KPFA Weekend News Anchor Cameron Jones: On Tuesday, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, moved a human rights amendment to the Financial Services Bill out of committee on a unanimous vote. The amendment urges the U.S. Treasury Department to advocate that multilateral development banks supported by the U.S. not assist nations engaging in gross human rights violations, including denial of the freedom of religion and physical persecution because of sexual orientation or gender identity. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power protest
against Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act,
a.k.a. Hang-the-Gays Bill, in New York City.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Congressman Barney Frank, in his press release about the amendment, used the physical persecution of sexual minorities in Uganda as an example of the sort of human rights violations that his amendment would discourage, so most of the press has interpreted it as being targeted singly at Uganda's pending Anti-Homosexuality Act, otherwise known as the Hang-the-Gays bill, or, the Bahati bill, after its author Ugandan Parliamentarian David Bahati. Last week the New Vision, Uganda's state-owned newspaper, reported that Uganda's Speaker of Parliament has summoned MPs to report on March 22 to take up “unfinished business,” including the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Liberian born Emira Woods, Co-Editor of the Institute for Policy Studies' Foreign Policy in Focus, and one of the African advocates at the March 2nd Congressional briefing on the UN Mapping Report on Congo atrocities, told KPFA that although LGBT rights activism had most likely inspired Frank to write the amendment, it should apply to the whole range of human rights violations. She added, however, that an enforcement mechanism is hard to imagine:
Emira Woods: With the amendment and press release coming forward, what Congressman Frank has done is call much needed attention to the anti-gay legislation and I think we should commend that, and yet I think it is difficult to imagine how that will be implemented by Treasury using its leverage on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the other international financial institutions. I think this is an instance where a Congressman is using the political, sort of like a bully pulpit.
KPFA: And then you think the amendment's advocacy might be expanded to stop other gender violence such as the sexual terrorism in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Emira Woods: I think its first important to applaud the attention that he's bringing to the issues of the anti-gay legislation in Uganda. That's huge. And I think it's much needed. And all of the champions and defenders of human rights broadly, of LGBT right in particular, throughout Africa, welcome the statements and the actions from Congressman Frank. So I think wee have to applaud that first. Acknowledge it, support it, strengthen it. And then, I think, moving further to encourage a similar bully pulpit be used to address the atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
KPFA: For Pacifica, KFPA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Cameron Jones: The Great Lakes Region of Africa Coalition of peace and social justice activists in the U.S. is preparing for a March 2nd Congressional briefing on the UN Mapping Report documenting atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report was leaked on August 26th, 2010, and officially released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on October 1st.
President and General Paul Kagame leads the army whose
crimes in Congo are documented in the UN Mapping Report
leaked 08.26.2010, and officially released 10.01.2010.
The armies of Congo's neighbors to the east, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, and most of all that of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, are most implicated, but the U.S. continues to collaborate with all three militarily. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: International, multilingual broadcast headlines following the August 26th leak of the UN Mapping Report were later combined into this sound collage to introduce "The contradictions of General Paul Kagame:," a video posted to the Youtube and Jambo News, a publication covering Africa's Great Lakes Region:
Audio collage of headlines: (Audio collage of broadcast headlines during the week following the 08.26.2010 leak of the report.)
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Despite the Mapping Report's documentation of atrocities including mass rape, civilian massacres, destruction of hospitals and other essential infrastructure, and even genocide, there have been no international criminal indictments. Within the last year Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, and Burundi's President Pierre Nkrunziza, all of whom are implicated in the UN report, held onto power in elections that much of the world understood as window dressing for dictatorship.
The U.S. and UK have continued to arm, train, and collaborate with the armies of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi in Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere on the African continent. Last July the Pentagon awarded Northrop Grumman and three other defense and security contractors a $500 million contract to train the armies of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi and other African allies.
Jacques Bahati, Policy Analyst for the Washington D.C.-based Africa Faith and Justice Network spoke to KPFA about the Great Lakes Coalition's hopes for its March 2nd briefing on Capitol Hill:
Jacques Bahati: Our goal is to rally U.S. support for justice for the crimes committed by the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian armies and their Congolese collaborators in the war against Congo in 1996 to 2003. Also we want the U.S. to take a clear stand on this issue, supporting the UN Mapping Report recommendations to set up an investigation to determine whether the targeted and massive killing of Congolese, Burundian, and Rwandan Hutu were a genocide.
KPFA: There have been many Congressional hearings and many UN reports about this. What are you hoping might be different this time?
Jacques Bahati: Well, we can't get tired. We will continue to push and rally the international community for peace and stability of the region. Although they might not hear us or they haven't heard us, we believe that one day they will hear what we are saying, because the evidence is very clear. Many people died and justice has to be served.
President Barack Obama, as a Senator, authored Senate
Bill 2125, the Congo, Relief, Security, and Democracy
Promotion Act of 2006.
Ann Garrison: Bahati also said that they would be asking Congress to push for implementation of Senate Bill 2125, the Obama Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006, and the only bill that President Obama, as a Senator, ushered into law on his own. The bill calls for appointment of a Special Envoy to the Congo, and for the cancellation of U.S. assistance to any country invading the Congo and plundering its resources, as the Mapping Report and previous UN reports demonstrate, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi have.
The Great Lakes Coalition is asking Americans to call their Senators and Congressmembers to ask them to attend the March 2nd briefing on the UN Mapping Report on Capitol Hill. For updates on the hearings, see the websites of the Africa Faith and Justice Network and Friends of the Congo.
For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.
KPFA Weekend News Anchor Anthony Fest: And this is KPFA/KPFB in Berkeley, or KFCF, 88.1 in Fresno. The program is the Weekend News; I'm Anthony Fest with David Landau. Turning now to news from Africa, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has been in power for the past 25 years, with military, diplomatic, and intelligence support from the U.S. He officially claimed victory in Uganda's presidential election this morning, but opposition parties and election observers claimed widespread election fraud. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni entered his 26th
year in power, after claiming victory, on 02.20.2011, in
yet another presidential election that opposition parties
declared fraudulent.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: In his introduction to a recent interview with Ugandan President Yoweri Musveni, Aljazeera host Mohammed Adow said that Museveni had joined the League of African Rulers whose only wish is to stay in power forever. In conversation with Museveni, the Aljazeera host asked whether he would ever consider retiring, and criticized his extreme concentration of power, in his own hands.
Aljazeera's Talk to Jazeera Host Mohammed Adow: Mr. President, your National Resistance Movement Party is run like a one man show, not an institution. You are the NRM and without you, some say, it's the end of the party.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni: Oh, they must be sick, because NRM has got nine million members now. Many of the things they do, I don't even know. So anybody who said that I'm running that huge organization alone must be sick in his head or her head.
KPFA: Opposition presidential candidate Dr. Kizza Besigye and the Democracy Group, a non-partisan election monitoring team, were collecting their own election poll tallies after Ugandans went to the polls on Friday, so as to publish their own results, but Museveni's Communications Commission made that impossible by ordering telecom companies to jam their SMS message reception. Besigye, his party and other members of the opposition categorically rejected the election results, and denounced the National Electoral Commission which Museveni selected himself.
They also accused Museveni and his party of ballot stuffing, unsealed ballot boxes, voter intimidation by the army, flagrant vote buying, and using state resources to win. Commonwealth observers observed the same irregularities.
Commonwealth election observers spokesman: The power of incumbency in this general election, and during the campaign leading to it, was exercised to such an extent as to compromise severely the level playing field between the competing candidates and political parties.
KPFA: Poverty, especially among Uganda's majority subsistence farmers, was the opposition's central issue, but, poverty also made Ugandans vulnerable to widely reported, flagrant vote buying by the rullng party. Besigye urged hungry Ugandans to take the money, then vote against the thieves who gave it to them, but Job Collins, who ran for Youth Member of Parliament in Uganda's Northern Region, and other members of the opposition said that many impoverished Ugandans feel too disempowered to defy the authority of those who paid for their votes.
Speaking to the press, Besigye said that the opposition rejected not only the election results but also any legal authority based on them:
Dr. Kizza Besigye has rejected the authority of Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni established by the
02.20.2011 election, because, he claims, it was fraudulent.
Dr. Kizza Besigye: We have rejected the outcome of this election. We are rejecting the leadership that emerges out of this sham election. And we are going to take steps, in consultation with the various people we have pointed out, all the stakeholders in our country, including the public, as to the means we are going to use to bring the country back to Constitutional rule.
KPFA: Africa peace and justice activists in the U.S. have stepped up their calls for the U.S. to stop supporting both the Museveni regime and the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame since the October 1st release of the UN Mapping Report documenting their armies' war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.
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