“Attacks on civilians are all too frequent, and in particular, the problem of sexual violence which is arguably the worst in the world by some way, that is, the kidnapping of women as sex slaves, multiple rapes, mutilation – absolutely brutal sexual practices,” John Holmes told the BBC.

He says it seems to be a “sort of culture which has grown up of impunity, and a feeling you can get away with anything – and of course, the reality is that at the moment, you can get away with anything, and that’s one of the fundamental problems that’s got to be tackled.”

This piece from the BBC has a more in depth explanation for why this may be happening than many run-of-the-mill Congo articles. Here’s an excerpt:

Gashinge Devote, a Tutsi businesswoman living in Goma points to the absence of Congolese Tutsis in the lower house of parliament, and the few Tutsi civil servants employed in the local administration – even though as a population the Tutsis make up about 300,000 of the four million inhabitants of N Kivu.

…

Rwanda is playing a double game, engaging in diplomacy with Kinshasa while stirring things up on DR Congo’s eastern border.

Only recently Rwanda‘s President Paul Kagame defended General Nkunda’s rebellion by saying his fellow ethnic Tutsi has “legitimate political grievances”.

Even if that were true, in pursuit of his aims General Nkunda stands accused of crimes against humanity, including sexual violence and the recruitment of child soldiers – that’s why he is the subject of an international arrest warrant.

But for a better explanation, visit AfricaWorks

The problem of course is that Congo, as a political entity, is an illusion. The country is too large, diverse and riven by durable differences to be managed from a single center. It is time to explore a truly federalized Congo that might over the next 10 to 20 years peacefully “devolve” into a several nation-states. Eastern Congo would be especially well-served by “devolution,” since the region – today the least stable in the current Congo – has natural economic, social and geographic links to neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. If Scotland can engage in a process of “devolution” from Britain, why cannot eastern Congo engage in the same process? Colonial maps cannot forever burden the serious and expensive efforts to develop regional integration, whether in East Africa or the sub-Saharan generally. The double-standard – whereby European countries can split themselves apart based on democratic processes but African countries are eternally bound by the borders of their former European masters — ought to end. That European governments often quickly oppose any talk of redrawing African are examples of both hypocrisy and stupidity. European governments spend billions of dollars holding together unwieldy African countries and in the end sustain only the fiction of real sovereignty. The Congo is perhaps the best example of this. Congolese elections, which cost European donors a hefty sum, accomplished the little more than to highlight the folly of holding this vast territory together under a single political rubric. Maintaining the fiction of the Congo, in short, is dangerous and ultimately futile.

So I’m thoroughly impressed at all times with how African kids will play with ANYTHING. American kids got all this STUFF. And you give an African kid a piece of string and he’s busy for hours. There’s this group of kids near my house I see everyday playing and playing and playing with anything they find: string (their favorite), sticks, bags, each other. And they are always laughing and smiling. And I think of spoiled American kids fighting over their Baby Mozart Keyboard Synthesizers (does that exist? it’d be funny if I googled it and found a link to that, but I’m really not that motivated) and they should envy the African kids their string.

Anyway, this site, AFRIGADGET, is not directly related to that, but it’s about African ingenuity. Check it out. It’s really really cool.

Awhile back, I blogged about this essay in the Washington Post:

Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the “African” beads around her wrists.

“Save Darfur!” she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!

My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.

“Don’t you want to help us save Africa?” she yelled.

Today, in the Christian Science Monitor, this article, “Anatomy of a Start-up Antigenocide Charity,” poses some of the same questions, with very different answers. (It also happens to be by my friend Jina, props to you.)

Many told Hanis his idea was naive. But in just four months, he’d raised a quarter of a million dollars. This was in the spring of 2005, before Darfur became a cause du jour – before George Clooney and Mia Farrow, before Panties for Peace or Timberland boots with “Stomp Out Genocide” soles. This was before Hanis himself imagined his idea going national, with 10,000 members and a $3 million budget.

The article shows how two college kids raised a bunch of money and actually managed to do something, though there were many snags along the way.

“What these kids have done is something unique, something that opens the door for this kind of campaign … for the next Darfur,” says Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service. He credits the group with helping successfully pressure the president to name a special envoy to the region and Congress to commit more funds to the African Union. “Even now, their continued engagement really has influenced our politicians, our teachers, our community leaders, our churches…. That means a lot, even though it probably doesn’t end it.”

No one can individually end it, but if everyone stopped trying to save Africa, there might be Hanis’ $3 million less, and a bunch of groups like his not doing what they could be.

Maybe Uzo should take a look at Hanis and reconsider if he really wants all the college kids to stop. Sure, some of them are idealistic and misguided, but maybe some of them really are doing some good.

Taking Advantage of the Refugee System
Glenna Gordon

Leon Musafiri speaks English, French, Swahili and at least six other African languages. He can tell from a person’s accent if they’re from Rwanda, Congo, Uganda or Burundi, and he’ll even often narrow it down to region. He gauges accents, verifies stories, and knows his geography and history.

As a Congolese refugee who works with a lot of refugees in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, he says he generally knows who’s a legitimate refugee under international law and who’s making up a story to get the benefit from aid agencies.

Not everyone who’s made it to Uganda is a refugee, even the ones from wartorn countries where life is unbearably hard, says Musafiri, who’s the chairman of French-Speaking Refugees in Uganda, and an intern at the Refugee Law Project in Kampala.

Migrants flee their homes for a plethora of reasons. Wars make life dangerous and hard, and individuals can easily get caught up between forces much bigger than them. Poverty often makes people despair of ever having a better life or giving their children wider horizons. And sometimes migrants are looking for a new home where they’ve got a better chance of getting an education or earning a living that’s more than just scraping by.

A refugee, defined by international law in a U.N. convention, is a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable… or… unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.”

That doesn’t include people who haven’t crossed an international border, and it doesn’t automatically include just anyone who comes from a country where a war’s going on. Once someone is legally deemed a refugee, he or she is entitled to benefits from the United Nations and the government of the country where they’re resident. That might mean they’re eligible for food rations, and sometimes they’ll be allocated a plot of land inside a refugee camp.

REFUGEE PERKS

Refugees can be eligible for educational scholarships and other perks. The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, says about 220,000 refugees live in Uganda. About 170,000 are Sudanese, then there are 30,000 from Democratic Republic of Congo, 20,000 Rwandans, and a few thousand each from Somalia and Burundi.

All of these countries either have ongoing conflicts, wars that could flare up again, or still bear the scars of deep divisions that have tipped into bloodshed in the last 15 years.

Many of the people who put in truth-twisting applications for asylum are actually legitimate asylum-seekers, but some are convinced they have a better chance of success if they fabricate a more elaborate story.

Migrants say they if they know their real stories won’t get them refugee status, they confer with refugees already settled in the community about the best way to get through the system.

“Maybe 60 percent of the Congolese are telling the truth because so many people are affected by the conflict,”Musafari says. He guesses half of Rwandan cases are legitimate, and maybe 40 percent of Burundians.

But refugees aren’t the only ones taking advantage of the system. A lot of refugees say officials take bribes in exchange for papers. They call it “chai”- money for tea.

Douglas Asiimwe, senior protection officer at the Office of the Prime Minister, says, “Not everyone who is suffering is a refugee.”

When faced with accusations of bribery, he also insists, laughing: “No, no, no, that’s incredible. Do refugees even have the money to bribe? “Me, I’ve never, never, never touched refugee money. Asylum is a simple humanitarian process. I don’t determine status as an individual person. It’s the committee.”

Asiimwe describes the labyrinth of paper work that goes into refugee eligibility, but denies any loopholes give space for individual intervention. “Our system is very transparent and open,”he says.

But Amina Deere, a Somali refugee from Mogadishu whose name has been changed for her protection, would disagree. After a year waiting for her papers, she says: “Daylight, you’re supposed to bribe, but I refuse. “I refuse and I can’t,”says the 22-year-old single mother. Other refugees, she says, have relatives abroad who can wire them the “chai”, but she has no one.

“All the other ladies were cleared because they paid bribe, but I have no money. What am I to do?” says Deere, bold and talkative, and sure to make her voice heard among the group of Somalis gathered round in the alley behind an restaurant in the ethnically segregated part of Kampala’s Kisenyi slum area.

HAZY STORIES

Deere, a traditional Somali girl hidden behind a hijab veil, is determined to be seen and heard nonetheless. “Everything here is corrupt,”she says.

Abdis Allah, another man gathered round behind the restaurant in Kisenyi, says it took him eight years to get refugee status. Once he’d saved up enough money for a bribe, he says he got the papers within months.

Joli Mozi, a thin 35-year old Congolese woman in a traditional scarlet “gomesi”dress, didn’t know anyone when she arrived in Kampala, aside from the two orphans she adopted during her journey.

Travelling with a Somali boy and an unaccompanied Congolese girl, it’s unclear exactly where Mozi is from or where she’s going to go. She’s obviously in need, but that doesn’t make her a refugee in the eyes of international law.

She tells a story of people who came for her and her family in the night in December 2004. “It was dark, so I couldn’t see who was who,”she says. Her husband ran one way, she another, and her children went in a third direction.

She crossed the border in southwestern Uganda and ended up in Mbarara where she says she worked for international relief agency Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in an official capacity. However, Mozi also says that she had no education and both she and her parents were farmers who raised chickens.

A phone call to MSF proves that Mozi was in fact employed at MSF, but as a house keeper and nanny. “She’s very nice,”said Patrice Piola, the country director in Uganda of MSF’s research centre Epicentre. “But be cautious about what she’s saying because sometimes she can be very imaginative.”

Mostafa Khezry, senior protection officer at UNHCR, says: “You have to ensure that what (refugees) say is true to maintain credibility and continue settling other refugees.”

I ask Musafiri what he thinks of Mozi’s story.

It’s easy for people to open up to Musafiri because he’s a refugee as well. As a student leader in university in Congo, Musafiri refused to join or recruit others to join armed rebels. As the son of a pastor and a pacifist himself, Musafiri says he held to his principles. He soon found himself in a prison container somewhere near the eastern town of Goma, but the commander who supposed to execute Musafiri knew and respected his father’s religious works and chose to release him. Musafiri left running, and he got his refugee card within a month of reporting to the Ugandan police.

He doubts Mozi’s story.

But when pressed on it, he says, “Who are we to judge?”

BY GLENNA GORDON – Special to the Sun
September 4, 2007

KAMPALA, Uganda — It is rare that the commissioner of prisons disagrees with the president. But Johnson Byabashaija adamantly opposes capital punishment and thinks at least some of the more than 500 death row inmates here are innocent.

Even so, if President Museveni orders him to execute one of those prisoners, the commissioner said he will obey.

“If Museveni directs, we shall carry an order out. It’s our obligation,” Mr. Byabashaija said with resignation, adding that he hopes those orders never come.

Though there were three military executions in 2003, Uganda hasn’t put a civilian to death since 1999. In that year, 28 people were hanged at Luzira Prison. But despite the unofficial moratorium, death sentences continue to be handed down, and the nation remains on Amnesty International’s list of death penalty practitioners.

Across the African continent, capital punishment is becoming increasingly unpopular. In nearby Tanzania, despite the fact that no law has officially abolished the death penalty President Kikwete hasn’t executed anyone since 1994 and in August of this year, he commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment.

And though there are reports of extrajudicial killings in Rwanda’s prisons, that country’s Parliament officially outlawed the death penalty in June. Neighboring Kenya hasn’t executed anyone since 1986, though a recent push to abolish capital punishment could have the opposite effect and expedite executions.

“Nobody has the right to take away life. With the death penalty, the government is taking away life,” said Mr. Byabashaija, a decorated prisons-officer who has served in the Ugandan government as a civil servant since he received his veterinary degree in 1982. He began his career by supervising animals kept by the prison system and then raised money for prisons through the system’s poultry farm, which led to regular promotions until he was appointed commissioner in 2005.

“Our criminal justice system is not foolproof. There is the danger of an innocent person being wrongfully convicted, and you cannot reverse that,” Mr. Byabashaija said. “We are a Third World country. We are understaffed. How many policemen are available? The raw number of crimes overwhelms the police officers and compromises the quality of investigation.”

Still, despite his opposition to the death penalty, Mr. Byabashaija told The New York Sun: “Death is not a punishment. Everyone shall die anyway.”

At least one person would disagree with him.

“I’m Susan Kigula, a death row inmate. I’ve served seven years. They allege that I killed my late husband with my housegirl,” Ms. Kigula said, calm and measured, concerned with her own fate and that of her housegirl, or maid, who supposedly assisted her in brutally murdering her husband. She has told the story many times — always with the insistence that she is innocent, pointing out the fact that the key testimony against her came from a child who was only 3 years old at the time of the alleged crime.

“The justice system makes mistakes because it is comprised of human beings, who are bound to make mistakes. No one is perfect,” she said.

Based on her conversations with other death row prisoners, Ms. Kigula estimates that only 60% of the people sentenced to die here actually committed the crimes for which they were convicted. The rest, she said, are victims of a broken legal system.

In a 2006 report titled “Uganda: Challenging the Death Penalty,” the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative found that nearly 90% of the country’s death row inmates have little or no command of the English language, which is used in all court proceedings. Thus, suspects often are often unable to follow their own trials or even to understand the charges against them.

Additionally, 94% of inmates were found to be from lower economic classes, and 90% of the crimes were found to have been committed outside Kampala in rural areas where police departments are understaffed and underfunded.

All of these factors diminish a suspect’s chances for a fair trial, said Livingstone Sewanyana, the director of FHRI, a Ugandan nongovernmental organization focusing on legal rights issues.

In Ms. Kigula’s case, these issues don’t apply: She is a rarity among inmates in that she speaks very good English and was educated through the equivalent of high school — an uncommon level of education among the mainly illiterate prisoners.

However, she still insists her trial was unfair, which is why she is now the lead in Uganda’s first class action lawsuit challenging the death penalty: Kigula and 416 others vs. the Attorney General of Uganda.

Filed in 2003, the case has been stalled in the courts since 2005.While the law firm of Katende, Ssempebwa, and Company initially won on two counts in the Constitutional Court — securing a ruling that ended mandatory death sentences for specific categories of crime and that stopped sentences from being delayed more than three years — the firm on two other counts. The court ruled that the death penalty was indeed constitutional and that hanging was not a cruel and inhumane method of execution.

The defense appealed, and Uganda’s attorney general counterappealed.

Now, the case is currently waiting to be heard in the Supreme Court, which has been two judges short of a quorum since one of the justices passed away in June 2006. The court is waiting on President Museveni to approve the appointments of other judges.

Though Amnesty International declined to comment specifically on the Kigula case, they did agree that the courts are the best way to challenge the death penalty. “For the death penalty to go off the books, we have to have the Cabinet and Parliament to agree,” an Amnesty International researcher for East Africa, Godfrey Odongo, said. “That is where we need change, and that is where Amnesty International concentrates its action.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Kigula is just glad so many people are working on her case. But, she said, she doesn’t blame anyone for her time in jail — she just prays that she will soon be released. “One day in prison is a thousand years,” Ms. Kigula said, tears dripping down her cheeks and falling on the red-and-white gingham of her prison uniform.

Susan Kigula’s life will be spared as long as her case is held up in the courts, a fact that makes Mr. Byabashaija glad that no announcement will be posted on the board at the main prison gate any time soon.

“In 1999,” when the last civilian executions were carried out, “the notice said it will be at such and such a time,” Mr. Byabashaija said. “It is not comfortable. Me, I’ve never seen an execution being carried out,” he added, since it is not one of his duties as commissioner to witness the executions. “I shiver at the prospect.”

But Ms. Kigula’s mental anguish is directly related to the timelessness of her sentence and the interminable waiting. “My relatives have abandoned me. They got tired of waiting,” she said. “If they sentenced me to some number of years, they have hope you’re coming out, but if you’re sentenced to death, you are left on your own with God.”

How do you score on the FP quiz? From the FP site, with answers there. I’m not telling how I did, though I was surprised by some answers, some pleasantly and others like the jolt learning can be.

1. What city has Europe’s largest Muslim population?
   
   1. London
   2. Moscow
   3. Paris

2. What percentage of Chinese men are smokers?
   
   1. 27
   2. 47
   3. 67

3. How many journalists were killed around the world in 2006?
   
   1. 36
   2. 56
   3. 106

4. In 2002, there was one direct flight per week between India and China. In 2006, there were ____ weekly flights.
   
   1. 26
   2. 46
   3. 66

5. What country has the greatest number of threatened species?
   
   1. China
   2. Ecuador
   3. Indonesia

6. What percentage of Afghanistan’s total cultivated area is used for poppy cultivation?
   
   1. 7
   2. 47
   3. 87

7. Which country devotes a higher proportion of its gross domestic product to military expenditures?
   
   1. Russia
   2. Saudi Arabia
   3. United States

8. In 1995, the United States’ share of global manufacturing was 22.4 percent. In 2005, its share was ____ percent.
   
   1. 11.1
   2. 16.1
   3. 21.1

Most Logical comment goes to:

Kenyanchick said…

At issue here is freedom of the press, pure and simple. But, as 27th has so ably demonstrated, this has been conflated with the issues of race and nationality, and the fact that Katherine Roubos was singled out for vilification (and not her darker, sub-Saharan colleagues who covered the same press conference)shows that the demonstrators/rent-a-crowd were trying to make that tedious and tired connection between homosexuality and whiteness/foreignness.

Most illogical comment goes to:

The 27th Comrade said…

I wish we could export some foreign culture over to the West … something like suicide bombings and polygamy and women honour-killings. The Americans would protest against it, and we would stop giving them money when they do.

Most interesting accusation:

princess sylvia said…

By the way why are you supporting Roubos are you………….??????

Most likely to pray for the 27^th Comrade:

semakeddie said…

you are a sinner who is bound to face a holy God when you lose that breath not later than 100years from now….

all it takes is a whisper to him…even on that keyboard..simply admitting you ahave offended him

and thats the life we live …you can live it too.dont let pride stop you from that critical decision.feel free to call +256 7923020

am praying for you comrade

Blessings
in christ alone

Most like a conspiracy theory:

Iryn said…

I believe she is been sent to recruit homos and the sort in Uganda

Most interesting perspective:

Val Kalende said…

there is nothing western about homosexuality. Internet was invented by an American. So do not even use it coz its unAfrican!….

What is moral for you does not have to be moral for me.
If you hate homosexuals, dont even waste your time discussing them.

Most absolutely positively ridiculous comment:

Mwesigye Gumisiriza said…

American faggotess lost in the African wild

Most off topic comment:

Mwesigye Gumisiriza said…

To prove my point, when I responded to her Makerere story, I tricked her when I pointed out that her alma mater was not even among top universities in the US on webometrics ranking she had referred to. If she had checked, she would have found out that University of California Berkeley was actually at No. 4.

Finally, I will end with another Mwesigye quote since he seems to be my best friend these days…

“Let me remind you that the Internet is a free space and totally democratic. That is why the blog has a section for comments/opinions from the readers. Then, why should you moderate it just because the views expressed are not in tandem with yours.”

Yes, the Internet is a free and democratic space. There’s plenty of it. But a BLOG is a PERSONAL space, not a space thatto be completely democratic. This is my blog, and I get to do what I’d like with it. That’s the beauty of a blog. If you want a completely free speech blog dedicated to hate speech against homosexuals, please use all of that free and democratic space on the internet to start one, MG.

I’ve decided not to switch to moderated comments, not because of you, Mwesigye, but because it would slow down the conversation on my blog just because I don’t always check my email as often as people comment. However, if I get technologically adept enough to block one person’s comments, believe you me, Mwesigye Gumisiriza will NOT be commenting on my blog anymore.

From “Museveni Hints At 2011 Poll Plans” in the Daily Monitor, M7 says:

• “All these ministers you see here are your servants. The other time I was a freedom fighter but you elected me into office, now I am your servant. If you don’t vote me into office, I will not complain. I will retire to my home.”
• “When I am gone, my only worry will be if the driver that has been left with the ignition key can steer the country ahead,” Mr Museveni added. “Voting is good because you can get rid of a bad leader after five years. Therefore, the liberation struggle you supported brought back that key to power that Obote had taken away from you.”
• “Government is the army,” the President said. “If the army is stable, then everything will be stable. Issues of economy and politics, those are additions.”

The article concludes with this lovely bit about M7:

As is his practice on such tours, President Museveni handed out envelopes containing Shs10 million to village groups reportedly to help them start income-generating projects.

But he cautioned them to emphasise the importance of the linkages between one’s income and expenditure in the crusade to eradicate household poverty in Uganda.

It was a surprise to me when I saw it, but one of the photos I took of Abramz and his crew break dancing showed up on the cover of MS Uganda July 2007 Newsletter.

From the Daily Monitor, a follow up to my last Amin post.

Uganda: What Idi Amin’s Image Tells Us About the World Thinking
…Never did it occur to the world that this image of Amin is largely and overwhelmingly false. This has taught me that the world is largely a gullible place. That is why I find it increasingly hard to take people seriously, no matter how “brilliant.” I would not be surprised, had he been alive, that even the great Albert Einstein would have believed that Amin killed 500,000 people.
I also don’t take seriously the claim that somehow Africans don’t generally keep records and so it is unfair to expect them to produce a list of 600 names of Amin’s victims….

We have to ask: if it is said that Amin killed 300,000 or 500,000 Ugandans, how did we arrive at that number? Whoever arrived at that staggering figure of 500,000 must have been doing some counting. They must have kept track of the victims. They should forward that list, if not the entire 500,000, then at least 600 names.

Four months ago I wrote to the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. That organisation published a report in May 1977 claiming that between 80,000 and 90,000 Ugandans had been killed by Amin.

If Ugandans are poor at keeping records, then we can at least count on the meticulous Swiss to keep files of all their published material. And yet to this day, I have not got a reply from Geneva. Many people have argued that it does not matter whether 20 people are murdered by a regime or 500,000 even one life is precious….