Kabila holds the key to the room where the solution lies. Mr Kabila will be badly judge by histoey if he carries on with his arrongence and persecution of the minorities in Congo. He should wise up, no army is going to bring the everlasting peace in Congo. He needs to talk to Nkunda hear his grievencies after all Tutsi are the minoritie according to many, in the country almost the size of the Western Europe. My message to you Mr Kabila learn to act like a gentlemen; honour your agreements, respect other leaders, be humble.

Nkunda will eventulayy be arrested or killed, either way everyone in SADC agree that he is a bad apple that need tobe got rid of.

Unless you are willing to arrest all the Tutsi in the Congo, Nkunda will be easily replaced. Now, if you are willing to face the facts on the ground; you'll have no choice but to deal with the FDLR issue as this is the only key to peace in the Kivu. In lieu of the aforementioned fact, Kabila will never defeat the Tutsi millitarily. They have over 600yrs of millitary experience in the region(check ur History)and no army in the region can face their resilience.

Historian

We know the history of the Tutsi people, the most recent being 1994. Such history being so dramatic and often times regretable does not mean that it warrant the savagely that we are witnessing now, what other group of people in Africa would attract such loath, well it is not a good thing and I wish they couls choose a better way to lead their lives.

If a tribe has such a military might, why is the FDLR still a problem? Rwanda has invaded Congo officially twice (1997 & 2003) and occupied the Eastern part of Congo. Why didn't they solve the FDLR issue? Why is Nkunda not using his military to help crush the FDLR? The truth is that all these rwandese people(Nkunda and FDLR) have the same objective, loot and extend the boundaries of Rwanda into Congo. Congo army might be weak now but true Congolese people will not let Rwandans reign in their country forever. An end to this is coming soon.

I am not Congolese but may heart go to all the Congolese who are caught in this, this is repeat of the Angolan war where the major powers uses Rwanda to force Kabilas government not to deal with China and also no renegotiate the mining constracts. It is the British war, remember Tony Blair is the advisor to Rwandan government, but I know once Obama gets to office He will not accept this British colonial hangovers, the British empire is long dead but its Ghosts are still haunting us. Nkunda is its creation.

I had predict the arrest of the thug Nkunda last year and I do think that my predictions were correct, not he should be hunged on a tree, and let to the hawks of the air gouge this eyes off, may he be cursed the rest of his life, my the blood he spilled haunt him the rest of his short life, may his children died and whatever that he had bored in his fatal adventures, God keep the Congolese peace from now on.

claude_rutsinzi what are you up to? You have the gut to defend your fellow warlords here? What minorities are you talking about? Who is killing them? When? How? Have you heard of the AMANI peace prcess? And what do you say about that? What are those agreements you want Kabila to honour? Is it to let Kivu become under Rwanda?

What solution do you want for the Tutsi? All you guys can say is you are the minority and that exactly your AYSLUM SEEKING argument in the west. They grant you asylum on that basis alone and you think you can kill innocent people simple because you are minority tutsi?

Why are the minority ruling Rwanda? Any answer to that? Who in the Congo is against the Tutsi? Why not work with the DRC Government to tackle those issues if you are really interested in a co-relationship and co-existence betweens tribes.

Give me a break, you lover of guns and BLOOD

Please read this and if it interesting send a vote fo thanks to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney at hq2600@gmail.com

End the conflict in the Congo Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives One Hundred Seventh Congress, First Session, May 17, 2001 Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida, Chairwoman Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Ron Paul, Texas Cass Ballenger, North Carolina Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania

Cynthia A. McKinney, Georgia Robert Menendez, New Jersey Grace Napolitano, California Adam B. Schiff, California

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a representative in Congress from the State of Florida, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights: I am very happy that we have for her opening statement the person who is really driving this hearing and who has called for and demanded this hearing for a long, long time because she has been so worried and desperate over the situation in the Congo, my good friend, the Ranking Member, Cynthia McKinney of Georgia.

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney called for this hearing.Ms. McKinney: Thank you, Madam Chair. I definitely appreciate the fact that you are allowing us to call this important hearing today and to hear from our witnesses who have contributed now, who have dedicated now a vast amount of time, energy, effort, part of their lives into setting the record straight, securing the truth, first of all, and then trying to help the Congolese people to finally have the ability to determine for themselves their own government and how they will steward their own resources.

This hearing is vitally important because we will have the opportunity to set the record straight as to what has been happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the last three years. We have the opportunity to be able to draw together the varying investigations and reports of experts who have examined the Democratic Republic of Congo war and place in the public record the truth about what Rwanda, Uganda and their so-called rebel allies have done to the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We have the opportunity to pass judgment on the Clinton legacy and make a finding as to exactly what Madeleine Albright and her foreign policy team have done to the Great Lakes region.

I think it is also important to point out at the outset that the U.S. and Belgium deserve special condemnation for the 37 years of suffering in the Democratic Republic of Congo because it was their intelligence services who conspired to assist in the murder of the democratically elected President Patrice Lumumba. The West chose Mobutu to replace him, and for the next three generations Zaire, as it was then known, was placed in the grip of a corrupt and evil leadership.

Despite the mining of billions of dollars of minerals and other resources, DRC has been left by Mobutu nearly bankrupt and on the brink of collapse. The corporations and the Western businessmen who traded with Mobutu never once called on him to be put in order. Instead, they celebrated in his fabulous homes and enriched themselves at the expense of the Congolese people.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney says: “This is not a noble war about saving civilians from genocide or about protecting democracy from tyranny. Instead, this is a war about self-interest and greed.” And children forced to be soldiers are among the millions of Congolese paying the ultimate price. – Photo: Finbarr O\'Reilly, ReutersRwanda, Uganda and their allies began a war in August, 1998, in the DRC under the claim of fighting the Hutu interahamwe, the Rwandan militia responsible for much of the killing during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. President Museveni of Uganda and President Kagame of Rwanda have always maintained that by fighting in the DRC they will defeat the interahamwe and in so doing secure their borders and prevent another Rwandan type genocide from occurring.

They continue to maintain this position until this very day, but this Rwandan/Ugandan explanation for their invasion of DRC is a lie. This is not a noble war about saving civilians from genocide or about protecting democracy from tyranny. Instead, this is a war about self-interest and greed.

Despite limp and totally ineffective protestations by the United Nations, the world community has largely stood idly by and allowed these two men to prosecute what can only be described as the most vicious, senseless and bloody war being fought in the world today.

The cost of their actions to the DRC and its people is almost beyond measure. The scale and savagery of the crimes committed by the Rwandan and Ugandan armies in DRC compares to the abhorrent actions of the Nazi assault upon Eastern Europe.

The International Rescue Committee has just released a 2001 survey of the death toll in DRC’s war. For the 32 month period from August 1998 until the end of March 2001, an estimated 2.5 million civilians have died in the DRC. Of those, 350,000 people have died from violence and 2.2 million have died from disease and malnutrition arising from the adverse effects of the war on the region. IRC estimates that on average 77,000 civilians have perished each and every month in the DRC. That is almost 2,500 civilians dying each day for almost the last three years.

Compare those numbers with the lost lives in Kuwait 10 years ago and the world’s response to the Iraqi aggression. The world sent 350,000 troops to the Gulf to defend Kuwait. In 100 days, the combined military, naval and air forces of the Western world had reduced the Iraqi military, one of the world’s powerful armies, to a burning hulk.

Then compare DRC suffering with the 2,000 lost lives in Kosovo two years ago. The combined air forces of NATO pounded Belgrade into submission and then indicted Milosevic for war crimes. We all remember how the Western world responded to the Iraqi and Kosovo humanitarian disasters and flooded them with food, medicine, shelter and other aid.

I am ashamed to say, Madam Chair, that the Western world has treated DRC like it has treated all the other African disasters it has helped to create. Too little too late. In January 2001, the World Food Program issued a worldwide appeal for $110 million for urgent food aid to Congo. As of May, the World Food Program had received less than one-third of this amount.

Similarly, UNICEF had asked for $15 million worth of essential drugs and therapeutic feeding centers, and to date UNICEF has received less than one-tenth of that amount. Incredibly, the principal aid sent by the U.S. to the region has been in the form of military aid to the warring parties.

What we do know is that the U.S. Special Forces and U.S. funded private military companies have been arming and training Rwandan and Ugandan troops to deadly effect. I think it is appalling that the U.S. taxpayer should be directly assisting the military efforts of Rwanda and Uganda, the aggressors in this tragic conflict and who are confirmed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as the authors of terrible atrocities against Congolese civilians. Our efforts in Africa have amounted to nothing more than bankrolling belligerents and mass murders.

What makes this conflict particularly sickening is the role of U.S. and European corporations, together with Rwanda and Uganda, in the plunder of DRC’s resources. The recent U.N. report on the illegal exploitation of natural resources from the DRC made a series of important findings.

The principal aid sent by the U.S. to the region has been in the form of military aid to the warring parties.

Before going on, let me commend Madam Safiatou Ba-N’Daw and the other panelists on the U.N. panel for their work in presenting the U.N. Secretary General with a truly first rate investigative report on the theft of DRC’s resources. The report concluded that there is mass scale looting, systematic exploitation of Congo’s resources taking place at an alarming rate by the armies of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.

For example, the report finds that DARA Great Lakes Industry, of which DARA Forest is a subsidiary, is in collusion with the Ministry of Water, Land and Forests of Uganda to export timber from eastern Congo by falsifying the timber’s origins. The countries actively buying this uncertified timber include USA, China, Belgium, Denmark, Japan, Kenya and Switzerland.

In May, 2000, DGLI, the parent of DARA Forest, signed a contract for forest stewardship certification with SmartWood and the Rogue Institute for Ecology and Economy in Oregon of the United States. This program amounted to nothing more than a scheme to facilitate the certification and extraction of illegally acquired timber from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The same large scale theft of DRC’s resources has been committed with respect to cobalt, gold, diamonds, coltan, silver, zinc, uranium and numerous other minerals. Significantly, DRC has some of the world’s largest deposits of coltan, an important mineral critical for the maintaining of an electric charge in the computer chip industry. The price of coltan varies from $100 to $200,000 a ton, varying on quality and availability. Business in coltan is booming, but it is not the Congolese who are getting rich.

There is an additional and very disturbing report from MISNA, the Catholic news agency, regarding Rwanda’s actions with respect to the theft of DRC’s resources. MISNA reported in February this year that the Rwandan Army is now setting up concentration camps in the Numbi area south of Kivu in order to have sufficient labor on hand to extract coltan and other precious minerals. It was this enslavement of innocent civilians and captured prisoners of war that drew some harsh criticisms against the Nazi and Japanese leadership from the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals.

In response to the findings by the U.N. special panel, the Rwandans have had the audacity to say that the Congolese people are benefiting from the mining trade in eastern Congo and that there has been an improvement in the Congolese welfare, security, health, education and infrastructure. That is almost like saying that the people of Eastern Europe who were enslaved in quarries, underground mines and forced to work in dangerous conditions in automotive and munitions plants benefited from the Nazi occupation of their countries.

Mr. Robert Raun, president of Eagles Wing Resources, a U.S. based company which trades in coltan, was reported to have described the growing trade as capitalism in its purest form.

We need to support the recommendations of the Ba-N’Daw report. We need to end all military support for the Rwandan and Ugandan military forces. Our government should publicly condemn the governments of Rwanda and Uganda for their criminal actions in eastern Congo, and we should demand that an international tribunal be established in the Great Lakes to investigate and prosecute the violations of international law. We should call on our allies and the entire international community to join us in ending the conflict in DRC.

I would end with this. Is it that U.S. military bases in Uganda and Rwanda and easy access to DRC’s resources are worth all of this? Thank you, Madam Chair.

The official Congressional transcript is titled “Suffering and despair: Humanitarian crisis in the Congo.” Aside from changing the title, the Bay View has not altered the transcript except for minor stylistic adjustments to make it easier to read. To tell Rep. McKinney you appreciate her advocacy for the Congolese, email hq2600@gmail.com.