File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1996/96-11-15.074, message 62


Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:48:59 +0100 (MET)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: M-G: Some newspapers 10.-13.11 on Zaire/Rwanda 


Some reports (directly or indirectly quoted) from various
recent newspaper issues (Swedish and international):

1.      Sydsvenskan (Malmoe, Sweden) Wed 13.11:

Reports that "aid to starving in Zaire is still distant".

"Scattered parts of an international action took form on
Tuesday. Canada openly assumed resposibility as main
responsible country for a military action."

At a press conference in Rome, UN gen. secretary Boutros-Ghali
said that the force will comprise some 10-12 000 men, from
appr. 12 countries. "African participation will be considerable,
after South Africa has promised troops."

At least logistic support from the USA is hoped for. The
Nordic countries have said they cannot participate militarily,
but the 3 countries Norway, Sweden and Denmark have promised
one transport aircraft each with aid.

Raymond Chrétien (Canada) and Julius Nyerere (the mediators
of the UN, respectively of the OAU) tried Tuesday to ease
together the positions of Rwanda and Zaire on international
military action and humanitarian aid.

The Zairian government doesn't want any action that will
"legitimize" the rebel forces in Eastern Zaire, and refused
a Red Cross transport plane permission to land in Kisangani.
The Zairian rebels stopped a transport with aid from
Rwandian territory to Bukavu. At least 1000 are dying each
day.


2.      Neue Zuericher Zeitung (Switzerland) Tue 12.11:

Rebels in Eastern Zaire on Monday allowed a small convoy
with aid to enter Goma in Nothern Kivu. This was the first
time since they seized power that they permitted such
transport. Aid organizations have not yet reached Mugunga,
15 km west of Goma, because this camp is surrounded by
armed exile Rwandans who almost daily are firing shells
into Goma, according to corrsepondents.

Those armed forces are among those (directly) responsible for
the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and are holding several hundreds
of thousands persons as hostages, west of Goma and also in the
vicinity of Bukavu. How to bring aid to these people without at
the same time allowing the murderers to profit from it remains
completely unclear.

President Zenawi of Ethiopia in his opening speech to the
OAU meeting criticized the international community, which
on the one hand had demanded that African states themselves
get active, but would not provide the funds necessary for this.
Several west and central African states had declared themselves
on principle prepared to act, but without financial support from
the industrial countries there could not be any decision.


3.      Le Monde (France), Sun-Mon 10.-11.11:

The editorial criticizes the USA for refusing to participate
in immediate action and asks whether this doesn't mean that in
reality the US government had tacitly accepted or even
encouraged the driving off of those hundreds of thousands of
people from Rwanda in 1994.


4.      Arbetet Nyheterna (Malmoe, Sweden) Mon 11.11:

Unconfirmed report of 3000 students having being killed
at Bukavu state university by "Rwanda rebels".

Swedish aid worker Roland Staalgren reports having met in
Lubutu, 300 km northwest of Bukavu, a student at a private
university in Bukavu whom he had also met before and who
now said that there had been a massacre in that city. At
the student's own university, only a few had been killed,
but at the state university in Bukavu, according to
him, some 3000 young students had been.

(No other sources have confirmed this, so it's not possible
to say whether it's just or mainly a false rumour.)


So far some newspaper reports.

Rolf M.




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