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 --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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