Laurent nkunda et paul kagame

He also said that neither he nor the Rwandan government had seen the draft report and did not know its contents. But the fact that the UN has been monitoring phone calls between the Rwandan presidency and Gen Nkunda will infuriate President Kagame and further poison the relationship between the UN and Rwanda. This militia raised millions of dollars to fund their war through the illegal trade in minerals, says the BBC's Thomas Fessy in Kinshasa.

Laurent nkunda et paul kagame: But the mayhem and

The Congolese government has previously denied working with the FDLR to exploit the region's rich mines. This is now for the UN Security Council to decide. Most Popular Now 56, people are reading stories on the site right now. BBC News Updated every minute of every day. Nkunda himself has been indicted as a war criminal. The US last week said that while there was no evidence of the Rwandan government directly supporting Nkunda he has been receiving support from Rwandan soil.

That is thought to refer to his continuing close ties to some in the Rwandan army, and that some former Rwandan soldiers are now fighting with his forces. Nkunda says he is fighting to defend the region's Tutsi population from Hutu extremists but his critics say he is a power-hungry warlord who is principally interested in protecting valuable gold and tin and coltan mining interests, like other rebel leaders.

Britain's influence in Rwanda has grown considerably as France's has declined since the genocide. Beforethe UK did not even have an embassy or a permanent diplomatic presence in Kigali. In all three, the Kagame regime, and its allies in Central Africa, are portrayed not as heroes but rather as opportunists who use moral arguments to advance economic interests.

And their supporters in the United States and Western Europe emerge as alternately complicit, gullible, or simply confused. For their part in bringing intractable conflict to a region that had known very little armed violence for nearly thirty years, all the parties—so these books argue—deserve blame, including the United States. The concentrated evil of the methodical Hutu slaughter of Tutsis in is widely known.

For many it has long been understood as a grim, if fairly simple, morality play: the Hutus were extremist killers, while the Tutsis of the RPF are portrayed as avenging angels, who swooped in from their bases in Uganda to stop the genocide. But Lemarchand and Prunier show that the story was far more complicated. Moreover, slaughter during the one hundred days of genocide was not the monopoly of the Hutus, as is widely believed.

Both Lemarchand and Prunier recount the work of RPF teams that roamed the countryside methodically exterminating ordinary, unarmed Hutu villagers. For example, on April 22,units of the new national army surrounded the Kibeho refugee camp in south Rwanda, where aboutHutu refugees stood huddled shoulder to shoulder, and opened fire on the crowd with rifles and with 60mm mortars.

Some commentators in the United States have viewed Kagame as a sort of African Konrad Adenauer, crediting him with bringing stability and rapid economic growth to war-torn Rwanda, while running an administration considered to be one of the more efficient in Africa. In the nine years he has led the country after serving as interim president, he won an election to a seven-year term inhe has also gotten attention for the reconciliation process he has imposed on villages throughout Rwanda.

Those concerns are shared by human rights groups, which have documented the suppression of dissent in Rwanda. Freedom House ranked Rwanda out of countries in press freedom inwhile Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also described the Rwandan government as imposing harsh and arbitrary justice—including long-term incarceration without trial and life sentences in solitary confinement.

Other Western observers and human rights activists have noted that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has never properly investigated atrocities committed by Tutsis. Thomas Turner laurent nkunda et pauls kagame parallels between the exploitation of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda and the brutal late-nineteenth-century regime of King Leopold of Belgium, whose thirst for empire drove his acquisition of what became known as the Congo Free State.

Citing a United Nations investigation of the conflict, Turner concludes:. Much as in Free State days, the Congo was financing the occupation of a portion of its own territory. Unlike Free State days, none of the proceeds of this pillage were being reinvested. After backing the wrong side during the Rwandan genocide, France had lost its will or interest in playing its longtime part as regional patron to several client regimes.

Following the removal of Mobutu, who often did the bidding of Western powers, there was no longer any clear regional strongman to mediate disputes. The allegiance of African states to the idea of permanently fixed borders, which had held firm since independence, was being challenged. In allowing the Rwandan invasion of Zaire, the United States had two very different goals.

The most immediate was the clearing of over one million Hutu refugees from UN camps near the Rwandan border, which had become bases for vengeful elements of the defeated Hutu army and Interahamwe militia, the agents of the Rwandan genocide. The only thing we [i. In an interview with the BBC on November 10,Nkunda threatened to topple the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo if the president, Joseph Kabilacontinued to avoid direct negotiations.

Laurent nkunda et paul kagame: Nkunda's attorney says he

Throughout the years, Nkunda has come under scrutiny and been accused by a number of organizations of committing human rights abuses. Nkunda was indicted by the Congolese government for war crimes in September According to human rights monitors such as Refugees InternationalNkunda's troops have been alleged to have committed acts of murder, rape, and pillaging of civilian villages; a charge which Nkunda denies.

Nkunda may have been usurped in leadership by fellow general Bosco Ntagandawho became the new representative of the group. The two might have had a falling out over a massacre of civilians perpetrated by Ntaganda's forces. Nkunda was arrested on 22 January after he had crossed into Rwanda. On 26 Marchthe Rwandan Supreme Court ruled that his case could only be heard by a military court since the military had been responsible for his apprehension.

Nkunda's defense had sought in vain to have his detention declared illegal [ 21 ]and he has yet to be charged with a crime. Nkunda has six children. Contents move to sidebar hide.

Laurent nkunda et paul kagame: President Paul Kagame's threat that he

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