File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1996/96-11-15.074, message 58


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. 




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