Can Barney out legislate Bahati?

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.

Audio link: http://www.anngarrison.com/images/mp3s/barneyfranklgbt.mp3.

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.