BAN WELCOMES SUMMIT BETWEEN LEADERS OF DR CONGO AND RWANDA

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed yesterday's summit between the leaders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, the first official bilateral meeting since the neighbouring African nations broke off official ties more than one decade ago.

DRC President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame met in the city of Goma, in eastern DRC, in their first direct talks since 1996.

"The Secretary-General commends both leaders' commitment to promote peace and stability in the Great Lakes region," according to a statement issued by his spokesperson.

He also praised the joint military offensive launched early this year against the "destabilizing and threatening presence" in eastern DRC of the notorious ethnic Hutu militia known as the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), which continues to perpetrate widespread killings and rapes of Congolese civilians.

In today's statement, Mr. Ban said he is encouraged by the two presidents' pledge to consolidate their relationship's renewal through future meetings in the capitals of their respective countries.

"Security and development go hand in hand, and the Secretary-General hopes that the normalization of the relations between the DRC and Rwanda will contribute to the well-being of the people of both countries."

Civilians are bearing the brunt of attempts to dismantle armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with the rebels carrying out vicious reprisals and some Government soldiers committing serious human rights abuses, the senior United Nations official to the country told the Security Council last month.

"We take these concerns very seriously and have addressed them with the Government at various levels," said Alan Doss, the Secretary-General's Special Representative and head of the UN mission in the DRC (MONUC).

He told the Council of the deployment of more MONUC resources and personnel to the affected provinces, such as North Kivu, continuing efforts to combat sexual and gender-based violence, and increased pressure on the Government to take action against undisciplined soldiers.

MONUC has set up nearly three dozen military bases in the embattled North Kivu province, many in remote areas where operations are ongoing against the FDLR. "These bases have allowed for close monitoring of the operations and rapid intervention in a number of instances."

But Mr. Doss warned that the Mission's resources are being stretched thin as it waits for reinforcements to arrive following the Security Council's recent authorization of additional troops to deal with the strife in the DRC's east.

The FDLR has been retaliating against civilians and attacking villages in North Kivu, committing rape and other human rights abuses which have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, according to reports from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The group has been operating in eastern DRC since the end of the 1994 Rwandan genocide that left around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead.
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Opinion: Africa Has to Find Its Own Road to Prosperity

In the Friday edition of the Financial Times, Rwandan President Kagame wrote in an opinion piece that many world leaders "...still believe they can solve the problems of the poor with sentimentality and promises of massive infusions of aid, which often do not materialize. ..."

Citing Dambisa Moyo's book, Dead Aid, Kagame said that "...the cycle of aid and poverty is durable: as long as poor nations are focused on receiving aid they will not work to improve their economies. ..."

Kagame added that "...often, aid has left recipient populations unstable, distracted and more dependent; as Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister of Afghanistan, has pointed out, it can even sever the relationship between democratically elected leadership and the populace. ..."

He also said that although "...we appreciate support from the outside ... it should be support for what we intend to achieve ourselves. No one should pretend that they care about our nations more than we do; or assume that they know what is good for us better than we do ourselves. They should, in fact, respect us for wanting to decide our own fate. ...

While this is encouraging, we know the road to prosperity is a long one. We will travel it with the help of a new school of development thinkers and entrepreneurs, with those who demonstrate they have not just a heart, but also a mind for the poor." [Financial Times]

The Power of Horror in Rwanda

Fifteen years ago, efforts at genocide killed about 800,000 Rwandans. Now that tragedy is providing the government with a cover for repression.

by Kenneth Roth

During a gruesome three months in 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans were murdered as part of a calculated effort by a group of Hutu extremists to eradicate the country's Tutsi population.

The genocide ended only with the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel group founded by Rwandan exiles who ousted the Hutu extremists. The front's austere and savvy commander, Paul Kagame, now serves as Rwanda's president.

In the 15 years since the extremist government was ousted, Rwanda has become an island of stability in a volatile region. The economy is booming, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi is officially downplayed, and ethnic and political violence has been largely eradicated. Kigali, the capital of a country that likes to portray itself as the Switzerland of Africa, is orderly and manicured.

But Rwanda has a long way to go. Despite the facade of occasional elections, the government essentially runs a one-party state. And ironically, it is the genocide that has provided the government with a cover for repression. Under the guise of preventing another genocide, the government displays a marked intolerance of the most basic forms of dissent.

There is no meaningful opposition. The press is cowed. Nongovernmental organizations are under attack. When parliamentary elections held last September produced a whopping 92% victory for Kagame's ruling party, evidence collected by the European Union and Rwandan monitors suggested that the government actually inflated the percentage of opposition votes so as to avoid the appearance of an embarrassing Soviet-style acclamation.

One tool of repression has been the gacaca courts -- informal tribunals run without trained lawyers or judges -- which the government established at the community level to try alleged perpetrators of the genocide. The original impetus was understandable: Rwandan prisons were overpopulated with tens of thousands of alleged genocidaires and no prospect of the country's regular courts trying them within any reasonable time. The gacaca courts provided a quick, if informal, way to resolve these cases. In theory, members of the community would know who had or had not been involved in the genocide, but in reality the lack of involvement by legal professionals has left the proceedings open to manipulation.

Today, 15 years after the genocide, people are still coming forward and accusing their neighbors of complicity in it, suggesting that gacaca has morphed into a forum for settling personal vendettas or silencing dissident voices. The prospect of suddenly being accused of past participation in the genocide, with little legal recourse against concocted charges, is enough to make most people keep their heads down in the political arena.

The government says it will close the gacaca courts in June. But the government has another tool of control -- the crime of "genocide ideology." Formally adopted last year, the law outlawing "genocide ideology" is written so broadly that it can encompass even the most innocuous comments. As many Rwandans have discovered, disagreeing with the government or making unpopular statements can easily be portrayed as genocide ideology, punishable by sentences of 10 to 25 years. That leaves little political space for dissent

Pressing the government to amend these repressive laws and practices is not easy, as I discovered in recent meetings with senior officials from the prime minister on down. They are understandably sensitive about political invective that can lead to renewed ethnic slaughter, but the public faces the very real danger that any political criticism of the government will be construed as fomenting genocide.

Western governments, guilt-ridden at not having stopped the genocide and impressed by Rwanda's stability and economic growth, have been all too willing to close their eyes to this repressive sleight of hand.

But Kagame's strategy is shortsighted and dangerous. He claims to be building a society in which citizens are only Rwandans, not Tutsi or Hutu, but his repression of civil society means that avenues to forge alternative bonds among people are limited. That makes it more likely that in moments of tension Rwandans will resort to their ethnic identity, as so often happens in repressive societies.

The challenge for world leaders 15 years after Rwanda's genocide is to overcome guilt and look beyond the enforced peace to convince Kagame and his government to build the foundation for more organic, lasting stability.

The best way to prevent another genocide is to insist that Kagame stop manipulating the last one.

Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.