Vol 51 No 22 | RWANDACONGO-KINSHASA Kagame’s troops return to Congo 5th November 2010 Chaos in the Kivus has given Kigali a pretext to send its soldiers back across the border in pursuit of political and economic objectives The Rwandan Defence Force is back in Congo-Kinshasa but trying to keep a low profile. Presidents Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame agreed on the move at a 6...
Vol 51 No 21 | CONGO-KINSHASA Murder again 22nd October 2010 The death in detention of another critic illustrates the government’s arbitrary power as its reputation declines at home and abroad The official story is that Armand Tungulu Mudiandambu killed himself on 1 October with a cloth he was using as a pillow. He had been detained by President...
Vol 51 No 20 | CONGO-KINSHASA Massaging the message 8th October 2010 UN officials believe their edited investigation has persuaded Uganda and Rwanda not to withdraw their peacekeepers At the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 23 September, Rwandan President Paul Kagame did not look like a man leading a government...
Vol 51 No 20 | CONGO-KINSHASACANADA Kinshasa in court 8th October 2010 President Joseph Kabila's government now has the distinction of facing three international court cases in which foreign companies accuse it of arbitrarily seizing their assets. The biggest...
Vol 51 No 19 | CONGO-KINSHASA A poll that perplexes 24th September 2010 The coming elections are immense, will cost US$715 million and are quite possibly illegal The grumbles are growing fast, although there is still a year to go before the votes are cast. Several Congolese non-government organisations are casting doubt on the legality...
Vol 51 No 19 | CONGO-KINSHASA Runners and frontrunners 24th September 2010 Only three candidates have so far declared that they will stand for president at the election whose first round is due on 27 November 2011. Oscar Kashala Lukumuenda,...
Vol 51 No 19 | CONGO-KINSHASA Mixed minerals 24th September 2010 The job of Congo’s Centre d’Evaluation, d’Expertise et de Certification (CEEC) and its director, Léonide Mupepele, is to certify the value of metals produced, and so to ensure...
Vol 51 No 18 | RWANDACONGO-KINSHASA Kigali wins another round of the blame game 10th September 2010 United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon held an emergency meeting with President Paul Kagame in Kigali on 8 September after the Rwandan government threatened to withdraw from UN peacekeeping missions. Kigali’s logic was unassailable. A draft UN report had suggested that Rwandan troops might have committed ‘crimes of genocide’ in eastern Congo-Kinshasa in 1997; if the UN endorsed those claims, Kigali said it would have no choice but to withdraw its 3,500 troops from the UN force in Darfur, Sudan. The credibility of the United Nations is on trial again after the leaking of its draft 545-page report mapping human rights violations in Congo-Kinshasa in 1993-2003. It seems...
Vol 51 No 18 | RWANDACONGO-KINSHASA The UN’s credibility on the line 10th September 2010 Relations with the United Nations in general have taken a heavy hit. Kigali accuses the UN of leaking the report to distract attention from the inadequacies of its...