to the 65 confirmed dead, 20 other persons were wounded and are being treated in local hospitals. While the UN is waiting to gather more information before identifying the perpetrators, the Rwandan back Union of Congolese Patriots leader, Thomas Lubanga, has been quoted placing blame on rival Lendu militias. This is the first massacre reported since the deployment of more than 3,300 UN peacekeepers into Ituri province in early September. News Release No: 2003/001/DR Congo.

Radio Netherlands 8 Oct 2003 Minerals and massacres DRC's volatile Ituri province is home to rich deposits of various minerals such as gold, diamonds, cobalt and coltan. Despite the presence of UN peacekeepers, massacres are continuing in northeastern Congo. The bodies of dozens more victims of mass slaughter were found earlier this week, many of them children. The discovery has focused international attention on the strife-torn Ituri province. Clashes in the mineral-rich Ituri region, between the rival Hema and Lendu tribes, have left more than 50,000 people dead in the last four years. But this is the first reported massacre since the UN took over peacekeeping duties from a French-led force last month. It comes as no surprise to foreign observers like Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch. "Well it's tragic of course, but we have to be realistic here. Simply, the arrival of UN troops isn't going to solve the problem. There are multiple political problems to be resolved yet, and there is also the enormously important question of the delivery of arms into the region. And until there's an embargo in force to prevent the supply of weapons into these areas, we're likely to see a continuation of the conflict at least at some level." Setback for peace moves The name coltan is a contraction of two minerals: Columbite and Tantalite. When refined, it transforms into a heat-resistant powder that can hold a high electrical charge. The powder is used to control current flows inside miniature circuit boards in lap tops, cell phones and other consumer electronics. The latest violence is a major setback to UN peace efforts. It is expected to reignite tensions between the two tribes. This could jeopardise current attempts to broker peace in the troubled province after a series of similar atrocities. The flare-up could also complicate efforts to end Congo's wider war, in which more than three million people have died over the past five years, mostly through disease and starvation. The international peace force has sent in helicopters and troops to the site of the massacre in Katshelli, some 60 km from the main town Bunia to investigate the killings. The United Nations has vowed to bring those responsible to justice. They're not the only ones concentrating on events in Ituri. The new International Criminal Court (ICC) is making its first investigations there, compiling information with a view to future prosecutions. In an interview with Radio Netherlands, chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo says it's a painstaking process: "The first step is analysing information, so we're enlarging the group of people who are doing the work on the ground, because it's a very difficult situation. Since the conflict started, there have been more civilian deaths in Congo than in any other conflict after the Second World War. So, this is a huge conflict and we have to care about what's happening." listen to the interview with chief prosecutor Moreno Ocampo, 2´17 International problem The scale of the violence has turned Ituri province into Mr Moreno Ocampo's first priority. The ICC chief prosecutor says the Congolese transitional government simply cannot deal with the problem, which extends far beyond its borders. "There are NGOs working in the area and sending us information. We are also working with intelligence organisations from different countries. And also on the financial side, because the crimes aren't only committed in Ituri. The killings may actually happen there, but business connected with the region is fuelling the crimes." "If someone does business with people, knowing that they're killing others to come up with the goods and sending money to support this crime, they could be regarded as being part of the crime, even if they live in Europe. So, we're not only investigating what's happening in Ituri, but in the entire world. According to the UN panel on the illegal exploitation of natural resources, there are more than 27 countries with business connections with Ituri. Each of those countries can help investigating cases."

AFP 8 Oct 2003 UN peacekeepers head for site of DR Congo massacre KIGALI, Oct 8 (AFP) - Troops from the UN peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) left Wednesday for the village from where attackers set off early this week to massacre 65 people, a force spokeswoman said. "A combat section left very early this morning," Isabelle Abric told AFP from Bunia, the capital of the troubled northeastern Ituri region. The squad of MONUC troops numbered 35 men, Abric said, and they were headed for "a village from where the attackers probably left on Monday morning." Abric did not name the village. Latest figures from MONUC, whose troops in Ituri come from Pakistan and Bangladesh, say at least 65 people, thought to be from the minority Hema tribe, were killed and a score were wounded in Kachele, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of Bunia. The killers are thought to be from the larger Lendu tribe, whose long-running feud with the Hema has claimed some 50,000 lives since 1999. Two other MONUC combat sections spent Tuesday night in Kachele. The 3,300-strong force, which, apart from reconnaissance missions, has been largely confined to the town of Bunia, "will next week begin deploying in the rest of Ituri", Abric told AFP later Wednesday. Asked whether there would be a rapid deployment in and around Kachele, she said "probably, but for security reasons we cannot say in advance where we are going to deploy." The latest killings underline the need for MONUC to be deployed throughout the Ituri region, the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in Brussels Wednesday. "The transition in DRC offers an unprecedented opportunity to the Congolese people to emerge from five years of war. "All Congolese must seize this chance: neighbouring countries must back the current process." The head of the UN mission in DRC meanwhile said UN forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo would use helicopters to monitor the movement of armed militias and discourage arms trafficking. "We have reinforced our equipment with attack helicopters," William Swing said. The aircraft, whose type he did not give, would make easier surveillance of the movement of armed bands, in particular in the Ituri region. "The game is over," he warned the militias, in a direct reference to the Kachele attack on Monday. Swing said he had "some indications" of those responsible for the massacre and promised they would be brought to justice, while accepting the need for greater surveillance of the district. In Ituri and Kivu (east) the added "electronic aerial monitoring will also let us enforce the embargo on arms-trafficking," he said. He said he had information about the movement of illegal weapons in the east of the country "where the arms are coming in" but added that the new MONUC mandate authorising the use of force would make it possible to stem the traffic. Swing also said that MONUC would intensify its efforts to demobilise and repatriate Rwandan forces as required by the peace agreement between Rwanda and DRC.

VOA 12 Oct 2003 Congo Delegation Sent to Province Torn by Ethnic Violence Dino Mahtani Bunia, DRC 12 Oct 2003, 14:20 UTC Listen to Dino Mahtani's Report (RealAudio) Mahtani Report - Download 441k (RealAudio) A government delegation in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been sent to the war-ravaged northeastern Ituri Province to show its commitment to bringing an end to the conflict. The mission follows months of violence and a recent massacre of at least 65 civilians. A parliamentary delegation from Congo's new transitional government of national reconciliation was dispatched on Saturday to the town of Bunia, Ituri's principle town. The delegation, comprised of the new president of the assembly and 11 deputies, all representing Ituri province, arrived in Bunia only days after a recent massacre about 60 kilometers northeast of Bunia, where 65 civilians, mostly women and children, were butchered by machetes or shot to death. The delegation went by helicopter to the scene of the massacre in an effort to reassure the population. Fighting between ethnic Hema and Lendu militias has claimed at least 50,000 lives since 1999 and has forced half a million people to flee in the mineral-rich province, which is abundant in gold, diamonds and coltan. Both Hema and Lendu militias have been backed at one time by the Rwandan and Congolese governments and factions of the Ugandan military in their bid to dominate the province. The new government is comprised of elements of the former government as well as ex-rebel groups also backed by Uganda and Rwanda. The delegation met on Saturday with representatives of a local political group comprised of various leaders drawn from Ituri's multi-ethnic population. The delegation wanted to convince them that the new government would play an active role in the province's political life, promising to bring back law order and stability, and would punish those responsible for atrocities. Meanwhile, U.N. troops have begun the first steps of permanent deployment into Ituri, a province roughly the size of Sierra Leone, to try to bring peace to the war-stricken corners of the forested region. About 120 troops have been dispatched to the town of Bule, some five kilometers from the scene of the latest massacre, in the hamlet of Katshelli. The so-called Ituri brigade will eventually number about 5,000 troops. But the United Nations' job does not stop there. A recent massacre of at least 16 people about 30 kilometers north of Uvira, a principle town in South Kivu state that lies on the Burundian border 700 kilometers south of Bunia, has focused U.N. efforts on bringing peace back to the entire eastern region of Congo, some three months after the country's peace deal was signed, that had brought an end to Congo's wider war, a conflict that had claimed over three million lives since 1998. South Kivu is still infested with marauding Mai Mai tribal militiamen, Hutu extremists involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Burundian Hutu rebels, and various other splinter groups and militia, not to mention troops from the Rwandan backed RCD-Goma (Rally for Congolese Democracy) ex-rebel movement, that is now part of the new government. With a task force of less than 2,000 troops for the rest of the eastern region outside of Ituri, a land mass four times Ituri's size and with an overall mandate of 10,800 troops, some 4,000 less than is mandated for Liberia, a country that can fit into Congo 24 times, the United Nations has its work cut out. Witnesses of this week's massacre outside Uvira report that the killers were members of Burundi's principle Hutu extremist group. The United Nations has not been able to confirm this.

BBC 13 Oct 2003 DR Congo massacre probe widens By Arnaud Zajtman BBC, Kachele United Nations peacekeepers are deploying to another three villages in the strife-torn Ituri province in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have already set up a permanent presence near the site of clashes between Lendu and Hema ethnic militias that have claimed about 50,000 lives since 1999. Last week, 65 people, thought to be from the minority Hema group, were killed in the village of Kachele. The head of the UN in the Congo, William Swing and the President of the Congolese Parliament, Olivier Kamitatu, have paid a joint visit to Kachele. 'Provide security' In the aftermath of the massacre about 200 UN armed troops have been deployed in the area. Major Jehangir from Pakistan, is the commander of those troops. Most of those killed in Kachele were children (Pic: UN) "The main task is to provide security to locals and to help any locality which is being threatened by any other place from the rival tribes," he said. "Yesterday we have conducted an air operation. There were helicopters and we dropped our troops here and though they managed to escape, we went and we assessed the complete village and the area where those suspected killers are hiding and living." Now villagers have resumed their farming activities here and the atmosphere is peaceful, but tribal militiamen are still active in the bush and the local chief says that next time it would be good if the UN deploys troops before, rather than after massacres are committed.

CENTER FOR THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE 13 Oct 2003 www.genocideprevention.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Attack in province of South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo ARLINGTON, VA – 10/13/2003 Massacre of 16 civilians, primarily women, on 6 October 2003 prompts MONUC to begin investigations. MONUC has confirmed that on 6 October 2003 a group of approximately 20 men attacked the small village Ndunda in the town of Uvira, South Kivu, DRC. The men were reportedly armed with crude weapons including axes, machetes, knives, and clubs. They killed 16 people, who were primarily women, and four people remain missing. Witnesses told MONUC on Friday that the group was speaking Kirundi, the national language of neighboring Burundi and that some of the perpetrators were wearing Burundian armed forces uniforms. They also told MONUC that the attackers possibly belonged to Burundi’s Forces pour la defense de la democratie, the armed wing of the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie rebel group, which, recently, has been active in the region. MONUC is awaiting the testimony of the only two survivors, who are currently being treated at a nearby hospital, before making formal accusations. For more information on the Center for the Prevention of Genocide, please contact us by phone or visit our website at www.genocideprevention.org.

Knight Ridder 15 Oct 2003 In wake of massacre, U.N. peacekeepers to step up efforts in Congo By Sudarsan Raghavan KACHELE, Democratic Republic of Congo - The Lendu attack on their Hema neighbors was a family affair. Wives and children stole the cows and looted the huts of people they knew or once played with. Husbands and fathers with machetes and rifles slaughtered the weakest of the weak, mostly children, pregnant women and the elderly. The massacre of some 65 Hemas at this and three other villages last week was just another spree in the ethnic violence in Ituri province, where an estimated 50,000 people have been killed since civil war broke out in August 1998. But this time, the much-criticized United Nations peacekeeping force is responding by changing tactics in its effort to stop the slaughter. On Thursday, blue-helmeted U.N. troops are scheduled for the first time ever to begin patrolling the hamlets of Ituri, armed with a stronger mandate and tougher rules of engagement. The outcome could shape the future of the Congo at a time when a transitional power-sharing government is trying to unite this fractured Western Europe-sized nation and take it to its first democratic elections since 1960. If the violence subsides, U.N. diplomats and aid workers hope the blueprint can be used in Congo's other troubled regions. Success in Ituri would also help reassert the United Nations' relevance as a global peacekeeping body, some diplomats hope. "It's important for the concept of peacekeeping that we succeed here," said Ambassador William Swing, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative to the Congo and head of the U.N. mission, who is from Miami. Hema and Lendu have lived side by side in Ituri in times of peace without problems, but like many ethnic groups they've become bitter rivals in times of chaos. "When I heard the gunshots, I ran away. I forgot my wife and children," said Kpadhigo Bbulo, 30, his voice lowering to a guilt-filled whisper. His wife and five of his 12 children were butchered that day. The oldest child was 14. The youngest was 4. U.N. human rights workers who visited Kachele and three other nearby villages the day after the massacre estimated that 40 of the dead were children. Some believed the Lendus were targeting the next generation of Hemas. Others had a simpler explanation. "They didn't run fast enough," said Beatrice Balbin, a U.N. human rights worker. It's unclear whether the attack was politically motivated. In the absence of any state authority and police, gangs of Hemas and Lendus are preying on the countryside, said U.N. officials. The U.N. mission in Congo, known as MONUC, arrived in this vast, mineral-rich former Belgian colony in 1999 - a year after the country formerly known as Zaire was plunged into a devastating civil war. Rebels, backed by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, rose up to oust Congo's leader Laurent Kabila, who toppled U.S.-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. The conflict, which at one point involved as many as nine neighboring countries, has left an estimated 3 million people dead, mostly from disease and starvation. In late April and early May of this year, MONUC sent a small force of Uruguayan peacekeepers to replace 9,000 Ugandan troops who were pulling out of Ituri under the terms of a Congo peace deal. Soon after the peacekeepers arrived, chaos broke out. As many as 500 people, mostly civilians, were butchered in Ituri's largest town, Bunia, during fighting between Hema and Lendu forces. Thousands sought refuge in the U.N. compound. But the Uruguayan peacekeepers - outnumbered, outgunned and under orders to protect only the U.N. facility - did nothing to stop the carnage. That prompted the U.N. Security Council to dispatch a heavily armed French-led European Union force with a mandate that allowed the use of force to preserve the peace. The U.N. troops raided the homes of Hema militia leaders and adopted a tough stance - in one instance, opening fire by helicopter on a truck containing Hema gunmen. The impact was quick. Shops in Bunia have reopened, new restaurants are cropping up and a South African company is launching a new cellular phone service. The child soldiers who once controlled the town have vanished. By all accounts, Pakistani and Bangladeshi peacekeepers who replaced the French-led force have been aggressive in enforcing the peace. Now MONUC would like to have that same effect in rural towns and villages where it has no presence. By next week, MONUC hopes to be fully deployed in three towns - Marabo, Bule and Bogoro - and to begin patrolling a 1,250-square-mile area, roughly 5 percent of Ituri. Each town will have about 150 troops, backed by helicopter gunships and armored personnel carriers. More troops are expected to fan out to other parts of Ituri in upcoming months. Many questions remain. Chief among them is whether MONUC has sufficient manpower to patrol Ituri. When a contingent of Nepalese troops arrives as early as next month, there will be 4,800 U.N. soldiers in the region. In comparison, the successful U.N. peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone, equal in size to Ituri, had more than 17,000 peacekeepers. "With 5,000 troops we can't be everywhere," conceded Maj. Abou Thiam, the military spokesman for MONUC. "But we can compensate this by patrolling by foot during the day and night and by helicopters during the day." Jeanne Gbosi, 29, prays this will work. She and most of her neighbors no longer sleep in their huts. When it gets dark, they head for the cover of the bush. "My biggest fear is that Lendus live next to here," said Gbosi. Last week, she buried her 13-year-old son, Mapa, in a mass grave. Then she tossed some pretty flowers over the freshly turned earth.

Reuters 16 Oct 2003 Rwanda says Hutu rebels regrouping in Congo KIGALI, Oct. 16 — Rwanda said on Thursday it feared infiltration by thousands of militiamen just over the border with Democratic Republic of Congo, which it invaded in 1998 to neutralise the armed groups. Rwanda said Congo should show more commitment to disarming the militia roving in the east of the giant country under the terms of a peace deal signed by the two countries last year that led Rwanda to withdraw its troops. ''We are not happy at all. The installation of a new transitional government (in Congo) has not changed the situation on the ground,'' Rwanda's Foreign Affairs Minister Charles Muligande told Reuters by telephone. ''These forces are not being prevented from moving towards our borders.'' The Congolese government in Kinshasa, where rebels and government have joined a power-sharing administration, said it was not backing the militia. ''We're not interested in making war with anyone, we have no interest in destabilising whatever it may be,'' said Mulegwa Zihindula, a spokesman for President Joseph Kabila. ''We cannot accept the presence of people on Congolese territory (who want to) destabilise other countries.'' The commander of U.N. troops in Congo, General Montaga Diallo, has asked the Kigali government for information about its allegations that Interahamwe are being rearmed. Rwanda estimates that close to 30,000 rebels comprising former Rwandan soldiers and the Interahamwe militia responsible for the country's 1994 genocide are still in camps in the Congolese provinces of North and South Kivu and Maniema. Congo said last month Rwanda was out to sabotage its peace process by backing a group of former rebels who refused to take up their seats in parliament in its new transitional government. Rwanda, which supported Congo's biggest rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy, during nearly five years of war, rejected the accusations. It said the government's problems resulted from weaknesses in Congo's power-sharing deal. Rwanda invaded eastern Congo in pursuit of Hutu extremists responsible for the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus by hardline Hutus. Rwanda signed a deal with Congo in July last year in which Rwanda agreed to withdraw its forces and Congo agreed to disarm, dismantle and repatriate the militia. (Additional reporting by Bya'Ombe Lubunga in Kinshasa)

PANA 16 Oct 2003 500 DR Congo policemen to be deployed in Bunia Kinshasa, DR Congo (PANA) - The Congolese government is to send 500 members of the national integrated police force to Bunia in the eastern province of Ituri, Interior minister Theophile Mbemba Fundu indicated Thursday in a release. According to the release, the policemen will reinforce the other security forces present in Bunia as part of efforts to secure this town and its environs. Other police units would be deployed later. The UN Mission to Congo (MONUC) recently indicated its willingness to help build an integrated national police force in DR Congo. It has since been drilling 70 policemen in a course that would end on 28 October.

IRIN 17 Oct 2003 Kabila orders ex-FAR and Interahamwe out of country KINSHASA, 17 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has said it will no longer tolerate the presence on its national territory of elements of the Rwandan former army (ex-FAR) and Rwandan Hutu former militias (Interahamwe) who fled their country into neighbouring DRC after playing a major role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The announcement was made on Thursday by Mulegwa Zihindula, spokesman of DRC President Joseph Kabila, during a news conference in the capital, Kinshasa. "The president of the republic can no longer accept that these people, who are not Congolese soldiers, remain in the Congo. They must be disarmed and returned to their country," he said. Mulegwa was responding to a question regarding recent allegations by Rwandan authorities that the DRC's transitional national government was continuing to support the ex-FAR and Interahamwe. "The ex-FAR and Interahamwe are operating freely, well armed and have never abandoned their intentions of destabilising Rwanda," Charles Muligande, the Rwandan foreign minister, told IRIN. "The situation needs urgent attention and the DRC government must show more commitment to resolving this problem. We are not happy at all. They are not doing anything, and these forces are moving towards our borders." Mulegwa also said Kabila had expressed support for a regional conference on peace, democracy, development and security. "The regional conference could help to resolve all these problems," Mulegwa said, calling on the international community to continue to support the process of disarmament and repatriation of foreign armed elements in the DRC. For his part, Gen Mountaga Diallo, force commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, suggested during a news conference in Kinshasa on Wednesday that the voluntary nature of the programme for demobilisation, disarmament, repatriation, reinsertion and reintegration (DDRRR) of these foreign armed elements could come to an end. "The offer [of voluntary repatriation] clearly does not interest these Rwandan combatants, who continue to hide. They do not want to accept the hand that has been extended to them," he said. "But when the moment comes that this programme [DDRRR] is ended - because MONUC will not remain in the Congo forever - it will be up to the Congolese government to decide their fate." Since MONUC began the voluntary DDRRR programme, some two-and-a-half years ago, about 2,500 Rwandan ex-combatants and their families have been repatriated. MONUC estimates that about 14,000 Rwandan ex-combatants remain in the DRC. Mulegwa would not say if the DRC government would resort to force to remove Rwandan ex-combatants from its national territory. "We are certain that the unified and restructured Forces armees congolaises [national military] will soon be ready to play a role in the disarmament and repatriation of these Rwandan combatants," Mulegwa said.

BBC 18 Oct 2003 Africa's forgotten and ignored war By Fergal Keane BBC correspondent in DR Congo Danny leaned into the plane and asked if we were all strapped in. Then he paused, as if thinking about what he was going to say next. Congolese teenager pans for gold, but the war has affected the trade "Folks, as we are missionaries, we always start our flights with a prayer," he said. Then he began to pray. He asked that we be safe on our journey. He asked, too, that his passengers might find the story they were looking for in Congo. By now Danny would have known exactly the kind of story we would find. He had grown up in Africa. It was his home. Every other day he flew into north-eastern Congo. He had helped evacuate hundreds of people when the fighting erupted around Bunia in late spring and summer. Danny knew Congo alright but he wore his faith like armour, and from his world above the clouds this missionary pilot saw a different Africa. Peaceful From up there, one could see the well tilled fields of Uganda, the silver immensity of Lake Victoria, the occasional fishing boats speckled on its surface, and then the land sloping upwards into mountains and forest and another expanse of water, Lake Albert. An invisible line divides the lake and at half past three on a sunny afternoon we crossed into Congo. As I said, from the vantage point of these skies, one saw a different Africa. It was a green place, a peaceful place. We passed over small brush fires, the thick white smoke curling into the sky and then dissipating as it hit the cold air further up. From here Congo was at peace. Then we began to descend. We crossed a line of hills and banked to the left, then circled and flew over a large town. This was Bunia - our destination, its streets busy in the sunlight. Coming in to land we could see the tents of the UN troops, their white armoured vehicles, the barbed wire encircling the airport perimeter. Blue helmets, white vehicles, the green hills of Central Africa. Echoes of Rwanda Children have been the target of militias For one jolting moment I was carried back to another place, a central African nation where I had watched the UN fail to halt genocide. Rwanda. Over the next few days the echoes of that other tragedy would follow wherever we went. The UN compound in Bunia is encircled by razor wire and guarded by Uruguayan troops. They looked tired, dusty and uncomfortable. There were Bangladeshis too, and Pakistanis and there are Nepalese on the way. The armies of the world's poorest countries, just as was the case in Rwanda. For, here at the outset, let us be clear about one matter: that Congo is a tragedy the developed world has done its best to ignore. A Congolese soldier in a war-torn country Four million people have died from massacre, famine, disease. Four million in just five years. In that period the armies of no fewer than seven African countries have fought here. They did not fight for the good of the Congolese but as part of a latter day scramble for Africa, a war for the country's rich resources of diamonds, gold and minerals. In recent years we've recoiled at fresh accounts of the horrors inflicted on Congo under the colonial rule of the Belgian king Leopold. Heroes Yet even as a powerful new account of his terrible reign was being published, a new age of evil was overtaking Congo. That night in the Lushakavini hotel I pulled out a copy of the latest report on Congo by Human Rights Watch. Its chief researcher is a remarkable woman called Alison Des Forges. I remember during the Rwandan genocide, meeting a group of survivors and one of them pressing into my hand a letter for Alison. "She is my friend, and she must be told what has happened to us," the woman said. He saw the corpses of his family, including his nephew who was five-years- old, with his stomach cut open. They were cutting the flesh and eating the victims Witness to a massacre Alison Des Forges and the brave Congolese activists who help her are heroes of our time. They are brave because recording the testimonies of the traumatised survivors of Congo's horror is in itself traumatising work. They are brave because it can also be dangerous work: human rights activists have been abducted, tortured and murdered. It is only when you hear the testimony that they record, that you understand why they are so driven to bear witness. For example, this story recorded from a Pygmy man, in late 2002. "About 20 miles from Mambasa, the militia attacked a pygmy camp." "A man called Amuzati who was hunting in the forest heard shooting. As he wasn't far from his camp he returned to see what was happening." "About half a mile away from the camp he heard shouts and crying, and then there was silence." "He came closer and saw several militia men." Congolese are weary of the war, but there is no hope in sight "He saw the corpses of his family, including his nephew who was five-years-old, with his stomach cut open." "They were cutting the flesh and eating the victims... he was filled with emotion and afraid that if he shouted, they would catch him too, so he crept away." Or there was the story told by the aunt of a rape victim - there is an epidemic of sexual violence in north-eastern Congo. This is the story she told: "One day in early November we were on the road near Mambasa when we ran into the militia." "Some had camouflage uniforms and others just had green ones; some of them had green berets." "They took our things from us including our bicycle and goats and then they took our niece who was only 15-years-old and they raped her in front of us." Even children are sent off to fight "Then they took her away with them. We have not seen her since." "Her name was Marie Anzoyo. I know other girls who were taken including a girl called Therese and another called Vero." Marie Anzoyo, Therese, Vero. Three names out of millions. We rose before dawn on the second day and set out on the road north. I use the word "road", but it hardly describes the dirt track which leads, over five bone-crunching hours to the village of Kachele, scene of Congo's latest massacre. The landrover slid in the mud, bounced over ruts. In places the bush was so thick it brushed the windows of the car. Ethnic wars This was perfect ambush country, a landscape of concealment and hidden watchers. In this part of Congo, alone 50,000 people have been killed in the past five years. The country is full of refugee camps like this with people living in fear Many of them members of two warring ethnic groups: the Hema and the Lendu. Close to Kachele we saw a log lying across the track leading into the hills. Our guide, Dego, told us it had been placed there by Lendu tribesmen, those accused of carrying out the slaughter of Hema people at Kachele. "They are just over that hill," he said. Not for the first time in Central Africa, I was reminded of WB Yeats' line: Little room / great hatred. Survival Here, desperately poor people fought each other for the sake of land. This is not mindless tribal violence. In this part of the world land means food and that means survival. If these people lived in a country with a functioning state, these disputes over land would likely never have erupted into such appalling violence. UN peacekeepers approach a Congo village Congo's vast natural wealth should provide prosperity for all of its people. But instead, they have been cursed to live in a land ruled first by a venal Belgian king, and by Mobutu Sese Seko, the world's most corrupt dictator, and now a country where foreign armies like Uganda and Rwanda have come to plunder and fight. In Kachele the survivors sat around in their rags. Some looked bewildered. An old woman crouched outside the hut in which her family had been murdered. A cluster of children sat together in the open space between the mud and thatch huts. Too late Here are the facts of the massacre at Kachele. Shortly after 0500, as the light crept over the valley, a party of Lendu militiamen approached the village. One of them fired shots. It was the signal for the killing to begin. Families panicked by the shooting ran out of their huts. They ran into the militia and were cut down, mostly with the weapons used by Africa's poor: machetes, clubs and spears. Sixty-five people were killed. Forty of them were children. Forty children hacked and bludgeoned at the hands of adults. The killers escaped as they nearly always do, and a few hours after that the UN peacekeepers arrived. Too late to do anything but count the corpses. Kachele's chief is bitter. Antoine Dhabi is 37-years-old. He inherited the chieftaincy from his brother who was murdered by the Lendu. He told me that his daughters - eight-year-old Esperance and 13-year-old Antoinette - had been abducted by the attackers. Antoine Dhabi said he felt like giving up and leaving for the town. The land of his ancestors had become too dangerous. "The Lendu want to wipe us all out," he said. But talk to Lendu people who have been attacked by the Hema militias and you will hear the same thing. They too have suffered appalling massacres. Howl of grief As we were leaving the village we heard singing. I got out of the landrover and walked in the direction of the voice. I say singing, but it is hardly an accurate description It was partly song, but also, partly, a howl of grief. An old woman was performing a ritual of mourning - dancing on the mass graves which contained the bodies of the dead. Her name was Marianne and she had just come back to the village to find that her son and several of his children were dead. I asked our guide Dego what she was singing. "She sings that her children are gone, that they are decaying in the earth," he said. Then the old woman climbed down from the grave and got down on her knees, and then threw her arms across the mound of earth. And in this way, she said farewell to her children.

IRIN 23 Oct 2003 Rights group renews call for justice in Ankoro massacres NAIROBI, A human rights NGO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has called for the resumption of investigations and trials of those responsible for the November 2002 massacres of civilians in the town of Ankoro, in northern Katanga Province. In a statement issued on Wednesday from Lubumbashi, the Katanga branch of the Association Africaine de defense des Droits de l'Homme (ASADHO) called for the resumption of investigations and trials that had been suspended in April 2003 pending a restructuring of the military justice system, at which time some 27 combatants had been indicted. Although the leadership of a unified national military was inaugurated on 5 September in the capital, Kinshasa, progress towards integration of forces of numerous former belligerents has lagged. On Tuesday, an international committee overseeing the two-year transitional process in the country criticised the national unity government for a wide range of delays, and urged it to send military commanders to their posts, to complete the formation of a united national army and the drafting of laws on national defence. [see earlier IRIN story, "Oversight committee chides transitional government for delays"] "The survivors of the Ankoro massacres are impatient," ASADHO said. The precise toll of the massacres has remained unclear. An investigation from 7 to 9 April conducted by the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, found that at least 70 people were killed during fighting in November 2002 between government forces and Mayi-Mayi militias in Ankoro. However, MONUC said the death toll could be higher. ASADHO said at least 300 people were killed, while 7,715 houses, 11 churches and a health centre were pillaged and burned, during attacks that involved heavy weaponry such as 107 mm type 63 multiple rocket launchers. ASADHO called on the transitional national government to accord all means necessary to the military judicial system so that fair trials could resume, and on the military justice system to speed investigations into the events of November 2002, particularly by including civilian parties.

Ethiopia

IRIN 3 Oct 2003 Call to abolish death penalty ADDIS ABABA, 3 Oct 2003 The Ethiopian government faced fresh calls from human rights organisations on Friday to abolish the death penalty. The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) appealed to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to bring an end to executions in the country. International rights organisations estimate that around 50 people have been sentenced to death in the last decade – many former officials from the previous regime. The call for the abolition of the death penalty comes after four men were sentenced to hang in August after being convicted of “genocide” under the former government. Last year, five members of the radical Somali Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya group were sentenced to death for committing “terrorist acts” in Ethiopia. EHRCO argued that the death penalty is “barbaric” and that society should “teach and reform” offenders. “A society can be more healthy by teaching, reforming and rehabilitating the offender,” the human rights organisation said in a report released on Friday. In Ethiopia the death penalty involves either hanging or death by fg squad. EHRCO also described as “flawed” arguments that claim the death penalty reduces crime in society. “The notion that judicial killings would be instructive has been disproved by the history of mankind since ancient times,” it said. The death penalty was introduced in the mid-1950s after the drafting of the country’s first modern penal code. The government is currently revising the penal code. Those condemned to death have the right to appeal to a higher court and to petition for presidential clemency.

Liberia

BBC 3 Oct 2003 UN warns of more Liberia violence - Wednesday's battle was the worst in Monrovia since peacekeepers arrived Liberia could experience an escalation of fighting in the coming weeks, says the United Nations special envoy to Liberia, Jacques Klein. Some 3,500 UN troops are already deployed in the capital, Monrovia, but Mr Klein said the force was not yet sufficient to bring stability and disarm some 30,000 rebels. He also rejected claims by Liberia's interim President Moses Blah, that UN troops failed to prevent Wednesday's gun-battle between rebels and government forces in Monrovia in which at least three people were killed. "I think that President Blah doesn't know what he is talking about," Mr Klein told BBC's Network Africa programme, adding that the peacekeepers had, in fact, managed to turn back most of the heavily armed rebel convoy. The incident happened when the leader of the main rebel group, Sekou Conneh, arrived for a first meeting with Mr Blah. US role Mr Klein's comments came two days after the official launch of the UN peacekeepers in Liberia. The 15,000-strong UN mission is set to become the world's biggest peace force but no new troops have arrived yet. A battalion of troops from Bangladesh is expected within two weeks, the UN says. These people are raping, robbing and stealing from their own people. They will continue to do that until we disarm them Jacques Klein Monrovia is relatively calm but skirmishes continue in the rest of the country, where there are no peacekeepers. Meanwhile, US President George W Bush on Thursday defended the limited role US troops played in Liberia, a day after the last US warship had left Liberia's coast. "We have kept our word. We have done exactly what we said we would do," he said. Mr Bush said US Marines had secured the airport and port to enable troops from the West African peacekeeping force to enter Liberia and then turn control of the peacekeeping mission to the UN. "We've kept a presence there... And the strategy has worked," Mr Bush said. No 'macho force' Mr Klein warned that there will probably be "an increased level of violence over the next four or five weeks", but said time "is running out for... murderers... who are raping, robbing and stealing from their own people". He said that raising the UN peacekeeping force to its full strength would take up to three month, and until then the troops would not be able to disarm Liberia's rebels. Troubled start for Liberia peace mission "You cannot do anything until you have sufficient force structure," Mr Klein said. "We can't put people in harm's way needlessly to show some macho force. You have to have a sufficient force to do the job properly and that is what our planners are doing." The BBC's Paul Welsh in Monrovia says that Wednesday's violence in Monrovia showed the peacekeepers how difficult the task ahead is likely to be. However, our correspondent says, the regional peacekeepers have already made a huge impact on the capital and the area around it, bringing a level of peace and stability Liberians could only dream of two months ago. The additional troops will be tasked with stabilising the rest of the country, where civilians are still harassed by gunmen and where there are still regular skirmishes between rebel and government forces. www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unmil/

Nigeria

Vanguard (Lagos) 24 Oct 2003 Itsekiri Group Wants 24-Hr Patrol of Warri Waterways Warri THE Itsekiri National Youth Council (INYC) has appealed to the Nigerian Navy to begin a 24-hour patrol of waterways around Warri, and asked the Federal Government to take all necessary steps to stop the genocide against the Itsekiri. Mr. Matthew Tsekure, Chairman of INYC sub-committee on publicity, alleged that on the morning of Tuesday, October 21, the Ijaw pirates struck at Orugbo in Warri South Local Government Area and eight hand-paddled boats conveying about 50 Itsekiri from Warri to Ode-Itsekiri and Orugbo were attacked in Warri River with all goods sunk. He said the occupants who were swimming to safety were either shot or speared to death by the sea pirates, adding that "when the news got to Orugbo and Ode- Itsekiri, a combined rescue team of young men using hand-paddled dug-out boats were dispatched to rescue those who might have escaped and swam into the mangrove swamp. This rescue team went without knowing that the pirates had hidden themselves in the mangrove. The rescue team were again attacked and their boats destroyed with some of them killed. "The Ijaw pirates again using four speed-boats moved into Ode-Itsekiri shooting indiscriminately. They left with four aged women who could not escape into the bush. As at today, we have confirmed the death of about 35 persons with others still marooned in the mangrove with no hope of their being rescued." Continuing, the statement said, "could humanity remain so callous and unendingly turn blind eyes to this unending massacre of Itsekiri by the Ijaws? On Sunday, October 5, 2003, over 29 Itsekiri and Ilajes voyaging from Awoye in Ondo State to Escravos in Delta State were massacred. We informed the people and government in Nigeria. "It was business as usual with no step put in place to prevent a further reoccurrence. Such usual pattern of quiet on the side of government (for whatever reason since 1997) when the Ijaw began their ethnic cleansing policies against the Itsekiri has always encouraged the Ijaw to do the killings with reckless abandon", the statement added. -

Rwanda

Reuters 1 Oct 2003 Rwanda Ruling Party Victorious in Assembly Poll By Arthur Asiimwe KIGALI, Rwanda - Rwandan President Paul Kagame's ruling party scored a decisive if predictable win in the first parliamentary polls since a 1994 genocide Wednesday after a race bereft of significant participation by the main opposition. "We declare RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) the winner of this election," Electoral Commission Chairman Chrysologue Karangwa said in a live broadcast on state-owned television. "By Friday we shall tell Rwandans how many seats each of these parties will hold in parliament." Karangwa said the RPF won 73.78 percent of the votes cast. The Social Democratic Party, PSD, was second with 12.31 percent with the Liberal Party, PL, third on 10.56 percent. Karangwa put turnout at 99.48 percent in the ballot on Monday and Tuesday for 56 of the chamber's 80 seats. Women's groups will nominate the remaining 24 members Thursday. Analysts had long predicted an RPF landslide since the main opposition had no role in the race. European Union observers said Tuesday that opposition candidates had been intimidated in the run-up to voting and added that it was regrettable that two opposition figures had been barred from standing in the race. The government has yet to comment on the charge of intimidation. The turnout confounded critics who had predicted meager participation due to what they termed lack of interest in an apparently one-sided race. "There were no cases of violence during polling day," said Karangwa. "Most people turned out to vote in the afternoon." Kagame, who began a seven-year term after he led the RPF to a landslide win in presidential polls in August, Tuesday predicted a huge win for his party in the assembly polls. A Tutsi, Kagame has run Rwanda since leading the rebel army that ended the 1994 genocide in which Hutu extremists killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The polls took place under a new constitution adopted in May that set up a multi-party political structure for the first time since Belgian colonial rule ended in 1962. A Western diplomat and several critics of the government said the likely RPF victory meant the assembly would remain under the firm control of the president. The current 76-seat assembly is dominated by allies of the RPF. "Do not expect any major change in the new parliament," the diplomat who did not wish to be named told Reuters. "There's no new blood and certainly no credible opposition figure." The only two heavyweight opposition figures in the race, Celestin Kabanda and Jean-Baptiste Sindikubwaho, who both planned to run as independents, were disqualified from standing by the electoral commission Friday for allegedly forging signatures from their supporters on their application forms.

Danish daily Information, 1 October 2003 By Bjørn Willum Distrust sparked low turnout Election observers, diplomatic sources and voters reported a low turnout at yesterday's parliamentary election in Rwanda in protest against exclusion of opposition candidates By Bjørn Willum, special correspondent of the Danish daily Information KIGALI - Dressed in white pants, neat brown shoes and a long-sleeved grey shirt, a supporter of opposition politician Célestin Kabanda stood at the roadside in the shadow of a tree, while cars rumbled by. Just some one hundred meters away, grey tents had been put up on the trampled-down red soil that is found all over the tiny country. All across the country, tents and at schools draped with flags and streamers in the national green-blue-yellow colours were set for parliamentary election day - according to the government the first free of its kind since the country gained its independence from Belgium, the former colonial power, in 1962. Nevertheless, he was not sure that he bothered to vote. Maybe sometime later in the day. Many of his friends had decided to stay away from ballot boxes, he explained. "Those people whom they had counted on voting for had been deleted off the list." Friday night Célestin Kabanda and another prominent opposition candidate, Jean-Baptiste Sindikubwabo, were accused of having falsified some of the 600 signatures that is needed to stand as an independent candidate. It was by time of going to press impossible to obtain actual figures on the poll turnout but diplomatic sources, election observers and voters told Information that the turnout appeared remarkably lower than at last month's presidential elections, where Rwandan President Paul Kagame received more than 95 per cent of votes, according to the National Electoral Commission. Distrust sparked low turnout "The turnout is low. You need to interpret that," a diplomat said with a smile. On the one hand, he said, some people do not know what the parliament is all about and why they have to vote again since the president already won one election. "The second interpretation is that many people have no interest in the whole thing after what happened in august," he continued with ill-concealed reference to fiddling with ballot papers, lack of closed voting booths and pressure reported in connection with the presidential election of August 25. "There were not many at the polling station," recalled one uniformed male voter in his thirties, having returned from casting his vote for Rwanda's Liberal Party. "Last time they were forced to vote for the RPF [the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the government party, ed.], so they did not want to vote this time. To vote or not to vote, that is the same thing." Polling in an open room And according to one election observer contacted by Information, there has at several polling stations been good reason for such distrustfulness. The poll was set to open at six o'clock in the morning. "The first place we arrived before six, and they had already begun. People were not using voting booths. They received a paper, after they received it, they put it into the box - in front of the electoral commission." "When I entered, they changed the procedure immediately, " the observer said, adding that people were then instructed to use the closed voting booths. Although the scenario was repeated in several places, the person in question only believes that election observers saw the tip of the iceberg - in particular those of foreign nationality. According to a press briefing from the National Electoral Commission, 1,617 observers were registered for the election, of which 167 were foreigners - most of these from the EU - who thus had to drive from one polling station to the next during the day. Another problem was the lack of ink in voting booths - the actual marking of the ballot paper takes place by the voter leaving his or her fingerprint next to a candidate or party. Instead, the ink was at some stations situated at a table right in front of polling officials. In this way, it was possible to swiftly dip one's thumb, mark the paper and hand back the ballot paper, which in many cases incidentally was folded in such a way that only the names of the government party's, candidates were visible, the election observer recounts. If you in such cases insist in using a voting booth, the observer said, "you make yourself extremely suspicious." An EU election observer, who asked not to be identified either, confirmed after polling stations had closed to Information that there had been "very few people compared to the presidential elections" and that EU observers had found "a few irregularities". Declining further comment, the person referred to the official report on the election by EU observers that is scheduled for publication on Friday. The first reports on the counting of votes indicated that the RPF had won the election by a wide margin. Archive with selected articles at www.willum.com

Danish daily Information, 1 October 2003 EU criticism of Rwanda election Election observers yesterday criticised the handling of the parliamentary election. There were reports of election fraud and threats against the opposition but the EU refused to take a stance on the validity of the poll By Bjørn Willum (Kigali) and Annegrethe Rasmussen (London) KIGALI/LONDON – EU election observers in Rwanda yesterday severely criticised this week’s parliamentary election, saying the democracy in the country was “not yet fully assured”. Among the charges were stuffing of ballot boxes, manipulation of ballot papers and intimidation of the opposition. Apart from that, the presence of the 34 EU observer teams “was not always welcomed”, as the official diplomatically phrased statement read. For example, one international observer told Information how she was first refused entry to a polling station and later asked to leave before the counting of votes was set to begin. When she insisted on staying, it turned out that all ballot papers had been neatly folded in the same way despite the fact that the size of ballot box slits normally required that ballot papers be stuffed and squeezed into boxes. Moreover, one particularly large fingerprint kept popping up during the counting of the nearly 600 votes – in Rwanda ballots are marked with a fingerprint – all of which turned out to be in favour of the RPF government party. According to official figures, the RPF won a landslide victory of 73 per cent, with the three opposition parties – that all backed Rwandan President Paul Kagame at last month’s presidential election – by and large shared the remaining votes among themselves. “I was […] struck by the fact that none of the independent candidates managed to get any significant number of votes,” Colette Flesch, the head of the EU observer mission in the country, said at a press conference. No clarification on validity But Colette Flesch had ”no comments” when Information afterwards asked her whether the result was valid and whether a re-election would be appropriate. “There will not be a re-election, you know it and I know it.” She did on the other hand refuse to use the expression ‘free and fair’ about the election. “We said what we had to say, we criticised what we thought went wrong and we think – we hope – that next time around these things will be taken into consideration.” “It is pretty clear that these are not free and fair elections,” commented a third international observer, who had also witnessed a ‘100 per cent counting’. “There really is no democracy here.” That interpretation was confirmed by a spokesman of the European Commission. “The indication is that the poll in the widest sense has not been taking place in a desirable manner. But the cooperation between the EU and Rwanda will continue to the benefit of a broader involvement of interest groups from the all of the civil society, and we will continue encouraging this in order to ensure a continued democratization of Rwanda,” he said. “The Commission is relieved that the poll took place without violent acts as such and we now await the final report that is to be discussed with EU member states in an active and constructive process.” Questionably high turnout figure In Rwanda, the EU also questioned the high turnout, which according to the Rwandan National Electoral Commission was at 96.5 per cent. “We have observed that the participation has been visibly less than during the presidential election. This holds true for all polling stations we visited,” Colette Flesch commented. On the day of the presidential election, people formed lengthy queues long before polling stations opened at six o’clock in the morning, but none of the observers whom Information consulted had this time experienced any run on ballot boxes. Instead diplomats, observers and voters said many chose to stay away as a protest against expected electoral fraud and exclusion of the two most prominent independent opposition candidates few days before the election. “I do not at all believe in the 96.5 per cent but I can’t tell you that on the record,” a very high-ranking member of the EU observer mission told Information. Rumours about observers Journalists from the local government-controlled media in Rwanda, which has been running smear campaigns against independent parliamentary candidates, as expected brought their guns into position against EU observers yesterday. One journalist thus accused Colette Flesch of having favoured the opposition because she after the presidential election campaign had accompanied one of the losing candidates to the Rwandan Supreme Court where he delivered a complaint about the election. “Dear Sir, when he delivered his complaint, I was in Luxembourg. That is ridiculous,” Colette Flesch hit back, greatly amusing the audience of the press conference.

Reuters 3 Oct 2003 Fears for Rwanda over lack of opposition October 3, 2003 Nairobi - President Paul Kagame will enjoy unchallenged authority to steer Rwanda through the next tough phase of its post-genocide history. This was analysts' verdict yesterday after his twin poll victories against sidelined and demoralised opponents. But his political party's landslide win in parliamentary elections this week means the National Assembly is unlikely to be able to act as a viable forum for dissent, creating long-term strains in a still-traumatised society of 8-million, the analysts said. "There will be no credible opposition," said Celestin Kabanda, an independent parliamentary candidate disqualified from the assembly race just days before the vote. The ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) scored a predictable if eye-catching victory in the polls - the first assembly contest since the 1994 genocide - after a race bereft of participation by the main opposition. The election victory followed an even more spectacular win for Kagame in August in a presidential contest that earned him a seven-year term as head of state and commander-in-chief of one of Africa's most powerful armed forces. But his avowed goal of national reconciliation faces major challenges, including a programme to put on trial thousands of people accused of carrying out the horrors of 1994 and scaling back Rwanda's costly army, a major drain on its economy. Critics slammed both poll victories as cheap, as the main opposition Democratic Republican Movement party was banned earlier in the year and unable to take part in either contest. European Union observers said this week opposition candidates had been intimidated in the run-up to the assembly voting and added it was regrettable that two opposition figures - Kabanda was one - had been barred from the poll. The RPF won 73,78% of the vote in the race for the 80-seat assembly. Party strengths in terms of seats won were due to be announced today. In the presidential race, Kagame took 95% of the vote. "When you look at the (assembly) figures, they reflect a one-party-controlled parliament. This kind of parliament cannot be a watchdog of the executive," said Faustin Twagiramungu, a Hutu opposition veteran trounced by Kagame in the presidential race. - .

IRIN 8 Oct 2003 Focus On Genocide Widows Dying of HIV/Aids Mediatrice Ilibagiza, 38, is a widow and mother of three who, like thousands other Rwandan women, lost her husband during Rwanda's 1994 genocide. She was also among the hundreds of women who were raped by Hutu militiamen known as the Interahamwe and soldiers of the old army, the Forces armees rwandaises, leaving her infected with HIV/AIDS. Tutsi women were the main targets of the militia assault that used AIDS as a genocidal weapon, according to Hiraly Mukamazimpaka, the national coordinator of Avega Aghozo. Avega Aghozo is the umbrella organisation that groups genocide survivor bodies representing up to 25,000 widows. These groups and human rights bodies say that the raping was orchestrated by the leaders of the genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and politically moderate Hutus were killed. "After killing our husbands, they turned to us. They knew very well that they were infected with the virus and wanted us to experience the same agony," Ilibagiza said. She has now been living with HIV for nine years. Her skin is scared and eyes sunken by the disease. The genocide did not only kill, it left in its wake lasting psychological scars on thousands of survivors. So, to many widows of the genocide, theirs is an existence filled with the agony of having lost their husbands and of waiting to die from HIV/AIDS. A study by Avega Agahozo conducted in three of Rwanda's 12 provinces shows that 66 percent out of the 1,200 widows sampled tested HIV positive. The same statistics - limited because the study could not cover all the provinces due to the lack of money - revealed that the experience of 100 days of killing and raping left 80 percent of the widows traumatised. "The misery I went through during the genocide is something I will never forget. It cost me half of my family and now my own life," Ilibagiza said as she wiped away her tears. Meanwhile, she cares for her three biological children and five others adopted from relatives who died during the genocide. Today 558 of Avega Agahozo's members are living with HIV/AIDS, but the organisation's officials said the numbers could be higher since most widows have been shunning HIV tests. "It's not until their conditions worsen that they turn up for testing," Rose Musana, the Avega Agahozo official in charge of the project helping these widows, said. She said the stigma attached to being raped by the Interahamwe had caused many victims to remain silent about their ordeal. "Some of them sacrificed their bodies for the machete and many others were forcefully raped," she said. Antiretroviral Drugs The widows are largely overlooked in a country trying to rebuild nine years after the genocide. Only a handful of these women, mostly in the capital Kigali, receive medical care and counseling. Only 20 of the 585 infected Avenga Agahozo members have access to anti-retroviral drugs, courtesy of a British and a Dutch NGO. As many continue to die of HIV/AIDS related diseases each day, Avega Agahozo continues to seek support to provide anti-retroviral drugs to the living. It has sought the support of donor agencies and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda's Department of Witness Protection and Welfare. "We have done the lobbying but we seem to be fetching virtually nothing," Musana said. This means Avega Agahoze can only provide limited support. The tiny dispensary the organisation runs only provides testing, counseling and basic medications to treat opportunistic diseases associated with HIV/AIDS. Ilibagiza is one of the lucky 20 patients who receive anti-retroviral drugs. She started taking her medication a year ago and now feels better. "I used to fall sick very frequently before I started taking these drugs," Ilibagiza said in her small ramshackle home in a Kigali suburb. "I used to spend most of my time in hospital but this stopped when I received them. I only wish my colleagues could also have access to these drugs." Ilibagiza's association has built semi-permanent structures to house close to 180 widows but her main problem remains how to get the nutritious foods that doctors have recommended in her battle to extend her life. Emotionally, the HIV infected widows are hurt by the realisation that those who caused their agony - now undergoing trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, -are receiving free HIV/AIDS medication while their victims are denied. "If we have been denied proper justice why should we receive double injustice by being denied medication? The international community should do something," Ilibagiza said still crying. Yet, the most painful feeling most of these widows must endure is the knowledge that their children will soon be orphans. Avega Agahozo helps orphans by paying school fees and finding them lodgings. But with their numbers increasing daily, the burden is becoming too great for this small association to bear. Today the centre caters for at least 1,000 children, half of whose mothers are HIV/AIDS infected.

Reuters 13 Oct 2003 No justice for Rwanda genocide victims Mon 13 October, 2003 09:57 BST BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Rwandan President Paul Kagame says the Rwanda genocide court did not bring justice to the victims of the 1994 massacres in which minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Extremists of the Hutu majority nine years ago slaughtered 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. "Despite the cost of the tribunal, justice was not served," Kagame told the Belgian daily Le Soir in an interview in Kigali. "The victims of rape as an instrument of war, of the spread of AIDS were not helped while the prisoners detained in Arusha benefited from all the necessary treatment," he added, without putting forward any demands. The U.N. Security Council in August voted to replace Carla del Ponte, a tough former Swiss attorney-general, as prosecutor for the Rwanda tribunal. Rwanda has criticised the Tanzania-based tribunal for inefficiency despite its 16 judges, more than 800 staff and a budget of nearly $100 million a year. Kagame, a Tutsi, accused del Ponte of treating suspects of the genocide and soldiers of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Army -- the armed branch of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994 -- on the same footing. "For us, that is an insult," Kagame told the paper. Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party last month scored a decisive if predictable win in the first parliamentary poll since the 1994 genocide. European Union observers said that opposition candidates had been intimidated in the run-up to voting. Kagame accused certain EU observers "of being negative, independent of what they could see". "They had already made up their mind and, at the scene, they sought pretexts for confirmation," he added.

IRIN 15 Oct 2003 Amnesty concerned over effectiveness of judiciary NAIROBI, 15 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Human rights advocacy group Amnesty International has expressed concern over the effectiveness of some of the judicial measures taken by the government of Rwanda to bring to justice those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1990 to 1994 armed conflict and genocide in the country. In a report released on Wednesday listing several concerns, Amnesty said that while it welcomed measures aimed at ensuring that genocide trials met internationally recognised standards, it criticised the government's reluctance to investigate violations committed by its security forces. Amnesty said that the Rwandan government should ensure that the presumption of innocence was maintained until the suspect's guilt was proved beyond reasonable doubt. Among other recommendations, it said the government should stop arbitrary arrests by observing the legal safeguards contained within its Code of Criminal Procedure; take measures to protect the independence of the judiciary at all levels and to ensure that judicial officials are able to carry out their functions without interference. Regarding "Gacaca" - a communal judicial system introduced by the government to expedite genocide trials - Amnesty said the government should ensure that the defendants got adequate time to prepare their defence; had the opportunity to call, to examine and cross-examine witnesses; were accorded the right to appeal their conviction and sentences; and to ensure that the gacaca sessions were open to the public, including human rights monitors. At the international level, Amnesty said, Rwanda should cooperate fully with the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda by ensuring "unhindered access" to Rwandan sites and witnesses in their investigations of those accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. Amnesty also made recommendations to Rwanda regarding civil and political rights, refugees, freedom of expression, the media and human rights abuses by Rwandan security forces in th