Archivo etiqueta «República Democrática del Congo»
Par Thierry Vircoulon, chercheur associé à l’Institut français des relations internationales (LE MONDE, 07/01/10):
Alors que le ministre des affaires étrangères français, Bernard Kouchner, entreprend une tournée africaine qui l’amènera au Rwanda et en République démocratique du Congo (RDC), la situation à la frontière de ces pays ne cesse d’être volatile. Longtemps à couteaux tirés, ces deux pays se sont rapprochés en 2009, à la suite des pressions de la communauté internationale. Ce rapprochement s’est traduit par l’arrestation d’un des principaux seigneurs de guerre de la région, Laurent Nkunda, ex-leader du mouvement rebelle tutsi, le Congrès national pour la défense… Seguir leyendo
By Mary Lou Hartman, a documentary filmmaker (THE WASHINGTON POST, 12/12/09):
I was just raped.
Not just, as in recently, though sometimes it feels like yesterday, but just as in only. I was only raped, not mutilated. I did not have a bottle or stick or gun shoved into my vagina, twisted to inflict maximum injury. Though damaged, I did not have my breasts lopped off, nor did I lose a limb. I was left intact, though far from whole.
I did not feel lucky 4 1/2 years ago, when I was raped, but I do feel lucky today as… Seguir leyendo
By Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society (THE GUARDIAN, 26/11/09):
In 1995, after the Rwandan genocide, western leaders discussed plans for an armed force for Africa’s Great Lakes region to suppress the remnant of the extremist Hutu movement that had fled across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I asked a British military planner how many men it might need. About half a million was his reply.
He had studied the vast landscape, the size of France; thick forest, huge mountains, no roads or boundaries, only a few airstrips and little idea of how many… Seguir leyendo
Africa Report N°151 (CRISIS GROUP, 09/07/09):
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The joint Congo (DRC)-Rwanda military push against the Rwandan Hutu rebels has ended with scant results. Fifteen years after the Rwanda genocide and the establishment of those rebels in the eastern Congo, they have not yet been disarmed and remain a source of extreme violence against civilians. While they are militarily too weak to destabilise Rwanda, their 6,000 or more combatants, including a number of génocidaires, still present a major political challenge for consolidation of peace in the Great Lakes region. They must be disarmed and demobilised if the eastern Congo is… Seguir leyendo
By Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls (THE WASHINGTON POST, 30/06/09):
Just over a year ago, in answering whether sexual violence in conflict was an issue that the U.N. Security Council should take on, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proclaimed, “I am proud that, today, we respond to that lingering question with a resounding ‘yes!’ ” With this statement, and with the cooperation of other power brokers at the table, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1820, which finally recognized sexual violence as a widely… Seguir leyendo
By Anna Husarska, senior policy adviser with the International Rescue Committee (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/03/09):
“Chu-ku-du, chu-ku-du, chu-ku-du” goes the wooden scooter as it bumps along the lava-covered streets of this central African city. It’s a strange-looking contraption, like a handmade toy for grown-ups: two rubber-covered wheels connected by a board, with a steering handle atop an upside-down fork.
Even the oldest people can’t remember when and how the onomatopoeically named chukudu first appeared in this part of North Kivu, an area of eastern Congo between the north shore of Lake Kivu and the heart of the Virunga National Park.… Seguir leyendo
Por Ferran Requejo, catedrático de Ciencia Política en la UPF y autor de Las democracias, Ariel, 2008 (LA VANGUARDIA, 26/02/09):
La situación de los derechos humanos sigue mostrando un panorama desolador en buena parte de los estados del planeta. Ello supone un incumplimiento grave de la Declaración Universal de la ONU de 1948. Que el tema sea muy conocido no lo transforma en menos grave. Pero buena parte de las democracias liberales también presentan incumplimientos concretos en la protección de dichos derechos. De los últimos informes independientes pueden presentarse los casos de RD Congo y España como ejemplos de ambos… Seguir leyendo
Por Mario Vargas Llosa (EL PAÍS, 28/12/08):
Durante muchos siglos, la empresa colonial fue transparente: un país, aprovechándose de su fuerza, invadía a otro más débil, se apoderaba de él y lo saqueaba. Nadie ponía en cuestión semejante estado de cosas porque se trataba de algo que se venía practicando desde la noche de los tiempos y todos, colonizadores y colonizados, aceptaban o se resignaban a esta cruda realidad como a una fatalidad inevitable, consustancial a la historia.
El descubrimiento y conquista de América por los europeos introduce una importante variante. Por primera vez y por razones religiosas el colonizador… Seguir leyendo
By Herman J. Cohen, the assistant secretary of state for Africa from 1989 to 1993 (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 16/12/08):
THE conflict in eastern Congo over the past 12 years has been as much a surrogate war between Congo and neighboring Rwanda as an internal ethnic insurgency, as a United Nations report underscored last week. The only way to end a war that has caused five million deaths and forced millions to flee their homes in Congo’s two eastern provinces is to address the conflict’s international dimensions. The role of Rwanda — which borders the provinces and which denied the… Seguir leyendo
By Giles Foden, the author of The Last King of Scotland and professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia (THE GUARDIAN, 16/12/08):
In 2001, I was in a bar in Kigoma, on the Tanzanian side of Lake Tanganyika. As I sipped my beer, I could hear the clipped tones of a South African speaking into a radio transceiver. He was ordering supplies for the United Nations peacekeeping mission known as Monuc, then operating out of Kalemie on the lake’s Congolese side. At the time, Monuc’s blue berets were just about managing to keep a lid on things… Seguir leyendo
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 12/12/08):
The HEAL Africa hospital has a feeling of newness that is rare for this part of Africa, mainly because its previous facility was destroyed by lava from Mount Nyiragongo in 2002. One building holds people with bullet wounds — shot through the pelvis, the thigh, the jaw. Another ward contains women recovering from fistula repair surgery — the quiet victims of extreme sexual violence who tend to avoid your eyes.
In another room, families whose children have congenital defects such as clubfoot and cleft lip are gathered. A surgeon at the hospital introduced… Seguir leyendo
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 10/12/08):
The setting of this city is all contrast and drama — nestled along a vast, placid lake but dominated by a volcano that steams by day and glows faint and red on a clear evening. A city living in the shadow of sudden violence.
Driving north from Goma, one passes through wide lava fields — black, broken and sharp to the feet. About seven miles along the rutted road, the uniforms of the soldiers change, from the solid green of the FARDC (the Congolese military) to the camouflage of the CNDP (the rebel… Seguir leyendo
Por Mario Vargas Llosa (EL PAÍS, 30/11/08):
En la ciudad de Boma, capital de este inmenso país cuando se llamaba el Estado Libre del Congo y era propiedad privada del Rey de los Belgas, Leopoldo II, el señor Placide-Clement Mananga está entregado a luchar a favor de la civilización y contra la barbarie. Ésta, para él, no tiene la cara atroz de las violaciones, las matanzas, las epidemias y el hambre que adopta en otras regiones de su país, sino la del olvido. Monsieur Placide estuvo cuatro años de joven en un seminario católico, preparándose para ser cura. Pero el… Seguir leyendo
By Jim Hoagland (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/11/08):
While world leaders gathered here to unleash soothing words on the financial tsunami swamping their economies, the daring “responsibility to protect” doctrine adopted by U.N. members three years ago was being buried in the killing fields of eastern Congo.
For the sake of your bank account, hope that the international community can protect dollars, euros and yen more successfully than it protects the lives and safety of people who happen to live in failed or rogue states.
In three years, “never again” has become “sorry about that.” Humanitarian intervention — proudly proclaimed as… Seguir leyendo
Por Mario Vargas Llosa (EL PAÍS, 16/11/08):
PIEDRA DE TOQUE. Congo, el país que recorrió el explorador británico, padeció la colonización más inhumana. Hoy, millones de personas viven allí una pesadilla cotidiana rodeados de ruina, miseria y tristeza.
El Museo se encuentra en el Monte Ngaliema, una comuna de la capital congolesa, en un terreno de las Fuerzas Armadas, y desde lo alto de esta elevación se divisa -un espectáculo soberbio- el gran río africano en todo su esplendor, con las dos capitales -Kinshasa y Brazzaville- contemplándose la una a la otra desde las dos orillas.
Allí, en el mismo… Seguir leyendo