Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: DRC coverage in Counterpunch

dear edward
i am so glad you are pursuing this.
as for where to direct our actions, i am in favor of directing them anywhere at all where we can have an impact
as i act with amnesty, we would normally send letters to kagame and kabila, as well as the african union. but there is a huge un peacekeeping force that simplybacked away when m23 walked into goma,  and they left the city open to them. the same seems to be happening in the neighboring countryside.
so the pressure on the security council matters, and the obstacle, till yesterday anyway, was susan rice who refused to permit the security council to attribute wrongdoing to rwanda and accept that it was supporting m23. i don't know how far that has changed. i also worry about the fact that m23 is still there, 2 km from goma, and whatever motivated them before to take over n kivu is still there
ken

On 12/3/12 5:27 PM, Kissi, Edward wrote:

Ken,

 

Thanks for your response and interest in doing something about the lingering crimes in the DRC. I will print your draft letters. They could serve as the framework for an eventual moral call.  I will also keep an eye on all perspectives offered, in this forum,  on the DRC action-matter. I will print them and also look for and speak with Daniel Kovalik and Kambali Musavali to get more information on the current state of affairs in the country. I will put together something and seek support on it very soon.

 

The African Union and African Envoys in DC and New York, and African Newspapers, should be the places to which we should, initially, direct our quest for action. We cannot yell Imperialism when we look to the United States to clean up our backyards.

 

What is happening in the DRC calls for the resurrection of our moral scruples at a time when we seem to be suffering from a paralysis of will.

 

Should you and others be interested in the database of information that Bob Hill and I have created on the DRC, you can find it at http://www.congowarresource.org.

 

Edward Kissi  

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kenneth harrow
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2012 11:29 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: DRC coverage in Counterpunch

 

dear edward et al
i am very glad you are calling for action on the drc
i work with the central african co group of amnesty usa, and the past 2 weeks have been enormously stressful due to the m23 actions. rwanda is the primary supplier of arms and troops to m23, and susan rice, the us ambassador to the u.n.has been obstructing u.s. action calling for rwanda to cease in this.
there have been actions yesterday and today by u.k. and the u.n. security council and m23 withdrew from goma.
but the basic problem remains as long as rwanda continues to feed arms, not to say troops, to m23.
i will post letters below  you can send if you wish to take action here:
ken

November 23, 2012

 

Ambassador Susan Rice

United States Mission to the United Nations
799 United Nations Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10017

 

Dear Ambassador Rice,

 

According to Jeffrey Gettleman, in his report of Nov. 21 in the New York Times, “Rwanda is widely suspected of arming the M23 and sending Rwandan soldiers to fight covertly alongside the rebels. Twice before, in 1996 and 1998, Rwanda clandestinely fomented rebellions in eastern Congo that eventually reached all the way to Kinshasa. At the time, the Rwandan government lied about its involvement, denying that it had thousands of troops inside this country.”

Despite a report by the United Nations Group of experts, Rwanda continues to lie about its involvement. According to the Group of Experts, “Rwandan officials have provided military support to M23 through permanent troop reinforcements and clandestine support through special forces units.” The investigators also found that M23 rebels have been recruited in Rwandan villages, while former members of other militias have joined the rebellion by travelling through Rwandan territory, and funds for the rebels have been collected by members of Rwanda’s ruling party. “Officers of the Rwandan armed forces have also furnished the rebels with weapons, facilitated the evacuation of casualties to Rwanda and shared communication equipment with M23,” the report said.

The leadership for this Rwandan effort appears to be James Kabarebe, who is now Rwanda’s defense minister, who was recently accused by United Nations investigators of being the secret puppeteer behind the M23, pulling the strings as a way for Rwanda to control Congo’s lucrative mineral trade and dominate this area.

Rwanda has vehemently denied such involvement. The United States has delayed a Security Council action that would demand that Rwanda cease to support the M23. If the war in the Congo accelerates, resulting in still more deaths added to the five million who have died so far, the responsibility will fall on those who failed to act now, as they had failed to act in 1994 to stop the genocide in Rwanda.

               Please support a resolution that would require Rwanda to withdraw its support from the M23 militia, and that would augment the mandate of MONUSCO so that it might intervene to prevent further expansion of the conflict.

 

Sincerely

 

President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC 20201

Dear President Obama,

We are deeply dismayed about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We urge you to lead the international community in taking forceful action to try and stop the human rights violations that are being committed and press all involved parties to ensure the protection of civilians.   

Specifically:

Press the Security Council to ensure protection of civilians from further abuse and ensure support for the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) so that it has adequate resources to fulfil its protection role.

Publicly recommend to the UNSC that officials within the Rwandan Ministry of Defence be added to the list of designated individuals targeted by the UNSC Sanctions Committee.  Also, support a Security Council resolution requiring Rwanda to immediately withdraw its support from the M23 armed group.

 Press the Congolese government to stop violations being committed by the Congolese army as well as entering in to alliances with armed groups.

 

Sincerely

 

On 12/2/12 1:12 PM, Kissi, Edward wrote:

Akwasi,

 

Thanks for sharing this. It is timely coming a few days after our illuminating discussions in this forum about “civilization”; “Greeks” and “Barbarians.” It might be time to also  find a place in our hearts and debates for the content of  Daniel Kovalik’s interview with Kambala Musavali.

 

What has happened in the DRC since the early 1990s has long crossed the threshold of a genocide, conceptually speaking. In fact, the continuing crimes there violate all the key provisions of the Genocide Convention. They constitute also the most egregious assault on Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the right to life). But, where one places the crimes of the DRC in the academic discourse on international human rights law and policy is not what is important now and  here. What is urgently needed is a solution and how to devise it and from where.

 

What can we do as a group of scholars, people, and activists fortunately brought together by Toyin Falola to think about Africa and all matters and issues relating to the continent?

 

We make our individual contributions to understanding Africa in our respective careers . That is good. But, what can we do, individually and collectively,  about what is going on in the DRC as Kambala Musavali has detailed them.

 

As an African and historian of Africa, I and an Independent Archivist,  Mr. Bob Hill (an American),  created, in 2006,  what we called “The Congo War Resource” to bring the attention of students, scholars, governments and human rights activists to the crimes of the DRC. Every Spring and Summer when I teach my African History Since 1850 course, I devote a substantial portion of time to the DRC to highlight to students the problems of government and human rights in a part of post-colonial Africa that supplies them resources for their cell-phones. Every Summer, since 2007, I have brought the DRC to the attention of Florida Public School teachers whose Summer Institute on the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights I continue to teach at the Florida Holocaust Museum with Dr. Peter Black of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dr. Mary Johnson of Facing History and Ourselves.

 

When I was invited by the UN, in 2008, to write a “Discussion Paper” for member states of the organization on how lessons of the Holocaust can be used to improve human rights conditions and also to prevent genocide in Africa  (see “The Holocaust As A Guidepost for Genocide Detection and Prevention in Africa” at the website of “The Holocaust and the United Nations”), I did not hide my lack of faith in the UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. After all, I am aware of how the US and the UN operated in Rwanda in 1994.

 

With the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda and the then raging genocidal atrocities in the Sudan in mind, I articulated a new doctrine meant solely for Africa in what I called “Obligation to Prevent.” I saw in this doctrine, the ability of countries in a particular region of Africa to come together and rapidly to prevent a human rights crisis from degenerating into an actual genocide that could also unleash a flood of refugees into neighboring countries. I hinted in that paper, the concept of “rescue”, similar to Israel’s “Operation Moses” in Ethiopia of the 1980s----the possibility that a neighboring “moral” nation could move in to rescue a group under threat. But, with the plight of Liberian nationals in my own country in Ghana, in mind, I was measured in my own view of this concept’s fortunes in Africa.

 

In September 2012, I raised the disturbing issue of the DRC in front of  policymakers from 14 African countries gathered in Cape Town to discuss how to implement the UN mandate on Holocaust and Genocide Education in Africa. I thought that charity should begin at home and what is happening in their backyard (the DRC) represented the most important entry point for the representatives to begin any curricula discussions in Africa about the Holocaust. I will raise this DRC matter again, in front of key UN officials,  in an upcoming activity in Paris commemorating the UN’s “Holocaust Remembrance Day.”

 

A few days ago, I signed, as a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a letter to the White House,  prepared by concerned scholars of genocide studies led by Dr. Sam Totten of University of Arkansas, asking about what the White House is doing about crimes being committed by the government of Sudan in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains area. Folks, there is another serious problem there.

 

People, I raise the above not as an exercise in self-promotion, but to detail my own moral journey to apply what I have studied about the Holocaust and genocide to dealing with my continent’s moral lapses. I have shared the above also to highlight one key problem that continues to gnaw at my moral heartstrings. We who come from the continent and whose image and sense of dignity in America are severely hurt by the madness of Boko Haram; the SLA; the government of Sudan, the Interahamwe and the armed militias of the DRC, to mention, but a few, should do what we can, individually, and collectively, to bring some modicum of sanity to the parts of Africa where insanity reigns supreme.

 

In a public forum at the Kaplan Center for African Studies, at the University of Cape Town, in September, I charged African students at the University to become the first group of conscientious humans to organize sit-ins and demand from their governments action to prevent grave human rights abuses on the continent. If they and students at African university campuses are not doing that, then they cannot expect non-African students from Michigan State, UT-Austin, University of South Florida etc to do it for them. I asked them to think ethically before they can think critically in whatever they study.

 

To preempt and address the embarrassing question (which no one asked) about what I was doing about human rights abuses in Africa as an African scholar enjoying my life in America, I detailed, as I have done here, the limited efforts I continue to make, as an individual, to bring attention to the continent’s terrible spots, especially the DRC.

 

What can we do as a USAAfricaDialogue family?

 

1. I have no doubt that others have done the same things that I have done.
2. I think we should write letters not to the White House, but to the African Union, and African Envoys in the UN and Washington, DC about the DRC and put whatever pressure we can on them to do something. Let us shame them into activity.
3. All of us know how seriously American policymakers take events in the Middle East. Because, there is a vibrant constituency of concerned voting activists and citizens in America who care about that region and make sure that their voices are heard.
4. Can we here as a group of Africans and Africanists become a pressure group dedicated to influencing human rights issues in Africa---so that a scholar such as Daniel Kovalik, and a concerned African such as Kambale Musavali can have more allies in us?

We should expand our “universe of moral obligation” to include those in the DRC whom circumstances have rendered destitute and vulnerable to the twisted temperament of armed groups.

 

Edward  Kissi

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Assensoh, Akwasi B.
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2012 5:38 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - FW: DRC coverage in Counterpunch

 

Subject: DRC coverage in Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/30/genocide-in-silence/

 

 

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-- 

kenneth w. harrow 

faculty excellence advocate

distinguished professor of english

michigan state university

department of english

619 red cedar road

room C-614 wells hall

east lansing, mi 48824

ph. 517 803 8839

harrow@msu.edu

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--   kenneth w. harrow   faculty excellence advocate  distinguished professor of english  michigan state university  department of english  619 red cedar road  room C-614 wells hall  east lansing, mi 48824  ph. 517 803 8839  harrow@msu.edu