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?
- I have no doubt that others have done the same things that I have done.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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