The Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday banned a documentary film about a doctor who treats war rape victims, leading the filmmakers to say the government was trying to silence debate about sexual violence.
Media Minister Lambert Mende gave no reason for the decision to ban The Man who Mends Women (L’Homme Qui Repare Les Femmes), which is about Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege, the founder of Panzi Hospital in the eastern city of Bukavu.
Sexual violence by militias and the army is a defining atrocity of a conflict in eastern Congo that has lasted two decades, and the hospital has treated thousands of rape victims.
Several high-level perpetrators have recently been convicted.
Human rights groups have accused the army of using rape as a weapon, but military leaders objected to the film as slanderous, said Thierry Michel, the film’s Belgian co-producer.
“The banning of the scheduled screening of this film is a way of gagging (Mukwege) … and (the voice) of the victims of these wars and tragedies that the country has lived through for 20 years,” Michel said in the statement.
The film, co-financed by Belgium’s foreign affairs ministry and the International Organisation of La Francophonie, was scheduled to be screened in the capital, Kinshasa, next week and Bukavu the following week.
Mukwege won the Sakharov Prize, Europe’s top human rights award, last October and was tipped for last year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have missed the deadline set by the Southern African Development Community to voluntarily disarm themselves, it said on Saturday.
In spite of the presence of 20,000 UN peacekeepers, around 50 Congolese and foreign armed groups are still active in the region.
SADC chairman President Jacob Zuma urged the FDLR to come forward and disarm themselves unconditionally.
“The deadline set by the heads of state and government of SADC… for the FDLR to disarm voluntarily or face military action expired yesterday, 2 January 2015,” Zuma said in a statement.
A joint summit by the SADC heads of states would be held in Luanda, Angola to decide on measures to be taken.
“SADC remains committed to the internationally mandated objective of neutralising all negative forces operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including the FDLR, and remains ready to play its fullest part in this regard,” Zuma said.
The east of the DRC has been a conflict area for two decades, French news agency Agence France-Presse reported last month.
Two major wars between 1996 and 2003, were fought with neighbouring countries including Uganda and Rwanda intervening directly or using militias to do their bidding.
The World Health Organization has just confirmed that the newly-identified cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the Democratic Republic of Congo is genetically unrelated to the strain currently circulating in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.
A WHO collaborating research center in Franceville, Gabon, the Centre International de Recherches Médicales, had previously identified six Ebola positive samples sent to the laboratory. They report today that, “the virus in the Boende district is definitely not derived from the virus strain currently circulating in west Africa.”
The WHO amplified that finding:
“Results from the virus characterization, together with findings from the epidemiological investigation, are definitive: the outbreak in DRC is a distinct and independent event, with no relationship to the outbreak in west Africa.”
The finding is worthy of such emphasis because of concerns that the west African outbreak had somehow spread to the DRC, formerly Zaire. The viruses in each outbreak are genetically distinct, but they are both of the Zaire species of Ebola virus, a fact that might be confused as meaning the outbreaks are related.
The form of the Zaire virus currently circulating in the DRC is most closely related to one responsible for an outbreak in 1995 in the city of Kikwit. Ebola virus first emerged in the DRC and South Sudan in 1976. The current outbreak in the DRC is the seventh on record.
The index case has been clearly identified as a pregnant woman from Ikanamongo Village who died on August 11 after preparing bushmeat that her husband had hunted.
The means of viral spread, as reported by the WHO, is typical of most Ebola outbreaks: “Local customs and rituals associated with death meant that several health-care workers were exposed and presented with similar symptoms in the following week.”
Thus far, the WHO has identified 53 cases consistent with a diagnosis of Ebola, including 31 deaths. Seven of the dead were healthcare workers.
But the WHO stressed that the outbreak is primarily occurring in a remote region of the DRC, about 750 miles from the capital of Kinshasa.
Tjostolv Moland, one of two Norwegian citizens imprisoned in the Congo since 2009 on murder charges, has died in prison. He was 32.
The cause of death wasn’t immediately clear, attorney Hans Marius Graasvold said.
British-Norwegian citizen Joshua French, who was imprisoned alongside Moland, is upset but in good health, Graasvold said.
The two former Norwegian soldiers were sentenced to death in Congo in the murder of their driver, Abedi Kasongo, and attempted murder of a witness.
The tragedy that has now occurred shows us it is extremely important that Joshua French returns home soon
The court in the northeastern city of Kinsangani also convicted them of spying for Norway because they were carrying military ID cards at the time.
They have denied the charges and the Norwegian government has denied that the men were spies.
Moland, who grew up in Vegardshei in southern Norway, worked for the Norwegian military until 2007.
After that, he and French went on to work for private security companies in Africa, according to Norwegian daily Aftenposten.
Among other things, they helped companies keep their ships secure off Somalia’s coast.
Graasvold said the two were in Congo in 2009 to do research for a potential start-up of an event company that would arrange extreme tourism holidays.
They had hired Kasongo as their driver after their motorbike broke down while travelling through the rainforest in eastern Congo.
They have consistently denied the charges against them, saying they are innocent and were ambushed by gunmen.
The British charity organisation Reprieve, which has assisted French’s legal team, has sharply criticised the conviction of the two, pointing out there was no physical evidence against the men and that two people were paid to testify against them.
Graasvold said he was last in contact with Moland about a week ago and wasn’t notified he had any health problems then. Previously, during his time in prison Moland has been ill with malaria and other diseases.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said Moland was found dead in his cell Sunday morning and that members of his family in Norway have been informed.
“More than anything, our thoughts now are with them in this very difficult situation,” Eide said, adding the government has been concerned about French and Moland’s situation for a long time.
Norwegian authorities have tried to have the two transferred to serve their sentences in Norway and have also worked closely with Britain to put pressure on the Congolese officials to pardon the two.
Eide on Sunday said Congolese representatives haven’t responded to formal communications from him, British Foreign Secretary William Hague or Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
Graasvold said the two men’s families have earlier criticised Norwegian authorities for being passive in the case.
He said it was now even more important to make sure French is released.
“The tragedy that has now occurred shows us it is extremely important that Joshua French returns home soon,” he said. – Sapa
Italy’s first black minister, a target of racist slurs since her appointment in April, has condemned a spectator who threw bananas towards her while she was making a speech at a party rally.
Integration minister Cecile Kyenge, who was born in Democratic Republic of Congo, has angered far-right groups with her campaign to make it easier for immigrants to gain Italian citizenship.
Shortly before the incident on Friday, members of the right-wing Forza Nuova group left mannequins covered in fake blood at the site of the rally in Cervia, central Italy, in protest against Kyenge’s proposal to make anyone born on Italian soil a citizen.
“Immigration kills,” was written on leaflets accompanying the dummies – a slogan Forza Nuova has previously used when referring to murders committed by immigrants in Italy.
Although the bananas missed the stage where Kyenge was speaking, she responded to the gesture on Twitter, calling it “sad” and a waste of food, considering the economic crisis.
“The courage and optimism to change things has to come above all from the bottom up to reach the institutions,” she added.
Kyenge has faced regular insults since becoming minister, often from other politicians. Earlier this month a senior parliamentarian in the anti-immigration Northern League party likened her to an orangutan and only apologized after a storm of criticism. – Reuters
A Brussels court has rejected a legal bid to ban “Tintin in the Congo”, the second adventure of Belgian writer Hergé’s globe-trotting boy reporter. Black associations in the country claimed the book contained racist stereotypes.
“Tintin in the Congo” – a classic 1920s comic strip about Belgium’s celebrated fictional boy reporter – is not racist, a Brussels court ruled on Wednesday.
The Brussels Appeals Court upheld a 2011 ruling against Congolese immigrant Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo and the Belgian Council of Black Associations, who wanted the book banned.
In 2010 Mbutu, who lives in Belgium, Congo’s former colonial ruler, said Tintin employed a little black helper who was seen as “stupid and without qualities”.
“It makes people think that blacks have not evolved,” he said.
In one scene, a black woman prostrates herself before Tintin, saying: “White man very great. White mister is big juju man.”
‘Gentle and candid humour’
Alain Amici, lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the court in 2011: “The negative stereotypes portrayed in this book are still read by a significant number of children. They have an impact on their behaviour.”
Not so, said Brussels judges, for whom “Tintin in the Congo” is full of “gentle and candid humour”.
The cartoon strip, written in the late 1920s, was Belgian writer Hergé’s second Tintin adventure. It was followed by stories in which the author tried to add greater realism and historical accuracy.
Hergé himself recognised that “Tintin in the Congo” was a “youthful sin” that reflected the prejudices of the time.
In 2007 a British court ruled that “Tintin in the Congo” should be sold with a warning that it includes racist content.
Mbutu has also tried to have the cartoon banned in France, unsuccessfully. – France24
A rebel group believed to be backed by Rwanda seized the strategic, provincial capital of Goma in eastern Congo on Tuesday, home to more than 1 million people as well as an international airport in a development that threatens to spark a new, regional war, officials and witnesses said.
Explosions and machine-gun fire rocked the lakeside city as the M23 rebels pushed forward on two fronts: toward the city center and along the road that leads to Bukavu, another provincial capital which lies to the south. Civilians ran down sidewalks looking for cover and children shouted in alarm. A man clutched a thermos as he ran.
Thousands of residents fled across the border to Rwanda, the much-smaller nation to the east which is accused of funneling arms and recruits to the M23 rebels.
By early afternoon the gunfire had stopped and M23 soldiers marched down the potholed main boulevards, unimpeded. Their senior commanders, who the United Nations has accused of grave crimes including recruiting child soldiers, summary executions and rape, paraded around the town in all-terrain vehicles, waving to the thousands of people who left their barricaded houses to see them.
The United Nations peacekeepers, known by their acronym MONUSCO, were not helping the government forces during Tuesday’s battle because they do not have a mandate to engage the rebels, said Congolese military spokesman Olivier Hamuli, who expressed frustration over the lack of action by the peacekeepers.
“MONUSCO is keeping its defensive positions. They do not have the mandate to fight the M23. Unfortunately, the M23 did not obey the MONUSCO warnings and went past their positions (at the airport). We ask that the MONUSCO do more,” he said.
A U.N. spokesman said in New York said that the nearly 1,500 U.N. peacekeepers in Goma held their fire to avoid triggering a battle. The peacekeepers “cannot substitute for the efforts of national forces” in Congo, said spokesman Eduardo del Buey.
On Wednesday the Security Council will review the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo. A resolution adopted Tuesday by the Security Council asks the U.N. secretary-general to recommend possible redeployment, and possible “additional force multipliers.”
The resolution approved unanimously by the council imposes targeted sanctions, including a travel ban and assets freeze on the M23 rebel group leadership. But it did not name two countries accused by Congo of supporting the rebels: Rwanda and Uganda.
The council demanded that the M23 rebels withdraw from Goma, disarm and disband, and insisted on the restoration of the crumbing Congolese government authority in the country’s turbulent East.
The resolution also calls for an immediate end to external support to the rebels and asks the U.N. secretary-general to report on the allegations of foreign support while expressing its readiness to take appropriate measures.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday that the mandate of the U.N. forces in Congo “must be reviewed.” Speaking in Paris, he said it is “absurd” that the U.N. has 17,000 peacekeepers in all of Congo but they “couldn’t stop several hundred men” in Goma.
The French minister also said a rapprochement between Congo and Rwanda was critical to solving the crisis. Fabius said he’s been in touch with officials in both countries.
The rebels are believed to be backed by Rwanda, and to a smaller extent by Uganda, which are accused of equipping them with sophisticated arms, including night vision goggles and 120 mm mortars. Evidence is mounting of the involvement by the neighboring country and on Friday, the United Nations Group of Experts is expected to release its final report, detailing the role the neighboring nations played in the recruitment, financing and arming of the rebel movement, which was born in April.
Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende said that Rwandan soldiers had crossed into Goma, hiking over footpaths across a volcano that looms between the two countries.
“Goma is in the process of being occupied by Rwanda,” said Mende, speaking from Congo’s distant capital of Kinshasa. “We have people who saw the Rwandan army traverse our frontier at the Nyamuragira volcano. They have occupied the airport and they are shooting inside the town. Our army is trying to riposte but this poses an enormous problem for them -this is an urban center where hundreds of thousands of people live,” he said.
A Congolese colonel, who was at the frontline in Goma before the city fell, said that the soldiers he saw were Rwandan. Neither his claim nor Mende’s could be independently verified.
Congo’s President Joseph Kabila flew to Uganda Tuesday for talks with President Yoweri Museveni, a Ugandan government spokesman confirmed. The official spoke in Kampala on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge the information.
M23 rebel spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama confirmed that they had taken the airport and the city. “We are now inside the city of Goma,” he said.
Goma, a city of low-lying buildings, many topped by rusted corrugated roofs, was last threatened by rebels in 2008 when fighters from the now-defunct National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, stopped just short of the city. Their backs to the wall, the Congolese government agreed to enter into talks with the CNDP and a year later, on March 23, 2009, a peace deal was negotiated calling for the CNDP to put down their arms in return for being integrated into the national army.
The peace deal fell apart this April, when up to 700 soldiers, most of them ex-CNDP members, defected from the army, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the deal. Like in 2008, they again advanced toward Goma. This time, the city fell and the disastrous consequences for the population were already on display.
At a municipal hospital, 19-year-old Nene Lumbulumbu described how she was cleaning her house, when she was hit by a stray bullet in the torso. A father stood over his little girl’s bed, clutching an X-ray showing the bullet lodged in her chest. He had sent her to fetch water in this city where most live without running water. She was brought back by neighbors, after being hit by a bullet.
The hospital was treating children whose arms were sheared off by exploding shells, and teenagers paralyzed from the neck down. Hospital director Justin Lussy said the injuries were just the tip of the iceberg.
“Regional and international actors must now prevent this turning into a new regional war,” said the International Crisis Group in a statement. “The past week has shown history repeating itself in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with the same tragic consequences for civilians in the region.”
If the rebels succeed in taking Bukavu, it will mark the biggest gain in rebel territory since at least 2003, when Congo’s last war with its neighbors, including Rwanda and Uganda, ended.
Jean-Claude Bampa, who lives near the road to Sake, the first town on the drive to Bukavu, spoke on the telephone over loud gunfire in the background. “I can hear gunshots everywhere, it is all around my home,” he said on Tuesday morning. “We are stuck inside and are terrified. I pray this will be over soon.” – AFP
The International Criminal Court’s first convict, Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, on Wednesday appealed his 14-year sentence for using children in his rebel army, his lawyers said.
Former militia commander Lubanga, 51, was sentenced in July for his part in a war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where aid groups say 60,000 people have been killed in conflicts since 1999.
“The defence gives notice of appeal and asks for an acquittal,” Lubanga’s lawyers said in a document filed with The Hague-based court.
He was convicted in March of war crimes in the central African country, specifically for enlisting and using child soldiers in 2002-03, in what was the ICC’s first verdict since starting work a decade ago.
Lubanga, who has been detained in The Hague since 2006, is the founder of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) and commander of its military wing the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC).
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of war crimes.
The ICC, the world’s only independent permanent tribunal to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity has issued four arrest warrants for crimes in DR Congo since starting work in 2003.
Two militia leaders, Germain Katanga, 34 and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, 41, who fought against Lubanga, are currently facing trial on similar charges.
Former UPC leader Bosco Ntaganda, a Lubanga ally, is yet to be arrested to face the ICC on war crimes charges.
The ICC is investigating seven cases, all based in Africa. – AFP
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