France Cited As Having Great Resposibility For Rwanda Massacre

 

FRANCE

The Stupid Defense

A commission of historians said that France bears “heavy and overwhelming responsibilities” over its role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide but cleared it of complicity in the massacre, the Associated Press reported.

In a report released over the weekend, the commission found in a two-year investigation that the government of then-President Francois Mitterrand reacted too slowly to genocide because it realized too late the extent of the slaughter that killed at least 800,000.

However, it ruled out any “complicity in genocide,” including accusations that France sent weapons to Rwanda after the start of genocide.

President Emmanuel Macron established the commission in May 2019, saying the inquiry is aimed at improving relations with Rwanda and other African nations that have questioned France’s role in the massacre.

It’s unclear to what extent will the report improve relations between the two nations but the Rwandan government hailed the report as “an important step toward a common understanding of France’s role in the genocide.”

There Are Two Congos Now

 

REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The Emperor’s Old Clothes

President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of Congo, sometimes called Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, recently purchased an arsenal of weapons from Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic.

The president’s critics fear that the more than 500 tons of weapons that he purchased, including 775 mortar shells and more than 400 cases of truck-mounted rockets, will be used to tighten his grip on power, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported. Similar Azerbaijani arms shipments helped him crack down on protesters who argued that he rigged the vote to win reelection in 2016.

They are watching to see if there is a repeat performance.

Citizens of the Republic of Congo head to the polls on March 21 to elect a new president. Sassou-Nguesso, 77, is almost certainly to win office because the vote will be a sham, argued Financial Times columnist Neil Munshi, who noted that the president changed the electoral law in 2015 to remove a 70-year-old age limit on candidates.

Sassou-Nguesso is called the “emperor” because he has held office for a total of 36 years that does not include a period between 1992 and 1997, noted the Africa Report. In those five years, former President Pascal Lissouba, the first democratically elected president of the republic, ruled until Sassou-Nguesso ousted him in a civil war.

Now, many including the Catholic Church have sounded alarm bells with its leaders saying they had “serious reservations” about the elections because of coronavirus prohibitions to stop the spread of the virus as well as questions about the integrity of the election system.

And the weapon purchases likely angered many Congo-Brazzaville voters. As France 24 explained, the country possesses vast resources even as many areas lack power – the country has a vibrant oil industry that includes massive multinational companies reaping billions in profits. Sassou-Nguesso has promised to build a new refinery to satisfy demand, Africa News added. He doesn’t say much about electricity, though.

Unemployment and low pay are other issues plaguing the country.

Meanwhile, overfishing has forced local fishermen to capture sharks to sell to Asian companies that prize shark fins for soup, the BBC wrote. But now fishermen are catching fewer sharks, too, having misused this resource.

These challenges are one reason why opposition leader Mathias Dzon, who was finance minister under Sassou-Nguesso from 1997-2002, believes the country needs change. “Sassou will be sanctioned at the ballot box,” said Dzon in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

That’s not likely, observers say.

Even so, many hope Sassou-Nguesso didn’t order those weapons because he was similarly pessimistic about the vote.

Kidnappings Are "Business As Usual" In Nigeria

 

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Good Morning, today is March 12, 2021.

NEED TO KNOW NIGERIA Suffer the Children Bandits recently released 279 Nigerian girls kidnapped recently from their school in Zamfara, a state in the country’s northwest. The kidnappers had forced the girls to march in the forest, beating them and threatening to shoot them if they stopped, Sky News wrote. “Alhamdulillah! (God be praised!) It gladdens my heart to announce the release of the abducted students,” Zamfara Governor Bello Matawalle wrote on Twitter, the Associated Press reported. “I enjoin all well-meaning Nigerians to rejoice with us as our daughters are now safe.” These children are safe. For now. Others are not. In this case, officials claimed they did not pay ransoms in exchange for the girls’ freedom. The kidnappers do not appear to be connected to Boko Haram, the Islamic State-affiliated militant group that abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok in 2014. More than 100 of those girls remain missing. Regardless, one would think that Nigerians would be happy the girls are now free. Instead, a riot broke out soon after officials brought the girls to their parents, Reuters reported. Nigerians are sick and tired of such incidents. Three mass kidnappings have occurred in the region since December. Late last year, gunmen took 300 schoolboys. Most are now free, the BBC reported. Last month, at least 27 students were abducted and later released, Reuters reported. Kidnappings are part of Nigerian life. Variety magazine wrote about how the country’s movie industry, called Nollywood, produces films like “The Milkmaid,” which tells the tale of a sister’s search for her missing, kidnapped sibling, for example. Nigeria’s boarding schools in the remote northern section of the West African nation have become lucrative hunting grounds for armed bands, the New York Times explained. The government has paid $18 million in ransoms from mid-2011 to March 2020 to release victims, according to a Nigerian intelligence report cited in the newspaper. Corrupt government officials have skimmed from those payments, too. A cycle of poverty, violence, kidnapping, ransoms and corruption have gripped northern Nigeria, argued Wall Street Journal reporter Joe Parkinson, who wrote a recent book on the Chibok kidnappings, in an interview with National Public Radio. In an op-ed in USA Today, Parkinson and his co-author, Wall Street Journal Reporter Drew Hinshaw, added that foreign drones, special forces and other expensive resources deployed to find the Chibok girls never worked. Kidnapping is a fast-growing part of the Nigerian economy that doesn’t necessarily have a military solution, in other words. Some think developing the region and providing jobs to these would-be abductors who have taken a page from the militants’ playbook might work. Others say a heavy military presence in the region is the solution. Changing the culture of corruption is an idea tossed into the mix. Regardless, most are sure that the latest kidnappings of children in an isolated part of Nigeria are far from the last.