File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1996/96-11-06.061, message 39


Date: Tue, 5 Nov 96 04:52:43 UT
From: "Ang " <uls-AT-msn.com>
Subject: M-G: Rwanda/Zaire


      >A question, since I don't know the situation well enough:
Are both (or all) sides in this Rwandan conflict essentially bad?
So that it's correct to stay out and not support any of the
parties, making propaganda instead that they should stop fighting
and come to terms?
Rolf M.

Rolf,
	I don't pretend to understand what's going on in 
Rwanda/Zaire now.  The only thing clear to me is that 
millions will die.  

1)  The New York Times had an interesting quote in 
Sunday's paper:  "In Uvira, a man asserting that 
he was the leader of the rebellion, Laurrent Kabila, 
55, told reporters on Friday that it was not a backlash 
by Tutsi against a Government plan to strip them of 
citizenship, but a coalition of groups from Shaba, 
Kasai and Kivu Provinces who wanted to overthrow 
President Mobutu Sese Seko."  

    The little I've been able to find to read about this tragedy  
(& if you translated French on this issue before, please 
do so again now!) has discussed the following:  

2) by the way "tragedy" is to weak a word, but I deliberately 
avoided the word "genocide" and couldn't come up with an 
equally strong word.  The Living Marxism website had a very 
interesting article asking why specifically the Western powers 
decided to label this as such (as opposed to similar deaths on 
a massive scale elsewhere in Africa) and question whether the 
slaughters were really based on racial hatred.

3)  The Tutsi's were set up to be the bourgeois's over the Hutu
when the land was carved up by France and others - so it's
really originally class based and they were set up to be
enemies with all the legacies of colonialism. 

3)  The IMF & Worldbank or whatever caused immediately
before the slaughter began the unbelievable impoverishment
of the people.  So that it's really an economic genocide.

4)  Refugees are refugees and shelter and food are necessary
to sustain human life but a lot of press is being put out
by these relief program/ngo's/mass media that the refugees fleeing
are the murderers and hard to feel sympathetic towards, thus
the coming deaths can be dismissed -
like in the same Times' article "They [the camps] presented
a moral quandary for aid workers:  how can you feed and house 
thousands of people who perpetrated mass killings?"
5)  Really a fight between France and the U.S. each supporting
a side to control an area near Countries with minerals, etc.
I hope that anyone who knows about this situation will
give information.  There is no more serious or severe
a situation as this one is now.

			Ang

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