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.

Congo's Sex Practices Against Nature Bill will criminalize homo sex and animal sex

Now Congo has an anti-gay bill on the table, proposed less than 30 days after release of the UN Mapping Report on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Congo, 1993-2003.  These crimes are ongoing because of what is commonly termed "impunity," i.e., because the perpetrators have never been prosecuted or "brought to book."

Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act, a.k.a., Hang-the-Gays Bill, was also promised a second read in Uganda's Parliament within less than 30 days of the release of the Mapping Report, which implicates Uganda's army and, most of all, Rwanda's.

This may be the most ridiculous distraction from the report yet, even more ridiculous even than Rwanda's charges against Peter Erlinder, Paul Rusesabagina, and Victoire Ingabire, who now sits in Kigali's infamous 1930 Prison, in pink prison garb, with her head shaved, as Peter Erlinder did last spring, within a week of traveling there to defend her.

Congo's army is also implicated in the Mapping Report; Congo too feels called to distract, but homosex and zoophilia lumped into one law, with the same penalty?   Congo doesn't have more serious things to deal with than this, with no court system capable of responding to the Mapping Report, and a president, Joseph Kabila, and army, also implicated in the report?

Congo's bill, the Sexual Practices Against Nature Bill will, if passed, criminalize homosex and animal sex, a.k.a., zoophilia, or, bestiality.  Like Uganda's bill, it also criminalizes the promotion of homosex and defense of LGBT rights,  though penalties will not include hanging, as in Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act.  Congolese will face only three to five years, for having sex with the same sex, or with animals, if this passes, and, at least D.R. Congo, site of the most lethal conflict since WWII, including mass rape, civilian massacres, genocide, and relentless resource plunder, will finally get serious Western press:

International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/mHeu4Tr1Ps

Groups mobilise against DRC’s anti gay bill 

In CONGO, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights organisations and activists have expressed concerns over the the Sexual Practices Against Nature Bill presented before the national parliament of the Democratic Republic of aiming to criminalise homosexuality and zoophilia as sexual practices against nature.

Jean Bedel Kaniki, President of Groupe Hirondelles Bukavu, an LGBTI organisation in the DRC confirmed that on the 22 October “the bill was judged admissible by the majority of the parliament and was sent to the socio-cultural committee that will discuss its permissibility in terms of the provisions and principles of the constitution before its promulgation.”

Section 2 of the proposed Bill singles out zoophilia (sex with animals) and homosexuality as sexual practices against nature.

It also criminalises any activities that directly or indirectly aim to promoting the rights LGBTI persons, therefore, in accordance with section 174h3 of the Bill, “all publications, posters, pamphlets, (or) films highlighting or likely to arouse or encourage sexual practices against nature are forbidden within the territory of the DRC (Section 174h3)” and “all associations that promote or defend sexual relations against nature are forbidden within the territory of the DRC.”

Those who go against the stipulations of this Bill will be punished by 3 to 5 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 Congolese francs (Section 174h1). Kaniki explained that the Bill is most likely to be passed next year.

“I do not think that the bill will be passed before the next parliamentary session in March next year; in the next few weeks the budget will be the most pressing issue debated”, he said.

However, Kaniki warned that “we should not wait until March 2011 because they can always surprise us, the same way they did when the Bill was presented to parliament. It came as a surprise for us.”

Organisations have already set up a joint working group in Kinshasa, the capital of DRC.

“We are trying to mobilize the diplomats and also to have people in parliament who can intervene in our favour to the president of the parliament.”

Kaniki also said organisations have the support of LGBTI organisations such as Horizon Community Association (HOCA) from Rwanda, Mouvement Pour Les Libertis Individuells (MOLI) and Humure from Burundi, as well as other LGBTI organisations from Kenya, Uganda and South Africa that have more experience.

In an open letter sent to human rights organisations and activists, the organisations denounced the proposed Bill as a gross human rights violation that goes against all international treaties ratified by the DRC.