Category Archives: Security

Kerry names Feingold special envoy for African region, including DRC

From: Judy Miriga

Good People,

Russ Feingold failed to harmonize Kenya’s situation of 2007/8. Instead of giving a hearing to warring factions to solve a situation, he made the situation worse by favoring one group against the other thus dividing Kenyans Diaspora who worked so hard to bring the 2007/8 to order and put it on a path to peaceful resolution of their problems. It is therefore that, I am not convinced that he is the right person to be send as envoy to broker a delicate situation of the Great Lakes of East Africa, more specifically the Congo situation with Rwanda. I can see in advance that he will fall in favor of the M23 of Kagame for Rwanda Government and this will be very divastating……..

Russ favored, trusted and believed in everything said by the group of Salim Lome the advisor of Raila Odinga as Gospel Truth and whatever the warring group put forth were disregarded and ignored. He had a fixed mind and wouldnt budge or change opinion to pay attention for fairness.

I am also seeing a situation where USA stand to loose grips in Africa giving a wider berth of opportunity to Chinese if we make such mistakes………We have to be very careful how we engage with Africa……..more or so now that Africa is very shaky and are unstable in their economic standing with China who is encouraging corruption with impunity and where respect for sovereignty and territorial boundaries of neighbours are not respected according to the International Treaty with failure to observe International Human Rights Law.

Africa is presently facing massive situation of LAND GRABBING with the scramble of the worlds unscrupulous greed by Special Interest to Africa for illegal occupation.

If we fail to save Africa, we shall have failed to reinvented USA power in the world.

Kerry will have made the worse mistake ever in going ahead with this plan……….

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson &
Executive Director for
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
email: jbatec@yahoo.com

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U.S. News
Kerry names Feingold special envoy for African region, including DRC

Former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., named special representative for Africa’s Great Lakes Region and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 2007 file photo. (UPI Photo/Kevin Dietsch)
Published: June 18, 2013 at 3:05 PM
WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) — Secretary of State John Kerry named former Sen. Russ Feingold special representative for Africa’s Great Lakes Region and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Speaking with reporters at the State Department in Washington Tuesday, Kerry said “the ongoing crisis” in the region “continues to trouble all of us greatly.”

“We are convinced that we have to help the parties find a path to a lasting peace, to a permanent cessation of hostilities and to the disarmament and demobilization of M23, accountability for human rights abuses and finally a breaking down of the barriers that are standing between humanitarian aid and the civilians who need it.”

M23 is a rebel military organization also referred to as the Congolese Revolutionary Army.

Kerry said the region is “a high level priority” for him and President Barack Obama.

He said Feingold, a Democrat, was “the Senate’s leading advocate and expert on Africa” during his time in office.

“I’m very grateful that he has agreed to come back to government and to apply the expertise that he gained those years for the Obama administration and for the State Department.”

In his new role, Feingold will work on issues including cross-border security, and political, economic and social assistance, Kerry said.

Topics:John Kerry, Russ Feingold, Barack Obama

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/06/18/Kerry-names-Feingold-special-envoy-for-African-region-including-DRC/UPI-78231371582356/#ixzz2Zo9EqBV7

REVIEW: It is time Kagame and Museveni take back their Rebel Groups out of Congo

From: Judy Miriga

Good People,

It is not about Kabila but the whole Congolese Public Mandate to Democratic Rights to live at Peace in dignity with its neighbours and observing the International Law for Human Rights security and protection to live a dignified life in pursuit for happiness.

The UN Peace-keeping unit in Congo is obligated to give security to Congo People, but instead, they are after hidden agenda with Kagame and Museveni, where they are seen as conspirators against the Congo people with intention to plunder Congo’s mineral resources. Because of this, the UN Peace-keeping Unit in Congo, clearly demonstrated biasness on the Congo Government but showed sympathy on the Tutsi led M23 Rebel Group which is an illegal imposter that was formed through a conspiracy by President Kagame, Bosco and Museveni with their corporate Special business interest network to terrorize Congolese people and destroy their peace and happiness. This is unacceptable………and what Congo people need is peace with their democratic space which has nothing to do with M23. M23 is a problem of Kagame and they belong to Rwanda not Congo……..M23 was created by Bosco with the help of Kagame……..That is the fact……

While I tend to agree with Maurice and Leila that Kabila may have be a spent force, and that Congo need a new Leader to move Congo forward; in other-words, if Kabila difficult to rule, let him organize to call an election urgently so that, Congolese people should consider electing a Congo-man who is capable to solve Congolese problems so Congo can move forward. This, I wont mind, but to punish Congo people and causing them to languish into too many unending killings, pain and sufferings time and again since Patrice Lumumba died, is not fair. and therefore, this situation of invasion on Congo by Kagame and Museveni is not right but very disturbing. It is destroying Congo people in order to satisfy the GREEDY of the RICH.

The fact remain that, the RICH AND GREEDY are the ones who created M23 to strike the already weakened Congo Government. What they want is FREE CONGO LAND for their special business; the reason why Land Grabbing is a problem in Congo extending through the whole Africa. If we shall fail to put Democracy for Africa into purspectives, these Corporate conspiracy will destroy Africa’s livelihood and survival with serious environmental pollution that will affect the whole worlds Climatic Situation. By the look of things, daggers are drawn which include UN Peace Keeping in Congo turning against the Congo people……..and what we read from this is that African peoles life is rated valueless with no rights……..but are fit for slavery with no cooperation. So the UN Peace Keeping is surely not for the Africa’s interest.

My dear brothers and sisters, I feel the pain of destruction, crime, abuse and violation injected to exterminate Congolese people. The Congo people are seen by the world as animal fit for slaughterhouse who do not deserve to live……..which is why the global-banksters (World Bank) ganged attacking poor Africas Economic stability the reason for planning terror on independent countries weakening their economy without caring to share wealth of the people of Africa……….This is sad…….

I am equally saddened by Ban-Ki-Moons’ overlooking UN statement here under, where they are considering pulling off from helping and supporting Congo people with its Government to get rid of M23 which was formed in March 2009 by Gen. Bosco a Tutsi and a friend of Kagame who plan to control and create a Government of Rwanda inside Congo knowing too well that M23 forming a Government of its own with Army inside Congo is against the International Treaty of boarder protection, is an assault and encounter of offensive onslaught for illegal invasion and is considered an atrocity against a sovereign Independent country, interfering with internal matters with intention to destroying its freedom, its peace, destroying its peoples livelihood and survival and rendering Congolese people Refugees in their own country LAND………This behavior is criminal in nature, it is an abuse and violation against International Law for Human Rights and it must be condemned by all good people of the world who are after PEACE and UNITY for common good of all.

When the M23 invaded Congo three months ago and took over Goma, the M23 past through UN coalition army in Congo with ease into Goma without any resistance, which was seen as a pre-planned engineered conspiracy for UN with M23 to takeover Congo land benefiting vested interest of Kagame and Museveni engineering the onslaught on Congo.

UN Ban-Ki-Moon’s behaviour in support of today’s report is clear indication that UN are amongst the interested looting party and thievers who supported M23 encroachment intrusion in Congo with a MISSION………that when Congo Government is gaining traction to remove M23 from their outbreak assailing violation, UN would rather look the other side………shame on UN peacekeeping in Congo……..

People of Africa, wake up……..wake up people…….demand for Africas justice……..there is no justice in Africa………Some of Africa’s leadership are sell-out……they have put Africa’s livelihood and survival at dangerous compromising situation, and Kagame and Museveni must be put to face ICC Hague for Human Rights crime, violation, abuse with environmental destruction and pollution in Congo……….

Rise up people and demand for Justice………..There must be a “Give and Take”……..we must demand trade that is fair, balanced and free based on democratic mutual agreement negotiations benefiting all in a varied diverse secure and protective interests……….not just to benefit a few greedy politicians with their cronies………

There will be no peace or happiness in the world if Africa shall not be free from subjective oppressiveness by the Corporate conspiracy network to destroy Africa people in ways and means……..

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson &
Executive Director for
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
email: jbatec@yahoo.com

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UN reviewing Congo army support over M23 abuse allegations

July 18, 2013 PoliticsUnited Nations
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations is reviewing support to Democratic Republic of Congo army units accused of desecrating the corpses of rebels and mistreating detainees, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday during renewed fighting in the country’s east.

U.N. peacekeepers had raised the reported abuse of M23 rebels with the Congolese army and welcomed steps by the army “to investigate these claims and to hold the perpetrators of these acts accountable,” Ban’s press office said in a statement.

Congolese army forces, or FARDC, supported by helicopters, attacked M23 rebel positions near the eastern city of Goma on Tuesday in a third day of heavy fighting that has forced hundreds of villagers to flee their homes.

“The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about reports of alleged mistreatment of M23 detainees and desecration of corpses of M23 combatants by the Congolese armed forces,” Ban’s press office said.

The 17,000-strong U.N. force, known as MONUSCO, and Congo troops have struggled over the past decade to stem a conflict involving dozens of armed groups and complicated by national and ethnic rivalries. A new 3,000-member U.N. Intervention Brigade was recently deployed to fight and disarm rebels in the east.

“MONUSCO has launched the process of reviewing its support to FARDC units suspected of being involved in these incidents,” said Ban’s statement. “The Secretary-General calls on the DRC to bring the perpetrators of these reported acts to justice.”

The United Nations threatened in February to withdraw support for two Congolese battalions after soldiers raped at least 97 women and 33 girls, some as young as 6, in an eastern town after they fled from advancing M23 rebels in late November.

The peacekeeping mission decided to keep working with the battalions after 12 senior officers, including the commanders and deputy commanders, were suspended and about a dozen soliders charged over the rapes in Minova, according to a U.N. human rights report.

M23 began taking parts of eastern Congo early last year, accusing the government of failing to honor a 2009 peace deal. That deal ended a previous rebellion and led to the rebels’ integration into the army, but they have since deserted.

A report by U.N. experts last month said that M23 recruited fighters in neighboring Rwanda with the aid of sympathetic Rwandan army officers, while elements of the Congolese army have cooperated with Rwandan Hutu rebel group FDLR.

Rwanda and Congo have both denied the accusations.

—– Forwarded Message —–
From: Leila Sheikh
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2013 4:06 AM
Subject: It is time Kagame and Museveni take back their Rebel Groups out of Congo
Afu huyo J Kabila anajificha.
Maisha magumu sana ambapo kila saa inabidi ujifiche.
Leila Sheikh

From: Maurice Oduor
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2013 12:03 PM
Subject: It is time Kagame and Museveni take back their Rebel Groups out of Congo

Judy,

You’re really intense about this Rwanda-Congo-Uganda thing. Do you have a personal stake in Kabila staying in power? If Kabila’s presence in power is inspiring all these wars, then maybe it’s time we looked at the possibility of Kabila leaving and the AU sponsoring a fresh round of elections, real elections this time. What do you think?

As it is, Kabila seems to be a President of the Kinshasa and Lubumbashi regions only. The rest is under rebel control. How many congolese have to die before we can start asking Kabila to leave? What has he really done for his country since he came into power?

Courage

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Judy Miriga wrote:

Good People,

The UN led invasion on the Rebel groups in Congo did well to start bombarding the Tutsi-led M23 which were advancing to re-capture Goma because of the failed talks in Uganda.

They were out to teach Kabila the President of Congo a big lesson. It was the reason Kagame bragged he was going to hit Kikwete when he least expected using the B words in Ki-Rwanda.

The sin of Kikwete was to request and advice Kagame to engage peace in the great lakes of East Africa.

All the Tutsi-led rebels of the M23 movement or the Hutu-led anti-Rwandan government Democratic Front for the Liberation Rwanda (FDLR) and the The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) sponsored and led by Salim Saleh, who is Museveni’s brother; are all doing big business with the Corporate Special Business Interest in Washington by spilling the blood of Congolese people and are exterminating and destroying livelihood and survival of the DRC Congo people…..the reason why DRC Congo do not have any peace however much Congo people try to stabilize their country. This state-of-affair is unacceptable.

Since this matter has gone out of control with Rwanda and Uganda invasion getting lethal…….the UN mission team in Congo with now the 3,000-additional strong special UN force may need to be more subjective in their attack of the Rebel groups with precision and they must genuinely help to save the situation conclusively and not allow themselves to be compromised by the Corporate Special Interest. Congo people too have a right to pursuit of happiness.

There is no more waiting to negotiate at the expense of Human Rights violation, crime and abuse with destructions of livelihood and survival of the Congolese except, to drive these Rebel groups back to their Country from where they belong into Uganda and Rwanda. Kabila also must stand his ground to add pressure to save his country from these extreme terrorism which emanates from instigations with engineered conspiracies by Kagame and Museveni to protect these groups for their profit. Kagame is a man and he must remain so……..

Problems can only be solved by tackling and fixing the root-cause of it. The root cause of problem of Congo people is Rwanda and Uganda private marcinaries lodged inside DRC Congo but controled from Rwanda and Uganda; forming a foreign Government inside Congo. No one can accept this kind of behavior. Kagame and Museveni must behave or else, they are both headed to a much more bigger trouble they have never seen before in their life time. They are not bigger than the world………they will not cause us heartache and disturb our peace and we sit pretty……….They are the aggressors and instigators and they will not get away with it…….It is because Civil Rights Justice must take precedence against them instantaniously……….

We must not ignore such butchery that has taken in Congo for over twenty years. This butchering started with the elimination and brutal death of Patrice Lumumba. Since then Congo has not seen peace. The Congo people have paid enough price with their blood, it is time things must be done differently.

Obscurity seems to confer immunity in high places where, strong men are judged only by their readiness to kill and take away Human Rights as they wish. Quoted in St. Augustine’s ”City of God,” how lawless armies dismembered the Roman Empire. If there be no “JUSTICE” there remain Kingdoms of selfish and greedy gangs of criminals left to control ways of life?

These Rebel/Mercenaries are gang groups of men formed under the command of a unscrupulous business community who work alongside bad leaders of the world in a compact of association to do business without paying taxes to the people’s Government, where with the control power, they plunder public wealth and resources for their selfish greedy gains and divide the loot according to an agreed Treaty they form amongst their network. This is how they establish their base, captures cities and subdues people for slavery by the attainment of impunity.

Shall we sit pretty and watch when Human Rights is abused??? Is this not a problem for the world??? Dont we need to stand our ground together under Civil Rights Justice Movement to protect Peoples Equal Justice and Liberty with pursuit for happiness for all without discrimination for the sake of Peace ???

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com/

Congo-Kinshasa: Stalled Kampala Talks Linked to Congo Clashes
By Mark Caldwell, 16 July 2013

interview

The Congolese army is battling two militias in eastern DRC, the M23 rebel group, comprising mostly ethnic Tutsi militia, and the ADF, a Ugandan Muslim armed force. The UN has a new intervention force.

The Democratic Republic of Congo said on Monday (15.07.2013) it had killed 120 fighters belonging to the M23 rebel movement to the north of Goma.

The insurgents deny these claims. The fighting comes after Uganda’s Red Cross Society confirmed 66,000 Congolese refugees had crossed into the east African country.

They were fleeing another battle zone in which the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) was attacking Kamangu, a town in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The UN has deployed a new 3,000-strong Intervention brigade with a tough mandate to fight armed groups in eastern Congo.

DW’s Mark Caldwell spoke to Thierry Vircouloun, Project Director for Central Africa with the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Why has this fighting flared up on two fronts?

I think it’s mainly a coincidence. There is no link between them. It’s clear that the fighting between the M23 and the Congolese army is a direct result of the dead end of the Kampala negotiations. The talks in Kampala have dragged on since December last year without any meaningful results.

Therefore it’s very clear for all the stakeholders that there won’t be a diplomatic settlement to the problem between the M23 and the Congolese government. Therefore the only way to change the situation is actually through the military way.

I would say that in the northern part of Kivu, the ADF is not involved in the same kind of fighting with the Congolese army.

It’s small clashes that have happened and the ADF has withdrawn to remote areas after temporarily taking some villages and taking some hostages. The main fighting is happening between M23 and the Congolese army and the M23 remains the main target of the Congolese army.

The UN has its largest peacekeeping mission in the world in the DRC, including a new intervention brigade. What have they done so far to stop the fighting?

interview

So far the UN has not done anything to stop the fighting.

They have called on the Congolese army and other parties to calm down, but it’s clear that there is a window of opportunity for military action as seen from Kinshasa, firstly because the Kampala negotiations are not moving forward and secondly because fighting the M23 is very popular in Congo unlike negotiating with them.

Thirdly, it seems like the M23 itself was very weakened by the internal fighting that happened at the beginning of the year

So what are the M23’s objectives at the moment?

I think at the moment the objective of the M23 is to resist the Congolese army and try to keep its position close to Goma.

What can you tell us about the UN’s new intervention brigade, what is its current status?

The brigade is not fully operational, the Tanzanian and South African components of the brigade have arrived in Goma, north Kivu, but the contingent from Malawi is not yet here. I also understand that the brigade has not received all its equipment.

However the MONUSCO commander has sent a very strong warning saying all civilians with a gun won’t be considered as civilians. It’s not clear at this stage what is going to be the first target of that intervention brigade.

As far as I understand, no operation by this brigade had been planned before this coming September. Howeve, given the development on the ground, the UN may be forced to intervene faster than they wanted to.

Thierry Vircoulon is the Project Director for Central Africa with the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Congo-Kinshasa: UN Blue Helmets On ‘High Alert’ As M23 Rebels Advance Towards Goma

15 July 2013

United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are on high alert today and stand ready to use force to protect civilians in Goma from an advancing rebellion by the March 23 movement (M23), the top UN official in the country said, urging all parties to exercise restraint.

The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) expressed “deep concern” about the latest bout of fighting which broke out after a significant group of the M23 attacked the national forces (FARDC) on 14 July in Mutaho, eight kilometres northwest of Goma, in eastern DRC. According to the Mission, heavy artillery and a battle tank were used in the attack.

“Any attempt by the M23 to advance toward Goma will be considered a direct threat to civilians,” the Mission warned. It also noted that the UN blue helmets stand ready to take any necessary measures, including the use of lethal force, in order to protect civilians.

The acting Special Representative of the Secretary General in the country, Moustapha Soumaré, urged restraint to avoid a further escalation of the situation.

“I call on all to abide by the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework Agreement and to allow the political process towards peace to move forward,” Mr. Soumaré said, referring to the UN-brokered accord adopted in February with the support of 11 nations and four international organizations (11+4), with the aim of ending the cycles of conflict and crisis in the eastern DRC and to build peace in the long-troubled Great Lakes region.

“I urge all signatories of the PSC Framework to exercise their influence in order to avoid an escalation of the situation,” he added.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Mary Robinson, the UN Special Envoy for Africa’s Great Lakes Region, along with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, visited the DRC in May to bolster support for the PSC Framework which Ms. Robinson dubbed a “framework for hope.”

Last month, there was talk of a possible resumption of peace talks between the Government of the DRC and the M23. At that time, Mrs. Robinson had urged both sides to engage in earnest discussion under the auspices of the Chairperson of the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Mr. Robinson was convened in Burundi last week a conference to help develop a road map for women’s engagement in efforts to bring peace to Africa’s long-trouble Great Lakes countries.

Since March, tensions in the region have been heightened, leading to the Security Council to authorize in March the deployment of an intervention brigade within MONUSCO to carry out targeted offensive operations, with or without FARDC, against armed groups that threaten peace in eastern DRC.

Uganda: DRC-Based Ugandan Rebel Group ‘Recruiting, Training’

11 July 2013

Kampala — The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) (sponsored by Salim Saleh Museveni’s brother Mercenary/Rebel group which installed Museveni and Kagame to power and who moved from Uganda to Rwanda into Congo—–where Museveni conspired for them to occupy land in Congo), a Ugandan rebel movement based in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is recruiting, training and reorganizing to carry out fresh attacks on Uganda, officials say.

“The threat is real. ADF is recruiting, training and opening new camps in eastern DRC. We are alert and very prepared to deal with any attack on our side of the border,” said Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF). “We are sharing intelligence information with the DRC government [and] FARDC [DRC’s national army] about their activities. We hope FARDC will be able to deal with the group.”

According to media reports in DRC, early on Thursday morning the group clashed with FARDC in Kamango, a town in North Kivu Province close to the Ugandan border, briefly ousting the army before withdrawing. Uganda’s NTV tweeted that thousands of Congolese had fled across the border to the western Ugandan town of Bundibugyo.

The ADF was formed in the mid-1990s in the Rwenzori mountain range in western Uganda, close to the country’s border with DRC. The group killed hundreds in several attacks in the capital, Kampala, and in parts of western Uganda, and caused the displacement of tens of thousands. The rebellion was largely contained in Uganda by 2000, with reportedly just about 100 fighters finding refuge in eastern North Kivu. From the mid-1990s till 2007, ADF was allied to another Ugandan rebel group, the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda; together, becoming ADF-NALU.

The ADF’s leader, Jamil Mukulu, a former Catholic, converted to Islam in the 1990s, and the Ugandan government has long claimed the group is linked with Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda and the Somali militant group Al-Shabab. The US placed the ADF on its list of terrorist organizations in 2001.

UPDF’s Ankunda said: “There is no doubt; ADF has a linkage with Al-Shabab. They collaborate. They have trained ADF on the use of improvised explosive devices.”

Kidnapping, recruitment

According to Ankunda, the ADF – now thought to have up to 1,200 fighters – has tried to increase its troop numbers through kidnapping and recruitment in North Kivu Province and in Uganda.

“What is worrying us is that the ADF has been carrying out a series of abductions, recruitment and attacks in DRC without much resistance from FARDC,” Ankunda told IRIN. “We are critically following up their recruitment in Uganda. We have made some arrests.”

According to a December 2012 report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), the ADF is “more of a politically convenient threat for both the FARDC and the Ugandan government than an Islamist threat lurking at the heart of Central Africa”.

“They are still isolated, and actions against their logistic and financial chains have been quite successful,” Marc-Andre Lagrange, DRC senior analyst at ICG, told IRIN. “As in 2011, ADF are now engaged in providing military support to other armed groups to sustain their movement. This demonstrates that ADF, as such, is now a limited threat despite the fact they remain extremely violent.”

According to experts in Uganda, the continued presence of armed groups like ADF is a major concern for peace and stability in DRC, Uganda and the wider Great Lakes region.

“The allegations that ADF is regrouping are not new and should not come as a surprise. What should worry us as a country is the apparent collective amnesia of treating our own exported armed insurgencies as other people’s problems,” Stephen Oola, a transitional justice and governance analyst at Uganda’s Makerere University’s Refugee Law Project, told IRIN. “The LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army] and ADF are Uganda’s problems and will remain so, no matter where they are located at a particular time, until we seek a comprehensive solution to conflicts in this country.”

Neutralizing the threat

At the moment, Uganda has no mandate to pursue the rebels within DRC. Ankunda said he hoped the new UN Intervention Brigade – tasked with defeating “negative forces” in eastern DRC and due to be fully operational at the end of July – will step in to curb the group’s efforts to destabilize the two countries.

The ICG’s report warned that it would be important to neutralize the ADF’s cross-border economic and logistical networks; the group allegedly receives money transfers from Kenya, the UK and Uganda, which are collected by Congolese intermediaries in the North Kivu cities of Beni and Butembo. It also derives funding from car and motorcycle taxis in North Kivu and profits from gold and timber exports to Uganda.

“It would be wise to separate fiction from fact and instead pursue a course of weakening its socio-economic base, while at the same time offering a demobilization and reintegration programme to its combatants,” the report’s authors stated, adding that “Congolese and Ugandan military personnel colluding with these networks should be dealt with appropriately by the authorities of their country”.

According to Makerere’s Oola, Uganda needs to do some soul-searching if it is to defeat the rebellions that continue to destabilize the country: “We must sit down as country in judgment of oursel[ves], through truth-seeking and national dialogue, to ask the right questions. Why are they fighting? What should be done to end their rebellion? How do we address the impact of the cycle of violence that has bedevilled this country from independence?”

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. ]

Salim Saleh was haunted by Jet Mwebaze’s death. Why?
Posted by Bitukirire Isaac Newton on June 6, 2011 at 2:59 PM

In Sept. 1997, an army officer and brother to Brig. James Kazini, another senior army officer, died in western Uganda under circumstances that remain mysterious. The then Minister of State for Defence, Steven Kavuma, gave conflicting accounts of what had happened to the private plane carrying Mwebaze. The media also reported various accounts. Appearing on the Capital Gang talk show on 91.3 Capital FM at the time, the then Lt. Gen. Salim Saleh was grilled by the then Mbarara Member of Parliament, Winnie Byanyima, also a panelist on the Capital Gang, to explain what Saleh’s employees were doing on that plane in which Mwebaze was said to have died. Saleh did not have an answer. Maj. Gen. James Kazini the former army commander died on Nov. 10, 2009 still convinced that his brother had been killed by the state or at least an actor in the state. But for several months, Saleh found himself almost unable to sleep. He disclosed to some people that he was being haunted by the spirit of Jet Mwebaze. Apparently it was tormenting him night and day. On the day of Mwebaze’s burial, an unusually heavy downpour of rain swept over the area. It rained heavily and continually all through the burial proceedings and convinced many onlookers that there was something suspicious about Mwebaze’s death. In 1998, Saleh tried to find a way out of the nightmare he was facing. He sought the help of a traditional fortune teller, a soothsayer of some sort, to go to Mwebaze’s grave and perform a number of rituals to appease the spirit of Mwebaze. A young man approached by Saleh refused to look up the fortune teller. Saleh finally found another young man to go to Mwebaze’s grave with the medium on his behalf. What happened, however, shocked Saleh. The young man, usually meek and modest in personality, suddenly burst out into a loud wail when he met Saleh. He shouted at Saleh and insulted him, speaking as one possessed by a strange spirit or invisible force. What happened next is not clear but this episode is a glimpse into the dark and sinister world that Uganda’s leaders since 1986 live in. Their abnormal lust for power and material things, their casual way with shedding blood speaks not of ordinary human beings, but of people possessed by what some might refer to as the spirit of death and murder. It is this spirit in Museveni, his brother Salim Saleh, and Museveni’s wife Janet Museveni that I went to investigate in July 2006 when I met a Seer outside Kampala. I ended up discovering the most astonishing things imaginable. But the net result of that experience was that all my fear of the state, what it can do, and of Museveni vanished from me the next day. I had stumbled onto what in the Bible is referred to as the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, the ultimate in knowledge of the deep mysteries of the universe. That spirit of death and murder hangs over the other leader in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. About Mwebaze’s death, Saleh had planned to mobilise soldiers and army veterans to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo to offer support security to the new government of President Laurent Kabila. But failing to successfully convince these men to go to Congo, the task fell to Mwebaze, who easily assembled the men and these men waited for the flight at Entebbe International Airport. For whatever reason, Saleh started to view Mwebaze as threat to his power and influence within the army and plotted against Mwebaze. Just before Mwebaze was to have taken that flight, Saleh — who knew Mwebaze’s love of money — convinced him to give up on the military mission and instead fly to Congo on a diamond business mission. Mwebaze agreed to. Employees of Saleh’s company, including some Israelis, boarded a plane. When the plane arrived in the skies over Kasese, it came down to the ground. Later, Mwebaze was shot dead by the army in Kasese, then under the command of Brig. Nakibus Lakara. Who gave the order for Mwebaze’s murder? Who else but the man who would later be haunted by what he himself said was the spirit of Mwebaze. It is no coinsidence that it is he, Saleh, who made the call to Lydia Draru or Lydia Atim, asking her to call Mwebaze’s brother to Namowongo, only for three hit men, not Draru, to beat Kazini to death — and then reports of a domestic quarrel conveniently fed to the media. According to NRA fighters in Luwero, Saleh was given the nickname “Rufu” which in the languages of western Uganda means “death.” This nickname was not because of any extraordinary military achievements or bravery on the battlefield, but rather, according to the former NRA guerrillas, because it was to him that Yoweri Museveni entrusted the task of eliminating Museveni’s real or perceived enemies in Luwero. These NRA veterans say that such major assassinations as that of the first NRA commander, Lt. Ahmed Seguya and many others — including, now, the killing of Maj. Gen. James Kazini — were the core assignment of Salim Saleh during their guerrilla war. In Kampala, most army generals, intelligence officers, and others familiar with the workings of the NRM government do not believe that Kazini was killed by Lydia Draru. Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire’s melodramatic questioning of why God allowed Kazini to die without first consulting he, Otafiire, reflects the amount of fear being felt within top military circles than that Otafiire was trying to express black humour. END

Exposed! NRM’s plans to rule Uganda till 2042
Written by Our Editor
Monday, 29 June 2009 04:15
The Uganda Citizen today exposes a Master Plan by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) to stay in power until 2042. Hatched in March 1992 at Rushere, Nyabushozi, home of President Yoweri Museveni, the plan exposes the NRM as having lied to the whole world in general and to Ugandans in particular, when they said, in 1986, that theirs was not merely a change of guard but a new movement offering fundamental changes.

Muhoozi (left): Museveni’s sonIn an attempt to isolate the rest of Uganda and concentrate power into the hands of two clans from Western Uganda, the ingenuous plan sets out in detail how two Western Uganda clans, the Bahima and the Basita, planned to stay in power for 50 years before allowing anybody else to get into power.The plan of action that was read out by Mr Museveni to all the 76 people that attended the secret planning, sought to make sure that all top posts in the army were held by the Bahima. It arranged, among other plans, to:
Make sure their people had the highest educational qualifications during his term of office for their children. Make sure they were the richest people in Uganda with the 50 years master plan. Make sure they controlled the army and had the highest ranks in the army.

Museveni (left) and Paul Kagame (right) – Rwanda’s president and former Uganda intelligence chiefEnsure that they take charge of all the resources in the country.

Ensure that none of those not concerned, needed to know about the action plan.

This last wish may have already backfired as those that attended the meeting have already fallen out with Museveni. These include, among others, Hope Kivengere who minded to act as the link between Museveni and the grass roots.

Museveni asked the meeting to help recruit several of their relatives in the armed forces where he would install them in the security services especially the ISU, PPU, ESSO and Military Police. “This,” Museveni said, “would assist in the resisting of other tribes that would attempt to take power by the use of force.”

In order to ensure that power remained in the hands of the two clans, the meeting directed that Elly Karuhanga take the responsibility of ensuring that 80 per cent of their children were educated to a level that would ensure their sustaining power. He was instructed to send their children for studies abroad in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa and India. A Mr Kirimani was charged with educating the daughters and sons internally, especially to ensure that he put up special school in Nyabushozi to cater for the interests of the group. It was at this juncture that Sam Kutesa suggested upgrading Bunyanyeru Settlement School from Nursery to Secondary School.

Mr. Elly Rwakakoko interjected the chairman’s speech by introducing a new chapter of how Museveni could be succeeded after his term of office. On this point, Mrs. Jovia Salim Saleh begged the members to ensure that after Museveni, the next president must come from the Basita clan. She said that she had done a lot for the Basita and taken many risks for the last 20 years and therefore it was important that the Basita take charge of the resources of the country. The members resolved that she was not in order. Mzee Ephrann Rusimira suggested that the new president should be the brother to the president if the master plan was to succeed. He warned that if the Bairu and non-Bahima clans got to know about the action plan, it would fail to take off. Mzee Rutamwebwa suggested that Salim Saleh (Museveni’s half-brother) should go back to school if the objectives of their action were to be met. It was unanimously agreed that Salim Saleh had to get a A’ Level Certificate of Education. He also suggested that someone close, possibly the son of the president should be groomed to take over the reigns from Salim Saleh. This too was agreed on and the group begged Museveni to look around for a boy who would be groomed.

The group also brainstormed about how to destroy those who would gang up to take power from the clan. Death was suggested for the potential leaders who would attempt to fail the master plan. The group deliberated that they should:- a) Deny other people access to economic resources through: (i) Overtaxing individuals and companies, which don’t belong to their’ people and protect those that belong to them. (ii) Destroy co-operative societies and unions. (iii) Sell parastatals and public enterprises that those not with the Bahima and Basita clans don’t gain from. (iv) Commercialize education and health services. c) Destroy the economic, military and political will of Northern and Eastern Uganda.

d) Ensure that a non-political Kabaka of Buganda is installed on the Buganda throne, while at the same time promoting disunity among the Baganda. e) Unite all the Bahima in the Great Lakes Region and awaken their political, military and economic process.

f) Participate in the exploitation of economic resources of rich neighbouring states. g) Making strategic alliances with whatever power in the world that will enhance achievement of this plan.

Members recommended that all those given responsibility must ensure the achievement of the objectives. Museveni was mandated to appoint committees or individuals to implement the different aspects of the master plan. It is quite clear from the points made above that many of these plans have been fulfilled. However disagreement among the two clans has led to some in this group to approach the press with a copy of the deliberations.

The following people attended this meeting:-

NAME & HOME AREA

1. Mr.Y.K. Museveni – Nyabushozi 2. Mrs. J. Museveni – Nyabushozi 3. Mr. Elly Rwakakoko – Ruhama, Ntungano 4. Mr. Eric Kabango – Rukungiri 5. Akwandanaho Salim Saleh- Nyabushozi 6. Mr. Sam Kutesa – Nyabushozi 7. Mr. Abel Katemowe – Rukungiri 8. Canon Rwabugaire Buyania – Rukungiri 9. Mrs. Rwabugaire Buyanja – Rukungiri 10. John Wycliff Karigire – Ntungamo 11. Mrs. Karazarwe Ntungamo 12. Mrs. Rwakakoko Ruhama – Ntungamo 13. Bob Kabonero – Ntungamo 14. Mr. Jim Muhwezi – Rukungiri 15. Mrs. Susan Muhwezi – Rukungiri 16. Mr. Jotham Tumwesigye – Nyabushozi, Mbarara 17. Mr. John Nasasira – Kazo 18. Mzee Nyindombi – Kebisoni 19. Mrs. Faith Bitamurire- Kebisoni 20. Mugisha Muhwezi Nyindobi – Kebisoni 21. Mrs. Jane Mwesigye – Sembabule 22. Mrs. Mwesigye – Sembalue 23. Mr. Kamugisha – Kebisoni 24. Mrs. Kamugisha – Kebisoni 25. Mr. John Kazoora – Ntungamo 26. Mr. Christopher Kiyombo – Ntungamo 27. Major Henry Tumukunde – Buyanja Kitojo 28. Mrs. Tumukunde – Buyanja Kitojo 29. Mzee Rwakanengere – Kashari Rubaya 30. Jolly R
wakanengere – Kampala, Rubaya 31. Mrs Salim Saleh – Nyabushozi 32. Rev. Kajangye Buyanja – Kitojo
33. Aronda Nyakeirima Buyanja -Kitojo 34. Mzee Mpira Nuyanja – Nyakibungo 35. Charles Muhhozi Kifaburaza – Kagunga 36. Justus Katono – Karishunga Buyanja 37. Elly Karuhanga Nyabushozi – Mbarara 38. Mzee Kafumusi – Ibanda 39. Sikora B.K. Buhweju – Buyaruguru 40. P. Kaitirima – Sembabule 41. Mathew Rukikakire – Sembabule 42. Mrs. Rukikare Kabura – Rukungiri 43. Sam Baingana – Rukungiri 44. Mrs Baingana – Rukungiri 45. Mzee Amos Nzei – Kabale 46. Mrs. Nzei – Kabale 47. Mzee Rutamwebwa – Nyabushozi 48. Mrs. Mary Rutamwebwa – Nyabushozi 49. Rev. Canon Sam Rubunda – Nyabushozi 50. Mrs. Jennifer Kutesa – Sembabule/Ntungamo 51. Eriya Kategaya – Rwampara 52. Jovia Kankunda – Mbarara 53. Mzee Rwakiturate – Nyabushozi 54. Rwabantu Rusheyi – Ntungamo 55. Col. Chefali – Kazo 56. Col. Kazini J. – Nyabushozi 57. Major Kashaka – Nyabushozi 58. Jero Bwende – Nyabushozi 59. Augustine Ruzindana Rubaya – Ntungamo 60. Ephraim Rusimirwa – Nyakabuye 61. Mzee Kaino – Nyakininga 62. Rev. Rujoki – Nshwerunkuye 63. Mrs. J. Rujoki – Nshwerunkuye 64. Prince John Barigye – Kashari 65. Kanyesigye Barigye Junior – Kashari 66. Kirimani – Nyabushozi 67. Fred Kanyabubale – Kitojo Buyanja 68. Kakurungu – Kitojo 69. Captain Biraro – Nyabushozi 70. Mrs. Nasasira Kazo 71. Herbert Rwabwende – Kashari 72. Odrek Rwabwogo – Nyabushozi 73. Hope Kivegere – President’s Office 74. Bishop Justus Ruhindi – Rukugiri 75. Justin Sabiiti – Mbarara 76. Maama Rubindi – North Kigezi Diocese

majid alemi junior. in bc. – Exposed NRM & M7 Secrets Plan On Westnilers
Re: this message i forwarded under united nations convenson charter of 1942/45 citizens right to know act. international law. to all community of nations U.N. members including uganda. based on what is the article, we the voice of voiceless appeals to united nations secretary general. to take and present this case to the united nations security council to aprove united nations peace keeping forces to westnile region. which faced war for long time. their properties destroyed, no power electricity in region,roads are in bad shape, bridges are all damaged needs repair, education system are poor, unemployments problems are high, the present government dont care about the people in westnile region. based on all major problems facing the the people in the region. we request united nations international protection branch to take charge of the region. on humaniterian cause. people in westnile was refugees for many years, now they are returnees. they have nothing, united nations to rebuil…
Sewagaba – Even Museveni will fall.
Man proposes and God disposes.God said that,”Iam the one who frustrates the ways of wise men.”Even Hitler had a dream that his Third Reich would last for a thousand years, but only lasted for twelve years. All leadership comes from God.God knows the day and hour Museveni will get out of power. Milton Obote had the same ambitions, but he ran away one night without saying bye bye to the Ugandan people. Even Museveni will fall and never rise again, because he is a liar, a thief and a hypocrite.

Anonymous

Museveni is making Ugandans to suffer on his behalf but he should remember how he came to power ,and he should remember that it’s the baganda who brought him to power so he should dictate accorddingly and hope one time he will go back successfully
wanted – security puposes
i think this not a dream, when you look what is happening in all activitise as planed, they are working. employment, education,death, disruption of tribes,security and on top of that corruption is rampant in nrm reign due to diplomatic immunity….sit back & we fall….come 2gether we shall revive the glory of uganda. ”FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY” UG as THE PEARL OF AFRICA…..FOR the case of a NRM ”for me my tribe and relatives and clans mate” as thier motto :angry-red.
grace nalubega kalema – human rights activist
Its such a pity that greed e ncrunched their heart they (Nrm)owners i call owners because their resons to stay is not that they have love and mercy for millions of citizens suffering with unemployment,poor education skill ,corruption every where museveni would insist to stay and we opity to go and leave in others countries inorder to earn a living
king concerned – concerned
It is only a matter of a few years that this govt goes down. we shall neva allow this kind of domination. am particularly alarmed by the big numbers of the same clan or tribe in makerere and other higher institutions of learning (around 60 per cent). a single county in that area has over 500 students in makerere, yetthe whole of karamoja, bugweri, kumam, as tribes and oothers may not even raise such a number. this is so so unfair

James Arinaitwe – MD POSTA
Hi, am so surprised about this, and this further confirms that MUSEVENI IS NOT A UGANDAN, but A RWANDASE. honestly u have made us banyankole and banyarwanda suffer in the future, because the truth is u can not stay in power forever, so the day u will go is the day we shall start suffering, we are going to be slaughtered like goats. and u are forgeting that this is life and one time u will die, though am worried that u will die of hard disease like cancer of course mixed with your HIV/AIDS. and your children are going suffer too. u have impregnated so manypeople’s women, all this is on record. but your days are numbered, God is seeing all James
http://www.theugandacitizen.com/news/66-oureditor.html
« Africa’s War Criminal | HomePage| Vagina Warriors take on the world »

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Yoweri Museveni is the African genocide machine
Peoples’ Media: Dictator Museveni has since 1997 been involved in the systematic destabilisation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the resultant horrific civil war. This involvement continues to this day.As early as 1992 ‘The Guardian’ reported that: “In the six years since Yoweri Museveni took power, his government has managed to alienate three of its five neighbours. Relations remain good with only Tanzania and Congo DRC.” Museveni sparked off Africa’s most tragic humanitarian crisis when it subsequently sought to destabilise Congo DRC. In 1997, the London ‘Times’ reported that “Uganda … backed an uprising by rebels in eastern Congo DRC who’s aim was to drive the Zairean Army from the region and bring down President Mobutu” In 2001, Human Rights Watch documented this involvement, stating that Museveni had “fuelled political and ethnic strife in eastern Congo with disastrous consequences for the local population.”This had included stirring up ethnic violence, murdering civilians and “laying waste their villages.” Human Rights Watch had also previously noted that Uganda was responsible for the murder of large numbers of civilians in north- east Congo.This was also confirmed by Congolese human rights organisations.In late 2002, Uganda was subsequently again accused of deliberately seeking to “provoke ethnic conflict, as in the past” – actions which the United Nations warned risked genocide in the region. In July 2003, a Human Rights Watch report, ‘”Covered in Blood”: Ethnically Targeted Violence’, stated, for example, that Uganda was involved in the ethnically-motivated murder of several thousand Congolese civilians in the Ituri area of north-eastern Uganda. Uganda continues to arm Congolese gunmen responsible for horrific acts of terrorism – acts every bit as horrific as those attributed to the LRA in northern Uganda. The Museveni regime was also accused of militarily and logistically assisting the UNITA rebel movement in Angola. Additionally, the UN has repeatedly stated that Uganda was criminally and systematically stealing Congo’s resources. A Human Rights Watch report also noted that Ugandan forces “have blatantly exploited Congolese wealth for their own benefit and that of their superiors at home.” The hypocrisy of Museveni’s public bleating about neighbouring states allegedly destabilising his government is clear. The International Community’s Responsibility for Continuing Conflict in Uganda. The international community itself shares a partial responsibility for the continuing war in northern Uganda. This responsibility is at least two-fold. Western governments continue to project Uganda as a success story when the reality is that it is wracked by political turmoil and Uganda’s economy is artificially buoyed by aid. A Refugees International report has observed, for example, that according to one estimate donors provide about 53 percent of Uganda’s budget. They also cited a UN official as saying: “[D]onors don’t want to portray Uganda as another African country that is going down the drain. Because they give so much to Uganda, donors have a political motivation to make sure that it is seen as a success story.” This pretence ignores, in addition to the conflict in northern Uganda, Museveni’s responsibility for the deaths of millions of civilians in Congo. The international community, by facilitating a military rather than a peaceful solution, also bears a direct responsibility for prolonging conflict. A UN news report, for example, has noted: “Some aid agencies working in the north have criticised the international community for allowing Museveni’s government to keep the humanitarian crisis in the north on the back burner … For example, they have expressed concern over the government’s recent decision to re-allocate 23 percent of funds from other ministries to defence, seen by some as indicating a preference for a military solution over a peaceful settlement in the north.” We call upon all our friends around the world to publish the crimes of Yoweri Museveni and also educate their local communities about the african Polpot.

COMMENTS:

Museveni in Congo and Sudan: The former commander of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF), Gen. James Kazini, a nephew of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni, was at the center of charges against the Ugandan army of wholesale looting in Uganda and southern Sudan. As EIR reported in its last issue (see pp. 58-65), Kazini was also caught in a covert caper to smuggle arms to the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army of John Garang, operating in cahoots with Roger Winter of the U.S. Committee on Refugees, Daniel Eiffe of Norwegian Peoples Aid, and notorious gun-smugglers Michael Harari, formerly Israeli Mossad station chief for South America, and Alberto P. Herreros, formerly a prime contract for the illegal George Bush-Oliver North Contra supply operation of the 1980s. The question now being raised is whether the covert supply of arms was being paid for by booty gathered by the Ugandan Armed Forces, which invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo on Aug. 2, and followed that with an invasion of Sudan in September. According to some sources, the money gained from the sale of the gold, timber, and diamonds, being looted out of Congo and southern Sudan, was put into offshore bank accounts, and then used to buy the arms and other supplies to keep the wars going. According to a South African intelligence source, Kazini was in command of the invasion of the Congo, the source having accompanied him during the campaign in western Congo, which failed. Kazini’s presence in Congo is not just military, but is also for business-a fact that came to light when Kazini’s brother, Col. Jet Mwebaze, was killedin a crash on Sept. 26 of a private plane, apparently on its way to the Congo. Soon after the rescue of some of the survivors of the crash, news began to leak out that pointed to far more than a technical failure or weather problems: The pilot of the plane was found with a bullet in his head. Colonel Mwebaze was reportedly also shot before or after the plane crashed. More than $1 million in cash was found on the plane. Other passengers on the plane included Asian businessman Arif Mulfi and Israeli businessman Zeev Shif, a partner in the Eforte Corp., a company of Salim Saleh, half-brother to Dictator Museveni and Museveni’s top military adviser. Speculation was rife throughout Uganda that the plane was going to the Congo for a pick-up of gold in areas under the occupation of Ugandan troops. Corroboration of this idea soon came from an unexpected source: an article appearing in the Oct. 12 issue of New Times, the semi-official newspaper of the Rwandan government, a military satellite of Museveni’s Uganda. The paper reported a “growing rift” between the Rwandan and Ugandan forces now occupying eastern portions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, blaming the tensions on a “clique” in the UPDF centered on Kazini and Salim Sateh. Titled “Saleh Reducing the UPDF to a Thieving Gang,” the article said, “When the war against [Congo President Laurent] Kabila broke out in the Congo, this clique saw it as a windfall-literally as a goldmine . .
.. The clique now wreaking havoc in the Congo includes Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh, Brigadier Kazini, Colonel Kerim, Major Ikondere, and the late Lt. Col. Jet Mwebaze. The list reads like a who’s who of the UPDF’s top convicts.” The article charged, “A brave and personable officer, Colonel Mwebaze died on a gold mission in the company of elements of a murky international gold- and money-laundering syndicate, heading for the part of the Congo under the control of his own brother, Brigadier Kazini, in the service of General Salim Saleh, the overall warlord.” The article was written by a Rwandan veteran of both the Rwandan Patriotic Army and Museveni’s National Resistance Army. The article further excoriated Salim Saleh for his involvement in privatization in Uganda, saying that he took a $1.5- million commission on a recent purchase of defective army helicopters. The paper prompted a visit to Kigali, Rwanda from Salim Saleh, and a trip to Kampala, Uganda to meet Museveni by Rwandan Defense Minister Paul Kagame. Salim Sateh admitted to the press that he was retrieving business operations lost with Kabila: “I used to have business with Kabila, but that is now lost,” Salim told New Vision. He also said that the Israeli businessman on Jet’s plane was in the gold business for him. He also attacked the Rwandans for “washing the dirty linen in public,” but said that the rift had been heated. “We have now established a new code of conduct for smooth running of our operations.” Salim Saleh has also come under scrutiny from the Ugandan Parliament for allegations that he is the hidden buyer of the Ugandan Commercial Bank, which is being privatized by the government. Before taking charge of the invasion of the Congo, Brigadier Kazini was commander of the fourth division of the UPDF, and in charge of operations in the north against the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and in support of the Sudanese 56. As the mystery surrounding Mwebeze’s death was still swirling around, an article appeared in the Ugandan opposition newspaper, which quoted an unnamed official of the SPLA complaining that Jet had also been in charge of a company that was fleecing southern Sudan of its resources of gold and timber. “Jet was the managing director of the New Sudan Trading Corporation (NSTC), which was the company formed by the SPLA to help in facilitating trade in areas under its control,” the SPLA official said. He charged that the company was in fact dominated by Ugandan army officers, government ministers, and businessmen. The SPLA official said that in return for their share in the company, the Ugandan government permitted the SPLA to have free rein in northern Uganda to recruit guerrillas and to conduct private businesses, especially trade in cattle. The looting of southern Sudan and eastern Congo by the Ugandan military clique led by Museveni proceeds despite the fact that Uganda is being aided by outside sources as well. In hearings on July 29, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice, an enthusiastic supporter of Museveni, reported that the United States provided Uganda with $3.85 million in military equipment last year, and will likely do so again in 1998, in addition to an International Military Education and Training Program. Under questioning, she admitted that the Ugandan military had “a lot of problems” of corruption and lack of discipline, which the government is not dealing with successfully. The privatized looting is also evidently required despite a 26% increase in the Ugandan military budget announced for the 1998-99 budget by Minister of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development Gerald Sendaula-an increase which has caused protest among parliamentarians who represent Uganda’s service-starved people. But Museveni was defended in this action by no less than the World Bank representative in Kampala, Randolph Harris, who proclaimed that the “security threats” to Uganda cannot be ignored. Money to feed the war effort continues to roll in. The International Monetary Fund announced on Nov. 11 that it will hand over a $46 million loan to support Uganda’s 1998-99 “economic program.” It is the conjecture of Ugandans that most of this money, including a recent grant from the British government of ?67 million, will be siphoned off to pay for Museveni’s military operations in the region, wars which the Ugandan people do not support. An additional question is: How much of a slice do Museveni and his relatives, including Salim Saleh, Kazini, and others who now dominate the Ugandan Armed Forces, get from the booty-grabbing and other money flows? No matter what the size of the slice, however, the British Commonwealth extraction companies that follow in the wake of the military triumphs of Museveni’s mercenary army, will take the biggest share of all.
Posted by: by Linda de Hoyos | Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Saleh’s wife sued Tuesday, 15 February 2005 A religious organization, Uganda Brothers Christian Instruction and two others have filed a suit against Jovia Saleh seeking cancellation of a land title. The plaintiffs through Bamwite Kakubo and Company advocates allege that Akandwanaho wife to Major General Salim Saleh fraudulently obtained the land title “ Nabigirwa Swamp”. They allege that they are the rightful owners of the land, which they purchased from one Petro Lukonge in 1976. The group says they had developed the land by growing crops as well as construction of buildings for their residence. They allege that Jovia came with a fake land title and started construction of a building after destroying their crops. They pray court to restrain her from taking over the land as well as stopping her construction.
Posted by: By Gertrude Nampewo | Tuesday, February 15, 2005.

Border blues – Why must African passport holders jump through hoops for a visa?

From: This is Africa

Greetings friends,

Are African travellers the only ones forced to jump through hoops for a visa? It certainly feels like it sometimes, which is probably why the story of the Senegalese woman who told the French to stick their visa where the sun don’t shine struck such a chord with Africans all over the world. But how do we as Africans treat each other when it comes to travelling within the continent? To find out, read our latest piece ‘Border Blues’.

Enjoy .

Peace.

Siji Jabbar (Editor for This is Africa)

“WE WERE RAISED BY PEOPLE WHO HAD TEARGAS IN THEIR HEARTS”
http://funx.dmd.omroep.nl/x/c/?RY5bDoIwEEW34gbGykMMJv1wDa5gpAMzCVDSDjSuvoIx8fOe5JzczhZlnmx7ueVgy6Zq8miL_lpntqy63I1JKZ2VJUrEPkiH54nMJnHFETBoNI4UZTRF21aNSQSJAkFAieTg9YaF.DLulD0wOlDCMGAEmUGZJADTUYEhIOMU1acZZlTx868PPUWV7VjgZBO3Z7HvcVf3xp8dZnb26Vfl0_P79AMA83

KENYA: SAD DAY FOR KETHI AS JUDGES ARE EXPECTED TO RULE IN FAVOR OF TNA

From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
THURSDAY, JULY 18, 2013

As High Court judges Richard Mwongo, Weldon Korir and Mumbi Ngugi rule tomorrow whether Kethi Diana Kilonzo’s name should be on the ballot paper for the Makueni by-election, most Kenyans have already concluded that the ruling will be in favour of Uhuru’s TNA party.

As former vice president Kalonzo Musyoka claimed, IEBC is TNA and TNA is IEBC, according to this Electronic Footprint-SHOCKING: TNA Was IEBC According to this Electronic Footprint …, the data shows a shocking manner how IEBC and Jubilee used the electronic data to rig the elections.

Using data provided by a source at Kencall, TNA was IEBC. TNA used 21 data entry clerks at to enter data both in its server and the server of IEBC through a backdoor entry provided by Kencall.

The server (KENCALL IP: numbers.1.numbers.40) running Windows Server 200x gave access to the 21 data entry clerks employed by TNA. The same data entry clerks, receiving calls from TNA agents, entered data into IEBC database.

The IEBC database had 16 columns including a column called User-ID- which had who among the 21 data clerks entered the data. The TNA database called (MARKET RACE) was also hosted on this same server but it lacked the User_ID column.

This shows clearly that IEBC is TNA and TNA is IEBC. That is why TNA was able to allege that Kethis was not a registered voter, hence ruling out the clearance by IEBC for Kethi to vie for Makueni by-election. Otherwise if TNA was not IEBC then how could it know that?

Against the background that Kenyans have already made their conclusion that tomorrow’s ruling by all means must be in favour of TNA. This has been deliberately done according to Kalonzo because democracy in Kenya continues to be on trial.

According to Kalonzo this was evident during the petition that challenged the flawed presidential results of the March 4th 2013 general election, which due to obvious reasons, the Supreme Court of Kenya upheld, much to the dissatisfaction of the millions of Kenyan population.

Because TNA is IEBC, is why her name could easily be deleted from the voters list. The IEBC had no any other alternative but to withdraw her name from Makueni senatorial race. Remember, this is the same IEBC which cleared her for the seat.

The advice to TNA that Kethi should not vie for Makueni came from Charity Ngilu who instead wants Narc aspirant Prof Philip Kaloki to capture Makueni seat. Ngilu who was given a land docket ministry by Uhuru Kenyatta earlier had proposed the widow of Mutula Kilonzo, Nduku, attempt that didn’t bear fruits.

Ngilu was being sought by the Jubilee Coalition to bar a very strong candidate from the race because they obviously feared her strong candidacy on Wiper Democratic Movement, which is a CORD affiliate.

One of our readers also wanted to know why former Kibwezi Member of Parliament, Agnes Ndetei is being used as messenger to fight on behalf of Jubilee Coalition to frustrate Kethi. I have two reasons; one, for it not to appear as if it was a Kikuyu war; two, to appear that Kalonzo is being fought by fellow kamba.

Most Kenyans have also stated categorically through social media that Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and Kenyan Judiciary cannot be trusted because they belong to the same feather.

The big challenge here is of course, which electoral commission can be trusted if it is true they go according to the government wish? Where then will you get a “truly independent Judiciary” composed of men and women of integrity to regain the confidence of Kenyans as an institution of last resort in handling election disputes?

Wise judges like Justice Isaac Lenaola who do not want to tarnish their reputations had to pull out of the case. Lenaola says he is uncomfortable hearing the case filed by Kethi Kilonzo who wants to be reinstated to vie for the Makueni seat. This case is based on dirty politics and can spoil you good reputation as a judge.

Lenaola who disqualified himself from hearing the suit, had last week on Thursday ruled that the file be placed before the Chief Justice Willy Mutunga in order to constitute a three judge bench to handle the case.

Yet, to date the electoral commission has failed to furnish Parliament with the final results of the March 4 General Election. Dagoretti North MP Simba Arati claims that several commissioners and senior members of the commission’s secretariat have refused to append their signatures to the results fearing a backlash from the public.

This brings the doubt of sincerity of the IEBC declaration that Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta duly elected as president after he garnered 6,173,433 votes (50.07 percent) against Raila Odinga (CORD) 5,340,546 votes (43.31 percent).

The issue is not over as yet with the IEBC. Detectives are questioning the four top managers at the electoral commission over the mismanagement of the March 4 elections according to sources close to the investigation by the anti-corruption commission.

The chairman, chief executive and his two deputies had implicated one another in the failure of the electronic tallying and transmission after the elections. A senior detective from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) told the Saturday Nation on Friday that the system failure was caused by internal fights over tenders, lack of coordination among departments and negligence.

This brings us to another big question as to why Jubilee should fear Kethi. I think because of her famous she earned during presidential results dispute between Uhuru and Raila. She presented herself very smartly before the court. With this fame she can easily be the next president of Kenya since almost every Kenyan would vote her.

Kethi is not only a young flamboyant talented lawyer, as a lawyer with talent and a lot of knowledge in law she is the new face in Kenyan screens that Kenyans are focusing on. She has become a mirror.

To spoil this good reputation is the reason why Agnes Ndetei has been used as a Jubilee messenger to write to the University of Nairobi requesting information regarding an alleged recall of Kethi’s Master’s degree certificate which they claim was irregularly awarded to her.

This is contrary to Kethi’s response that her certificates are genuine and she acquired them due to her excellence in law school. Kethi has a recognized master degree in law from the University of Nairobi.

That is why some Kenyans are challenging Ndetei and other Narc party officials including Charity Ngilu who is now coming up with Kethi’s degrees issues that they should be honest, where were they all that time? If the claim is true then they were a party to it. The good thing is that Kenyans are not fools.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Facebook-omolo beste
Twitter-@8000accomole

Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.

-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002

Tanzania to investigate killing of 7 Peacekeepers in Suda

From: Judy Miriga

Are Kagame and Museveni bullies in the great lakes of East Africa in their persistance quest to destroy DRC Congo livelihood with take-over of Migingo Island???

Will the world just sit and watch when innocent are killed with pain and suffering on the faces of the innocent?

Advancing to Goma means, the organized terrorist Rebel group of Tutsi M23 are inciting people to war and are asking for full-fledged-war. The M23 is trouble and they must be wiped out from the Great Lakes region of East Africa.

Peace is important in this region, but if the two cannot behave themselves, the world leaders must unite to stop them from taking what does not belong to them by force of the gun. They must also be made to pay for the damages they have caused in their terrorism and invasions with crimes committed. They must not be let to get away with it.

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson &
Executive Director for
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
email: jbatec@yahoo.com

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DRC wants all rebel groups to disarm

Published on Jul 13, 2013

The DR Congo government has warned all rebel groups operating in the country to lay down weapons or face retaliation.Congolese Army spokesperson Olivier Amuli told CCTV that now is the time to disarm. This comes days after UN peacekeepers clashed with a group of unknown gunmen, killing four of the attackers, a few kilometers outside Goma. CCTV’s Hillary Ayesiga reports

M23:LE GENERAL SULTANI MAKENGA ET SES 100% M23

(speaking in Ki-Rwanda is confirmation these are Rwandese Rebel group)

Published on Mar 3, 2013

PASS OUT ( sortie d’une formation militaire) DES MEMBRES DU M23. OBSERVEZ L ‘ELEGANCE DU GENERAL DE BRIGADE SULTANI MAKENGA 100%. LE TACITURNE. L’HOMME FORT.

DRC refugees stream into Uganda

Congolese refugees flood into Uganda

Congolese government troops fight M23 rebels

Sudan: Tanzania to Investigate Killing of 7 Peacekeepers in Sudan

15 July 2013

Related Topics

Tanzania: Dar Seeks Peace Missions Review

Dar es Salaam — The Tanzania People’s Defense Forces (TPDF) on Sunday announced the appointment of a team of experts to investigate the killing of seven Tanzanian soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region.

Unidentified armed assailants on Saturday ambushed a convoy composed of troops and police of the African Union and the United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) at Khor Abeche in southern Darfur, killing the seven Tanzanian soldiers.

Colonel Kapambala Mgawe, spokesman for TPDF, said the experts will travel to Khartoum and Darfur to have talks with authorities over the deadly attack, which also left 14 others injured.

However, Mgawe declined to mention the composition of the experts and the day the team will leave for Sudan.

In February, Tanzania sent 875 soldiers to Darfur on a peacekeeping mission according to a UN declaration.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday also expressed “outrage” over the deadly attack on peacekeepers in Darfur.

In a statement issued by the UN Information Center in Dar es Salaam, the UN chief expressed his deepest sympathies to the families of the fallen peacekeepers, the government of Tanzania and all UNAMID personnel.

“The Secretary General condemns this heinous attack on UNAMID, the third in three weeks, and expects that the Government of Sudan will take swift action to bring the perpetrators to justice,” said the statement.

Congo-Kinshasa: UN Blue Helmets On ‘High Alert’ As M23 Rebels Advance Towards Goma

15 July 2013

United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are on high alert today and stand ready to use force to protect civilians in Goma from an advancing rebellion by the March 23 movement (M23), the top UN official in the country said, urging all parties to exercise restraint.

The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) expressed “deep concern” about the latest bout of fighting which broke out after a significant group of the M23 attacked the national forces (FARDC) on 14 July in Mutaho, eight kilometres northwest of Goma, in eastern DRC. According to the Mission, heavy artillery and a battle tank were used in the attack.

“Any attempt by the M23 to advance toward Goma will be considered a direct threat to civilians,” the Mission warned. It also noted that the UN blue helmets stand ready to take any necessary measures, including the use of lethal force, in order to protect civilians.

The acting Special Representative of the Secretary General in the country, Moustapha Soumaré, urged restraint to avoid a further escalation of the situation.

“I call on all to abide by the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework Agreement and to allow the political process towards peace to move forward,” Mr. Soumaré said, referring to the UN-brokered accord adopted in February with the support of 11 nations and four international organizations (11+4), with the aim of ending the cycles of conflict and crisis in the eastern DRC and to build peace in the long-troubled Great Lakes region.

“I urge all signatories of the PSC Framework to exercise their influence in order to avoid an escalation of the situation,” he added.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Mary Robinson, the UN Special Envoy for Africa’s Great Lakes Region, along with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, visited the DRC in May to bolster support for the PSC Framework which Ms. Robinson dubbed a “framework for hope.”

Last month, there was talk of a possible resumption of peace talks between the Government of the DRC and the M23. At that time, Mrs. Robinson had urged both sides to engage in earnest discussion under the auspices of the Chairperson of the International Conference for the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Mr. Robinson was convened in Burundi last week a conference to help develop a road map for women’s engagement in efforts to bring peace to Africa’s long-trouble Great Lakes countries.

Since March, tensions in the region have been heightened, leading to the Security Council to authorize in March the deployment of an intervention brigade within MONUSCO to carry out targeted offensive operations, with or without FARDC, against armed groups that threaten peace in eastern DRC.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Congo-Kinshasa: UNHCR Rushes Aid As 66,000 Congolese Refugees Stream Into Western Uganda

15 July 2013

Bundibugyo — The UN refugee agency is providing emergency shelter, blankets and other essential relief items to some 66,000 Congolese refugees who have fled fighting for the safety of western Uganda in the last five days.

Refugees began fleeing after a reported attack last week on the town of Kamango in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan Islamist rebel group said to be operating around the Ruwenzori Mountains of DRC’s North Kivu province.

By the early morning hours of last Thursday, the refugees had reached Bubandi sub-county in western Uganda’s Bundibugyo district, with 13,000 arriving on the first day alone. By mid-afternoon Sunday, the Uganda Red Cross Society said it had registered 66,139 people. Whole families have been carrying mattresses, pots and pans, and children were even carrying chickens.

“This is an extraordinarily swift and concerning influx of refugees into an area with very limited preparedness to extend humanitarian assistance to such a large number of people,” said Mohammed Adar, UNHCR’s representative in Uganda. “We are, however, moving to mount the initial response as quickly as possible while preparing at the same time for an enhanced operation.”

With no indication the refugees will go home soon, UNHCR joined the Office of the Prime Minister and other agencies in providing emergency aid. UNHCR sent plastic sheeting for shelter construction, plates and cups, and temporary latrine kits as well as soap. The agency has also provided fuel for transfers to a new transit centre, 23 kilometres from the DRC border, and the first 300 refugees were moved on Sunday.

Today, UNHCR plans an emergency shipment of tents, blankets and sleeping mats.

Bundibugyo is a mountainous and densely populated area about a seven-hour drive from the Ugandan capital Kampala. The new arrivals are being received in five primary schools, and other sites. Some are staying with families in the community.

The World Food Programme has delivered enough food to feed 20,000 people for five days, with more food due to arrive on Monday. The Ugandan Red Cross has organized communities to cook and serve hot meals, while the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other partners are providing water.

Even before the arrival of the newest refugees, Uganda was already home to more than 210,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers, 63 per cent of whom came from the DRC.

Uganda Police Deny Migingo Torture Claims

By Charles Etukuri, 3 July 2013

Ugandan police force has refuted reports appearing in a section of Kenyan media that its officers beat up their counterparts on Migingo Island, a piece of land that is the centre of a row between the two east African countries.

These reports indicate that Ugandan police beat up three Administration Police (AP) deployed at the controversial island, seriously injuring three others.

“There was no fight as it was being portrayed by the Kenyan media,” deputy police spokesperson Patrick Onyango said.

He termed the incident as a minor disagreement between the two sides.

“The Kenyans were beaten by Ugandans in public glare after they were stopped at Nyandiwa Islands in Kenyan waters. As per procedure, the Ugandans were told to register at Ugingo Island, and leave their weapons behind which angered them,” The Star newspaper quoted a Kenyan Government official.

Nyatike deputy county commissioner, Moses Ivuto was quoted by the paper saying Rashidi Agore – the new head of Ugandan police at the island – was not aware that when his officers cross over into Kenya they are supposed to leave their firearms behind.

“The officer was pushed, slipped and injured his leg and was taken to hospital. We have sent more officers on the ground to ascertain the situation,” Ivuto said.

On the contrary Onyango said some of the officials were blowing the matter out of proportion.

“Our boat had got spoilt and our officer Agore asked his Kenyan counterpart for permission to take it over across to Nyandiwa so that it could be repaired and he was granted permission. But then another officer who was leading the AP, which controls the rural border, stopped them.”

The regional police commander of Busoga East, Echodu Egapytus told New Vision that there was lack of communication between the officer in the communiqué between and their counterparts on the ground.

But even as the Ugandan authorities sought to claim that the officers slipped, The Star quoted Juma Ombori, the island Beach Management Unit (BMU) chairman as stating that the officer didn’t slip but was beaten up by the Ugandans who are more superior in ranks and better facilitated than Kenyans.

“The Ugandan contingent is led by Senior Superintendent of Police, have better pay and weapons with 18 officers while Kenya’s head Richard Omaya is just an inspector with about eight officers,” Ombori said.

The row over the one-acre island has simmered since 2004 when Ugandan security pitched camp at the island to fight piracy in Lake Victoria.

Uganda Police is controlling security in Migingo in line with an agreement signed in Arusha in April 2009 by President Yoweri Museveni and his former Kenyan counterpart Mwai Kibaki to resolve the dispute.

In 2009, the two countries instituted a survey to determine who owns the island but the outcome of that survey has never been conclusive.

Echodu said both sides had met to try and calm any tensions in the area and that more meetings will be held over this weekend to calm down the tension.

Kenya, Uganda Police Clash At Migingo Island

By Manuel Odeny, 2 July 2013

Tension is high at Migingo Island after three Kenyan Administration Police (AP) officers were seriously beaten and hurt by a group of Ugandan police.

Officers from the two countries at the island have been keeping vigil with residents fearing that the tension may escalate if top official from the two countries don’t met.

The Kenyans were beaten by Ugandans in public glare after they were stopped at Nyandiwa Islands in Kenyan waters. As per procedure the Ugandans were told to register at Ugingo Island, and leave their weapons behind which angered them.

Nyatike deputy County Commissioner Moses Ivuto termed the incident unfortunate incident saying Rashidi Agore the new head of Ugandan police in the island was not aware that when his officers cross over into Kenya.

“The officer was pushed, slipped and injured his leg and was taken to hospital, we have sent more officers in the ground to ascertain the situation,” Ivuto said.

Yesterday senior officers in the county met in a security meeting and they planned to visit the island yesterday. But residents said tension has been building between Kenyan and Ugandan officers in the island and it was further fueled by President Uhuru Kenyatta recent visit in Uganda.

“When Uhuru visited Kampala the island was abuzz that the two presidents could find an amicable solution to the issue. Sadly it wasn’t mentioned to the delight of Ugandans,” Juma Ombori, the island Beach Management Unit chairman said.

Ombori said the officer didn’t slip but was beaten up by the Ugandans who are more superior in ranks and better facilitated than Kenyans.

“The Ugandan contingent is lead by Senior Superintendent of Police, have better pay and weapons with 18 officers while Kenya head Richard Omaya is just an inspector with about eight officers,” Ombori said.

According to agreement signed between the two countries, each was to have 12 officers but Ugandans have just ignored the agreement.

“These coupled with demoralization of the Kenyan officers as most are poorly paid and equipped has led to the problem,” he said.

Peacekeeping

United Nations Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo (Kinshasa)

Congo-Kinshasa: Monusco Expresses Deep Concern Over M-23 Attack and Warns Against Any Action That Will Threaten Gom

Kinshasa — In the afternoon of 14 July, heavy fighting broke out in Mutaho, 8 km NW of Goma, after an FARDC position in the locality was attacked by a significant group of the M-23.

The attack occurred after the M23 had reinforced its positions around Kibati, close to Mutaho, earlier in the day, including with heavy artillery and a battle tank.

The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) expresses deep concern over this development and calls for restraint to avoid a further escalation of the situation.

“I call on all to abide by the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework Agreement and to allow the political process towards peace to move forward”, said the acting Special Representative of the Secretary General in the DRC, Moustapha Soumaré. ” I urge all signatories of the PSC Framework to exercise their influence in order to avoid an escalation of the situation”, he added.

MONUSCO has put its troops on high alert and stand ready to take any necessary measures, including the use of lethal force, in order to protect civilians. Any attempt by the M23 to advance toward Goma will be considered a direct threat to civilians.

I will Just Wait For You At the Right Place And I will Hit You, Rwandan General Paul Kagame Threatens Tanzanian Jakaya Kikwete

by AfroAmerica Network on July 3, 2013

“Those people [Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete] you just heard siding with Interahamwe and FDLR and urging negotiations… negotiations? Me, I do not even discuss this topic, because I will just wait for you [Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete] at the right place and I will hit you! He[Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete] did not deserve my answer. I did not waste my time answering him…It is well known. There is a line you cannot cross, there is a line, a line that you should never cross. It is impossible…”“

It is in these ominous terms that the Rwandan dictator General Paul Kagame threatened to get even with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, while addressing Rwandan Youth on June 30, 2013 during a summit called “Youth Konnect””, sponsored by his wife, Janet Kagame.

Relations between Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete and Rwandan leaders have soured in the last weeks. On several occasions Rwandan leaders called the Tanzanian President “a genocide and terrorist sympathizer”, “ignorant”, “arrogant”, and “mediocre leader”. The relations have deteriorated following the recommendation by President Jakaya Kikwete of open negotiations between Rwandan, Ugandan and Congolese leaders and their respective armed opposition in order to bring durable peace and security in the African Great Lakes region.

First the Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo and Defense Minister, James Kabarebe, publicly cursed the Tanzanian President and called him a sympathizer of “genocidaires”, a “genocide denier”, and other names.

Then, General Paul Kagame, while addressing a closed door meeting with his close aides, called the Tanzanian President “4Bs”, which in Rwandan language means “an opportunist, attention seeker, arrogant and contemptible person.”

Then the Rwandan puppet Hutu Prime minister Prime Minister called the Tanzanian President a mediocre leader .

The latest public threats by General Paul Kagame against the physical person of the Tanzanian President are arguably the most serious sign of how worse the relations among the two countries and the their leaders have become. According to sources in Kigali, General Kagame has also been frustrated by the attention Tanzanian President has been receiving from World powers. Until a few years ago, Rwanda and its dictator was the darling of the West. The attention from the West has since dwindled.

The recent visit by US President Barack Obama to Tanzania may have further increased the frustration and perhaps led to the grave public threats by General Paul Kagame against the Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.

The upcoming days and months promise to be full of anticipation and sursprises in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

2013 AfroAmerica Network. All Rights Reserved.

Tagged as: FDLR, General Kagame, Jakaya Kikwete, President Barack Obama, Rwanda, Tanzania

VATICAN FREEZES PRELATE ACCOUNT AS MUSLIMS WANT NUNCIO EXPELLED

From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
SATURDAY, JULY 13, 2013

A jailed prelate’s accounts at the Vatican bank have been frozen as part of an investigation into his financial dealings, the Guardian report. According to Pope’s spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi the Promoter of Justice – an official similar to a chief prosecutor – had ordered the freezing of two accounts belonging to Monsignor Nunzio Scarano. The monsignor is accused by the Italian authorities of being the central figure in a bizarre plot to smuggle €20m (£17m) into Italy from Switzerland.

It is at the same time a group of Malay Muslim NGOs have called for the expulsion of the Vatican’s first Apostolic Nuncio to Malaysia, Archbishop Joseph Marino, for remarks attributed to him on the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims.

The group’s secretariat publicity chief Dzulkarnain Taib said Archbishop Marino should not interfere with the country’s internal affairs. “As ambassador here, he is to forge close diplomatic ties, but what he said was beyond his job scope and could be interpreted as having another agenda,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Dzulkarnain was commenting on Archbishop Marino’s remarks on Thursday that the fact-sheet presented by the Christian Federation of Malaysia (CFM) on the use of the word “Allah” was sensible and logical.

The Islamic Missionary Foundation of Malaysia (Yadim) also expressed disappointment with Archbishop Marino’s remarks. “As a diplomat, he should be neutral on the matter and not touch on sensitive issues involving Muslims in the country,’’ said its chief Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki, who called on the archbishop to withdraw his remarks and apologise to Muslims.

On the bank, the case has embarrassed the Vatican as it struggles to convince international watchdogs that its financial institutions have adequate safeguards against money-laundering. The Promoter of Justice’s move showed the Vatican was taking an active role in the affair.

But Lombardi said that it took effect on 9 July, and it was not immediately clear why the Vatican authorities had waited 10 days after Scarano’s arrest before blocking his accounts.

The monsignor, who was a banker before he became a priest, is a senior official of the Vatican’s asset management arm, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA). It is claimed that he conspired with an Italian secret service officer and a financial intermediary to repatriate the cash aboard a private jet.

In a statement to prosecutors this week, leaked to Italian media, Scarano was quoted as saying he stood to receive €2.5m for his part in the operation. He planned to spend €1m building a church in Umbria, but intended keeping the rest, at least temporarily.

He was said to have told prosecutors he regarded the remaining €1.5m as a loan “that would have enabled me to resolve certain financial problems” arising from a defunct business enterprise with a relative. Prosecutors are reported to have estimated that Scarano’s personal assets were worth around €500,000.

The prelate reportedly acknowledged that a family of Neapolitan ship owners had made monthly transfers, registered as charitable donations, to an account he held at the Vatican bank. The Italian prosecutors believe the money that was to have been brought in from Switzerland belonged to three members of the family, all brothers. Two have denied the money is theirs. The third has said nothing.

Among other unresolved aspects of the case are the amount and whereabouts of the cash. Scarano was said to have put the total at €41m, which had since been transferred to Beirut.

Though awkward in many respects, the Scarano affair has strengthened Pope Francis’s hand as he sets about cleaning up the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR). The prelate was arrested two days after Francis set up a commission to brief him on the IOR’s activities and suggest reforms.

The pope himself took part in the commission’s first meeting, which was held this week at the guest house in the Vatican where he has opted to live. Scandals shown or alleged to have involved the Vatican’s financiers have been embarrassing successive popes since 1982 when Roberto Calvi, a banker with close ties to the IOR, was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London.

The circumstances of his death remain a mystery. Equally unclear are the reasons for the disappearance the following year of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee. Prosecutors in Rome are currently taking statements from Marco Fassoni Accetti, a colourful figure with a strong resemblance to the comedian Roberto Benigni.

Fassoni Accetti claims to have helped kidnap the girl as part of a conspiracy to thwart the anti-communist activities of Pope John Paul II. In the latest of his increasingly controversial statements, he has made allegations about the names of his fellow-conspirators including discrediting the then head of the IOR, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Facebook-omolo beste
Twitter-@8000accomole

Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.

-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002

Kagame Hits Back on Kikwete’s call to negotiate

From: Judy Miriga

Good People!

FDLR controls 50 percent of the South Kivu Province but they are a mixture of both Hutu, Tutsi and Congo Rebel groups. M23 is predominantly Tutsi of the Kagame tribal group which is why, Kagame gives its full financial support and protection for Kagame’s benefit looting from Congo. Kagame is the aggressor terrorizing and killing innocent Congolese and driving them our of their land for Tutsi to occupy Congolese land, for which he has created a government within another government inside the DRC Congo for his benefit.

Kagame made M23 to be a strong voice demanding what does not belong to them in Congo.

From intelligence observation, M23 is working with FDLR to benefit Kagame. He has made it a smart business to loot from DRC Congo. This is why Kikwete requested him to talk with FDLR and stop Congolese massacre. If they are able to talk when it is business, why should they not talk when Human Rights demands, after-all, both Ribel group were created by Kagame and Museveni. Kagame created this group was fighting the Habyarimana regime, in 1980s and this part cannot be ignored. Killing Congolese children and women is not justifiable matter. Kagame must be forced to eat a humble pie……..

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson &
Executive Director for
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
email: jbatec@yahoo.com

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Rwanda, Zambia agree on refugee repatriation

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Zambia agree on refugee repatriation

Rwandan refugees registering upon arrival

Rwanda and Zambia have agreed on a comprehensive strategy for former Rwandan refugees living in Zambia.

In a joint communiqué signed on Friday night following a bilateral meeting by the two governments held in Lusaka last week, the two countries reiterated the call for the two countries to establish diplomatic missions in their respective capitals for enhanced bilateral cooperation.

The Zambian delegation was led by Minister of Home Affairs Edgar Lungu while the Rwandan team was headed by that country’s Minister of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs Seraphine Mukantabana.

These deliberations come as a follow-up to the regional assessment meeting of the global strategy on the search for durable solutions for former refugees, that was held in April in South Africa.

They also come following the effect of the cessation clause for Rwandan refugees that took effect on June 30.

The two delegations agreed that voluntary repatriation will remain open and efforts to encourage it will continue.

It was also agreed that former Rwandan refugees who wish to stay in Zambia will be facilitated by the Rwandan government in collaboration with the Zambian government.

“This is in order to facilitate processing and issuance of immigration permits in Zambia. The criteria and procedures for the eligibility to local integration will be set and published by the Zambian government,” reads the joint communiqué in part.

The communiqué further states that passport application forms for former Rwandan refugees shall be made available in Zambia through the office of the Commissioner for Refugees (COR) as the focal point for the process in Zambia.

While the focal point in Rwanda will be the Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration. Additionally, the two governments also agreed that the said forms shall be available online for downloading and submission to COR.

Since the coming into effect cessation clause, hundreds of Rwandan returnees from regional neighbours have been streaming into the country on a daily basis.

According to MIDIMAR, intense registration program is under way to provide passports for tens of thousands of Rwandans who lost refugee status on June 30 as a result of the UN cessation clause, but prefer to stay in the host countries.

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Stop Paul Kagame From Destroying Rwandan and Congolese Lives

Sign

The Petition

Paul Kagame visits Said Business School at Oxford University on 18/05/13.

We the undersigned hereby affirm that continued support to the Rwandan president Paul Kagame and his country by British institutions and government are irreversibly destroying the lives of millions of Rwandans and Congolese. This sounds contrary to the Western media coverage of the politics of region and for particular reasons.

Since July 4th, 1994, when Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front took power in Kigali after the genocide, they invested heavily and continue to do so in lobbying influential personalities such as Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and American investor Howard B. Buffet to portray his regime as a model of development in Africa.

But it is not rightly weighted how undemocratically his regime operates. On August 9th, 2010 the Rwandan president scored 93.4% of the votes in staged presidential elections. And this happened after assassination of politicians and journalists and imprisoning others. His regime took its criminal activities in foreign countries: United Kingdom, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa.

The reality is that the Rwandan government has put in place policies of killing imprisoning, and oppressing its citizens at levels never experienced in the country’s history. The claimed and drummed about development concerns only Kigali the capital and benefits less than 10% of the population. Instead the Rwandan president criminal activities have not stopped within national boundaries of his country. Since 1996 he waged wars in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to the United States Geographic Survey, Rwanda produced more than 25% of the world’s coltan in 2011 more than what their coltan deposits should be able to provide. Rwandan coltan mining relied on mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some of which are in conflict areas and others not.

More than 6 millions of Congolese lives have been lost and five hundreds thousands of women girls and even men raped by militia and military groups he has been funding to help him plunder the country’s enormous mineral resources. The last of these groups is the rebel movement M23 operating in Eastern Congo and whose the ICC indicted General Bosco Ntaganda was part of.

On May 18th, 2013 the Rwandan President Paul Kagame is invited as a guest speaker at the Said Business School – University of Oxford. This might not be his last visit in the United Kingdom if the British members of parliament continue to be blind at the crimes he has been accused of by many UN reports and renowned human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, both in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Being at the side of the victims of the Rwandan dictator is what the undersigned would normally expect from institutions that claim universally to advocate for democracy, human rights, justice and development.

For the UK government and institutions to persist in being blind at the never ending crimes that President Paul Kagame is committing in DRC and indescribable suffering he causes to millions of his citizens would confirm complicity, which would look as criminal too.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop-paul-kagame-from-destroying-rwandan-and/

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Africa will not fold its arms amid terrorism: Kagame
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Africa will not fold its arms amid terrorism

There are numerous Rwandan troops keeping peace around the World

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame stated in a press conference last month that terrorism is spreading within African continent and it is not advisable to continue folding arms despite such a threat.

Many people across the globe wonder why Rwanda continues to be a model in terms of peace keeping missions in different parts of the planet.

The same question will always be asked as long as the world does not yet understand the way Rwandans treat the security issues, especially with the fact that Rwanda as a nation was hurt by genocide and experienced horrifying human rights violence.

What makes Rwanda an outstanding peace keeper?

Discipline and determination are key qualities that are keeping Rwanda’s image on a high scale, and that goes down in the troops’ minds from the high commanding system. Rwanda is now praised all over the world for the role it plays in securing post-conflict regions and making an impact on the populations welfare in delivering vital services to them.

That goes round with top Rwandan militaries nominations by international organizations to head those missions. The recent nomination was when Maj. Gen Jean Bosco Kazura was appointed by the UN Secretary General to lead MINUSMA (Mali) which is the third largest UN mission with 12,000 soldiers.

Nevertheless, the Rwandans nominations cannot serve if the inside authorities don’t believe in their men and/or if they are not determined to facilitate them. The appointment of Gen. Kazura comes while another Rwandan Gen. Patrick Nyamvumba had finished his term as head of United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID).

President of Rwanda Paul Kagame is committed to help Rwandan military to be professional and useful not only in the country but also all over the world, one of many remarkable and developmental issues he deals with for Rwandans and their country.

Olivier Nduhungirehe, Rwanda’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, says General Kazura was appointed Force Commander of MINUSMA, “first, because of his personal competence and experience” and secondly “because of the role Rwanda has played in peacekeeping operations for the last nine years, particularly in Darfur.”

If Rwanda would not have done what was done in Darfur, Haiti, and Liberia or if Kazura would have been well facilitated to acquire professionalism and military knowledge, we would have been writing another story.

Can Rwanda send troops in Mali?

The mission led by Gen Kazura will undoubtedly play a key role in Mali’s presidential polls scheduled for July 28. This means the security has to be priority and given the terrorist groups’ experience in the region, the battle might not be easy.

One of the challenge the new Commander would face is the fact Rwanda did not deploy soldiers in Mali and that would be difficult to command the troops you have never been with before. The question repeats: is Rwanda ready to deploy in Mali?

According to the President Kagame’s words it is possible that Rwandan peacekeepers may also be deployed in the near future. In a news conference last month, President Kagame acknowledged that “There is a possibility of sending troops to Mali.” And a request had already been made, he said.

“Africa cannot, and should not, fold its arms when terrorist and criminal groups are occupying over half the territory of a Member State, carrying out the most atrocious crimes against innocent civilians and destroying monuments that are of great significance to Africa’s heritage and civilization.” Kagame stressed

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Rwandan exiles warned of assassination threat by London police

Two dissidents living in London told that Rwandan government poses imminent risk to their lives

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Haroon Siddique
The Guardian, Friday 20 May 2011 06.38 EDT
Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame
Rwandan exiles warned about threats to their lives may have been targeted because of criticisms made of President Paul Kagame (above). Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
The Metropolitan police have warned two Rwandan exiles living in London that they face an “imminent threat” of assassination at the hands of the Rwandan government.

The dissidents received letters within hours of one another which advised them to take extra steps to increase their safety and raised the possibility of them leaving the country, the Times reported.

“Reliable intelligence states that the Rwandan government poses an imminent threat to your life,” the warning letters read. “The threat could come in any form. You should be aware of other high-profile cases where action such as this has been conducted in the past. Conventional and unconventional means have been used.”

One of the men, Rene Mugenzi, 35, stood as a Liberal Democrat candidate for Greenwich council, in south-east London, and now runs a social enterprise which aims to help disadvantaged communities. He may have been targeted because of comments he made about the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, in March when asked on a BBC programme about the prospect of the Arab spring uprisings spreading to his homeland. He replied that criticisms of Kagame suggested that he was “a despot who doesn’t tolerate any form of opposition; that under his leadership, Rwanda has become a dangerous place for those who publicly disagree with him or his ruling party”.

Mugenzi told the Independent: “How can it be that in Britain, a foreign government can be allowed to threaten the life of a person? Every time I go outside, I am looking over my shoulder, wondering if there is an assassin around the corner.”

The other recipient of the warning letter was Jonathan Musonera, a former officer in the army of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front. He is one of several exiled military officers behind the founding of the Rwanda National Congress, a new political party that earlier this month called on the Rwandan president to stand down “if he cannot stop killing, jailing and exiling innocent citizens”. The group recently held a meeting in London. Musonera told the Independent he was “terribly scared. We know what the Rwandan government can do.”

A Rwandan suspected of being part of the assassination threat was stopped at the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone, Kent, last week, according to the Times. It said the man, a naturalised Belgian aged 43, left after being questioned by police.

Western governments have praised Kagame for his efforts in transforming Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, with Britain committing £83m a year until 2015 to help rebuild the country. But political violence and suppression in Rwanda have shaken faith in Kagame.

Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, another founder member of the Rwanda National Congress and former head of Rwandan intelligence, was the subject of a failed assassination attempt in South Africa in June, last year.

The Independent reported last month that MI5 had warned the Rwandan high commissioner to London, who attended the royal wedding, to halt an alleged campaign of harassment against critics of Kagame living in the UK or face a cut in British aid.

A Rwandan government spokesman said the allegations contained within the warning letters were “without foundation. The government of Rwanda does not threaten the lives of its citizens, wherever they live,” he said. “The Metropolitan police have not approached us with evidence of these allegations but we are ready as always to work with them to ensure that nobody, be they Rwandan or not, is the victim of violence on British soil.”

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Kagame speaks out on Kikwete’s call for negotiations with FDLR rebels

Rwanda President Paul Kagame. Photo/File

Rwanda President Paul Kagame. Photo/File

By EMMANUEL RUTAYISIRE, Special Correspondent

Posted Monday, June 10 2013 at 18:32
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has described calls for the country to negotiate with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) as “utter nonsense.”
(Read: Unease in Kigali over Kikwete’s call for talks with FDLR)

Speaking on Monday at the Rwanda Military Academy (Nyakinama) in the northern part of the country where he was attending a graduation ceremony of 45 officers, President Kagame said:

“I kept quiet about this because of the contempt I have for it. I thought it was utter nonsense. Maybe it was due to ignorance but if this is an ideological problem for anyone to be thinking this way, then it better stay with those who have it.

“We will have another time to deal with this. As Rwandans, being who we are, achieving what we want to achieve for ourselves is not a myth, its real”.

The call to talk to FDLR was made by Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete at a meeting of Heads of State from the Great Lakes Region in Addis Ababa, on the sidelines of last month’s African Union Summit in Ethiopia.

Kikwete’s remarks have soured the already shaky relations between the two neighbouring countries with foreign affairs ministers from both countries issuing statements.

(Read: Dar-Kigali spat a serious matter)

Kikwete had suggested that Rwanda should consider direct talks with the FDLR rebels since the military option didn’t seem to be working.

President Kikwete also urged Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to talk to the Allied Democratic Forces and the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda, as well as asking DR Congo’s President Joseph Kabila to talk to the M23 rebels and other forces operating in eastern Congo.

This is the first time President Kagame is personally responding to President Kikwete’s remarks even though both presidents attended the Addis Ababa meeting.

(Read: Rwanda can’t talk to FDLR; they’re stone cold killers)

Tanzania has said it is not going to apologise to Kigali over the statements.

The remarks have triggered a diplomatic row between the two countries although observers say it is a pointer to the fact that despite the cordial relationships, Presidents Kagame and Kikwete have never been friends.

The FDLR is a sensitive issue in Kigali because of the former’s role in the 1994 genocide as well as its continued security threat to Rwanda. The militia draws most of its members from the genocidaires who participated in the 1994 mass killings.

Kagame publicly threatening to hit President Kikwete.

4 juillet 2013

Amakuru

Kagame publicly threatening to hit President Kikwete. jeannet-300×200
She has reason to be worried

It is remarkable that the Rwandan president’s own wife has already understood the dangers of criminalizing a whole population group. In her own speech in the same event, she emphasized that criminal responsibility was individual and “every knee will have to kneel for itself”.

It has almost become a tradition in his improvised speeches to hear Rwandan president Paul Kagame spit his anger and express his contempt for Western donors and other foreigner s who do not share his peculiar ideas about governance and political freedom. He does not miss any opportunity to slam what he calls their attempts to give him lessons, while he has no lesson to receive from anybody. We have heard many insults and derogatory words, but an outright threat to “hit” the president of a sovereign neighbouring nation, this is something even those who know him for a long period would not easily had predicted. On Sunday June 30, in a speech to the “youth connect” meeting convened by the Ministry of Youth together with his wife’s own Imbuto foundation, Paul Kagame threatened Tanzanian President Kikwete in unmistakable terms that he will wait for him at the right place and hit him, in response to the latter’s suggestion that Kagame initiate talks with the armed Hutu opposition FDLR.

“And those whom you recently heard speaking for the Interahamwe and FDLR, saying that we should negotiate with them. Negotiate with them? As for me, I do not even argue about this issue because I will wait for you at the right place and I will hit you!! I really did not… I didn’t even reply to him, I never arg… uh… it is known, there is a line you can’t cross. There is a line, there is a line that should never be crossed. Not once. It’s impossible!!…”

From these words pronounced partly in his hallmark unstructured Kinyarwanda mixed with English, Kagame made clear that he is still deeply angered by the mere suggestion to engage in talks with political opponents. That is why he vowed to wait for the right opportunity to strike back at Tanzanian President. It is unheard of in world diplomacy, to see a head of state threatening to hit another head of state of a sovereign nation in time of peace.

This threat should be taken seriously. Kagame has already proven in the past that he is able to strike his adversaries and silence them. Whether fellow presidents or his own (former) trusted collaborators, his prowess in murdering those he thinks are his enemies would not shy from a comparison with L. Sulla’s famous bragging. Melchior Ndadaye, Juvénal Habyarimana, Cyprien Ntaryamira, Laurent-Desiré Kabila are all heads of states in whose assassination he has allegedly had a hand. Théoneste Lizinde and Seth Sendashonga, are former collaborators eliminated in covert operations from afar. The last known feat in this series is the failed assassination of his former army chief of staff Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who survived a shooting in Johannesburg, South Africa. The lesser known cases of eliminated military officers who had knowledge of damaging secrets of his cruelty or could become rivals for power in the military, is no less impressive.

The grudge against Kikwete has other sources as well. Kagame’s big ego does not suffer being second to anybody. Being overshadowed by Kikwete as the most visible leader in the region is an additional source of personal resentment towards the charismatic Tanzanian President who, in less than a year, has been honoured by the official visits of the presidents of the two most powerful nations in the world. The recent attempt by Kagame, Museveni and Uhuru Kenyatta to bypass Kikwete and meet in Entebbe without him underscores a rampant feeling of discomfort at the growing strategic importance of Tanzania in the region.

Tanzania’s resolve to play its full role in restoring peace in the region has borne him many enemies among the neighbours who most benefit from the chaos they have helped perpetuate in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Uganda and Rwanda will namely be the losers if peace returns in the region because violence has long been their cover and their opportunity to loot Congolese resources. But whether they like it or not, Kagame and Kaguta will have to understand that time for peace has now come.

Kagame doesn’t seem to notice the changing circumstances however. In his self-righteousness, he said in the same speech that he was the paramount example of tolerance because he accepts to live in the same country with an ethnical group of genocidaires. He said that allowing Hutus to stay alive is the biggest political space he could think of, anywhere in the world. He urged the Hutus, even those who were not born at the time of the mass slaughters of 1994 to repent and ask forgiveness on behalf of their ethnical group (Suddenly. There are ethnical groups in Rwanda again!). He made them understand that they owed their lives to him because his soldiers would have slaughtered the entire Hutu population that he characterizes as a genocidaire ethnical group, was it not for his magnanimity that forced him to stop the RPA soldiers. In return for RPF soldiers not slaughtering all Hutus, he urges them to bear the burden of perpetual guilt, because, according to him, crimes were committed on their behalf.

It is remarkable that the Rwandan president’s own wife has already understood the dangers of criminalizing a whole population group. In her own speech in the same event, she emphasized that criminal responsibility was individual and “every knee will have to kneel for itself”. She underlined the importance of liberating the youth from the burden of event in which they did not take part. When Kagame’s own wife starts signaling that she has understood the dangers of his principal political principle (criminalizing all Hutus), the peace in the region can’t continue to be held up by just one individual.

This is what Tanzania has understood much earlier. But Kikwete also knows that those who sow chaos in order to harvest in violence will not easily give up their booty. By accepting to step in, to make his voice for peace heard, Tanzanian President Kikwete knew there was a price. It is now up to the entire population of the region (Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and obviously Tanzania) to step in and stand with President Kikwete, ensure his protection and denounce any attempt to threaten his physical integrity.

Dr Alexis Habiyaremye
http://www.editions-sources-du-nil.com/article-kagame-publicly-threatening-to-hit-president-kikwete-118887725.html

KENYA: WHY COURT IN KETHI’S CASE IS LIKELY TO RULE IN FAVOUR OF TNA

From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2013

Many of our readers have been touched by my article on why Uhuru Kenyatta won’t end impunity in Kenya as yet, with some pleading with him not to allow impunity to creep into his government. He must ensure the law is followed to the letter.

Peres Were from Nairobi was very categorical: “with culture of impunity in Kenya Kethi Diana Kilonzo is simply wasting her time, the court will definitely rule in favour of TNA, for that matter, in favour of Uhuru Kenyatta”.

With impunity court has no say. That is why despite of the High Court decision on the appointments of TSC commissioners the government disrespected.

Those nominated for appointment in the initial list were Kahindi Ziro James, Fredrick Haga Ochieng’ and Adan Sheikh Abdullahi. Cleopas Tirop, who had emerged tops in the interview, was missing in the list.

This list was rejected and the names taken back to the President and a new one presented to the House, this time with Tirop, Ochieng’, Abdullahi and that of the chairperson.

Mr Abdi Sitar Yusuf went to court to block the three commissioners’ names arguing the list was irregularly approved. The court blocked Ochieng’ and Abdullahi but cleared Tirop and he was sworn in.

Impunity–particularly in connection with human rights abuses committed during the 2007 post election violence is pervasive. As of late last year, there had been a total of 24 convictions in cases stemming from the violence following the 2007 elections, in which more than 1,300 Kenyans lost their lives.

No police officers had been prosecuted successfully. This is because Kenya is a republic with an institutionally strong president. That is why, even though the new constitution stipulates the creation of a Supreme Court, which was established in June 2011, president still have power to overrule the judgment.

It explains why widespread impunity at all levels of government continued to be a serious problem, despite implementation of judicial reform and the vetting of all judges and magistrates.

Human rights groups estimated that police were responsible for approximately 1,000 extrajudicial killings between 2008 and 2012; in 200 of those cases, there was credible evidence of police involvement, according to civil society groups.

In 2008 the government formed the Commission of Inquiry into Postelection Violence as part of the internationally mediated political settlement. In 2008 the final commission report recommended that the government establish a special tribunal to investigate individuals suspected of violence; however, no local tribunal was established, and the government did not conduct any investigations.

As a result of government inaction, in 2010 the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation and in March 2011 issued summonses on charges of crimes against humanity for six individuals. At year’s end three of them held official positions and two were former government officials.

The six individuals were: Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, deputy prime minister by then and former minister of finance; William Samoei Ruto, member of parliament and former minister of higher education, science, and technology; Henry Kiprono Kosgey, minister of industrialization; Joshua Arap Sang, former head of operations for KASS FM radio station; Francis Kirimi Muthaura, former head of the public service and secretary to the cabinet; and Mohamed Hussein Ali, police commissioner at the time of the violence.

In August 2011 the ICC dismissed an appeal by the government that challenged the admissibility of the cases against the six, ruling that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove that it was conducting its own investigation.

On January 23, the ICC confirmed charges against four of the six suspects, ruling that the prosecutor had not reached the threshold for charges to be confirmed against Kosgey and Ali.

In February the government appointed a task force to investigate local cases of post-election violence in 2007-08. In an August report the task force indicated that it had reviewed 4,408 of the 6,081 files compiled by police and found that most of the files were incomplete.

No suspects were identified in 2,411 of the cases. In approximately 1,000 cases a suspect had been identified but there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. In 2008 human rights groups reported that police turned away victims or refused to take down witness testimony after the post-election violence.

Police reportedly were also responsible for many of the human rights violations during that period. As of year’s end there were 24 convictions in post-election violence cases, including two for murder. No police officers had been prosecuted successfully.

That is also why, even though the law prohibits arrest or detention without a court order unless there are reasonable grounds for believing a suspect has committed or is about to commit a criminal offense, police frequently arrested and detained citizens arbitrarily.

Police often stopped and arrested citizens to extort bribes; those who could not pay were jailed on trumped-up charges and beaten. Police often failed to enter detainees into police custody records, making it difficult to locate them.

Although the president historically had extensive powers over appointments, including for the positions of attorney general, chief justice, and appellate and High Court judges, according to the new constitution, promulgated in 2010, vests responsibility for making recommendations for the appointment of judges in the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), which must publicly vet candidates, president still have the power to determine who is appointed.

The government did not always respect judicial independence. It explains why in June President Kibaki ordered members of the Provincial Administration to disregard the High Court’s ruling after the court declared their appointments unconstitutional.

The government occasionally used the legal system to harass critics, like what happened with KNUT officials recently. The government used the court to declare that their strikes are illegal.

Even with law in place to protect media, government still uses security forces to harass members of the media. Good example is what happened in April when police threatened two journalists, The Standard’s Osinde Obare and Radio Citizen’s David Musindi, for publishing stories on a police raid at a market in Kitale.

According to Obare, Kitale police chief Luca Ogara called him to ask why he published a negative story about the police and threatened repercussions if he returned to Kitale. In some cases their cameras confiscated by police and film destroyed.

Another example is what happened in May when two journalists with The Standard Media Group, Senior Investigative Editor Mohammed Ali and Dennis Onsaringo, filed a complaint with the police commissioner regarding ongoing threats and intimidation by senior police officials.

In 2011 Ali filmed an investigative series for the Kenya Television Network (KTN) on police complicity in drug dealing and the role of state agents in frustrating an investigation into a large cocaine seizure.

Pressure from politicians, including former defense minister Christopher Murangaru, forced KTN to stop broadcasting the series. The police investigation into threats to Ali’s life and the defamation lawsuits sparked by the program were unresolved at year’s end.

In September prison warders at the Machakos Law Courts attacked Jonathan Mutiso, a KBC reporter, for filming an inmate who had attempted to escape by climbing on the roof of the court.

The warders confiscated the camera and ordered two Kenya News Agency interns to erase footage of the incident, threatening the two with violence if they did not comply. The warders were disciplined following a demonstration by journalists.

On September 30, police arrested three Somali journalists who were reporting on a grenade attack on a school in Eastleigh. The journalists were released without charge and deported from the country.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a report in February noting that impunity in cases of torture of journalists remained a problem. Ten journalists reported mistreatment at the hands of police in 2011; the government had taken no action in any of the cases as of year’s end.

These are just but few examples to demonstrate how the government of Kenya will not end the culture of impunity any sooner. And because the TNA is determined that Kethi’s name deleted from the register because they did not want her to vie for Makueni senatorial seat, you will not be surprised that the court will still rule in favour of TNA. That is Kenya you call yours.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Facebook-omolo beste
Twitter-@8000accomole

Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.

-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002

KENYA: THE MUGO REPORT: JUNE2013

From: Mugo Muchiri
Los Angeles, CA
July 1, 2013

THE MUGO REPORT – June 2013

Q: Good morning Bwana Mugo and welcome to our first meeting of the summer. It reminds us of how big our world is – doesn’t it? – when we complain about heat here in LA, even as our brothers and sisters in Kenya experience the cold chills of June-July.

Mugo: Yes, this is true. Good morning ndugu and asante for another session.

Q: Start by giving us your tip of the month?

Mugo: Sawa. Because I have a food fetish today, why don’t I share with our readers a foodie item that’s been intriguing me lately? It’s called digestive lassi. Not only is it great tasting, but as its name suggests, it’s also a potent aid to digestion. According to Maharishi Ayurveda, a lot of our health problems are largely attributable weak digestion which leads to food not being completely digested. A by-product of this feeble digestion is ama, a sticky residue that binds to some part of the body (like the joints) giving rise to discomfort, pain and ultimately disease. So here’s a simple digestive lassi recipe (for one serving) that can be easily made at home and enjoyed by the family:

-1 cup room temp water

-¼ cup fresh homemade yogurt

-a pinch of ginger, cumin, coriander and salt

Blend for one minute and drink after lunch………you’ll be sure to notice a difference in just a matter of days as your digestive juices perk up and burn all that ama away. Good luck and great health!

PRESIDENCY & GOVERNANCE

Q: Asante for that ndugu. There are good number of areas that I’d like us to touch on for this issue. But why don’t we start with governance in general, and President Uhuru Kenyatta’s style of leadership in particular. When you compare Uhuru to immediate former President Mwai Kibaki, would you concur with me that there’s a substantive change in style of leadership?

Mugo: I think it’s a little early to talk ‘substantive’, but there is an important ‘style’ difference. President Uhuru Kenyatta appears keener to engage with the different facets of Kenyan life – businesspeople, students, athletes, teachers, and so forth. I welcome this and consider it a 180-degree pivot vis-à-vis Kibaki’s style which came across as rather stoic and distant……unless, of course, you were a visiting dignitary, or perhaps had something to do with building a road.

It didn’t seem to matter to Kibaki whether folks had just lost their lives from a landslide or even the fall of poorly-built buildings, as was the case in Kiambu on a number of occasions. Moreover, I distinctly remember feeling that the president needed to go and be with the IDPs to do some hand-holding. But Kenyans failed to see a ‘feeling’ Kibaki. And if he did indeed feel something, he certainly had a curious way of showing it by not showing it. I think it’s important for a president to be seen to “feel your pain.” And this is where I see an immediate contrast with Uhuru for whom visibility seems to be an important part of his politics and diplomacy. You get the sense that he wants to be there, that he wants to be seen to care.

Q: But you think it’s too early to gauge ‘substantiveness?’

Mugo: I do. In all fairness 100 days haven’t even elapsed. As I said, Uhuru’s style is a propitious development for the presidency. But being a ‘seasoned’ Kenyan who’s now had the opportunity of seeing three presidents in motion (I was rather unsophisticated during Jomo Kenyatta’s tenure), I first wait to see how much tofu is on wananchi’s table first. The mouth follows the eyes.

Q: Meaning?

Mugo: Meaning engagement is not the end product, simply the means. When I begin to see the business of Government becoming increasingly free from corruption, then I think we can talk ‘substantive.’

PORT AS A PORTAL

Q: Let’s view some the changes that have occurred this past month through this prism. And ‘hoot, hoot!’ the Port of Mombasa is our first call. Uhuru and Deputy President William Ruto view an efficient port system as being pivotal to Kenya’s economy. Are you happy with the steps the president has taken thus far?

Mugo: Yes. Remember Mombasa cannot be seen outside the context of its vast hinterland which spans Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DRC. Interest in Mombasa has even been expressed from some unlikely quarters. Zambia was exploring the possibility of using Mombasa as a conduit for its copper exports about 1 ½ years ago (about 95% of Dar’s capacity is consumed by Tanzania’s own imports and exports). All these partner-states have one common denominator: the centrality of Mombasa to maintaining and growing their economic vibrancy and overall wellbeing. And I think this fact dictates how far up Uhuru’s to-do list this item gets positioned. I’m happy with the noises I’ve heard so far from State House…… joyful noises, I’m sure, if you asked our neighbors.

Q: Given all the cartels at the port, do you actually see the son of Jomo taking the bull by its horns on this on?

Mugo: Clearly yes. This is no longer Uhuru the Campaigner; you’re seeing Uhuru, the Chief Executive, setting a goal (5 days for cargo to move from Mombasa to Malaba), having a plan crafted to achieve that goal, and, importantly, overseeing the necessary follow-up in order to gauge performance. I think he realizes that large bureaucracies often lose sight of the big picture, not to mention getting caught up in turf wars.

Q: What is the overall picture?

Mugo: Well I’ve partially sketched it out from the geographical point of view. Moreover, the big picture requires a foundation of gratefulness: it’s about being grateful to our neighbors for the opportunity to serve their business interests vis-a-vis ‘they-have-no-choice-but-to-go-through-us’ type of attitude (in Kiswahili slang, Uta do?). I think the president wants this ‘servant’ mentality to underlie port operations as a precursor to continuing to earn our partners’ trust. Second, it’s about understanding that Mombasa cannot operate outside the commercial axis of Dar es Salaam and – judging by the $10 billion agreement inked by Chinese President Xi Jinxing and President Jakayo Kikwete this March 2013 – Bagamoyo.

Have we been good stewards of our port endowments? Uganda certainly doesn’t think so. Why would she otherwise begin exploratory talks with Rwanda and Burundi about a railway line through their three nations and then on to Dar es Salaam, totally bypassing Kenya? They’ll continue exploring that option as long as they feel we’ve basically insensitive to their needs. I think Uhuru’s efforts should be seen in the context of securing the future of Mombasa both as a major economic hub and a crucial employment provider in the Coastal region. And I really like Michael Kamau, his point man in all this. Gichiri Ndua, the KPA MD, has an unsigned letter that would give anyone the chills.

DRUG WAR

Q: Interesting. Let’s talk a little about Nigerians and drug dealing. These guys didn’t arrive in Kenya yesterday. It’s safe to say that they’ve had significant time, resources and protections to sink their roots. The President was pretty irate about ‘sing-song’ drug conferences that turn out to be a bridge to nowhere. He ‘coughed,’ and certain folks got expelled from jurisdiction.

Mugo: Again, a superb demonstration of how the levers of presidential power can quickly turn the tide and make it ‘BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL.’ 40 drug dealers were escorted back to their country in one fell swoop, ‘’even without sweating,’’ as the Nigerians would say. Talk about a tsunami with no warning! This is ‘chamtemakuni’ policy and we need more, not less, of it.

People begin to see why elections matter; new blood brings new vitality and a new environment where old protections don’t necessarily hold. But it’s still too early to celebrate. A lot more needs to be done to rid our society of this menace. Will we see investigations to finger big-time colluders in the police and in politics? Will the ‘sensitive’ but neutered American evidence about specific senior government officials as being sponsors of the drug trade in Kenya be reverse-neutered and used to go after Mbuta dealers? This belongs to the future, hopefully Uhuru’s Kenya future.

Q: I remember there being virtually no drugs in Kenya during my teenage years. We just saw or heard about the stuff in movies. Seeing someone in high school with bhang (marijuana) was a huge deal. Let’s hope we quickly return to those days. Alright, let’s move on to wildlife and poaching. We touched on this subject last month and it doesn’t appear to be receding as a news item. Share with us some developments recently.

WILDLIFE POACHING

Mugo: Four things: first, the Cabinet approved more stringent punishments for poachers. If the Legislature moves in tandem and approves the measures, it will be a powerful signal that the matter is being given the weight it deserves. Second, global players are coming in to correct the tilt in power dynamics that have favored international wildlife trafficking networks. One that needs to be singled out for praise is the Google initiative called ‘Global Impact Awards’ which recently advanced US$ 5 million to the World Wildlife Fund for the purpose of enhancing herd tracking & management capabilities through the use of sensors, tagging collars and other digital analytics. Lastly, the Philippines recently demonstrated their resolve to be partners in the service of protecting the world’s elephants and rhinos by destroying a huge stockpile of ivory tusks in the full glare of the media and public. They didn’t write articles about sending text messages to their citizens.

I’m glad to see WWF pioneering the use of drones in a few Southeast Asian & African countries. Kenya, I suspect, will be a test case. We called for the use of drones in the fight to save the rhino and elephant here in this report some 7-8 months ago, and it’s gratifying to see this happening.

Finally, before leaving Tanzania at the end of his second visit to Africa, President Obama announced via Executive Order the setting aside of $10million to be distributed amongst several African nations – Kenya is slated to be a recipient of $3million – to boost the fight against poaching. These are small but significant steps that should boost our wildlife protective assets.

SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS

Q: I wanted to conclude by reviewing some missteps that the President and Deputy President have experienced this past month. Why not start with Ruto’s trip to several West African states at a cost of KShs. 18 million. There are some reports that the total contractual amount is a staggering KShs. 100 million! What are your thoughts?

Mugo: This issue is still murky due to lack of transparency in government dealings. It was clear that Bitange Ndemo was out to protect Ruto, perhaps hoping perhaps to line up a job as Principal Secretary for himself in the same vein. In any case, this was an unfortunate development for a government that’s trying to carve out a message of fiscal prudence. But I would wait and see if this is acknowledged – albeit not publicly – as a faux pas. Kenyans through the press should scrutinize Ruto’s future foreign travels for spending indications. Talk about the role of a free press in our democracy…..the NATION did an outstanding job on this expose!

Q: Why in the midst of the need to be fiscally prudent would President Uhuru approved the allocation of KShs 700 million for the purchase of a building to house Kibaki’s office in retirement?

Mugo: Another unfortunate development of shooting yourself in the foot and chipping away at wananchis’ trust. Remember, but for the diligence of Suba MP John Mbadi and Committee Chairman Musyimi Mutava, this sneaked-in allocation might have very well gone undetected. I’m not proud of the president on this one, especially since it was hot on the heels of his admonishment of MPs, teachers, etc. about a ballooning public sector wage bill and its threat to national development. Even the scaled down figure of some KShs. 250 million still smacks of wastefulness.

I think the principle ought to be that former presidents’ library-cum-offices be entirely privately funded. Now there’s no doubt that our constitution drinks heavily from America’s fountain. So, I argue, must our best practices. George W. Bush’s presidential library at Southern Methodist University is an illuminating example.

There are other more worthy projects. Like the 1million acre irrigation project which I admire. Or a genuine reforestation program that seriously takes a stab towards the 10% forest cover we all desire. Both would elicit broad public support; even each alone would cement an enviable legacy.

It’s important for the two leaders to realize these ‘on-the-quiet’ allocations will just make them lose credibility in the public’s eye. Recently we read about tenders to re-furnish the Deputy presidential mansion in Karen at a cost of some KShs. 100 million. Apparently the current gym facilities, the swimming pool tiles and the mansion windows are not entirely pleasing to Ruto.

Can you juxtapose that with the KShs. 10 million solar-powered water borehole that World Vision recently commissioned in Ol Makau, Namanga area, and whose direct impact was to provide water for 700 families and 1,500 animals? Now multiply that by 10 – water for 7,000 families and 15,000 herds. Do you see what I mean?

Q: Sawa. I think we stop here. Asante for a stimulating discussion. Mpake next month, ndugu.

Mugo: Asante vile vile. And happy ‘digestive lassis’ to you.

KENYA MP CAUGHT RED HANDED RECEIVING A BRIBE

By Agwanda Saye

A Kenyan elected Member of Parliament is to be charged in court to face corruption charges after he was caught red handed taking a bribe of kshs 100,000 after he had demanded kshs 150,000 from a businessman over a Constituency Development Project.

Kasarani MP John Njoroge who is a former Deputy Mayor of Nairobi was arrested at a cty restyaurant as he received kshs 1000,000 part of the bribe he had demanded.

His arrest came about after officials from the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission set a trap on him.

According to Kenya’s anti-Corruption Chief Executive Officer Halakhe Waqo,they received a complaint from a contractor in the constituency that the MP was demanding a bribe of Kshs 150,000 to enable him authorize his payment of kshs 3.3million from the CDF project.

“The payment was for the work the contractor had done on Baba Dogo Road Secondary School” said Waqo.

The MP however denied the allegations asn he was escorted in police car after several questioning at the Commission’s headquarters.

Tanzania: The untold story of Mtwara gas riots

From: Abdalah Hamis

On 22 May, 2013 protests and street battles erupted in the southern Tanzanian region of Mtwara in response to the government’s handling of mineral resource wealth and the contracts it has signed with various international actors.

The army and police were sent to quell the unrest, using teargas and live rounds, in the main southern town of Mtwara and in Mikindani, a smaller town around ten kilometres away in which at least three people died.

Government and state-friendly media sources have typically portrayed the events as thoughtless violence and wanton criminality. However, this detracts from a widespread and more urgent malaise about how the government has handled the discovery of natural resources.

The ‘hidden agenda’ against the south

Until recently, the Mtwara region, on the border with Mozambique and looking across the Indian Ocean, did not receive much attention from the media, multinational corporations or the government. The region had been best known for its Makonde wood carvings, its cashew nuts, and little else, and was often perceived as somewhat traditional or backward.

It is common for Tanzanians from other parts of the country to refer to those from the south – which conventionally means the Ruvuma, Lindi, and Mtwara regions – as washamba, which can be literally translated as ‘farmers’ but is often used as a pejorative term more accurately translated as ‘hicks’ or ‘peasants’.

These regions are not particularly well connected to the rest of the country, especially owing to the fact that the main trunk road south from Dar es Salaam remains tantalizingly unfinished – in spite of a promise made at independence in 1961 that the road would be completed quickly.

Many view this physical detachment as symbol of southern dislocation from the broader history of Tanzania, and some contend it is the result of deliberate ostracism by central government.

Some have argued that this marginalisation has an historical precedent, a ‘hidden agenda’ against the south that apparently followed the Maji Maji rebellion against German colonial rule (1905-7).

The south has also been a testing ground for various government policies, perhaps most infamously the disastrous Groundnut Scheme under British colonial rule during the late-1940s and early-1950s, but also the violent means used to forcibly resettle millions as part of socialist villagisation during the 1970s. Interestingly, some of these means – especially the burning of properties and crops – have effectively been replicated to deal with the recent unrest.

The rise of the south?

Since 2005, however, and especially in the last couple of years, far more interest has been paid to the region in light of massive offshore natural gas discoveries. Now more than ever, southern Tanzania (and particularly Mtwara town) is in the process of being dragged into the global capitalist economy – notwithstanding the infamous Groundnut Scheme.

During long periods of living and working within the region between 2006 and 2010 – initially with an NGO, then later when conducting and completing PhD fieldwork – Mtwara did not seem to be a part of the world wrought with tension nor did it display obvious signs of potential unrest. Apart from a few isolated protests at cashew nut subsidies and a lack of government support for farmers (not least regarding the provision of fertilisers), the Mtwara region was largely peaceful as well as extremely poor.

During the eight weeks I spent in various places up and down the coast of the Mtwara and Lindi regions last summer, it became clear that half a century of continuous rule by the CCM party (‘The Party of the Revolution’) has generated a palpable sense of frustration.

This must have been coupled with widely held perceptions that natural gas revenues would either be squandered, benefit other countries or regions of Tanzania, or both. While it may be the case that critical views had been articulated in the past, there seemed to be a clear shift in many of the perspectives offered – resentment towards the authority of the government crystallised around perceptions of what might happen to the newfound natural gas wealth.

Political pluralism and opposing government

But this hostility should not be looked at in isolation from broader political processes. It needs to be understood in the context of the arrival of seemingly viable political alternatives to the CCM in the form of two opposing political parties: CHADEMA (‘The Party of Democracy and Development’) and the CUF (Civic United Front).

The former tends to garner support from the increasingly vocal and politically significant younger generation across the country, selling the ideology of ‘People Power’, while the latter garners a fair degree of support in coastal areas, including the islands of Zanzibar.

A younger generation of educated, tech-savvy Tanzanians is emerging and their knowledge and understanding of the Arab Spring has engendered a great deal of hope for political change across the country (similar views were voiced in Arusha and Moshi in the north, as well as in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam), whether peaceful or through force.

The burgeoning youth population has been emboldened to speak more freely given the emergence of such opposition political forces. Anecdotally, there also seems to be increased political engagement, as reflected by the numbers of people who watch and listen to parliamentary discussions across urban Tanzania.

At an All Parliamentary Party Group (APPG) meeting on Tanzania (co-chaired by the APPG on extractive industries) held at the Houses of Parliament in London on 13 March, a lot of back slapping went on between the Head of Political Risk at BG Group (a British natural gas company), a retired advisor from the UK Department for International Development who works on extractive industries, and the Tanzanian High Commissioner in London, who at least presented some nuance in his understanding of the delicacy of the situation in Mtwara and the necessity to manage expectations.

The only vaguely dissenting voice came from a researcher for the NGO Tearfund, who highlighted that it is necessary to engender genuine engagement with local populations when organising natural resource extraction.

However, when asked about the nature of the supposedly ‘broad-based’ consultation, few detailed responses were forthcoming from the panel, possibly reflecting the fact that key powerbrokers in the process of natural resource extraction were ignorant of the increasing sense of frustration at a lack of popular engagement. This has been latched onto by opposition political parties in Tanzania.

These opposition parties are gaining traction in calling for greater transparency over the contracts that the government has signed with natural resource extraction companies.

There are further demands for the publication of all of the contracts signed with foreign governments, especially regarding the construction of the pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam that is to be funded with a discounted loan from the Chinese government.

In spite of the fact that the conditions for unrest have been palpable in Mtwara for some time and that smaller skirmishes have taken place over the past year, the government has perhaps done more to fan the flames than to extinguish them in the past six months or so.

As recently as 21 May, a visibly angered President Jakaya Kikwete pronounced on national television that Tanzania’s natural resources are there for the benefit of all Tanzanians. This is a message that he repeated on 23 May following major unrest in Mtwara and Mikindani, and has become a narrative repeated ad infinitum since.

Unrest in Mtwara

In most of the media sources that reported the developing situation in Mtwara (few and far between), there has been a regular suggestion that the unrest was caused by the content of the Energy and Minerals budget delivered by Minister of Energy and Minerals, Sospeter Muhongo.

The budget confirmed the construction of a pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam/Bagamoyo – funded again by a low-cost loan secured from the Chinese government – thus creating industrial jobs in processing the gas outside the Mtwara region.

In the same parliamentary session, Muhogo also announced that around 0.3% of the revenues from natural gas sales would remain in Mtwara, alongside enhanced social service provision and the largely empty promises of Corporate Social Responsibility.

This announcement is seen to have sparked the violent unrest in spite of the fact that public television networks mysteriously went off air in the Mtwara region that afternoon, and remained unavailable for the duration of the budget announcement.

Nevertheless, pay-per-view channels allowed some in Mtwara town to view the proceedings, leading to outrage and violence, with government offices and some of the houses of their staff burnt to the ground.

The protestors then set up road blocks and fought running battles with the army and police on the streets of Mtwara and Mikindani.

There have also been reports that a journalist was attacked and his house burnt down because he failed to accurately report the level of discontent in the region. In response to the violence, riot police and soldiers used tear gas in an attempt to disperse crowds.

But while the budget announcement might have effectively ‘lit the blue torch paper’, it has been clear that something of this nature has been on the cards for some time, and is an indication of the failure to manage expectations surrounding the natural resource discoveries coupled with an existing perception of a ‘hidden agenda’ against Mtwara.

Whether such an agenda exists is secondary to the perception it does, and this should have been considered in all dealings. The most sceptical analysis might point to the failure to learn key lessons from the Niger Delta in spite of a rhetorical claim to have done so.

Some media sources (perhaps those most closely aligned to the government) claim that there is some mkono was nje (‘outside hand’) aiming to create tension and that it stems from Western governments in light of Chinese involvement.

However, this seems to belie the fact that the companies working on gas extraction in Mtwara are predominantly from Europe and North America such as BG Group (UK), Statoil (Norway), ExxonMobil (US), Ophir (UK).

Brazilian company Petrobras – an increasingly significant global actor – is also involved, while the only major and publicised Chinese involvement is the aforementioned low cost loan for the construction of the controversial pipeline.

Spreading such thinly-veiled rumours is perhaps a diversionary tactic to absolve the Tanzanian government of the burden of responsibility, which would make sense in light of how excessive the response of the police and the army seems to have been.

While there has been relative silence over the outcome of the unrest, reliable sources in Mikindani have referred to at least three deaths in the town, all at the hand of violence perpetrated by the police, whilst official pronouncements maintain that there has only been one death – that of a woman who was seven months pregnant in Mtwara.

It is likely that the number of deaths and injuries is far higher than has currently been suggested while many remain in police custody, being fed by family members outside jail so that they do not become severely malnourished. Furthermore, the army and police seem to have arbitrarily destroyed several houses, businesses, and therefore livelihoods, as part of a supposed search for protestors.

Placing unrest in the historical context

Both the unrest itself and the responses to it are perhaps indicative of a broader political shift across Tanzania, which some on Twitter are referring to as a change from subjects to citizens.

However, this situation must also be framed within the specific historical experiences of southern Tanzania. From the colonial groundnut scheme of the 1940s and 1950s, via the government mandated resettlement scheme (villagisation) during the 1970s, it has often been the case that southern Tanzanians have only experienced political engagement as subjects of policies and projects imposed and rarely discussed.

It seems clear that the government has responded with a clear show of strength to guarantee future security for gas and oil extraction companies working in the region and to attempt to curtail potential protests. Unfortunately, it is likely that this unrest will lead to a far greater militarisation of gas extraction, exacerbating and clarifying the already vast inequalities surrounding natural resource extraction.

Calm was largely restored within a couple of days but it can perhaps be argued that the conditions for unrest were already in place before the latest incarnation of change imposed by central government on an apparently placid population.

The region has witnessed levels of violence previously unseen in Mtwara, perhaps outside some of the most nefarious policies employed during villagisation.

In overlooking the specific historical experiences of the Mtwara region, coupled with the contemporary political context and the lack of genuine engagement with people through broad-based consultation, the risk of such outcomes in the future remain.

While fears of a ‘new Niger Delta’ amongst Mtwarans, gas company employees at various levels, and many other interested parties in the region might be scaremongering, it is now a much clearer possibility and one that must be avoided at all costs.

http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/index.php?l=56502


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Ensuring Safety for Kids at Home

From: Junaid Tahir

Your kids are a great blessing. You can be more patient for a mishap that happens to you but when it comes to your kids, you are very sensitive and cannot see them in pain, tragedy or chronic sickness. Below are some of the tips through which you can avoid several emergency situations popping up when your kids are at home:

1- Don’t allow kids to go to washrooms alone till they clearly understand the usage of hot and cold water taps.

2- Keep medicines away from your kids. Recently a friend of mine had to take his daughter to hospital in emergency as she ate 10+ tablets from the shelf. Although the hospital washed her stomach but did not take any responsibility for any mishap. My friend has to sign the disclaimer which stated that in case of any mishap the whole responsibility would be on the parents.

3- Don’t put chairs or sofas near windows, especially if you are living in flats. We have read so many news about kids death falling from windows.

4- Consider windows/doors closing brackets. If you have IKEA in your area, buy one from there.

5- If you have sharp edged dining or lounge tables, consider rubber based edge protectors. (Visit IKEA)

6- Keep the match or lighter away from the stove.

7- Keep the knives, scissors and other sharp edge cutlery away from the reach of kids.

8- Cleaning agents (floor cleaners, crockery cleaners, toilet antiseptics etc) must be out of reach. Be sure to close the bottles tightly. Toddlers have the tendency of putting everything in mouth.

Some Recommended Articles:

Raising Confidence in Children

18 ways to make parents feel great

Story: Mr. Educated and Mr. Wisdom

8 Points to consider for buying a Sofa

About Author: Junaid Tahir, a telecom engineer and a passionate blogger, writes articles on wisdom, happiness, stress management and life enhancement subjects. His articles can be read Here

TOP KENYA POLICE IN MIGINGO AFTER ATTACK

By Our Reporter

Top Kenya police led by the outgoing Nyanza Provincial Police boss Joseph ole Tito led a delegation to Migingo Island in Lake Victoria following an attack on three administration of police officers by Ugandan police.

Tito who was accompanied by Migori County police commander Clement Gatogo held a closed door meeting in the tiny controversial Island for close to four hours.

Tito however maintained that the meeting was a familiarization tour for the new police commander in the county.

He says the meeting was normal only to check on the living condition of the officers who are stationed at the Island to provide law and order.

However, Migingo Beach Management Unit chairman Juma Ombori says the meeting was necessitated by the attack on the APs by the Uganda forces.

Ombori says the three Kenyan officers were assaulted for no apparent reason by their neighboring colleagues sparking tension within the Island.

The attack was confirmed by the Nyatike deputy county commissioner Moses Ivuto who termed the incident as unfortunate.

Ivuto says the injured officers were treated in a nearby health facility and discharged and investigations into the attack is on.

Ends.

Former president Bush Comment while in Zambia June 1st 2013

From: Judy Miriga

Good People,

Leadership is a hard job, I agree………but, it pays well doing the
right thing. At the end of the day, there is a balance in the positive
side providing for responsibility in sharing and caring and making
life worthy of the purpose for creation; and when Nature is cared
for and preserved to remain in harmony with itself; because, God’s
creation was made perfect…….we are united at peace with each
other and always, ours remain to be of Responsibility for goodness
sake and in the transition; evil, hate, Killings, Pain and Sufferings
find no room to thrive………it is rendered irrelevant good people!!!
How wonderful is wonderful….. !!!

Have your say…………Cheers !!!!

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

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George W. Bush on Mandela, Snowden and legacy
Former president speaks with CNN while in Zambia with wife Laura
Author: By Jethro Mullen CNN
Published On: Jul 01 2013 06:23:25 AM EDT Updated On: Jul 01 2013 08:06:50 AM EDT

George W Bush in Zambia

CNN
(CNN) –

Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, are in Zambia, where they are renovating a health clinic.

In an exclusive interview, he tells CNN why he respects Nelson Mandela, what he thinks about Edward Snowden and President Barack Obama, and how he’s not going to be around when his legacy is finally decided.
• On Snowden: “I think he damaged the security of the country.”

• On Mandela: “His legacy will last for a long time.”

• On Obama: “It’s a hard job. He’s got plenty on his agenda.”

Bush talked about Snowden, the computer contractor who leaked details about secret U.S. surveillance programs, to CNN’s Robyn Curnow in Zambia on Sunday.

He said he believes the Obama administration “will deal” with the fallout from the controversy unleashed by Snowden, who is now thought to be holed up in the transit area of a Moscow airport after fleeing there from Hong Kong.

Snowden’s disclosures about the programs carried out by the National Security Agency have shaken the U.S. intelligence community and put the Obama administration on the defensive over accusations of government overreach into citizens’ privacy.

But Bush refrained from criticizing the current president.

“I don’t think it does any good,” he said. “It’s a hard job. He’s got plenty on his agenda. It’s difficult. A former president doesn’t need to make it any harder. Other presidents have taken different decisions; that’s mine.”

The White House has defended the surveillance programs as necessary tools to defuse terrorist threats. Obama has said he welcomes a debate over how to strike a balance between security and privacy.

“I think there needs to be a balance, and as the president explained, there is a proper balance,” Bush said.

Asked about an NSA program that tracks people’s Internet activity, Bush said, “I put that program in place to protect the country. One of the certainties was that civil liberties were guaranteed.”

Snowden has said he leaked information to journalists about the surveillance programs in the hope of ending what he called an excessively intrusive system.

The Bushes were at a renovated health clinic in Livingstone, Zambia, that opens Monday as a cervical cancer screening and treatment center. They hope this will save the lives of thousands of women.

In his comments, George Bush touched on the subject of Mandela, who is on life support in a South African hospital.

“Sometimes, there are leaders who come and go. His legacy will last for a long time,” he said of the ailing anti-apartheid icon.

Reminded by Curnow that Mandela had criticized him publicly about the war in Iraq, Bush said he didn’t bear a grudge.

“He wasn’t the only guy,” he said. “It’s OK. I made decisions that were the right decisions. History will ultimately judge. I never held someone’s opinion against him; I didn’t look at him differently because he didn’t agree with me on an issue.”

Bush also initially said he wasn’t bothered about his ratings in opinion polls, even if some of them now put him at a similar level to Obama.

“The only time I really cared was on Election Day,” he said.

Then, drawing laughter from his wife, he checked himself and said, “You know, I guess it’s nice. I mean, let me rephrase that: Thank you for bringing it up.”

In any case, the former president said he doesn’t expect a fair assessment of his legacy in his lifetime.

“I won’t be around, because it will take a while for the objective historians to show up,” he said. “So I’m pretty comfortable with it, I did what I did; I know the spirit in which I did it.”

Copyright 2013 by CNN NewSource. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Tanzania’s Victims of Torture

From: Yona Maro


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Author(s):
Neela Ghoshal
Published in:
Think Africa Press

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/06/26/tanzanias-victims-torture?origin=from_home

On June 26, the world commemorates the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. In Tanzania, however, such commemorations are likely to be muted. Tanzania is among a small minority of countries that have not signed or ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a United Nations treaty.

Yet Tanzanians, including those who are marginalized and most vulnerable in society, are sometimes tortured and ill-treated by police officers, and often have no recourse to justice. I have spoken with many such victims.

One of them, “Zeitoun,” from Tandika, told me during an interview in 2012:

“They [police officers] arrived and started to beat me around the waist with the butt of their gun. They took my own belt and tied it around my neck and dragged me to the police post. They tied my legs with cuffs, the two legs were tied together and the two hands were handcuffed. I was handcuffed to the gate of the holding cell… hanging like a goat to be roasted.”

Another victim, “Walid” from Zanzibar, described being arrested and sexually abused by police andpolisi jamii (community police): “They [beat me with] water pipes and electrical wires. Two of them raped me…. They had canes and pipes, and they hit me on the bottoms of the feet. I couldn’t walk afterwards.”

“Rosemary,” a 14-year-old girl in Mbeya, has had several experiences with police torture. “One time they burned me on the arm with a lighter,” she said, showing me the burn mark. She had also been raped by police “at least seven times.”

Why were they treated this way by the police? Because they are members of marginalized groups who are considered “criminals” under Tanzanian law. They are also victims of social stigma. Zeitoun injects heroin. Walid is gay, or “MSM” – a man who has sex with men. Rosemary is engaged in sex work.

A recent study by Human Rights Watch and the Wake Up and Step Forward Coalition (WASO) found that some members of these marginalized groups are tortured by security forces simply because of who they are.

Of course, they are not the only Tanzanians at risk of torture, according to a recent study by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC). The report includes the notorious case of Dr. Stephen Ulimboka, who said he was abducted by intelligence agents and then tortured because of his leadership in the doctors’ strike. In another reported case, police broke a man’s legs because he was suspected of stealing.

Despite such horrific abuses, the police have expressed a willingness to address the problem. When we submitted the Human Rights Watch and WASO report to the police, several commissioners, including those responsible for internal affairs, training, and the gender and children’s desks, welcomed the report’s publication and did not deny that abuses occur. They said they will distribute the report to regional commanders, and that they will hold accountable police officers who commit these crimes. Whether police officers’ behavior will improve remains to be seen.

Tanzania’s constitution prohibits torture, but no such prohibition appears in the penal code, making it difficult to hold abusers criminally accountable. At its last Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, Tanzania accepted member states’ recommendations to ratify the Convention against Torture. But it has not yet done so.

One outcome of this inconsistency may be that, although some police officers told Human Rights Watch that torture is unacceptable, that view is not shared at all levels. Police have used heavy-handed methods to quell recent political dissent, encouraged by some government officials who have said that beating protesters is the right thing to do.

Why this emphasis on the Convention against Torture? What difference does it make to ratify a treaty? For one, it sends a clear message to the security forces that when they torture detainees, they are violating both national and international law. Second, it affirms that rights are, in fact, universal. As a party to the Convention against Torture, Tanzania would be required to report on the convention’s implementation, and to demonstrate that it applies to all citizens. It would be required to domesticate the convention, integrating it into national law and providing torture victims with a solid legal basis for filing complaints. And it would be required to prosecute those who violate the law, regardless of their position or rank.

Often, the application of international human rights standards is most urgent for vulnerable groups. In some countries, these may be minorities, including ethnic, political, or religious minorities, whom those in power may have an interest in silencing. In some countries, these may be children, who may lack sufficient protections under national laws. And in Tanzania, sex workers, sexual and gender minorities, and people who use drugs, among others, fall into this category of most vulnerable. A clear commitment to international law on the part of the authorities would provide them, and all Tanzanians, an additional layer of protection.

Any discussion of protecting the rights of marginalized groups elicits controversy in Tanzania. That is normal: the unknown always provokes fear. Only recently have sex workers, sexual and gender minorities, and people who use drugs begun to speak out. Public debates around these issues are still in their early stages. But today, can we all agree on one thing: that no one deserves to be tortured?

Ratifying the Convention against Torture would not end torture or ill-treatment in Tanzania overnight. But in light of persistent recurrences of torture – and in a context where the most vulnerable lack a clear legal framework that sets forth consequences for those who abuse them – it is a critical step toward ensuring that
the security forces respect the rights of all Tanzanians.

KENYA LAW BODY SET TO CONDUCT AUDIT OVER PAYMENT

Date: Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 4:54 AM
To: “jaluo@jaluo.com”

By Agwanda Saye

The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has resolved to conduct an audit of former Mau Mau freedom fighters over the Sh2.6 billion British Government settlement.

The LSK Secretary/CEO Mr. Apollo Mboya said that the audit and identity verification will prevent fraud to the settlement meant for 5,228 ex-Mau Mau veterans who were victims of torture by the colonial Government.

Mr. Mboya said that LSK has approached Ernst & Young, an audit firm, to look at the possibility of undertaking identity verification for the surviving Mau Mau victims of Torture, those who are deceased and the legal estate of the deceased.

“Ernst & Young has the capacity to conduct the exercise under its department of Fraud Investigations and Dispute Services (FIDS),” Mr. Mboya said.

The LSK Secretary/CEO said that similar audits were conducted by audit firms when compensating victims of explosives in Samburu and rape that involved British soldiers in Nanyuki. The British Government compensated some 500 Kenyans Sh585 million in 2003 over deaths and injuries suffered from undetonated devices allegedly left in their grazing fields. “LSK believe that an audit of the list of prospective beneficiaries is the best way forward to ensure that no deserving former freedom fighter is defrauded,” Mr. Mboya said.

Mr. Mboya also said that the LSK will file a suit at the High Court on Monday to force the British Law Firm of Leigh Day to release a list of 5,228 ex-Mau Mau fighters who are to receive Sh340,000 each following an out of court settlement with the British Government on mainly torture claims by the colonial administration.

“We wrote a letter to the British Law Firm (Leigh Day) last week requesting for the list within seven days, which is expiring on Friday,” Mr. Mboya said.

The Secretary/CEO said that LSK receives several elderly citizens daily requesting whether their names are in the list to receive the settlement.

Mr. Mboya said that LSK is also aware that two other British Firms will file separate Mau Mau compensation claims cases in courts at the United Kingdom (UK).

“Tandem Law and GT Law Solicitors have similar cases with 8,061 and 700 clients respectively,” Mr. Mboya said.

Mr. Mboya said that unlike the law firm of Leigh Day, Tandem Law and GT Law Solicitors have both furnished LSK with their list of clients.

Ends…

Kenya: Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi’s farewell letter written on 17th February 1957

From: Jeremy Kinyanjui

The letter below dated 17th February 1957, is said to have been written by the penultimate military commander of Kenya’s pre-independent “ Mau Mau” Movement, the legendary Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi, and is said to have been written one day before Kimathi was executed by the British Colonial Government in Kenya on 18th February 1957. The letter is addressed to one Father Marino of Catholic Mission, P.O. Box 25, Nyeri, Kenya.

The source of the letter is the Kenya National Archives, where a typed copy of the same was on display at the Kenya National Archives Public Gallery in the 1990s, since when it has been brought down. However members of the public can on request, get a typed photocopy of Kimathi’s said below letter at the Kenya National Archives. It remains unclear if the original handwritten copy of Kimathi’s said below letter still exists, and if it still does, in whose possession it is. Contents of Kimathi’s said letter of 17th February 1957 reproduced below verbatim…

Dedan Kimathi
C/O H.M Prison (i.e. Her Majesty’s Prison)
17th February 1957

Father Marino
Catholic Mission
P.O. Box 25
Nyeri

Dear Father,

It is about one O’clock night that I have picked up my pencil and paper so that I may remember you and your beloved friends and friends before the time is over.

I am so busy and so happy preparing for heaven tomorrow the 18th February 1957. Only to let you know that Father Whellam came in to see me here in my prison room as soon as he received the information regarding my arrival. He is still a dear kind person as I did not firstly expect. He visits me very often and gives me sufficient encouragement possible. He provided me with important books with more that all have set a burning light throughout my way to paradise, such as :-

1. Students Catholic Doctrine
2. In the likeness of Christ
3. The New Testament
4. How to understand the Mass
5. The appearance of the Virgin at Grotto of Lourdes
6. Prayer book in Kikuyu
7. The Virgin Mary of Fatima
8. The cross of the Rosary etc.

I want to make it ever memorial to you and all that only Father Whellam that came to see me on Christmas day while I had many coming on the other weeks and days. Sorry that they did not remember me during the birth of our Lord and Savior. Pity also that they forgot me during such a merry day.

I have already discussed the matter with him and I am sure that he will inform you all.

Only a question of getting my son to school. He is far from many of your schools, but I trust that something must be done to see that he starts earlier under your care etc.

Do not fail from seeing my mother who is very old and to comfort her even though that she is so much sorrowful.

My wife is here. She is detained at Kamiti Prison and I suggest that she will be released some time. I would like her to be comforted by sisters e.g. Sister Modester, etc. for she too feels lonely. And if by any possibility she can be near the mission as near Mathari so that she may be so close to the sisters and to the church.

I conclude by telling you only to do me favor by getting education to my son.

Farewell to the world and all its belongings, I say and best wishes I say to my friends with whom we shall not meet in this busy world.

Please pass my complements and best wishes to all who read Wathiomo Mukinyu. Remember me too to the Fathers, Brothers and Sisters.

With good hope and best wishes,

I remain dear Father

Yours Loving, and Departing Convert

D. Kimathi

KENYA: WHY JUBILEE GOVERNMENT PREFERS COLONIAL POLICE STRUCTURE

From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2013

Just like the police force was formed to protect colonial business interests, it explains why Jubilee government would prefer to retain this structure. It also explains why the conflict between the office of the Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo and that of National Police Service Commission Johnston Kavuludi on appointments can never be resolved.

According to the old constitution the function of the police was to enable the colonial administration to penetrate “native” areas and enforce the policies of the colonial administration.

It was this function and structure that gave power to police boss in Kisumu, Grace Kaindi, who has been promoted to Deputy Inspector General to give orders to shoot to kill in Kisumu during 2007/08 post-election violence.

With such appointments, it will mean that rebellion symptomatic of rifts within Kenya’s police force over harsh tactics ordered to suppress opposition protests will continue to take place.

With this old structure junior police officers are to act on orders from their superiors. If they are ordered to kill they will do exactly that. If they are ordered to use force, brutality or even use live bullets to kill opposition supporters protesting constitutionally, they will do exactly that.

That is why during the post-election violence many deaths have been caused by police, who have fired tear gas and live rounds at protesters. Several police officers had been given “shoot-to-kill” orders, “a general rebellion which has been compounded by that kind of orders.”

With this structure it will also mean that salaries of the police will never be reviewed. Until June 2007, according to police pay slip of one particular police- Peter Kinyanjui: basic salary is Ks 15,000, Hse allowance 0, Gross salary 15, 0000, Deductions: Magereza SACCO 3,000.00, NHIF 320.00, NSSF 200.00, PAYE 2,740.00, Loan repayment 3,260.00- KCB LOAN 2,250.00, Total Deductions 11,770.00- Net Pay 3,230.00.

Despite the fact that this old structure has made the police very susceptible to corruption and crime in the country, Jubilee government to make Police Force in Kenya to remain a law unto itself, explaining why Inspector General David Kimaiyo defied National Police Service Commission chairman Johnstone Kavuludi by releasing a list of 47 county commanders without consulting.

This means that in order to appoint police boss who can act as the eye of the government, Kimaiyo for that matter is the right person to carry out that responsibility because he is the only one who can be trusted by the government.

This can explain clearly why in recent appointment of county police commissioners and the County CID heads, where Stanley Cheruiyot was appointed to Kisumu county, the appointments had to be carried contrary to section 7(2) of the National Police Service Act which states that all officers shall undergo vetting by the (National Police Service) Commission to assess their suitability and competence.

This section was entrenched in the new constitution following a history of human rights abuses by the Kenya Police. It also aimed at police reform, given that Kenyan police are poorly paid and have to make use with archaic housing that has not been expanded or renovated since the 1970s.

The Police have the following units: Criminal Intelligence Department, General Service Unit, Police Air-Wing, Presidential Escort, Kenya Police College, Kenya Airports Police Unit, Tourist Police, Railways Police, Traffic Police, Dog Unit, Anti Stock Theft Unit, Anti-Terrorism Unit, and Diplomatic Police.

Although Kimaiyo was appointed due to his wide experience in the police force, he is to lie low to instructions contrary to his professionalism.

Born on July 1, 1960, David Kimaiyo has a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Criminology and Criminal Administration from the University of South Africa (UNISA) and from KCA University.

He also undertook a course from the University of Leicester for his MSC, also holds a Bachelor of Theology from the Beacon University of Institute Ministry in USA, a Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, a Master of Theology from the Beacon University of Institute Ministry, USA.

He is currently pursuing a PhD in Criminology and Social order from the University o f Nairobi. Until his appointment to the Inspector post, he has been the Director/Coordinator of the Kenya National Focal Point on Small Arms and Light Weapons.

He served as a Senior Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture from 2008 – 2009. He was the Director of Operations of the Kenya Police from 2003 to 2008. He was Coordinator of the Kenya National Focal Point on Small Arms and Light Weapons from 2003 to 2004 and Commandant General Service Unit (GSU) from 2002 to 2003.

Kimaiyo also served as the Commander Presidential Escort Unit (PEU) from 1999 to 2002 and holds an advanced VIP protection Course from Tel Aviv in Israel.

According to his CV, he has Certificate on the Regional Implementation of the United Nations Programme of Action (UNPOA) on Small Arms and Light Weapons and on Strategic Trade Control Implementation, Legal Regulatory Training, from the University of Georgia Centre for International Trade and Security, Washington DC in USA attained in 2012.

He also holds a Certificate in Arms Making for Stockpile Management, Nairobi attained in 2010. Kimaiyo’s CV says he attained a Certificate in illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons Course (ILEA) from Gaborone Botswana in 2004 and in the same year acquired a special training in Crisis management and contingency Planning Course RIPA International United Kingdom.

He holds several awards such Order of the Chief of Burning Spear (CBS), Order of the Elder of the Burning Spear (EBS), Order of the Moran of the Burning Spear (MBS), Head of State Commendation among others. He becomes the first IG under the new constitution.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Facebook-omolo beste
Twitter-@8000accomole

Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.

-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002

Kenya’s New Deterrent Capability and Geopolitical Power

From: Judy Miriga

Good People,

Tough talks are simply words if not rooted on Constitutional Liberated tenets demanded by the Peoples Mandate to govern according to how they want to be governed. The base of the gist of political standing lie squarely on the Devolve Governance led by the County Government…….that MUST not be squandered by the Provincial Commissioners in any way short or long.

Words are paper weight, not until they see the action pact of those who demand that they demand to be governed in a certain fashion.

This kind of statement remind us and refreshes our thinking to understand why there was 1st world war and 2nd world war…….We entered into 1st and 2nd world war because of Violation of Right that occurred……….and today, we see constant abuse and pressure to push people to give up their Rights for selfish greedy people. This explain why this Reform will not settle down without a fight, and people will not let LAND GRABBERS to endanger people’s Right to live at peace in harmony and allow their livelihood and survival to be wiped out.

I don’t see how the poor-man of Africa will let their land go in a fluke and they walk away without putting a stiff fight.

Kenya’s war is an East Africa war, and it is Africa’s war………It shall not just end on the soil of Africa but it shall spread out to be the 3rd world war.

As far as consulting my inner-self, from this statement, I can see that we are not far from 3rd world war but inching very close to the 3rd world war however much we are trying to refrain from engaging into war……..WHY:

1) The poor of Africa has their livelihood centered on Land. They feed, educate, nurture, clothe, and inhabit in their land, which is a people’s community land and is not commercialized for profit making, and they pay no rent.

2) Life has turned very expensive today including education and there are not employment opportunities and life is unbearable

3) There is no second class human being, all people are equal and each and everyone must be human and be fair to allow to share life mutually in a balance and anything short of that is unacceptable

4) No one has a right to make other people’s lives painful and miserable because they think they have power to force poor people into slavery, this too is unacceptable

5) No one has right to swindle and take away people’s land for a penny then force people out of their land and trade on the land with the International Special Business Interest benefiting hugely from the unscrupulous thieving business and leaving the poor to rot by the road-side……..this is not human……this is lack of intelligence to apply a balanced and sustainable resource management……and instead go for quick money making; which in reality is making misery of many people’s lives for benefit gains of a few……..if peoples interest cannot be protected then…….this serves as an ultimatum

5) If people cannot accept to be reasonable and fair to each other, they have no business to run the affair of public in the Government …….. it is because, the Government is for the people which is made of the people and by the people. It must serve the interest of the people……..and this kind of behavior is pushing people into disunity and anyone assuming to have the right to frustrate majority of the people – they shall be in for a very rude shock……..

This cold war has been going on in Kenya for far too long and we shall not allow stupid minded people to run the show and continue pushing people to the edge…….deeper into poverty with lack of moral being……..and cut the thinly veiled life survival they hang on against hope that things shall be well …….. and without us standing firm and drawing a red line………

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

– – – – – – – – – – –

— On Sat, 6/15/13, maina ndiritu wrote:
From: maina ndiritu
Subject: Kenya’s New Deterrent Capability and Geopolitical Power
Date: Saturday, June 15, 2013, 3:13 AM

A tough talking president and a focused young economist about to economically transform East and Central Africa’s most powerful country deployed geopolitical power as his modus operadi in international relations.

The government of Kenya will respect its international partners and obligations and they, too, should reciprocate equally, a statement that connotes intolerance to foreign play in Nairobi’s political-economics.

European and Western Diplomats in Nairobi quite well, read the thinly threat, hence have limited choices other than redefine their role and mode of engagement with the Kenyatta government.

The British and American governments are moving with speed to mend fences with Kenyatta’s power brokers while British parliamentarians in London coming up with a policy, which emphasizes London remains, committed to working with Nairobi.

Geopolitical Power

Kenyatta’s government is far much stronger geopolitically whereby the former President, Mwai Kibaki had already set benchmarks for cooperation with regional neighbors and the East to form a formidable economic and military union that plays a key role in ending conflicts in Central and East Africa.

Kenya has powerful neighbors and symbiotically, each depends upon each other; this aspect of Kenya being geographically saddled inside a crest of loving and protective neighbors who depend much on her makes Nairobi superior and geopolitically attractive.

The talk of oil and gas and ICC shed light on the seriousness with which Nairobi and her strategic partners and neighbors take’s the Wests regular interference with geopolitics of Africa, sending a clear signal, that Nairobi, under Kenyatta will be keen and adamant if foreign interference with trade, geographical value, and politics of the region is observed.

The members of these states, party to this regional bloc were present to bid farewell to the man who chaired them and initiate their new leader, Kenyatta.

In contrast, Kenyatta committed to the regional bloc, reiterating Africa was on the rise, besides using these neighbors and friends as a shield against foreign interference.

To project their support, through Uganda’s commander in chief, President Yoweri Museveni, the powerful countries of Africa, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia besides others like Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, among others warned the West against interfering with African leadership.

East, South, and Central Africa is Kenya’s key source of geopolitical power while it’s economic value and military role in regional conflict resolution amplifies its deterrent capability.

Assets of the West including military bases besides companies and ranches that produce food exported to these countries complicate Western countries neo-colonial approach to African affairs in Kenya and the East and Central Africa region.

China through its strategic partner in East and Central Africa, Tanzania sent a strong delegation in the symbolic ceremony sending a clear message that it was homestretch for Beijing, while South Africa, a top member of the BRICS bloc, a global economic group, sent a clear message that Kenya was a strategic partner.

Surrounded and supported by such important strategic military-economic partners and neighbors, foreign policy in Kenya takes a new definition whereby Nairobi enjoys deterrent capability and a more robust geopolitical power that sets the rules of engagement with the West and Europe as a choice rather than a necessity as it used to be.

http://intelligencebriefs.com/?cat=3

Kenya’s New Deterrent Capability and Geopolitical Power

April 10 | Posted by David Goldman | Geopolitik, Intelligence News

A tough talking president and a focused young economist about to economically transform East and Central Africa’s most powerful country deployed geopolitical power as his modus operadi in international relations.

The government of Kenya will respect its international partners and obligations and they, too, should reciprocate equally, a statement that connotes intolerance to foreign play in Nairobi’s political-economics.

European and Western Diplomats in Nairobi quite well, read the thinly threat, hence have limited choices other than redefine their role and mode of engagement with the Kenyatta government.

The British and American governments are moving with speed to mend fences with Kenyatta’s power brokers while British parliamentarians in London coming up with a policy, which emphasizes London remains, committed to working with Nairobi.

Geopolitical Power

Kenyatta’s government is far much stronger geopolitically whereby the former President, Mwai Kibaki had already set benchmarks for cooperation with regional neighbors and the East to form a formidable economic and military union that plays a key role in ending conflicts in Central and East Africa.

Kenya has powerful neighbors and symbiotically, each depends upon each other; this aspect of Kenya being geographically saddled inside a crest of loving and protective neighbors who depend much on her makes Nairobi superior and geopolitically attractive.

The talk of oil and gas and ICC shed light on the seriousness with which Nairobi and her strategic partners and neighbors take’s the Wests regular interference with geopolitics of Africa, sending a clear signal, that Nairobi, under Kenyatta will be keen and adamant if foreign interference with trade, geographical value, and politics of the region is observed.

The members of these states, party to this regional bloc were present to bid farewell to the man who chaired them and initiate their new leader, Kenyatta.

In contrast, Kenyatta committed to the regional bloc, reiterating Africa was on the rise, besides using these neighbors and friends as a shield against foreign interference.

To project their support, through Uganda’s commander in chief, President Yoweri Museveni, the powerful countries of Africa, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia besides others like Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, among others warned the West against interfering with African leadership.

East, South, and Central Africa is Kenya’s key source of geopolitical power while it’s economic value and military role in regional conflict resolution amplifies its deterrent capability.

Assets of the West including military bases besides companies and ranches that produce food exported to these countries complicate Western countries neo-colonial approach to African affairs in Kenya and the East and Central Africa region.

China through its strategic partner in East and Central Africa, Tanzania sent a strong delegation in the symbolic ceremony sending a clear message that it was homestretch for Beijing, while South Africa, a top member of the BRICS bloc, a global economic group, sent a clear message that Kenya was a strategic partner.

Surrounded and supported by such important strategic military-economic partners and neighbors, foreign policy in Kenya takes a new definition whereby Nairobi enjoys deterrent capability and a more robust geopolitical power that sets the rules of engagement with the West and Europe as a choice rather than a necessity as it used to be.

http://intelligencebriefs.com/?p=3546

Kenya: EMERGING ISSUES ON MY ARTICLE OF YESTERDAY

From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2013

Some of our News Dispatch readers have positively commented on my article of yesterday, saying now they understand that I am not tribalistic as some thought. They were referring to some of my articles in which I said that I am not against Uhuru Kenyatta becoming the president of the Republic of Kenya, my worry was that his government was not going to implement the constitution.

Some readers from Uhuru’s central Kenya took issues with me, saying I was tribalistic and I did not want Uhuru to become the president because he is a Kikuyu. In fact I challenged this by blaming Raila Odinga as well, for nominating his brother Oburu Odinga, his sister Ruth Odinga forced to be the deputy governor even after Kisumu electorates demonstrated against her. And Jakoyo Midiwo forced to grab power by force.

The point I was driving at was that I want to see Kenya where leaders are elected as Kenyans to serve Kenyans, not using their ethnic communities as a voting bloc to grab power from Kenyans. When this happens it is where nepotism and tribalism takes root. You must reward those tribes that helped you grab power.

When leadership is directed towards that policy, is why such leaders would not mind or even talk about more than eighteen primary schoolgirls who dropout of school because of pregnancy in Emia location in Mt Elgon Constituency.

The Chepkurkur Primary School girls were confirmed to be pregnant last week during a stormy Parents and Teachers Association meeting. The girls have subsequently dropped out of school. The news has left residents in disbelief, with majority of them seeking to know the identity of those who put the girls in the family way.

Girls in the school have been getting pregnant at an alarming rate. One girl in Class Four, five in Class Six, eight in Standard Seven and four were supposed to sit final Class Eight national examinations this year.

It is also why such leaders will not have time even bother take action on police officers who have been alleged to be impregnating primary schoolgirls in Samburu, The 14 girls aged between 12 and 18 have allegedly been impregnated by police officers deployed in the area to curb rampant insecurity in the region.

Samburu is synonymous with insecurity and the rugged region is dotted with tens of police camps meant to stabilise the security situation in the vast region where bandits rule. But the deployment of the officers seems to have complicated the lives of school-going girls as some of them demand for sex from the underage pupils. They lure them to their camps using biscuits, bread and sweets in exchange for sex.

It is why with such type of leadership the government don’t care whether Treasury is faced with daunting task of toning down tax measures that are likely to inflict maximum pain on Kenya’s poor.

A Bill that comes to the National reading today (Thursday’s Budget) proposes to slap Value Added Tax (VAT) of 16 per cent on a host of essential goods and inputs, including fertiliser, maize flour, bread, wheat flour, milk, livestock feed, pesticides and books. Others are sanitary towels, newspapers, computers, insecticides, locally assembled water pumps and gin cotton.

Shelved last year in the run up to presidential elections, the VAT Bill would see the cost of such commodities rise by 16 per cent or more, because their final retail price is left to the discretion of traders despite one of the Jubilee Government’s key promises in its manifesto was to lower the cost of living for all Kenyans.

I laughed when the Consumers Federation of Kenya (Cofek) said it would sue the State should the VAT Bill or any other Bill proposing to tax basic commodities, sail through Parliament. Where on earth can you sue the state?

Cofek wants to sue Uhuru government on the basis of Article 43 which states that ‘every person has a right to be free from hunger and to have adequate food of acceptable quality’.

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936- ) got it correctly that with such type of leadership the real politics has very little to do with ideas, values, and imagination. It has everything to do with maneuvers, intrigues, plots, paranoia’s, betrayals and a great deal of calculation.

This is where the implementation of the constitution has no value. It is to be noted here very clearly and with no bias at all that the Deputy President William Ruto was against the proposed new constitution. How can you implement something you did not want?

Dujis MP Adan Duale who accused Ruto and Naomi Shaban of misleading Kenyans who had not read the proposed constitution that the document does not serve their interests is now in Ruto’s government.

Dr Shaban and Mr Ruto argued that the proposed constitution will be oppressive to Kenyans and reiterated their demand to amend contentious clauses before the draft was taken to the referendum.

Ruto and Dr Shaban’s fear was that the new constitution would ensure that Constituency Development Fund (CDF) be scrapped if the proposed constitution is adopted. They were also opposed of doing away with the provincial administration and districts.

Mr Ruto on the other hand argued that land was an emotive issue and should be resolved if Kenyans are to support the proposed constitution in totality. Ruto’s argument was supported by then Chepalungu MP Isaac Ruto and his Cherangany counterpart Joshua Kutuny, claiming land would be subjected to taxation under the new constitution.

Another reason for rejecting the new constitution was that it would significantly reduce powers of the Kenyan president and create greater balance among the different branches of government.

It explains why, even though key members of the “No” campaign: William Ruto, former president Daniel arap Moi, most Church leaders and numerous parliament members

Controversial issues included abortion clause and inclusion of Kadhi family courts was not the major reason for rejecting the new constitution.

This is considering that the Muslim courts have been in place since independence. The constitution would continue to recognize the Kadhi courts. The whole truth however, was that they were afraid the constitution would greatly limit those in power.

All the same when a constitutional referendum was held on 4 August 2010 the result was a victory for the “Yes” campaign, with official figures released by the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) showing 66.9 percent in favour.

People voted in big number, partly because the new constitution was seen as a vital step to avoid a repetition of the violent outburst after 2007 presidential election. Secondly, they voted in big number because the new constitution would allow changes to the structure of government, including making ordinary citizen to have their voices be heard.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Facebook-omolo beste
Twitter-@8000accomole

Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.

-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002