Bizarre fires guts down huts in Siaya County

Good People !!!

Hehehehehe ......uuuuuwiiiiii, jameni!!! Ati African Solution .........!!!

Jamani wacha niende.......kweli, niende; na fimbo la Referendum ikiongoza wanainchi.......

Kama kweli nataka, kweli; unataka hilo democracia, iweze kuwafaa........imbeni........ kwapamoja, na mshangilie mkisema; semeni, hatuendi tena jehanamu tulipo toka........kwasababu, hatupendi kuchomwa majumba, hatupendi kuzubaishwa watoto wetu kuleweshwa madawa, hatupendi mashamba zetu ziibwe na kunyakuliwa kwa nguvu bila kibali ya wanainchi, hatupendi mapolisi wabandia, akina organized militia terrorist groups, kuajirishwa na serikali ndani la Jeshi la kihalali iweze kuzusha fujo nchini kama lile la M23 la Rwanda sasa inasumbua Congo na kuvamia wanainchi na kuvunja economy na kuwauwa wa Congoman, na kama vile Museveni amejitweka madaraka na kuchukua Migingo kwa nguvu, sasa ametega Port la Mombasa kwa fujo..........Huu ni ungwana ndugu zangu......na wauliza, jee huu ni ungwana jameni???

Wana siasa magaidi wakiwachezea umbwea, wachezeeni bolingo pasi. Hehehehehe……

Waki wachezea ndombolo, wapeni madiaba; wakicheza sukus, wacharazeni na Rhumba.............kweli kabisa........tena ili iweze kua Sulu bin Sulu.......

Sasa ndio wakati mzuri, wekeni santuri, kwani Mombasa iliamka kitambo ikakataa wazi wazi, hawapendi kunyakuliwa mali yao, na wakawataja majina na kwa kauli moja walishirikiana kulinda mali yao……wali ngojea wabara wenzao pia waamke, lakini iliwachukua muda mrefu kuwa sahihisha wanasiasa bandia magaidi, wakupenda shibe lao kwa wizi la mali ya uma.........Democracia haina nafasi kwa wanasiasa magaidi wandugu na wadada.........Siasa ni kushirikiana, tena kuwakemea wanasiasa wasi thubutu kuuza mali ya uma kikabwela……na kwa ujira, kuwaambia ukweli na kuwaaibisha adharani.......hilo ndilo dawa……….

Msikubali kuonewa kisha mkalambishwa peremende tamu tamu …… vile, walivyo fanya hao akina Raila na Kibaki, na Kagame na Museveni........Watu kuuwawa ovyo ovyo, Manyumba yakachomwa kisha wanasingizia orogi……….halafu mna pewa peremende lamba, ati hawataki ODUOL, wanataka RASANGA ili wazidi kuchoma majumba huko Alego Siaya kwa Baba na kuhamisha watu kwa nguvu huko South Nyanza;…… na kisha wanapeana Migingo kwa Museveni .........Halafu Museveni anatutusi "Jaruo Jeuri tena Jinga"......... Uliona wapi jaluo kuwa na ujeuri bila sheria…….wewe una kubaliana na hayo? Nani Jinga basi ? Uliza baniani mchafu, kiatu chake ni dawa..........!!!!!

Kama ni ngoma chezeni mpaka oklock..........Mzee Yusufu, hodari wa ngoma lete tufurahi…….!!!

Nipe nikupe, maanake exchange ndio mtindo wa kidemocracia.........Wanasiasa dubwe dubwe wasitoe jasho...........wanapenda za bwerere……hamna za bwerere, yaani, free loaders..........hehehehehe

If Democracy must work and for it to take root in Africa, thievers and killers of genocide with atrocities fear justice. They lie and behind the scene they work modalities to kill democracy. These are the motivating factor that influenced killings in East Africa which was started with Museveni with his brother Salim Saleh of Somalia commiting genocide with atrocities in Uganda by killing and exterminating the Acholi of Uganda. The Acholi also want justice and Museveni must face justice at the ICC Hague with Kagame and this is what they fear. They regret Bosco is in ICC Hague already……Let them name their thieving masters there at the ICC Hague………that shall be a fair game. They accepted pay to do evil on their people, let them say it there at the ICC Hague who paid them to do evil to their own people…….

The fact remain that, the Acholis who suffered and are left to perish in the hands of Museveni and were made victims of LRA atrocities by Museveni, they too demand for justice.

Luo Kenyans will demand justice on the illegal occupation and killings of Luo fishermen in Migingo Island.

The Congolese people most definitely want to see justice against Kagame on his invasion of Congo by force using organized militiamen of M23 who committed genocidal with atrocities in ways and means, killings and violated Congo sovereignty and territorial boundaries. Now that Bosco was the founder of M23, he is already at the ICC Hague waiting for Kagame and Museveni.

The connection of 2007/8 election gone bad is clear that Kibaki and Raila in one way way or the other have the most responsibilities and were directly or directly involved and that they know something more about the organized killings. Since Museveni Gang of militiamen in Uganda Army uniform featured predominantly in the killings of Luo Nyanza people in Kenya and afterwards Museveni seems to have been rewarded with Migingo for a work well done. And, In the pretense of joint communiqué of the Federation of East Africa, Tanzania refused with free loading of its land and for this reason, he is now facing challenges with warning of attacks from Kagame and Museveni.......and therefore, something is most definitely cooking here........even without witnesses, I see ICC Hague making a headway to bring justice......there are indicators showing, there are enough evidences for ICC cases against Kagame, Museveni, Kibaki and Raila who should be of question.........with which to find the real killers who were the masterminders struggling for power then...........who is Kibaki and Raila.........Yes, Raila met with Museveni to plan takeover of Turkana just like Migingo without discussing with the people of Kenya first, the logistics and modalities of going about sharing development agenda for Turkana or Migingo or Tana River or Lamu for that matter.........There must be proper responsible approach to any mutual development agenda in advancing good leadership.

Raila and Kibaki did not follow democratic principles and neither did they care to comply with public mandate for which their offices were formulated after 2007/8 election gone bad.

Today, Raila continues to support individuals of his special interest pushing for his personal gain and interest against those of the peoples mandate. Rasanga is the New Kid of the Block expected to feed corruption of the Railas unfinished business; which is why, Alego Siaya ka baba houses are being burned to the ground by thugs who are clearing opportunity for special business interests free loading of stealing public land.........This is unacceptable......5 years of the Taste of Raila/Kibaki Rule, Kenyan Luos have seen real pain and sufferings; people died mysteriously, the Luo spears were cut mercilessly, people were forced out of their land by force both in Siaya and in South Nyanza, Bondo became Siaya.........eeeiiiiii yawa.......!!!!

Wachaneni na ICC Hague ifanye kazi yake..........Uhuru and Ruto may be having a clue who should be at the ICC Hague by now...................

Hehehehehehehe......weka santuri, cheza na Alego Usonga land, Alego haiwezi kua Bongo..........tuheshimianeni.........hii ni kionjo tu, cinema bado.........!!!!!!

There is a stop sign in South Nyanza reading....."Ochot Odong"......hehehehehe!!!

I can only wonder..................jeee, Nyanza people have they woken up from the deep sleep...........are they awake.........??? If so, how can they be fooled that Siaya Alego houses were burned down by witchcraft…….that Chief must be sacked forthwith with all his assistants…….That people must demand and go to the streets and the world will join them in support until the THIEF shall be CAUGHT……….even if he is a night runner……..!!!

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

Offside Trick ft Mzee Yusuf=nipe nikupe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJpuyYtw1SQ

Published on Aug 23, 2013

new offside trick song featuring mzee yusuf nipe nikupe.

Kenya: President Odinga Bumps Into President Museveni in Israel

18 November 2011

Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Uganda President Yoweri Museveni were surprised to bump into each other in Jerusalem last week. The two had visited Israel at the same time but are said to have been unaware of each other's presence. It took the Israeli ambassador to Kenya, Gil Haskel, who is also accredited to Uganda, to inform both that the other leader was visiting. "Ambassador Haskel even suggested holding an unplanned 'East African Summit' in the lobby of the the prestigious King David Hotel in Jerusalem," said an embassy official.

Both leaders agreed to divert from strict protocol to the ambassador's spontaneous initiative. The King David hotel, where they stayed in Jerusalem, immediately mobilised and managed to prepare an improvised formal conference room in the hotel lobby, which included the flags of both nations.

The embassy yesterday said Raila and Museveni had a "friendly meeting" which lasted for about one hour. "They discussed pressing East African matters as well as issues of interest on the bilateral agenda of Kenya and Uganda. Odinga and Museveni also discussed their experiences while visiting the Holy Land," ambassador Haskel said after the meeting. As the meeting wrapped up, Raila referred to the meeting as the "Summit of the Holy Land", said an official who was present

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1. Getty Images Photo by GPO/Getty Images Mon, Nov 14, 2011

1. JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - NOVEMBER 14: (ISRAEL OUT) In this handout image provided by the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO), Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) meets with Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga at the Prime Minister's office on November 14, 2011 in Jerusalem, Israel. Visits to Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum and River Jordan are scheduled for the Kenyan Prime Minister's visit to Israel, which begins a trans-world tour ahead of the presidential race in Kenya. (Photo by Avi Ohayon/GPO via Getty Images)

Kenya asks Israel for help fighting terrorists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hEA-UtShWc4

Uploaded on Nov 14, 2011

Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga is seeking Israel's support in stopping reprisal terror attacks by an al-Qaeda-linked militant group Kenyan troops are pursuing in Somalia.
A government statement Monday said Prime Minister Odinga asked Israeli President Shimon Peres for assistance in building the capacity of the Kenyan police to deal with attacks by al-Shabab militants. Odinga also met on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Israeli security forces are among the best in the world in dealing with terror threats, but al-Shabab could view Kenya's request as a provocation.
Kenya last month sent hundreds of troops into Somalia to pursue al-Shabab, whom it blames for attacks and kidnappings in Kenya. In response, al-Shabab has threatened to carry out terror attacks in Kenya's capital.

More articles

Israel ‘sneaked’ Museveni out

Posted by RISDEL KASASIRA

on Monday, November 21 2011 at 00:00

President Museveni’s recent visit to Israel was arranged by the former director of Mosad, the Israel’s intelligence agency, without the knowledge of senior officials from Uganda’s embassy in Tel Aviv, reports have indicated.

Mr Rafi Eitan, was quoted by an Israel Haaretz newspaper yesterday, saying he is President Museveni’s long-time friend and helped him to visit Israel.
The former spy chief, now a businessman, is also reported to be trying to establish business operations in Uganda that include setting up a cattle ranch.

However, the Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary, Ambassador James Mugume, dismissed the reports of Mr Eitan organising the President’s visit.
“Those are speculators. If an individual was in involved in organising that trip, I would have known,” Ambassador Mugume said, “I don’t know him and I am not aware of his business plans in Uganda.”

Mr Eitan is reported to have attended official meetings that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem had with Mr Museveni.
On his previous visit, the newspaper said, in 2003, Mr Museveni met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and with Netanyahu, who was then Foreign minister, mainly to discuss Israeli arms sales to Uganda.

President Museveni has also made trips to India, Tanzania and Kenya in less than a month while Presidents Sharif of Somalia, Salva Kiir of South Sudan and Faure Gnassingbe of Togo have visited Uganda, a scenario that is seen as a an intensified diplomatic campaign by the Kampala regime.

Haaretz also said Israel Foreign Affairs officials, who came to receive Mr Museveni at the airport in Tel Aviv, were surprised to see Mr Eitan, whom they say had not been invited, at the tarmac waiting to shake Mr Museveni’s hand.

But Amb. Mugume said the presence of Mr Eitan means the government was aware.
“It’s not reasonable because how did he enter the airport and later attend the meetings, if he indeed attended those meetings?” Amb. Mugume said.

President Museveni spent four days in the Middle East meeting Israel business community and politicians. He also coincidentally found himself in the same hotel with Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The two leaders were reportedly not aware of each other’s visit.
A statement issued by State House on the President’s visit last week said the Ugandan leader was in the Middle East to woo investors to Uganda.

rkasasira@ug.nationmedia.com

President Museveni on four day working visit to IsraelPublish Date: Nov 14, 2011

President Yoweri Museveni mets the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his office in Jerusalem

newvision

President Yoweri Museveni has met and held discussions with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his official residence at Beit Rosh Hamemushala in Jerusalem.

Accordig to a State House statement, the two leaders discussed matters of mutual interest including attracting Israel investors to Uganda and promoting infrastructure development.

The President who arrived in the country on Sunday for a four day working visit is also due to meet Israel’s President Shimon Perez and other Israel leaders.

Israel and Uganda have both called for enhanced economic cooperation between the two countries.

Raila masterminded the discovery of new Kenya

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Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Photo/FILE

In Summary

• Today, Mr Odinga must feel vindicated. While he is largely associated with the push for the new constitution, Raila biggest contribution to Kenya may be the discovery of “the other Kenya.”
• The founders and defenders of the old Kenya assumed that regions that cannot grow these crops and stuck to the traditional livestock, had no potential and was not worth public money.

At a meeting between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Israeli Prime Minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in 2011, Mr Odinga asked Israel to assist in the irrigation of the Todonyang and other parts of Turkana where famine was a permanent feature, punctuated with conflicts over diminishing water and pastures.

The Israeli PM reached for the map of Kenya and followed the northern part with his fingers, carefully scanning the region from the border with Uganda, towards Somalia. His fingers stopped on Lake Turkana, then asked; “where is the problem? I can see there is a permanent lake here, surrounded by a vast dry area. Why is the lake not being used to irrigate the land?”

For about 50 years after independence, the Turkana lived desperately while the lake stood by, not a drop of its water being used to irrigate the sunbaked land around it. The straight answer should have been that previous regimes had refused to put money into it. But diplomacy dictates that you cannot talk ill of your country in a foreign land.

Mr Odinga needed Israel’s technical expertise to irrigate the land. Mr Netanyahu immediately obliged, asking his people to get in touch with Kenya and begin working on the project.

The result is the 10,000 hectares, Sh20 billion Todonyang Irrigation Scheme which Mr Odinga unveiled in August 2012.

Away from Mr Netanyahu’s boardroom, Mr Odinga later explained that there were people in government who were still not convinced that northern Kenya is worth developing.

He explained that government was full of either the authors of the Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1965 that Kenya had followed since independence, or their disciples. This is the policy paper that advocated for investment of precious government resources only in “high potential areas” to guarantee high returns on investment.

Israel’s intervention therefore would not only boost Kenya’s limited capacity but also shame the doubting Thomases.

Today, Mr Odinga must feel vindicated. While he is largely associated with the push for the new constitution, Raila biggest contribution to Kenya may be the discovery of “the other Kenya.”

This revolution is overshadowed by the new Constitution that has institutionalised the idea that no part of the country should ever be starved of resources on account of its geography, political choices and distance from Nairobi.

The discovery of oil in Turkana, coal in Kitui and rare earth minerals in Kwale while other regions look for hidden treasures is in reality a discovery of the Kenya that the rest of the nation chose to forget for close to 50 years.

This is the Kenya of oil, natural gas, underground water, iron ore, coal and irrigated agriculture.

The coming of the new Kenya, like the new constitution, equally came at a price. For half a century, Kenya was run on an assumption that the potential of a nation is measured by how fertile the land is and how much maize, tea, coffee and grade cattle it can produce.

The founders and defenders of the old Kenya assumed that regions that cannot grow these crops and stuck to the traditional livestock, had no potential and was not worth public money.

As these once forgotten regions emerge, the leaders are today being forced to catch up with citizens.
Suddenly, everyone wants to be seen to be sympathetic to the wild north. At the Coast where for close to 50 years, the high and mighty went for holidays but refused to notice the myriad problems that kept the people down, everyone is talking about title deeds and grabbed land.

Given that Kenya’s leadership has barely changed hands in both ideology and personalities, the push to have the government rethink policies towards the former Northern Frontier District and the Coast has meant telling the authors of the economic blue print that Kenya relied on from independence that they were wrong.

At the centre of this quest has been Mr Odinga’s near solo onslaught on the Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1965.

Raila’s position has been that the development plan was inappropriate as its proposals resulted in skewed development of the country. In the ill-fated, propaganda laden 2007 campaigns, Raila vigorously attacked the blue-print, blaming it for the marginalisation of northern Kenya while other regions wallowed in government sponsored development.

The status quo of the PNU jumped in with claims that Raila was a Communist, anti-capital, anti-property, a man who would take from “the hard working” rich to reward the “lazy poor” who were his supporters.

At the Coast, Raila’s push involved embracing voices and causes including “the untouchable”. Years earlier, Raila had embraced the then fiery Islamic Party of Kenya and its preacher Sheikh Khalid Balala. IPK was considered “dangerous” and only an equally “dangerous” Raila Odinga could embrace it.

In the north, the creation of a Ministry of Northern Kenya for the first time since independence put focus on the region’s unique challenges.

Government explained the investment LAPSSET as an addition to what Kenya has, but Raila pitched it as a beginning for northern Kenya. Raila’s position was that LAPSSET would do for northern Kenya what the Kenya-Uganda Railway did for the south.

As the new Kenya emerges, the battle has shifted. The question today is no longer whether these regions are worth investing in. It is whether they will be allowed to take charge of their destinies through strong devolved units or they continue to be micro-managed from Nairobi.

 

--------------------------------------------------

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Clement Oginga <cloginga@gmail.com>
To: "wanabidii@googlegroups.com" <wanabidii@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Judy Miriga <jbatec@yahoo.com>; progressive-kenyans <progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com>; WanaKenya <wanakenya@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 2:57 PM
Subject: Re: [wanabidii] Bizarre fires guts down huts in Siaya County

Judy,

I can bet you that there's some kind of conflict over land in that Alego Usonga village. Some people want that land and this is their way of chasing these people out of it. I've seen a lot of these scenarios in the last few years. I know one village in our area where some people burned down all the houses in one night, then every time the villagers put up temporary structures for accommodation, they would come at night and burn those down too. Till the villagers got frustrated and moved away. then the harassers started farming the land.

 

 

--------------------------------------------

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Judy Miriga <socioeconomicforum50@gmail.com> wrote:

 

 

Good People,

 

Be very afraid, be very afraid. There is no witch-craft dont be fooled.

This is organized and people of this area must be vigilant and watchful

they will catch whoever is in this mission of putting houses on fire. The

idea is to put fear and have people abandon their homes. It is definately

engineered crime that people must unite to catch the Malevolent.

All manner of tricks to displace people is in the offing. People must put

politicians on notice. Wake up people, wake up.......stop sleeping. Dont

throw your hands in the air, all people must make positive moves if help

must come their way.........Do something before you are made homeless

and are made completely weak to stand your ground and be able to protect

your interest from marauding invaders.

 

Judy Miriga

Diaspora Spokesperson

Executive Director

Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc., USA http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

------------------------------------------------------

Bizarre fires guts down huts in Siaya County

 

Updated Saturday, September 14th 2013 at 17:41 GMT +3

One of the burnt houses in Nyandheho in Nyadorera, Siaya county. [Photo: Lawrence Aluru/Standard]

BY LAWRENCE ALURU

Mysterious fires in Siaya County’s Nyandheho Village have left more than 13 families homeless.

The freakish fires has been reducing one house after another to ashes in the last two weeks, as the affected families wonder who is next.

The charred remains of some of their possessions - beddings, kitchen utensils, food and clothes - lay in the ruins. The remaining furniture that they managed to pull out of the fire was strewn across the nearby open field as they kept watch over it.

Women and children are now forced to spend the night under trees as the number continues increasing day by day.

Usonga Disaster Committee chairman Paul Okome said the bizarre fire has left the residents in shock and disbelief.

The chairman added that some of the displaced victims have been forced to seek refuge at relatives’ homes while others are putting up under trees in open fields as per the Luo tradition.

The tradition requires that a person whose home has been reduced by fire should not seek refuge in another house until and when rituals are performed to cleanse him or her.

Ms Quintoline Atieno, a widow and a mother of five, expressed pain after all her belongings including farm produce were burned to ashes.

Atieno and her father-in-law, Mr Dismas Odhiambo, are among the latest casualties, as their house was the latest to go up in flames.

“I was informed by my neighbour that my house was on fire. The rescuers were only able to salvage a bucket of water and two sufurias,” said a weeping Atieno.

Usonga Disaster Secretary Mrs Merceline Omollo also associated the bizarre fire to witchcraft.

“We don’t know where the fire is coming from because those perceived to be the key suspects were arrested and the cases of fire were on the rise. There is a special kind of bat that is causing the fire and I urge religious leaders to intervene on the matter,” she said.

While confirming the incident the area Assistant Chief of Nyadorera “A” Sub-location Mr Silvester Amouk also claimed that the fire spread as a result of witchcraft.

--------------------------------------------------------------

‘Rebel’ Oduol leads in

Siaya: Cord poll

PHOTO | FILE Supporters of William Oduol celebrate outside Kisumu High Court ON August 23, 2013 after the election of Cornel Rasanga as Siaya Governor was nullified following a petition filed by Oduol after the March 4 General Election. NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

• Cord leader Raila Odinga, Siaya Senator James Orengo and Cord MPs from six constituencies in the county convened in Nairobi to consult on the matter before Mr Rasanga’s candidature was rubber-stamped.
• The Siaya opinion poll seen by the Sunday Nation gave Mr Oduol a 14-point margin over Mr Rasanga, with 48 per cent of the 712 respondents saying they would vote for Mr Oduol.

ADVERTISEMENT

By ISAAC ONGIRIMore by this Author

Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) latest opinion poll shows Mr William Oduol is the most popular candidate for the Siaya Governor’s by-election due next month.

The poll conducted at the request of the party by Infotrak Research Consulting triggered an array of meetings within the party before a decision was reached to support Mr Cornel Rasanga to defend the seat.

“It is true that we received the poll report that showed that Mr Oduol was in the lead but that poll was based on individual findings and did not consider party and other factors,” said Siaya Senator James Orengo.

Cord leader Raila Odinga, Siaya Senator James Orengo and Cord MPs from six constituencies in the county convened in Nairobi to consult on the matter before Mr Rasanga’s candidature was rubber-stamped.

Mr Oduol fell out with the ODM leadership after he viciously protested at shambolic party nominations in January following the party’s decision to declare Mr Odinga’s brother Dr Oburu Oginga the winner.

His protests forced ODM to seek mediation over the matter which saw the party’s election board handing over the ticket to Mr Rasanga before Mr Oduol rejoined the race through the National Agenda Party of Kenya.

The Siaya opinion poll seen by the Sunday Nation gave Mr Oduol a 14-point margin over Mr Rasanga, with 48 per cent of the 712 respondents saying they would vote for Mr Oduol.

Mr Rasanga comes second in the poll, with 34 per cent making him their preferred choice while Mr Ongwen comes third with five per cent followed by Mr Kerry Orege and JT Okinda who scored two per cent each. Former Kenya ambassador to US Elkana Odembo would have managed one per cent.

Sources at the ODM National Executive Committee revealed earlier that a decision had been made to nominate one of Mr Odinga’s top political advisers Oduor Ongwen for the seat.

Sources explained that after analysing the opinion poll, the coalition was concerned that a big percentage disapproved the former governor’s development record.

The Infotrak opinion poll indicated that 56 per cent of the respondents felt dissatisfied with Mr Rasanga’s performance as governor. ODM leaders have also fronted Mr Ouma Onyango as Mr Rasanga’s running mate in the by-election scheduled for October 17.

Meanwhile, Mr Oduol said he had talked to Mr Odinga and agreed to step down in case the party conducted a free and fair nomination process.

Mr Oduol said: “But I was shocked when once again they decided to appoint Mr Rasanga despite his dismal performance. I am now on the ground campaigning and let us meet at the ballot.”

Saturday evening Mr Okinda opted out of the race to back Mr Oduol.

Waki Envelope 20 Perpetrators Disclosed!!!

Nyamodi Ochieng Nyamogo <okil@nyamogoadvocates.com>
To: progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 6:30 AM
Subject: Re: [PK] Waki Envelope 20 Perpetrators Disclosed!!!

YEP! "When the saints go marching in"!!!

On 9/14/13, George Mwai <mwaigg08@gmail.com> wrote:
The list continues :

1. Raila Odinga - Prime Minister, ODM,
2. Hon William Ruto - Agriculture Minister , ODM,
3. Hon Sally Kosgey - High Education Minister , ODM,
4. Hon Najib Balala - Tourism Minister , ODM,
5. Hon Henry Kosgei - Industrialization Minister, ODM,
6. Hon Uhuru Kenyatta - DPM Trade , PNU ,
7. Hon William Ole Ntimama - Culture & Heritage Minister ,ODM.
8. Hon Kabando wa Kabando - Weapons Acquisation, PNU,
9. Hon Stanley Githunguri - Kiambu ,PNU - Financing ,
10. Hon Franklin Bett - Planning, inciting & financing, ODM.
11. Hon Mwai Kibaki - President,PNU

mwai george

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 7:27 AM, Geoffrey Omollo
<kidikibudi@outlook.com>wrote:

Omera,

Are you Oduya's spokesperson?

------------------------------

CC: progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com
From: tomoreje@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [PK] Waki Envelope 20 Perpetrators Disclosed!!!
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 07:22:19 +0300
To: progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com

None!

On Sep 14, 2013, at 6:52 AM, Jacob Chumba <jkchumba@hotmail.com> wrote:

Oduya Ndugu,

How many people did JACKSON KIBOR arap KIROBER
kill?

CHUMBA

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:06:42 -0700
From: oduyaericson@yahoo.com
Subject: [PK] Waki Envelope 20 Perpetrators Disclosed!!!
To: progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com

So long as the list lacks KIBOR, it is as Bogus as Clement!

Regards,

Oduya-Magunga,
Cell: +256 756 116 303
E-mail: oduyaericson@gmail.com

------------------------------

From: Geoffrey Omollo <kidikibudi@outlook.com>
To: "progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com" <
progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 6:49 PM
Subject: RE: [PK] Waki Envelope 20 Perpetrators Disclosed!!!

1. Raila Odinga - Prime Minister, ODM,
2. Hon William Ruto - Agriculture Minister , ODM,
3. Hon Sally Kosgey - High Education Minister , ODM,
4. Hon Najib Balala - Tourism Minister , ODM,
5. Hon Henry Kosgei - Industrialization Minister, ODM,
6. Hon Uhuru Kenyatta - DPM Trade , PNU ,
7. Hon William Ole Ntimama - Culture & Heritage Minister ,ODM.
8. Amb. Francis Muthaura - Secretary to the Cabinet
9. Jayne Kihara - Former MP Naivasha Town
10. Joshua Sang - Journalist, Kass FM
11. Edwin Yinda - Businessman
12. Brig Mohammed Ali - Police Commissioner

I have simplified now, confirm the list I have had in possession since
2009.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:34:06 +0300
Subject: Re: [PK] Waki Envelope 20 Perpetrators Disclosed!!!
From: mwaigg08@gmail.com
To: progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com

Geoff my bro,

The list is 13 names short. First digest that.

mwai george

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Geoffrey Omollo
<kidikibudi@outlook.com>wrote:

Where's your namesake and the likes of Jayne Kihara and a certain
businessman from Kisumu?

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:22:47 +0300

Subject: Re: [PK] Waki Envelope 20 Perpetrators Disclosed!!!
From: mwaigg08@gmail.com
To: progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com

Comrades,

Sorry for having kept you waiting. How about giving you in piece-meal? I
don't want you choking when the weekend has just began!! Here are the
first 7:

1. Raila Odinga - Prime Minister, ODM,
2. Hon William Ruto - Agriculture Minister , ODM,
3. Hon Sally Kosgey - High Education Minister , ODM,
4. Hon Najib Balala - Tourism Minister , ODM,
5. Hon Henry Kosgei - Industrialization Minister, ODM,
6. Hon Uhuru Kenyatta - DPM Trade , PNU ,
7. Hon William Ole Ntimama - Culture & Heritage Minister ,ODM.

 

mwai george

 

 

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Now African states in aggressive diplomatic efforts to halt ICC trials of three Kenyans

Emerging details reveal the desperate manoeuvres by the EA leaders to get President Uhuru Kenyatta to prevent his deputy from attending the ICC sittings ahead of his own trial on charges of crimes against humanity. Photos/FILE Nation Media Group

By DANIEL K. KALINAKI The EastAfrican

Posted Saturday, September 14 2013 at 15:56

In Summary

• The EastAfrican has learnt that President Kenyatta insisted on his deputy attending court, arguing that failure to appear before the ICC could trigger a warrant of arrest and “the argument of whether they are innocent would be lost.”
• After failing to stop Mr Ruto’s brief appearance in the ICC dock last week, African states, led by the African Union and masterminded by Uganda, are now pursuing an aggressive diplomatic effort to halt the trials.
• In addition, President Museveni has successfully sought an extraordinary summit of the African Union, whose sole agenda will be Africa’s relationship with the ICC. The meeting is to be held in October, ahead of the start of President Kenyatta’s trial.

Uganda and Rwanda asked President Uhuru Kenyatta to stop Deputy President William Ruto from flying to The Hague as his trial on charges of crimes against humanity kicked off last week, highly placed sources have told The EastAfrican.

The request was tabled when President Kenyatta met Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa and Rwanda’s Louise Mushikiwabo in Nairobi on September 8, two days before Mr Ruto flew out to the International Criminal Court.

The EastAfrican has learnt that President Kenyatta insisted on his deputy attending court, arguing that failure to appear before the ICC could trigger a warrant of arrest and “the argument of whether they are innocent would be lost.”

The request was part of the behind-the-scenes efforts by the African Union to stop the prosecution of President Kenyatta and his deputy on charges of crimes against humanity at the ICC in The Hague.

Mr Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang entered a “not guilty” plea to charges of murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population and persecution over the 2007/8 post-election violence that left 1,133 people dead and displaced 650,000 others. President Kenyatta, whose trial is set to begin on November 12, is charged with murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts.

READ: Kenya pulls out all the stops to have ICC cases dropped

After failing to stop Mr Ruto’s brief appearance in the ICC dock last week, African states, led by the African Union and masterminded by Uganda, are now pursuing an aggressive diplomatic effort to halt the trials. The strategy involves mobilising support across the continent “to turn a trial of two Kenyan politicians, into a trial of the African people.”

Kenya’s Foreign Minister Amina Mohammed last week led a delegation of regional diplomats to Addis Ababa to lobby Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, to have the AU spearhead the lobbying against the ICC.

Following the meeting, and teleconferences between the foreign ministers of Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda between September 8 and 9 at which a strategy was developed to drum up pressure against the ICC, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn wrote to the ICC on September 10, urging it to respond to a request to transfer the cases against the two politicians and the journalist to local courts in Kenya.

“Until the request of the AU is considered and clearly responded to, the case should not proceed,” Mr Desalegn wrote, in his capacity as current chairperson of the 54-member African Union.

In addition, President Museveni has successfully sought an extraordinary summit of the African Union, whose sole agenda will be Africa’s relationship with the ICC. The meeting is to be held in October, ahead of the start of President Kenyatta’s trial.

According to diplomatic sources, the summit is expected to arrive at a resolution on the ICC that would force the UN to negotiate a deal to halt the trials.

Efforts to fight the cases started as soon as Kenyatta and Ruto were sworn in, with the Kenyan leaders seeking the support of President Museveni to mobilise support against the ICC. This culminated in Uganda sponsoring a motion at the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May, at which a resolution was passed urging the ICC to refer the cases back to Kenya.

“African leaders have come to a consensus that the [ICC] process that has been conducted in Africa has a flaw,” Mr Desalegn told reporters at the end of the May summit, which also marked the 50th anniversary of the AU. “The intention was to avoid any kind of impunity... but now the process has degenerated into some kind of race-hunting.”

The ICC, however, brushed off the resolution as a political instrument that had no bearing on a judicial process. Undeterred, African diplomats have continued to rally support against the process in The Hague using a two-pronged strategy.

Internally, the Kenyan government has been fast-tracking efforts to close camps for internally displaced people and ameliorate their conditions before the trial kicks off.

In addition, it was agreed that while the two principals would continue to publicly express their confidence and co-operation with the ICC, pressure would continue to be raised by rallying domestic constituencies. Thus while parliament and Senate turned up the pressure by voting to withdraw Kenya from the ICC, the executive, which would be required to initiate a Bill to turn the threat into a piece of legislation, continued to express confidence in the process in The Hague.

Those efforts gained a sense of urgency last week after Mr Ruto appeared in the dock, followed by Mr Sang. The reality of a sitting African leader appearing before judges at the ICC appears to have rankled many heads of state and government across the continent and has given momentum to the renewed effort to either kill the prosecution in The Hague, or hand it over to local courts in Kenya or Africa.

A senior Kenyan official told The EastAfrican that Mr Ruto, who flew back to Kenya after a short adjournment in the trial, would return to The Hague as scheduled next week.

Asked if President Kenyatta would honour his date with the Hague court on November 12, the official said: “He is prepared to go but Africans are not keen to see him go.... the extraordinary summit of the African Union has been scheduled in October, ahead of November 12. It could change the game plan.”

The EastAfrican has learnt that African states plan to take the matter to the UN General Assembly in New York later this month if the ICC does not accede to their request to drop the trial or move it to Kenya.

The African states are expected to make five points to press their case: That the trial of Kenya’s top two executives will undermine their ability to govern the country; that a lot of work has already been done to resettle the people displaced by the post-election violence in 2008; that the trial will reopen old wounds; that Kenya has a new Constitution that can be used to create local courts to try the cases; and that the AU request to have the case moved to Kenya has been ignored by the ICC.

“If they ignore us, we will need to find alternatives because the ICC has become a theatre of a witch-hunt of Africans,” a senior African diplomat told The EastAfrican, adding, “We haven’t heard of any prosecutions of people from Syria, from Burma, from Iraq; we want them to be fair and for the court to work for all people.”

African countries now want the charges dropped, the officials to be tried in absentia, or for the trials to move to a local court in Kenya.

The plan is to use the Security Council to bring pressure to bear on the ICC, a regional diplomat said. Rwanda, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC in 2002, but which holds a temporary seat on the Security Council, has already expressed its support for the AU resolution on the matter.

ALSO READ: ICC: Kenya’s is a lose-lose strategy even if the AU has its way

It is understood that AU chairperson Mr Hailemariam wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon informing him that African states would reconsider their participation in international activities, such as the Somalia Conference, if the trials hinder Kenya’s ability to participate in them.

The EastAfrican has been told that if the African states fail to negotiate concessions now or at the UN General Assembly later this month, at the extraordinary AU Heads of State summit in Addis in October, they will consider withdrawing from the ICC en masse.

While this puts pressure on the ICC, the move by the AU member states will also raise questions about their commitment to ending the injustice and impunity that the ICC was set up to address.

Some 34 African countries have ratified the ICC Treaty and four out of the eight cases currently before the court were referred to it by African states.

Uganda was the first country to use the new court when it referred Joseph Kony and other leaders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army to the court in 2002. Permanent Secretary in the Foreign Affairs Ministry James Mugume defended the country against charges of double standards.

“Now Uganda has domesticated the Rome Statute and opened a special court to try war crimes, meaning Kony can be tried here. That is in line with the principles of the Rome Statute; of delivering justice for impunity but also fostering peace and reconciliation,” Mr Mugume told The EastAfrican.

“If Kony were tried by the ICC and imprisoned in The Hague, it would make some Western and a few other countries happy, but would that deliver justice to the people in Acholi who were victims of LRA atrocities?”

He added: “For some of us who participated in formulation of the Rome Statute, there were two key principles: Justice and impunity on the one hand and peace and reconciliation on the other. It seems some people have forgotten this. The West says it was Kenyans who in the first place took the case to ICC; yes, Kenya took the case there because they did not have structures [to try suspects and deliver justice at home]. But now they have. So why can’t they be allowed to handle the case at home?”

Civil society organizations representing the victims of the post-election violence say Kenya failed to establish a local mechanism to try the perpetrators and that the current efforts to undermine the ICC trials will perpetuate impunity and undermine justice and reconciliation.

Additional reporting by Tabu Butagira in Kampala

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Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)

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Tanzania: Senseless War in Eastern DR Congo Must End Sooner

1 September 2013

analysis

HEAVY fighting has been reported in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between the so-called M23 rebel forces massively assisted by Rwandan troops and the Congolese army.

The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO) and Force International Brigade (DIB) are there essentially to maintain peace and stability, have been given the mandate to shoot back at the rebel forces when they threaten innocent lives of the Congolese people.

And this was what happened during the week when the M23 rebels shelled the people of Kibati in the eastern Congo killing several people and the peace-keepers returned fire which proved to be too heavy to the rebels who suffered huge losses.

Rwanda, whose leaders have always brazenly denied supporting and helping the rebels militarily, is said to have sent two battalions in DR Congo to prop up the devastated M23 forces.

May be it will not be so easy for Rwanda to deny the recent developments. In another breath, South Africa has warned the M23 rebels and their cohorts fighting in the DR Congo not to try to retake the battleground city of Goma in the escalating violence in the area.

And the South African National Defence Force Chief of Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Derrick Mgwebi minced no words as he warned the rebels against any move to try to retake Goma when he said they were sending a message to M23... ."this time around you're not going to see Goma... "

This means that the peacekeepers were ready for any eventuality. So Rwanda's decision to send her troops into DR Congo to assist the M23 rebels essentially means Rwanda has now decided to openly fight the peacekeepers in pretext of fighting Rwandan rebels.

The United Nations has condemned the recent fighting in the area. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply concerned about the escalating violence in eastern DR Congo and in particular the indiscriminate shelling by the armed M23 group which caused deaths, injuries and damage among the civilian population in the eastern provinces as well as the immediate border area in Rwanda. The situation in the eastern DR Congo raises a lot of concerns not only to the UN Secretary General , but to many stakeholders especially in the Great Lakes Region.

More so in the DR Congo where hundreds of innocent lives are lost unnecessarily. The greed for Congo gold by the big people in Rwanda and elsewhere is sending innocent Congolese men, women and especially the vulnerable children to their premature deaths.

The greed for power by some people who consider themselves 'semi-gods' blocks their minds and hearts from reconciliatory considerations.

We draw some veneer of hope from the emergency meetings in Kampala convened by the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of the ministers and Heads of State from the Great Lakes Region next week where we hope the eastern DR Congo situation will be the main menu. Let sense prevail at the meetings and we urge that personal pride by whosoever should not be allowed to prevail.

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Tanzania's Children and the Toxic Lure of Gold

By Janine Morna, 13 September 2013

analysis

PHOTO ESSAY: Tanzania: Hazardous Life of Child Gold Miners

Tanzania needs to act on child labour in the hazardous gold mining industry, fast.

I met Farida, a widow, and her seven children on a gold processing site for small-scale miners in Tanzania. The air was thick with dust mixed with particles of the metal and mercury - byproducts of the mining process. A thin layer of white powder settled on my arms and face. Some of my colleagues started to cough heavily. Large ball mills - machines used to crush gold ore into powder - made unbearable clanging noises.

Two of Farida's teenage sons were preparing gold ore for the ball mill by crushing it into pebbles with large rocks, narrowly missing their fingers with each strike. Farida kept some of her children out of school so they could mine enough gold to support the family. I wondered what it must be like to be one of Farida's children, trapped there nearly every day.

Farida's older sons described their long, exhausting days. The 13 year-old, Rahim, had never been to school, and spent his time digging in deep, unstable pits - which frequently collapse on miners in the area - and transporting and crushing heavy sacks of gold ore.

Amani, at 15 the eldest, had recently learned how to extract the gold using mercury. He carefully mixed and swirled the ground gold ore, water, and silvery liquid mercury in a basin using his bare hands. Once the mercury and gold combined, I watched in alarm as everyone gathered closely around the trader who was burning the resulting amalgam. The mercury vapour released in this process is incredibly toxic, and can have dire health implications, especially for children. How much of these fumes had the family inhaled over the last few years?

In the course of researching a new report for Human Rights Watch, "Toxic Toil: Child Labor and Mercury Exposure in Tanzania's Small-Scale Gold Mines," my colleagues and I interviewed 59 other children working in similar conditions. Sadly, their stories are not unique in Africa's gold-producing countries.

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The Inquirer (Monrovia)

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Liberia: SRSG Concerned About Exploitation of Liberia's Resources

13 September 2013

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) and coordinator of UN Operations in Liberia, Karin Landgren has reported to the United Nations that the country still has several challenges even though it is sufficiently stable to provide an environment conducive to the critical reforms the government is undertaking.

Terming her observation as "many potential drivers of conflict" that remain to be addressed in the country, Ms. Landgren named land and the exploitation of Liberia's abundant natural resources as the cornerstones of Liberia's economic development, but that they also can be powerful sources of conflict.

She said therefore government and its many other partners should acknowledge the need for transparent and responsible management of concession agreements, particularly, when it concerns those who should be benefiting from development.

Briefing the United Nations Security Council recently, she also outlined the lack of adequate consultation with affected communities as an issue that needs attention, noting, "It will be important to institutionalize mechanisms for consistent dialogue between concessions and communities."

The UN envoy said, "Corruption in general remains a very significant handicap, impeding the functioning of national institutions, public confidence in those institutions, and the pace of economic growth."

Ms. Karin Landgren, lauded Liberia's commitments in maintaining peace, while underlining the need for the country to progress on critical reform processes and steadily strengthen its justice and security sectors in preparation to take on increasing security responsibilities. SRSG Landgren among other things highlighted the important role of the Constitutional Review Committee in leading a comprehensive, inclusive and participatory review process with intensive civic education efforts about to start under a tight timeline.

The SRSG also reported on the implementation of the three-phased military drawdown endorsed by the Security Council last September and stated that following the first phase of drawdown, UNMIL no longer maintains a fixed military presence in four of Liberia's counties, and the Mission is expected to vacate a further three counties by April 2014.

The UN boss in Liberia emphasized that more demands on the government are expected as this transition progresses and that the phased approach has permitted the government and UNMIL to develop close routine and effective mechanisms; however, greater efforts need to be made to strengthen security institutions for a successful transition.

"The Liberian security forces have not been able to scale up their presence and operational effectiveness to assume the increased security responsibilities, and they remain severely constrained by weak mobility, resources, and administration," she intimated.

She underlined that Liberia's security is intertwined with its neighbours and that strengthening regional approaches remains imperative to security as well as to development and that the country should remain on course, thereby pledging support for the Government, development partners and civil society.

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16 August 2013 Last updated at 20:13 ET

DR Congo unrest: Children freed from militia, says UN

Monusco is tasked with protecting civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Continue reading the main story

DR Congo Seeks Democracy

• End of the 'Terminator'?
• Weapon of war
• Rebel kaleidoscope
• Katanga, rich but terrorised

The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo says that 82 children - some as young as eight - have been rescued from an armed group.

Monusco says the children, including 13 girls, had been forcibly recruited in the past six months by the Mai Mai Bakata Katanga militia.

The group is active in Katanga province in the south-east of the country.

Forty of the rescued children have been reunited with their families and the others are said to be receiving care.

Correspondents say the region remains very restive, with local militia demanding a fairer distribution of wealth between the poorer north of Katanga and the southern zone where foreign mining firms operate.

Monusco - the UN's stabilisation mission in DR Congo - said in a statement that the children had been identified and separated from the militia through the concerted efforts of child protection agencies.

"We are extremely concerned by continued reports of active recruitment by Mai Mai Bakata Katanga and other armed groups in eastern DRC," said Monusco head Martin Kobler.

"Children face unacceptable risks when they are recruited for military purposes. The recruitment of children, particularly those under 15 years of age, could constitute a war crime and those responsible must be held to account."

Monusco said that since the beginning of the year, 163 children, including 22 girls, have been removed from the militia.

DR Congo Seeks Democracy

Goma crisis

• End of the 'Terminator'?

  Why did Ntaganda finally surrender?

• Weapon of war

• Rebel kaleidoscope

• Katanga, rich but terrorised

• UN under fire

• Q&A: DR Congo's M23 rebels

Rwandan invasion of DR Congo feared

View gallery

September 12, 2013

1 hour ago

Rwandan soldiers pass a sign welcoming drivers to the city of Gisenyi, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo on Southern African nations on Saturday expressed concern at the growing number of Rwandan troops on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and said it hoped an invasion was not imminent.

A statement from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional body said it was concerned "at the deployment of Rwandan troops along the common border" and "expressed the hope that Rwanda is not contemplating to invade".

Issued from a summit in Namibia attended by Congolese President Joseph Kabila, the statement called on the country's neighbours to "contribute to peace, security and stability of the DRC."

Congolese troops backed by a special United Nations force launched a fresh assault against M23 rebels late last month in DR Congo's north east.

The SADC also praised DR Congo's government troops and the UN brigade for "continuing to exert military pressure on M23 and other negative forces in eastern DRC".

Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa have all provided troops to the intervention brigade, a 3,000-strong contingent with an unprecedented offensive mandate to fight entrenched armed movements, marking a strategic change of tack from traditionally peaceful UN missions.

All three countries were represented at the summit.

The UN accuses Rwanda of backing the M23, a charge the country has adamantly denied.

The rebels in turn have accused the Congolese army of joining forces against them with the Hutu FDLR, or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, which is also active in eastern DR Congo where its members fled in the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Talks between the rebels and Kinshasa restarted Tuesday after stalling in May, following an ultimatum from regional leaders after a recent upsurge in fighting.

The M23 was founded by former Tutsi rebels who were incorporated into the Congolese army under a 2009 peace deal.

Complaining the deal was never fully implemented, they mutinied in April 2012, turning their guns on their former comrades and launching the latest rebellion to ravage DR Congo's mineral-rich and conflict-prone east.

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DR Congo rebels 'lick their wounds': UN

September 12, 2013 3:45 PM

Democratic Republic of Congo forces and UN troops have forced rebels back from a key eastern city and left them to "lick their wounds," a top UN official said Thursday.

The M23 group around Goma in eastern DR Congo suffered battlefield defeats, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said, suggesting that this is what forced it back to peace talks with the government this week.

M23, which the United Nations says has received support from neighboring Rwanda, launched an assault on Goma last month, sparking fierce battles with government forces.

An assault by the DR Congo army, backed by UN peacekeepers and attack helicopters, forced the rebels away from Goma, the major city in the resource-rich region.

"One very significant achievement was made: that the M23 group has been pushed back towards the north to such a place that it does not any more pose the direct threat that it had posed for such a long time," Ladsous said.

"M23 has suffered casualties" and withdrew to "lick their wounds," he told reporters after UN Security Council talks on DR Congo.

UN forces have strengthened their positions around Goma and it was "no surprise" that M23 has returned to peace talks with the government in the Ugandan capital, he added.

Mary Robinson, UN special envoy for the Great Lakes region, told the Security Council that M23 had offered to disarm if rival anti-Rwandan rebels operating in the region also laid down their arms, according to diplomats in the meeting.

Ladsous said the United Nations now hopes to start using surveillance drones over eastern DR Congo in early December. The unarmed drones will help the UN monitor the border between DR Congo and Rwanda, which denies aiding M23.

The UN has also stressed new political efforts to end decades of conflict in the region. African heads of state are to meet to discuss the DR Congo in New York on September 23 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly leaders' summit.

Eleven African nations, including DR Congo and Rwanda, signed up to a UN-brokered declaration in February agreeing not to interfere in each other's affairs.

A Security Council statement released after Thursday's meeting expressed "concern" at the tensions in eastern DR Congo and said all signatories of the political cooperation accord had to "fulfill their commitments in good faith."

 

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Friday, September 13, 2013

Do not expand police powers, urges rights group

Kenyan police officers. Human Rights Watch has urged Kenyan law makers to reject proposed amendments to the National Police Service Act of 2011 and the National Police Service Commission Act of 2011. The rights group fears that this move could increase worrying extrajudicial killings, and endanger the long-awaited police reforms. PHOTO|FILE. NATION

In Summary

• The proposed amendments could exacerbate worrying patterns of police abuse and extrajudicial killings, and jeopardize the long-awaited police reforms, Human Rights Watch said.
• The amendments seek to expand the legal use of firearms to include protecting property and preventing someone charged with a serious crime from escaping lawful custody.
• The Kenyan police have regularly been implicated in extrajudicial killings and other serious abuses prior to the 2007-2008 post-election violence.
• The amendments also enhance the influence of the president and cabinet secretary for Interior and National Coordination over the police and the commission.

Kenyan lawmakers have been urged to reject amendments to police laws that would expand the legal use of firearms and weaken civilian oversight over police abuses, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Parliament is expected to vote on the amendments before the end of September 2013.

The proposed amendments could exacerbate worrying patterns of police abuse and extrajudicial killings, and jeopardize the long-awaited police reforms, Human Rights Watch said.

“Kenyan lawmakers shouldn’t be expanding police powers when there are such serious concerns about police abuses,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“Instead, parliament should focus on improving accountability for extrajudicial killings by police and on other, much-needed reforms.”

In May Attorney General Githu Muigai proposed amendments to the National Police Service Act of 2011 and the National Police Service Commission Act of 2011.

Among other changes, the amendments seek to expand the legal use of firearms to include protecting property and preventing someone charged with a serious crime from escaping lawful custody.

The current laws already allow for use of lethal force by the police when their lives or those of other persons are in danger, but only when all other means fail.

Further amendments go against international standards, says the rights group.

International law is directly incorporated into Kenyan law under the constitution.

ABIDE BY UN PRINCIPLES

Human Rights Watch has urged Kenyan security forces to abide by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.

The principles call upon law enforcement officials to as much as possible apply nonviolent means before resorting to force and firearms, and to use intentional lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect life, the rights body added.

In early August a member of parliament allegedly assaulted a female police officer in Nakuru, while villagers in Nyanza killed a military officer after they mistook him for a robber.

Government authorities have publicly encouraged police officers to take advantage of provisions in the law allowing use of firearms to respond to these attacks.

On August 18, Inspector General of Police, David Kimaiyo, told his officers to “understand” their powers to use firearms, citing the assaults on the police officers.

“I hereby direct police officers that when their lives are threatened they must clearly understand their powers to use firearms,” the inspector general said in a statement to the media.

On July 19, the cabinet secretary for Interior and National Coordination, Joseph Ole Lenku, openly directed the Inspector General and other police commanders to use force.

He added there would be dire consequences if the warring Turkana and the Samburu communities in the Rift Valley failed to voluntarily return 50 guns that police lost in a botched operation in December 2012.

EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS

The Kenyan police have regularly been implicated in extrajudicial killings and other serious abuses prior to the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions had documented police involvement in the targeted killing of up to 500 members of the Mungiki, a proscribed criminal gang.

In a preliminary survey on extrajudicial killings released in mid-August, the human rights commission and the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) found that, between May and August, police had shot dead 120 people in separate incidents under unclear circumstances.

Police have not submitted reports to the Independent Police Oversight Authority to facilitate investigation in any of these cases.

The Police Act provides that any killing by police must be reported to the oversight authority, a civilian body created in 2012 for investigation of incidents of police abuse.

Police have also been accused of using excessive force against protesters even when it may have been unwarranted.

On August 7, security officers in Moyale allegedly shot a human rights activist, Hassan Guyo at a roadblock.

Guyo, 40, had travelled to Moyale from neighbouring Wajir to assess the human rights situation following clashes between police and villagers protesting the firing of a chief.

He had earlier complained to friends that a senior police officer in Moyale had threatened him with death.

REMOVE OVERSIGHT POWERS

The proposed new police amendments remove some oversight powers from the National Police Service Commission and return them to the Inspector General of police.

It is feared that this would lead to abuse of power by the police.

Some of the functions of the commission to be affected by these amendments include recruitment, vetting, and discipline of police officers.

The amendments also enhance the influence of the president and cabinet secretary for Interior and National Coordination over the police and the commission.

They reinstate the president’s powers to hire and fire the Inspector General of police.

Those changes would remove the Inspector General’s security of tenure and effectively undermine the person’s operational independence, which is provided for in Kenya’s 2010 constitution, said Human Rights Watch.

Proposals to make the Inspector General the chair of the National Police Service Commission as opposed to an independently hired civilian as provided for in the original act are inimical to the spirit of police reforms, the rights body added.

“Government authorities should be concentrating on accelerating reforms that are essential to making the police accountable.

They should not be passing laws that would give them greater power to commit abuses,” Bekele said.

“Authorities should bolster accountability in the police force by proceeding quickly with other reforms on the agenda, such as vetting and restructuring the force,” he added.

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Kampala denies Israel refugee deal

By PAUL REDFERN, Special Correspondent

Posted Saturday, September 7 2013 at 12:35

As Uganda continues to deny that it has signed a deal with Israel to take in thousands of unwanted Eritrean and Sudanese migrants from the Jewish state, it has been revealed that Kampala stood to gain from increased military aid in the agreement.

Uganda was singled out as the destination for tens of thousands of African migrants living in Israel, after a gag order was lifted last week (August 29) in response to a request by Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. However, while acknowledging that a deal was reached with Uganda, Israeli officials insist it will only apply to some of the 55,000 Sudanese and Eritreans currently in the country.

According to the arrangement, Uganda will either accept the migrants, or serve as a transit station to their own countries. The Ugandan government has continued to deny the agreement.

“We’re not aware of any such deal. There’s no way Uganda would enter into such an arrangement,” Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Elly Kamahungye said.

However, International Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem acknowledged that Uganda had been approached by Israel to take in the refugees.

“It is true Israel is looking for third host countries to take in unwanted refugees, and Uganda is one of the countries that have been approached for this purpose,” he said.

But he added that the approach had been rebuffed because as a policy, the country did not accept repatriated or deported non-citizens.

“We only accept refugees who walk across our borders, not unwanted immigrants rejected by other countries,” said Mr Oryem.

Human rights groups in Israel say that the plan is in violation of UN policy.

According to the Israeli media, under the agreement in principle, Uganda would take between 1,500 and 2,000 Eritreans currently in Israel in exchange for military, technological and agricultural aid. The Ugandan government is also reportedly earn $8,000 per head to absorb the refugees.

But Mr Oryem denied there was any offer of incentives outside the normal package for resettlement of the refugees, which includes housing, health, educational, energy and safe water facilities.

Israeli Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar told Knesset legislators last week that the special envoy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hagai Hadas, had reached an agreement with a third country to absorb Eritreans and Sudanese who crossed from Egypt into Israel over the past six years.

“In the first stage, we will focus on raising awareness within the population of infiltrators while helping them with the logistics of their departure, including costs, airfare and dealing with the possessions they accumulated while they were in Israel,” Mr Sa’ar said. During the second stage, Israel will set a deadline by which certain people within the “infiltrator population” will be asked to “willingly” leave the country.

Over the past eight years, around 60,000 African migrants, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, have entered Israel via Egypt. Around 2,000 are being held in a prison camp. Most are reported to have applied for refugee status, but their requests are yet to be processed.

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Take us home, former M23 fighters tell Kigali

By EDMUND KAGIRE, The EastAfrican

Posted Saturday, September 7 2013 at 12:38

Some 680 former members of the M23 rebel movement who fled to Rwanda in February want to return home, citing “poor living conditions” in the internment camp where they are currently being held in eastern Rwanda.

On Monday last week, the former rebels, who have since their entry into Rwanda been disarmed and asked to renounce rebellion, went on strike, prompting the army and police to intervene to quell the situation.

The former fighters, who are loyal to the former M23 political leader Jean Marie Runiga, pelted the guards who patrol the camp with stones and other objects, shouting, “We are tired of living in poor conditions, we want to return home,” according to eyewitnesses.

(Read: Drums of war in DRC as Rwanda masses troops)

However, police quickly intervened to quell the situation, encountering resistance from the irate mob of the former rebels. Shots were fired in the air to disperse the former M23 men who threatened to break out of their internment camp located in Ngoma district, Eastern Province.

Both the police and Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs said the incident was triggered by the refusal of the former fighters to undergo a routine check, forcing the police to use force.

“There was nothing unusual. The individuals in the camp refused to be checked. The police wanted to conduct a routine check in the camp to ensure that everything was OK, but the occupants of the camp were not very welcoming,” said ACP Theos Badege, the police spokesperson.

The routine check was aimed at unearthing illegal possessions, mainly arms and narcotics. ACP Badege says the former rebels became “unruly,” adding that those who incited the protest will be dealt with.

Following the incident, the military and police have deployed heavily in the camp. Attempts by journalists to enter the camp were futile.

According to eyewitnesses, however, there had been unrest in the camp for some time until the incident last week, which was the climax of what appeared like to be a building problem.

“We heard them shout that they were tired of conditions in the camp and wanted to return home. We requested security organs for permission to enter but the security personnel guarding the camp refused. We wanted to talk to them and listen to their grievances but we could not,” a journalist from a local radio station said.

The unrest at the camp prompted different ministries and government institutions to meet and discuss the emergency.

Minister of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs Seraphine Mukantabana, whose ministry is running the camp, said that “there was no problem at all” but a routine check that went bad. However, other sources suggest otherwise.

According to sources, the former rebels feel distraught because their applications for asylum have not been considered after many months.

Fleeing combatants

In July, Rwanda made several pleas to the UN to take responsibility for the fleeing combatants — or at least help Rwanda to feed and maintain the group.

The rebels, who include the former political leader Bishop Jean Marie Runiga and one of its top military commanders, Col Baudoin Ngaruye, entered Rwanda in February after fleeing from the fighting between two different factions of the movement. The two are being held in a secret place in the capital, Kigali. Efforts by The EastAfrican to reach them remain unsuccessful.

The rebels entered Rwanda just at about the same time wanted rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda surrendered himself to the US embassy in Kigali and was later handed over to The Hague-based International Criminal Court.

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Congo-Kinshasa: Rwandans Now Weary of Picking Up the Pieces of Kagame Leadership
By Antoine Roger Lokongo, 5 September 2013


The Congolese army has been flexing its muscles in killing hundreds of Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers in eastern Congo. Demonstrations by the Congolese masses have taken place as well as a new cooperation agreement among some countries in the Great Lakes region.


The above headline of mine is surprisingly very civilized compared to 'Umurabyo' newspaper's independent journalist Saidati Mukakibibi's. She is now languishing in jail in Rwanda for having quite rightly compared President Paul Kagame with the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler. She was arrested for defamation, inciting public disorder and ethnic 'divisionism' (Reuters, 13 July 2010) following the 1994 genocide, a trump card Kagame uses well both at home and abroad as a milking cow to keep and win new friends and to silence his critics. But for how long?
Mukakibibi is not the only one. Pascal Manirakiza, a Rwandan refugee who went missing in Uganda has been found tortured and unconscious and 'dumped' at a cemetery near the capital, Kampala, according to the Ugandan government which is supposed to provide him protection on the basis of the Geneva Convention. On the contrary, Manirakiza had earlier been arrested by Ugandan police on a warrant issued by Rwanda (the UN hypocritically protested the arrest). Manirakiza's crime? He was one of four Rwandans who told the BBC last month that they were seeking asylum in Uganda. They accused the Rwandan army of forcibly recruiting them to fight in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (BBC News Africa, 27 August 2013). The BBC reminded us that in 2010, Rwanda's ex-army chief Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa fled to South Africa. He accused Rwanda of a failed attempt to assassinate him later that year, after he was shot and wounded in Johannesburg. Rwanda denied any involvement. The shooting strained diplomatic relations between South Africa and Rwanda.

COVERING UP CRIMES
The question we ask now is: For how long the UN system, Britain and America are going to provide Museveni and Kagame cover or help cover-up crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide they are committing in the DRC? Not for too long! Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman, reporting for 'Le Soir' from Rwanda confirmed that 'it is clear that there is a growing concern among the Rwandan people' (Le Carnet de Colette Braeckman, 26 August 2013). Kagame's leadership is now widely put into question despite recent visits by his die-hard friends such as former US president Bill Clinton who questioned the line of thinking of 'some people in the human rights community who believe that every good thing that has happened in Rwanda should be negated by what they allege that they have done in the eastern Congo' (BBC News Africa, 12 August 2013).

However, the fact that Rwanda and Uganda are still stubbornly committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in the DRC is not helping their powerful mentors in the West save faces.
Kagame remains the real commander-in-chief of the M23 insurgents. On 15 July 2013, the Congolese army, the Forces Armées de la RDC (FARDC) repulsed an attack by M23 'rebels' backed by Rwandan special units in Mutaho, North Kivu Province.

120 attackers were killed and a dozen captured, including two seriously wounded. 10 Congolese soldiers also lost their lives (AFP, 15 July 2013). The Mutaho, Mujiga, Kibati, Buvira sectors and the strategic hill of Bukanda fell under the total control of the FARDC. Two Ugandan officers were also captured among them and transferred to Kinshasa (L'Avenir, 15 July 2013). Following this debacle, Rwanda accused the UN Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) of colluding with the FDLR said to be responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda! We have heard that a million times! Yet Rwanda currently assumes the presidency of the UN Security Council where it manages to block almost all the resolutions against M23. Isn't that absurd?

On 18 July 2013, the FARDC repulsed yet another attack by the M23 insurgents and their Rwandan backers in the north of Kanyaruchinya, 15 km from the city of Goma, North Kivu's provincial capital. 51 elements of the M23 were killed and a top-ranking M23 officer was captured. Among the 51 bodies, 15 were found wearing the uniform of the Rwandan army and were identified as Rwandan soldiers. Five Congolese government soldiers fell on the battlefield (Xinhua, 18 July 2013).
On 24 July 2013, the FARDC bombed the strategic military base of Rumangabo which served as a rear base for the M23 insurgents and their Rwandan backers and which set the warehouse of weapons and ammunition on fire. The base fell under the control of the FARDC (Digitalcongo.net, 24 July 2013). After this debacle, the M23 rounded up 210 Congolese youth in Kiwanja city, Rutsuru terrirory and locked them up in Nyongera prison. Up to now nobody has heard about them (Radio Kivu One, 28 July 2013).

On 13 August 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported that 40 M23 insurgents who had infiltrated Goma were arrested by the UN Intervention Brigade and scores of firearms recovered during a crackdown operation aimed at enforcing a security zone around the city of Goma. But later the UN failed to protect civilians from rockets fired from the Rwandan territory.

THE RECENT FIGHTING
Rwanda and Uganda are recidivists. On 17 August 2013, M23 insurgents backed by Rwandan troops yet again attacked the Congolese army in Kibumba, 30 km from Goma. According to the Congolese government spokesman, Lambert Mende, the Congolese army, supported by the UN Intervention Brigade, killed 17 Rwandan insurgents (M23） including 2 Rwandan colonels by the names of Hama and Tambwe and captured 12 others. Mende said that 'the FARDC were also able to destroy a depot of ammunition belonging to M23 in Kibumba, which burned throughout the day on 22 August 2013, which gives an idea of the volume of ammunition sent from Rwanda as supplies to this negative force' (Xinhua, 24 August 2013).

M23 maintains link with another armed group called Force de Résistance Patriotique de l'Ituri (FRPI) led by Cobra Matata. On 23 August 2013, the Congolese army inflicted heavy casualties on FRPI supported by Al-Shabab elements from Somalia and ADF-NALU, a 'Uganda rebel movement', killing 30 FRPI insurgents in Nombe, 40 km south of Bunia, Ituri (Eastern Province), recapturing many villages they had occupied. Three Congolese soldiers lost their lives and seven others were wounded (Radio Okapi, 25 August 2013).

A brief lull in days of fighting followed but on 23 August 2013, M23 insurgents backed by Rwandan troops yet again attacked the Congolese army in Kibati at night. The Congolese army supported by the UN Intervention Brigade riposted, killing 100 M23 insurgents, according to Congolese military spokesman Colonel Olivier Hamuli ( Associated Press, 28 August 2013).

'There are at least 100 dead on the rebel side. At least! I can't be sure, because this is just the bodies we saw. There are forests all around where we are finding more,' Hamuli told The Associated Press news agency. In contrast, Bertrand Bisimwa, the president of the M23 rebels, said only a dozen of the dead were from the M23 rebel movement.

Then Rwanda did the crazy thing you would not expect from a country that has been a victim of genocide! It fired nearly a dozen mortar shells that hit different parts of Goma on 22 August 2013, killing a family of four and nearly wounding a dozen others, including two Tanzanian U.N. soldiers and one from South Africa, causing significant damage to St. Paul's Anglican Church and destroying three classrooms in the adjacent school (Reuters, 24 August 2013). This is committing blatant war crimes and crimes against humanity, in fact acts of terrorism!

What was more shocking was the fact that the UK government, without a word of condemnation against Rwanda, simply ordered its staff to withdraw from the city of Goma. But UK mining companies stay put (... ). Why don't they also leave?! Anyway, even if the UK condemned Rwanda, it would have simply paid a leap service without coercive measures. What difference would it make? After all, the UK was the first to resume its financial aid to Rwanda following revelations by a panel of UN Security Council experts according to which 'Rwanda was interfering directly in Congo's internal affairs.'
The United States of America was even more cynical! The US State Department, in well calculated wordings issued a statement read by spokeswoman Marie Harf, saying that 'evidence of increased ethnic tensions in Goma', thus reducing Rwanda's mortar attack to a simple 'inter-ethnic conflict', and in fact called on 'both sides to keep calm' No culprit! In fact six senators from the US Congress travelled to Goma just to deliver that message.
As shells fell on Goma, causing deaths of men, women and children, the United States only saw an ethnic conflict that would degenerate. So do the Tutsi have the license to kill Congolese? This is a sign of bad faith, not an error of judgement, in fact an odious, undiplomatic, criminal stance on the part the USA, a nation that has the reputation of being 'a great democracy and a precursor in the defense and protection of human rights, and a frontrunner in the fight against terrorism!' (Le Potentiel, 27 August 2013).
This is how the first Rwandan aggression against Congo started. Kabarebe, the current Rwandan minister of defense and Rwandan special forces hijacked a civilian plane, and from Goma, they flew all the way to the West of Congo, attacked the Kitona military base, cut off electricity from the Inga dam, depriving Kinshasa of power for days - imagine the consequences, including many babies who died in the incubators! The US never condemned such terrorist acts! But when the people of Kinshasa bear handedly tracked down the Tutsi invaders in the capital and burning them alive, the then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright telephoned President Laurent Kabila and accused him of 'killing the Tutsi!' How unjust this world can be!
However, on 12 August 2013, the Rwandan government categorically rejected the Congolese government's request to have Congolese Tutsi rebel leaders 'who have asked political asylum in Rwanda,' including Laurent Nkunda, extradited to their country the DRC to face justice as stipulated in the new 'Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the DRC and the Great Lakes Region', signed on 24 February 2013, in Addis-Ababa, by 11 African leaders - including the leaders of Rwanda, Uganda (Museveni sent his vice-president) and the DRC - under the auspices of the African Union and the United Nations. Rwandan foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo said that 'Rwanda would not extradite Congolese Tutsi rebel leaders to Congo, a country which has not yet abolished capital punishment' (L'Avenir, 12 August 2013). The US, Rwandan's staunchest ally has also not abolished capital punishment. If Nkunda and other 'Congolese Tutsi' are Congolese, why should Rwanda pre-empt the judicial process in this way?

What conclusion might one draw then? According Mushikiwabo, Kigali will not extradite Laurent Kunda and other leaders of the M23 to Congo. But Laurent Nkunda and the leaders of M23 have committed genocide in Congo. Therefore Mushikiwabo is a negationist of the Congolese genocide. But she and her boss Paul Kagame can easily get away with it because they enjoy the protections of the United States of America and Great Britain.
One can even go further and conclude that the fact that Museveni and Kagame commit acts of genocide in Congo casts doubt on the official version of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, signed Paul Kagame.
TOWARDS BREAKING UP THE DRC
At the same time, on 21 August 2013, a 'Congolese Tutsi' Colonel Richard Bisamaza, acting commander of the first sector of the FARDC in Beni, defected from the Congolese army in Beni to M23 'rebel movement' with sixty 'Congolese Tutsi' foot soldiers, a few 'Congolese Tutsi' high-ranking officers and a cargo of ammunition. His aim was to join the M23 in Rutsuru. The Congolese army followed in hot pursuit of him and had him and some of his men killed during an exchange of fire, recaptured some but the majority fled (Kongo Times, 21 August 2013). What more can we do to accommodate 'Congolese Tutsi'? Some Western powers say that Congo must share its natural and mineral resources with Rwanda and Uganda (as if it was their right and as a war trophy) to have peace. This argument is laughable! Congo should then also share its mineral wealth not only with Rwanda and Uganda but also with all its other seven neighbors, isn't it? Why only with Rwanda and Uganda? No! Congo's neighbours can purchase these resources for the benefit of the public treasury of Congo (right now Congo Brazzaville import electricity from the DRC's Inga dam and pays the bill, no problem!). Even after 20 years of plundering its riches, the Congo does not expressly refuse to sell its wealth to Rwanda and Uganda!.
Equally shocking was the fact that Martin Kobler the head of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in Congo (MONUSCO) and Special Representative of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in Congo said on Radio France Internationale (RFI) that "MONUSCO is not responsible for everything that is happening in eastern Congo. These are Congolese problems and it is up to Congolese people to find solutions to them. We are here only to support the Congolese government". Yet right under Kobler's nose, the city of Goma was hit by new shelling from Rwanda, killing and injuring people, which triggered the people of Goma's anger against the UN mission, inactive against "the rebellion of M23" and incapable of enforcing a security zone around the city of Goma as promised instead of where the M23 are, and asked them to leave. Kobler did not say a word of condemnation of Rwanda. Uruguayan Blue Helmets opened fire on protesters killing two.

Kobler said that MONUSCO is not a magic solution to all the problems in eastern Congo. 'We cannot defend all the people here! We're doing everything we can! But the first line, the Congolese government is responsible, to protect the population.'
Even if this were true, MONUSCO should have at least one magical solution to the problem of war in the East. Otherwise of what good is the resolutions of the Security Council which recommends the use of force against negative forces, the signing of the Framework Agreement in Addis Ababa and the establishment of the Special Brigade ? (L'Avenir, 27 August 2013).
Now it's crystal clear. The United States and its NATO allies are hell bent on breaking up Congo using the UN and the Tutsi regimes of Rwanda and Uganda to achieve that objective. But, they will never succeed to control Congo, recolonise it or break it up in order to suck its resources, however superior or powerful they imagine themselves to be and whatever filthy lucre they flaunt to unfortunately a still good section of still mentally colonized Congolese people, to paraphrase President Robert Mugabe as he put it in his inauguration speech. The DRC will never be a colony again!
The era of white colonial 'whispers behind the African throne' passed on and got buried together with Lord Lugard the author of this anti-African, neo-colonial notion. Having struggled for our independence our fate has irrevocably orbited out of colonial relations, indeed can no longer subsist in curtsying and bowing to any foreign government, however powerful it feigns itself to be and whatever filthy lucre it flaunts," President Mugabe rightly said.
China's position is also very comforting. On the occasion of the 86th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army of China, Colonel Superior Ju Hongbin, Defence Attaché at the Chinese embassy in Kinshasa, solemnly declared that China firmly supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of Congo (La Prosperité, 26 July 2013).
In addition, on the 4 March 2013, 27 Congolese officers left Kinshasa for Belarus where they will be trained as pilots and technician of Congo's Air Force for a period of three years (Agence Congolaise de Presse, ACP, 4 March 2013).
COMPRADOR REGIMES ARE CHALLENGED BY CONGOLESE ARMY
The Congolese army is flexing its muscles and as we have just described above, it has managed to kill hundreds of Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers, inflicting a heavy toll on Kagame's and Museveni's armies posing as M23 rebels in eastern Congo in the last few weeks. The Rwandan and Ugandan comprador regimes still create more 'armed groups' in eastern Congo but the Congolese army always wipes them out. Should Kagame dare to fire more rockets against innocent Congolese civilians who have done nothing to Rwanda and Uganda and who are not responsible for the inter-ethnic killing in Rwanda in 1994, the Congolese army might march right into Rwanda to stop the rockets from being fired right at the source.
Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa have deployed troops which have constituted the UN Intervention Brigade tasked to use force to neutralize M23 and other Rwanda and Uganda-backed negative forces in eastern Congo. However, that Brigade could have been more effective if its command was independent of MONUSCO. African solutions to African problems! However, we believe that African soldiers within MONUSCO will not accept to be smothered and will accomplish their task and eastern Congo will be pacified. Moreover, on 23 August 2013, Angola, DRC and South Africa signed a cooperation agreement in the fields of training DRC soldiers and police officers. The accord also covers economic matters meant to reinforce regional cooperation and intra-Africa trade and concerns the ports of Lobito in Angola, Durban in South Africa and the Inga hydroelectric dam in the DRC. On the occasion, Congolese President Joseph Kabila said the accord seeks two purposes: one of them the assistance to the DRC in various domains, with highlight to the sectors of defence and security. The second purpose, according to president Kabila, has to do with reinforcement of cooperation among the three countries of the Southern Africa Development Community or SADC (Agencia Angola Presse, ANGOP, 23 August 2013).

After 32 years of Mobutu's oppressive and corrupt regime, ours is a rotten political class. The house is burning, yet Kerngo wa Dondo, three times Mobutu's prime minister and now surprisingly the president of the Congolese senate is still jockeying for positions! Without Congolese collaborators, this war would not have lasted this long. Although the Congolese people have been subjected to looting, massacres, rape, this has made them even more politically mature and it is no longer easy to take them for granted as demonstrations after demonstrations are being organized by the Congolese masses in the troubled eastern Congo. The people even collect goods and money for the soldiers and feed them. They also transport heavy weapons for the army up to the frontline. This proves that they have overcome their fear. The political initiative taken by President Joseph Kabila to hold a national consultation is meant to further cement national cohesion, national unity, national consciousness to bring Congolese of all cultural, political, religious, or ideological backgrounds to look in the same direction in order to safeguard what they all have in common: Congo's sovereignty and territorial integrity and to prevent more of Museveni and Kagame's adventures in Congo for which the Ugandan and Rwandan people are now weary of picking up the pieces later.

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Dar’s isolation due to refusal to ‘free’ its land — EALA member

Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Paul Kagame of Rwanda after commissioning a berth at the port of Mombasa on August 28. Picture: File

By RAY NALUYAGA, The EastAfrican

Posted Saturday, September 7 2013 at 12:22

The East African Legislative Assembly Members Tanzania chapter has refuted claims that the country is dragging its feet on regional integration.

Tanzania has repeatedly been accused of frustrating the integration process, with speculation that this may have led to it being left out of recent meetings where regional leaders have discussed key proposals to improve regional infrastructure and deepen integration. Tanzania was the only EAC member state that was not invited to these meetings.

(Read: Test of unity for EAC as Tanzania is isolated)

The first meeting in Entebbe in June, brought together President Museveni of Uganda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

The second one, in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa last week, had the same cast of leaders, with Burundi and South Sudan sending ministerial delegations.

Among other things, the Mombasa meeting passed a declaration to fast track the East African political federation in the absence of Tanzania, which analysts say highlights a clear move to break away from the laborious consensus model of the EAC to one where there is a “leading tendency of the willing.”

Last week, the chairman of EALA Members Tanzania chapter, Adam Kimbisa, said in Dar es Salaam that those accusing Tanzania of dragging its feet on integration are deliberately misleading the public in the region.

(Read: Why Tanzania drags its feet in the EAC)
According to Mr Kimbisa, Tanzania has not rejected any integration proposal without giving reasons, and it was surprising that those accusing the country of being anti-integration failed to accompany their accusations with the reasons advanced by Tanzania.

“The major thing behind this accusation is Tanzania’s refusal to have land included in Community matters. As it stands, land remains a private affair of each member state, but Bills have been unscrupulously drafted including land that Tanzania has repeatedly rejected,” he said.

As a result, he added, Tanzania is now being accused of being anti-integration, while the fact is that the country is willing to integrate on all matters except land.

The sentiments expressed by Mr Kimbisa provide a window into the thinking of Tanzania’s leadership regarding the contentious issue of regional integration.

Giving examples, Mr Kimbisa said Tanzania has donated free land to EAC to build its headquarters in Arusha, a clear indication that the country is for integration, contrary to allegations levelled against it.

Tanzania is also accused of being slow in decision making on integration issues while the truth, according to Mr Kimbisa, is that the country is being very careful before committing itself to anything based on experience from the break-up of the first community.

“When the first East African Community broke up in 1977, it was Tanzania that suffered the most. Once bitten, twice shy. We cannot allow ourselves to repeat same mistakes. We therefore have to scrutinise every detail before committing ourselves to anything on integration,” he said.

Covering nearly a million square kilometres, Tanzania accounts for 51 per cent of the total land area in the EAC. However, the country only accounts for 38 per cent of land under agriculture in the region, holding the greatest fraction of arable but unused land in the region — an estimated 380,000 square kilometres.

By comparison, Kenya, the second largest, accounts for 32 per cent of the total land area in the EAC, but 45 per cent of the land under agriculture.

The UN Population Division projects that the EAC’s population will balloon from the current 150 million to 270 million by 2030. The region will therefore have to turn to Tanzania as it looks to feed its growing population.

 

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UPDF choppers crash report still a secret

Results from investigations into the cause of the fatal crashes have not been made public. Graphic: TEA

By JULIUS BARIGABA, The EastAfrican

Posted Saturday, September 7 2013 at 12:18

In Summary

• The weather on Mt Kenya is said to change every 10 minutes, sometimes with sudden blizzards.
• On February 25, a renowned conservationist and a journalist were killed when a light aircraft they were travelling in crashed near Mt Kenya. Dr Anthony King was piloting the plane when it came down. The journalist was the only passenger on board.
• On July 19, 2003, 12 American tourists — three generations of one family — died after their chartered plane crashed into Mt Kenya. Two South African crew members also died in the crash.

Ugandans may never know the cause of the fatal crashes of three air force helicopters on Mt Kenya last year as the military is not about to lift the veil of secrecy around the probe into the August 12, 2012 air disaster.

Read: Opinion - Helicopter crashes and the wrath of Museveni

The crashes claimed the lives of seven officers of the Uganda People’s Defence Air Force, and injured 21 crew members as they were en route to Somalia to support the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) peacekeeping force, to which Uganda is one of the troop-contributing countries.

The silence about whose errors of omission or commission caused the fatal crashes brings into focus the issue of accountability in the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF). Unfortunately, even the Kenyan military has not made public the findings of its probe into the crashes.

Gen Salim Saleh, the president’s chief advisor on defence, who headed the Uganda investigation and handed a report to Commander in Chief President Yoweri Museveni within weeks of the crash, would not reveal what his probe unearthed.

Instead, Gen Saleh aka Caleb Akandwanaho told The EastAfrican, “The reports — mine and the Kenyan one — are the properties of the two governments. The respective ministers of defence and chiefs of defence forces are keepers of these reports.”

But UPDF Chief of Defence Forces Gen Edward Katumba Wamala says he has seen no such report.

“You better ask the person who did the investigation. I did not give him the task. How would he give me the report? The one from whom he got the task is the consumer of the report and would be the one to release it for public consumption,” he said, somewhat cryptically.

Gen Katumba Wamala added that the army has not yet taken up the matter with the UN to have the choppers replaced as demanded by President Museveni in May, during the Somalia Conference in London, when he asked that the UN compensate Uganda for loss of its military hardware. Amisom is an AU mission, deployed in 2007 under the auspices of the UN.

President Museveni argued that the Somali government’s allies needed to be given technological superiority over the Shabaab militia by using gunships, for which purpose the choppers were being deployed on the botched mission.

“In this connection, the UN should replace our gunships that perished in an accident in Kenya on the way to Somalia so that we use them as force multipliers,” President Museveni told the Somalia Conference.

The Uganda leader wants the three choppers, valued at about $10 million, replaced so that Amisom has the firepower to target Al Shabaab in their rural bases where they have been holding out for more than a year now.

President Museveni’s demand for the choppers’ replacements is driven by operational as well as sentimental reasons. The Uganda military has fought many wars around the region, but has not suffered so big a loss in one go.

The Mt Kenya crashes rank high up as one of the Uganda military’s worst air disasters, in which three of four helicopters crashed. Three Mi24 combat helicopters and one Mi17 utility chopper were headed for the war zone in Somalia to bolster the Amisom war against Al Shabaab, but all the combat helicopters crashed en route to the mission.

According to the UPDF, the flight plan was for the choppers to take off from Soroti Flying School in eastern Uganda on the way to Baidoa in Somalia, stopping at five fuelling points along the route — Eldoret, Nanyuki, Garissa and Wajir, all in Kenya — before finally touching down at Baidoa.

The combat helicopters coped well between Soroti Flying School and Nanyuki, but could not negotiate the 17,000 foot altitude of Mt Kenya between Nanyuki and Garissa. Aviation experts say the Mi24 is designed to fly at altitudes no higher than 12,000 feet. Only the bigger utility Mi17 chopper that could handle such heights survived the disaster, and landed at Garissa.

Yet, apart from sacking Air Force Commander Maj Gen Jim Owoyesigire and Chief of Staff Brig Moses Rwakitarate following the disaster, the military has done little as families of the Air Force officers who died in the crashes continue seeking answers.

Bad weather

President Museveni refused to blame the disaster on bad weather in the Mt Kenya area. But he mentioned “acts of negligence” and “high-handedness” that resulted in such losses of military equipment.

“I cannot listen to stories of bad weather on the mountain. Mountains are clearly shown on the maps. We never fly over mountains with helicopters, especially combat ones,” he said.

There are also fears that the UN, which had sanctioned deployment of the choppers in the first place under UN Security Council Resolution 2036, is blaming the Ugandan military for the disaster, and wants Kampala to bear the costs of replacement. Security experts argue that the usually diligent UN system would have vetoed outright flying of the helicopters and advised that they be disassembled and airlifted to the war zone.

Indeed, sources said that one of the captains who died in the crashes advised his superiors that it was unadvisable to fly fully loaded armoured gunships to Somalia, but was overruled.

There is also the question of whether the choppers upon taking off were presumed to be on a UN mission, or whether they would only qualify as being on a UN mission once they reached Somalia.

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MPs’ motion to get Kenya out of ICC most callous move


Posted Saturday, September 7 2013 at 13:43

Members of parliament in Kenya this week initiated a process to pull the country out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) protocols. The country chose to become a member of ICC.

And as it was to happen, the tribal conflagration of 2007/8 elections initiated the current court case.

This five-year cycle of violence was started under former president Daniel arap Moi’s watch, in 1991/2 and 1997/8 mainly in the former Rift Valley province.
But the 2007/8 presidential elections spawned deadly violence and these have not stopped to date.

This year alone, numerous skirmishes between communities have left a number of people killed without any strong response and deterrence from our police or judiciary.

As I write this, communities are burying their dead in Moyale and Trans Mara, due to tribal violence. As usual the political elite are implicated; so horse trading in Nairobi has been done to defeat the course of justice.

Tribal clashes in Kenya happen all the time yet the police and judiciary has never acted to stop future clashes.

When the worst happened in 2007/8 many were convinced that that only the ICC could mete out justice for the majority poor and voiceless who bore the brunt of the violence. The need for justice has not gone away merely because President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy Willaim Ruto formed an alliance and won.

I condemn the sycophantic MPs for initiating the process to pull out of the ICC. In their minds, the poor voiceless Kenyans are phantoms and a figment of our imagination.

Some have even joined the chorus of saying that the internally displaced people are fake. But the truth can never change. Will these people finally get justice?

Kariuki Muiru

Via E-mail

Introduction of VAT recipe for disaster

Seemingly the International Criminal Court (ICC) matters have overshadowed all other issues in Kenya and they are set to set the political agenda for the country for the rest of the year and beyond.

Today people are living in very troubled times with each day presenting unique challenges around the world. In Kenya, history set the country on the wrong footing from the word go through the British colonial practises and the nature and conduct of the politics since Independence.

As the ICC occupies Kenyans’ minds, the realities of the weaknesses of the economy have started sinking in, albeit slowly but in a painful way.

Clearly, the economy is deficient in the provision of decent livelihoods for majority of the population. The government finance books don’t look good. In effect it requires to collect more taxes and that explains the Value Added Tax on some essential goods and services on top of the existing taxes and other already VATed goods.

Still government services are not sufficient, hence the lack of teachers, schools, doctors, health services infrastructure, transport and communication and security provision among others.

Nonetheless, with the ICC disruptions and challenges the citizens are bound to spend a lot of energy. The ICC cases will raise emotions and political temperatures in equal measure.

I think this is a challenge beyond the ordinary Kenyan yet they are the most emotionally disoriented as they tend to take positions based on political affiliations.

The merits and demerits of the case not withstanding this is bound to be a harbinger to a lot of social and political dis-orientation and disfiguration. But it is the gullibility and the recklessness that at times occupy the citizen’s psyche that should be most worrying.

While this is happening, August saw inflation rise to 6.7 per cent. With the increase in the prices of basic goods, this will push the rate even higher. If the Syrian crisis escalates with a US intervention leading to rise in oil prices, Kenya’s inflation will bite even more.

In addition, imports outstrip export volumes. In effect we are headed for bigger deficits.

The country is facing social problems and political disquietness. Add the mess of unemployment and poverty, and Kenya has quite urgent problems whose magnitude is scaring to fathom.

Harrison Mwirigi Ikunda

Via E-mail

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Rwanda implicated in torture of another refugee in Uganda

Rwandans return home. Some of the refugees living in Uganda claim they are being persecuted. Photo/File

By ALEX NGARAMBE Rwanda Today

Posted Friday, September 6 2013 at 18:38

In Summary

• Pascal Manirakiza, who fled Rwanda while in school at CEPEM secondary school in Ruhengeri was found unconscious with marks of torture in Lusaze cemetery in Makindye, Kampala District and fingers are once again pointing to Rwanda’s security operatives.
• Of all countries hosting Rwandan refugees, Uganda is said to be the most notorious when it comes to allegation of torture.
• Lt Joel Mutabazi and Innocent Kalisa whose whereabouts are still unknown are the most prominent fugitives to have faced assassination attempts recently and both UNHCR and the office of the prime minister of Uganda have blamed it on Rwanda.

Barely a week after Rwanda was heavily criticized by the refugees’ rights advocacy groups, it is again embroiled in fresh allegations of torturing a Rwandan refugee living in Uganda.

Pascal Manirakiza, who fled Rwanda while in school at CEPEM secondary school in Ruhengeri was found unconscious with marks of torture in Lusaze cemetery in Makindye, Kampala District and fingers are once again pointing to Rwanda’s security operatives.

Of all countries hosting Rwandan refugees, Uganda is said to be the most notorious when it comes to allegation of torture, abductions and assassination attempts on refugees.

The former student sought asylum and has been living in Kyaka refugee camp where it is alleged that his captors whisked him away to a safe house in Kampala where he was tortured.

A fortnight ago, the Rwandan government was accused by United Nations High Commission for Refugees for kidnapping, attempting to assassinate and illegal extradition of refugees living in Uganda.

Lt Joel Mutabazi and Innocent Kalisa whose whereabouts are still unknown are the most prominent fugitives to have faced assassination attempts recently and both UNHCR and the office of the prime minister of Uganda have blamed it on Rwanda.

The suspected Rwanda operatives were intercepted by officials from UNHCR and OPM as well as police from getting to Mr Manirakiza allegedly with the intention of killing him at the cemetery where he was dumped after torture.

However, Rwanda’s High commission in Uganda has vehemently denied these accusations calling them smear campaigns by the enemies of the state.

“A section of negativists have continued to misinform the general public that some agents of Rwanda are responsible for a number of abductions of Rwandan dissidents living in Uganda,” said Maj Gen Frank Mugambage, Rwanda’s ambassador to Uganda.

About Mr Manirakiza, the ambassador said that Rwanda has been able to establish through Rwanda National Police that much as Manirakiza was a student at CEPEM Secondary school, he had of late associated himself with FDRL, a terrorist group that was involved in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Rwanda maintains that it is the same FDLR group which Manirakiza is associated with that has from 2009 to July 2013 been responsible for thirty grenade attacks in Kigali and around the country and on learning that he (Manirakiza) was being investigated, he together with one of his accomplices called Bienvenue escaped and what happened to him may have something to do with those who were indulging him in the FDLR activities, certainly not Rwanda.

Douglas Asiimwe, a senior refugee officer in the OPM Uganda, was not available for comment about Mr Manirakiza’s case but he had condemned earlier arrests of Rwandan refugees calling it a deliberate move by Rwandan operatives.

“It makes no sense to issue the arrest warrant now when a refugee (mutabazi) has been in the country for more than three years and Rwanda knew where he was all those years,” said Mr Asiimwe, in an earlier interview.

The OPM maintain that the manner in which Rwanda is trying to take some refugees back is not credible and it is suspicious of their intensions since there are laws that govern extraditing a person which are normally not followed and police should always take due diligence.




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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Police quick to serve the mighty

A combination of photos showing National Police Service Commission boss Johnstone Kavuludi (left) and Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo (right). Majority of robbery with violence cases reported are never taken to court for trial and the few suspects charged walk away scot-free due to lack of evidence produced against them. NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

• The Baseline Survey On Policing Standards And Gaps In Kenya, which was launched on Wednesday, shows that 62 per cent of robbery cases never proceeded beyond the police stations in which they were reported, because too little evidence was gathered to warrant a consideration for trial.

By FRED MUKINDAMore by this Author

The casual manner in which police and prosecutors work has been exposed in a new report.

Police, according to the report, routinely disregard crimes committed against ordinary Kenyans, but are quick to serve influential people.

Thus the majority of robbery with violence cases reported are never taken to court for trial and the few suspects charged walk away scot-free due to lack of evidence produced against them.

The report is the result of a survey commissioned by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority and conducted in 36 Counties.

Investigation period

Chairman of the authority’s Finance and Administration Committee Tom Kagwe, who presented the report said: “Investigation period (which police take to look into a report) depends on who is the complainant.”

He further explained that police would usually move fast to act on a matter if it’s reported by a person regarded as influential.

The Baseline Survey On Policing Standards And Gaps In Kenya, which was launched on Wednesday, shows that 62 per cent of robbery cases never proceeded beyond the police stations in which they were reported, because too little evidence was gathered to warrant a consideration for trial.

Of the few that were taken to court, 78 per cent were thrown out even before the case reached a point where the accused person was required to defend himself or herself, simply because the evidence adduced was deemed too weak.

Besides robberies, the survey also looked into two other felonies: “Preparing to commit a felony,” and “theft by servant.”

“The review of felony cases files indicates a conviction rate of 25 per cent. This means that only one in four cases ends in a conviction. This finding raises concern because it reveals poor quality investigations and challenges for police to determine which cases are ripe for prosecution,” part of the report reads.

The survey involved an analysis of 203 case files at Kamukunji, Kilimani, Kariobangi and Huruma police stations in Nairobi, as well as interviews with 515 officers.

Some 5,082 households were also interviewed.

IPOA chairman Macharia Njeru said: “The quality of investigations at the station level is very poor and a lot of work has to be done. The impact of professional misconduct is very high.”

The report further revealed that the National Police Service is staffed with brutal officers who falsified evidence, threatened the public with unjustifiable imprisonment and took bribes.

It did not spare prosecutors either : “There were many cases where the office of director of public prosecutions did not give directions on areas that needed to be covered by investigators to gain evidence,” said Mr Kagwe.

However, most cases in Kenya are prosecuted by police officers because the DPP’s office is barely three years old and is inadequately staffed. But even where prosecutors gave guidance on best ways to nail suspects, investigators were further reprimanded.

“This finding indicates that prosecutors are returning files for additional investigation but the police are not necessarily producing any additional evidence,” the report says.
It adds: “In most cases, communication between police and prosecutors is not being fully exploited to jointly work on strengthening the case.”

A big number of case files seen by the researchers lacked vital documents that the court would rely on.

Prove crime

Even in a number of cases that moved to court, proceedings collapsed: “Police were able to collect evidence to prove that a certain crime was committed, but proving that the accused person was involved was more challenging,” says the report.

Section 87 of the Criminal Procedure Act says in part: “A public prosecutor may, with the consent of the court, withdraw from the prosecution of any person,” in order to conduct further investigations.

Police misconduct largely goes unreported, the report notes. Officers interviewed said: “Officers who witness misdeeds by colleagues do not report for fear of reprisals, threats of being transferred, no action taken and it would affect employment.”

Moreover, members of the public also fail to report such malpractices because they fear no action would be taken, threats from officers as well as financial challenges.

However, the report also noted that police efficiency was hampered by among others low morale due to incommensurate salaries and lack of modern equipment to fight crime.

Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo, who attended the launch, said police detectives are usually trained not to take cases to court unless there is sufficient evidence.

“What could be lacking is the communication between the detectives and complainant and so the latter does not understand a case cannot be taken to court without enough evidence. A case file cannot also be closed if it has not been determined by a court,” he said.

Africa: Report Calls for New Probe of UN Chief's Death

10 September 2013

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Photo: United Nations

Dag Hammarskjöld

A commission of international jurists says there is evidence that the aircraft in which the then-United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld died in 1961 was "subjected to some form of attack or threat" before it crashed.
In a report released Monday, the commission said it was "highly likely" that the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States recorded radio traffic on the night of the crash. It recommends that the United Nations reopen the investigation into Hammarskjöld's death, which occurred while he was on a peace mission to what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hammarskjöld was on his way to Ndola in former Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, to meet the Katangan separatist leader, Moise Tshombe, when his chartered DC6 aircraft crashed near Ndola airport. Tshombe's breakaway from the Congo was backed by Western mining interests. Conspiracy theories that have circulated in the years since the crash assume that Hammarskjöld's efforts to broker peace between Katanga and the Congo threatened Western interests.

Rhodesian investigations conducted after the crash suggested pilot error as the cause, but a UN inquiry recorded an open verdict. The commission which reported on Monday was privately convened by a body known as the Hammarskjöld Inquiry Trust, and comprised Sir Stephen Sedley of the United Kingdom, Ambassador Hans Corell of Sweden, Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa and Judge Wilhelmina Thomassen of The Netherlands.

In the late 1990s, documents found by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and purportedly written by a South African intelligence front organisation said that at a meeting with British intelligence agents just before the crash, it was agreed that “UNO [United Nations Organization] is becoming troublesome and it is felt that Hammarskjöld should be removed. Allen Dulles (head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) agrees and has promised full cooperation from his people”.

The Sedley commission reports that South Africa's Ministry of Justice is unable to find the original documents, so it is not possible to check forensically the age of the paper and ink.

“As to their content, although they contain elements... which can be doubted, there is nothing on the face of the documents which can be confidently shown to be false... On the other hand, there is nothing in them which could not have been known to, or invented by, a forger,” the commission said.

However, it says other significant new evidence has emerged, much of it in recent years, and further inquiries could add to it.
The commission concluded: “There is persuasive evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some form of attack or threat as it circled to land at Ndola.... We... consider that the possibility that the plane was... forced into its descent by some form of hostile action is supported by sufficient evidence to merit further inquiry."

The commission said it was “highly likely“ that the NSA, and possibly the CIA, had tracked and recorded local and regional Ndola radio traffic on the night of the crash.

"Authenticated recordings... if located, would furnish potentially conclusive evidence of what happened to the DC6... The Commission’s investigations have reached a point at which this line of inquiry appears capable of producing a clear answer, and it is appropriate that the process should now pass into the hands of the (UN) General Assembly."

Responding to the commission's report in New York, a spokesperson for the current UN secretary-general, Ban Ki Moon, said the UN Secretariat will study the findings closely. “The United Nations is among those most concerned in arriving at the whole truth of the circumstances leading to his death,” the spokesperson added.