White Man's Burden: Affleck and Prendergast in Congress for Congo

Ben Affleck and John Prendergast in Congress,
March 6th, 2010 to testify at a House Foreign
Affairs Committee hearing on conflict in the
Democratic Republic of Congo.  No
Congolese or African person testified.

KPFA News Anchor Cameron Jones:  On Tuesday the House Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the Democratic Republic of Congo, the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II, which has continued since the International Rescue Committee estimated, over three years ago, that more than 5.4 million people had died in the conflict, most of whom died of hardship after being driven from their homes.   The hearing featured the testimony of actor Ben Affleck, heiress and philanthropist Cindy McCain, and John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, a foreign policy lobbying project of the Center for American Progress.  No Congolese, African, or even African American person testified. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.  

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  Friends of the Congo's Executive Director Maurice Carney told KPFA that the absence of a Congolese or even African voice at the Congressional hearing on Congo's catastrophe was no surprise even in the age of President Barack Obama.

Maurice Carney:  It's part of a long pattern of the colonization of information.  You have experts who claim to be speaking on behalf of the Africans.

African scholars and activists Nii Akuetta, Claude
Gatebuke, Emira Wood, Jacques, Bahati, Nita Evele, and
Kambale Musavuli, the all African panelists at the
Great LakesAdvocates' Coalition March 2nd briefing on
the 2010 UN Mapping Report, which docuemtnts atrocities
committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  
None of them were invited  to the March 6th 
Affleck/Prendergast Congressional hearing on Congo. 
Photo credit:   Arrian Lewis

KPFA:  The African Great Lakes Advocacy Coalition had, six days earlier held a briefing on the UN Mapping Report, released on October 1, 2010, which documents mass atrocities in Congo, with an all African, including Congolese, panel. An intern from John Prendergast's ENOUGH Project was in attendance, asking questions, but, as Carney noted, none of the panel's all African speakers were invited to speak at Tuesday's hearing.

Affleck and Prendergast attributed most of Congo's violence to two militias, the Democratic Federation for the Liberation of Rwanda, on Congo's southeastern border with Rwanda, and the Lord's Resistance Army on its northeastern border with Uganda, but the African Great Lakes Advocates said that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, both longstanding U.S. allies, are most responsible, and that this has been abundantly evidenced in the UN Mapping Report, and many previous UN reports referenced in the Mapping Report.    

Maurice Carney,
Executive Director, Friends of the Congo

Maurice Carney:   Both the FDLR and the LRA can enroll in the Museveni and Kagame School of Mass Atrocities and get a Ph.D., because the overwhelming suffering in the region has been triggered by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, led by their presidents.  So, when you have people testifying in Congress and talking about FDLR and LRA, to the exclusion of U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, you feel like you're in the twilight zone, lIke 'What are you talking about?'  Friends of the Congo maintains that, based on the information that these groups present, we can't help but be led to the conclusion that they're looking to cover for U.S. strategic and economic interests because their presentations are marked by two striking exclusions.  One, a discussion around Rwanda and Uganda, and two, a discussion around multinational corporations, the mining companies that are directly involved in the region. 

KPFA:  John Prendergast is most often introduced on talk shows, and in Congressional hearings, as an author and human rights advocate, but neither he nor the ENOUGH Project hide his previous employment as Director of African Affairs on Bill Clinton's National Security Council, and on the National Intelligence Council.

Ben Affleck made another celebrity appearance, last November, with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry, at a press conference about foreign policy in Congo at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is now headed by former Deputy Director of Defense John Hamre.  Again, Maurice Carney:

Former Georgia Congresswoman 
Cynthia McKinney held Congressional 
hearings on the Congo conflict in 2001.

Maurice Carney:   The people called in to testify are usually those who reinforce U.S. foreign policy in a particular region of the world, not those who challenge U.S. foreign policy.  So that's just the way it works in Washington unless you connect with a progressive, such as Cynthia McKinney, when she was in the Congress.  She brought in alternative views that exposed the role of U.S. foreign policy abroad.  But we've yet to find another champion like Cynthia McKinney.  

KPFA:  A partial transcript of McKinney's 2001 Congressional hearings on Congo, can be found on the website of the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper with the title "End the Conflict in Congo."  Keith Harmon Snow's essay "Ben Affleck, Rwanda, and Corporate Sustained Catastrophe" can be found on the Dissident Voice website.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.  

Audio url: http://goo.gl/fe8iz.

Obama take heed: French judge files charges against Kagame allies

Rwandan President Paul Kagame leads his troops.

Cynthia McKinney held hearings in 2001, in which she wrote:


There have been others since, including those held by Orange County Republican Congressman Ed Royce, who concluded that "the State Department didn't want to hear any of this though, as Kagame sat on their pedestal, and largely still does." 

Obama shepherded Senate Bill 2125, the Obama Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act into law in 2006. The Spanish Audiencia Nacional indicted Kagame's top officers for genocide.  There have been many UN and other human reports documenting the Kagame regime's atrocities and minerals plunder in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  On October 1st, the UN Mapping Report documented Rwanda's war crimes, crimes against humanity, and civilian massacres in D. R. Congo, crimes that an international criminal court would be expected to try as genocide.  How much more will it take?

How many of Obama's 2008 supporters ever read his 2006 Senate Bill, the only Senate Bill that will ever bear his name?

When will Obama revisit his own 2006 Senate Bill, and take heed of the 10.01 UN Report?  And, now, of the new French charges?  How much longer will the U.S. back the regime sued on two continents, in three countries, France, Spain, and the U.S.?   How long will the U.S. back the president that Professor Ed Herman, co-author, with David Peterson, of The Politics of Genocide, and, with Noam Chomsky, of "Manufacturing Consent," calls "the worst killer on the planet"?

Washington Post, 12.15.2010, http://goo.gl/eRHFT.

French judge files charges against Kagame allies

By PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARDThe Associated Press

By PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD

The Associated Press
Thursday, December 16, 2010; 9:38 AM

PARIS -- A French judge has filed preliminary charges against six people close to President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, including the defense minister, over the 1994 assassination of the country's then-president in a missile attack on his plane, their lawyers said Thursday.

The six - some ranking Rwandan army officials - were charged last week over the killing of Juvenal Habyarimana, they said. The assassination was widely seen as a trigger to Rwanda's genocide, in which an estimated 500,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were massacred in 100 days of frenzied killing led by radical Hutus.
Investigating Judge Marc Trevidic visited the Burundi capital of Bujumbura from Dec. 5 to Dec. 15, when the six agreed to be placed under investigation, said Bernard Maingain and Lev Forster, who represent all of the men.
Preliminary charges give officials time to pursue a probe before deciding whether to send suspects for trial or drop the case, and give suspects access to court files.

France is investigating the Rwanda case because the plane's crew was French and died with Habyaramina, along with then-president of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira.
Among the six people in question are ranking Rwandan army officers, including James Kabarebe, who has been Rwanda's defense minister since April, Charles Kayonga and Jackson Nkurunziza, the attorneys said. The remaining three were identified as Jacob Tumwine, Sam Kaka and Franck Nziza.
In November 2006, a now-retired anti-terrorism magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, delivered nine arrest warrants against people close to Kagame, all suspected of participating to various degrees in the April 6, 1994, attack.
The warrants triggered a break in diplomatic ties between France and Rwanda - re-established only in 2009. President Nicolas Sarkozy visited the Rwandan capital of Kigali last February, the first visit to Rwanda by a French leader in 25 years.

A Rwandan government-commissioned inquiry concluded that Hutu soldiers shot down the Hutu president's plane because they were opposed to a powersharing deal he backed.

Cynthia McKinney announces EndUsWars.org and a demonstration against escalation in Afghanistan

Former Georgia Congresswoman and 2008 U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has  called for a demonstration against escalation of the Afghanistan War outside the White House in Washington D.C. on 12.12.2009.

On 10.29.2009, the Washington Post reported that President Barack Obama already has 68,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan, twice the number when Bush left office.

On November 29, 2009, Cynthia McKinney, former Georgia Congresswoman and the Green Party U.S.'s 2008 presidential candidate, announced a new website, EndUSWars.org, and, an emergency rally to "Stop the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Escalation of the Afghanistan War," on Saturday, December 12, 2009,  11:00 am - 4:00 pm, at Lafayette Square, the White House, Washington D.C.   The announcement featured Jordan Page's music video, "Listen":