Date: Wed, 13 Nov 96 05:51:04 UT From: "Ang " <uls-AT-msn.com> Subject: M-G: Motivation for current violence - Zaire - snippets from All Africa Motivation for some of the current violence in Zaire (unrelated to that portion of violence aimed directly at overthrowing its "government". I haven't found any real info on that - the Militant article referred to the Zairian rebels as a bourgeois opposition group) as described in snippets I've copied from the All Africa Press Service on the WWW. Ang >From All Africa Press Service - November 12, 1996 Kinshasa (APS): (http://www.afnews.org/ans/central/central.zaire. 80038887997.html) According to reports, Munzi Hirwa had before his death written to the United Nations accusing Rwanda and Uganda of waging war in Zaire. (As archbishop, Munzi Hirwa would have been the Vatican's chief representative in eastern Zaire.) Writing to the UN mission in Bukavu, Archbishop Hirwa had accused Rwanda of using the Banyamulenge Tutsi rebels to seize power in Zaire, its much larger neighbour in the Great Lakes region, according to the Belgian News Agency, Belga. Munzi Hirwa had said the conflict in the Kivu area of Zaire was "a war by Uganda and Rwanda against Zaire," said Belga, quoting from a copy of the letter. He had asked the United Nations to persuade the United States and other countries which he accused of supporting the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Army to act "to stop this war of incalculable human damage." Cross-border fighting was continuing mid-last week after Rwanda said it had launched a lightning attack on an area near Bukavu, the first admission that it was involved in the violence. >From All Africa Press Service - November 12, 1996 by Sam Gonza: (http://www.afnews.org/ans/central/central.zaire. 80038887996.html): The estimated 200,000 Banyamulenge, people of Tutsi origin in Zaire's South Kivu province, have vowed that what happened to their ethnic compatriots - the Tutsis of Masisi, Rucuru and Bwito in North Kivu - would not befall them. Their military rebellion that started as an exercise in self defence has already proved their fierce determination to protect their lands in the Uvira. However, it is also clear that Rwanda and Burundi are fuelling the conflict for their own strategic reasons. Since independence in 1961, Zairean government authorities in the capital Kinshasa and the regional governors in the provinces, have regularly played one ethnic group in Zaire against another as part of a grand strategy of divide and rule as well as ruse for self enrichment. [I cut out further details on this]. According to Belgian radio on October 28, the Rwandese 4th Battalion in Kigali deliberately fired mortar and artillery shells into the refugee camps in Goma in order to empty them. Observers say by forcing 500,000 refugees out of the camp, Rwanda has caused sufficient mayhem to discourage foreign troops >from intervening in the conflict on the pretext of helping refugees. In November 1995, the Zairean Chief of Staff General Eluki Mongi, on a visit to Goma told local Bahunde, Banyanga and Batembe people that he understood their aspiration to rid themselves of their "foreign" neighbours. These sentiments produced an immediate effect whose biggest losers were the Tutsis who were then driven out of the area in droves by the combined activity of the Zairean army, the civilian or tribal militias backed by former Hutu soldiers from Rwanda as well as the Interahamwe Hutu militias implicated in thegenocide in Rwanda. The Rwandese had money and guns and were able to buy the services of the Zairean troops who often went without salaries for months on end. More than 10,000 Masisi Tutsis fled across the border to Rwanda, a process of eviction that continued up to mid- 1996. This campaign of eviction of Tutsis was motivated by a desire by Rwandan Hutus to carve out a niche for themselves in the Goma area and thus avoid forced repatriation to their homeland. Successive Zairean authorities had indicated time and again that Zaire would close the refugee camps by late 1996. --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005