The UN mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) reported today that the United Nations is going to send a sixteen-person team to map human rights abuses in DRC. Never say never, but the effort is belated considering that eleven years ago 200,000 refugees vanished off the face of the earth. Current reports still use the figure of four million dead in what has become known as Africa’s world War. Others put the figure at closer to ten million dead. With those kinds of numbers, it is impossible to comprehend the levels of atrocities. One thousand die every day in Kivu Province and the death of even one Congolese has become statistically meaningless. God help us if we have become so numb as to ignore even one death.
The High Commission for Human Rights plans to conduct a three-month investigation. The commission is responding to public pressure, trying to do something, but how can this investigation be meaningful, given the scope of the landscape in DRC, the lack of infrastructure and the inability to physically reach most villages?
The official mission is to “map the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003.”
HOW CULPABLE IS THE UNITED STATES?
According to eyewitnesses who have since come forward in conversations with OPED NEWS and keith harmon snow, there is strong evidence that the United States was actively involved in the invasion of what was then Zaire, operating from secret bases in Uganda. These eyewitnesses have told us that their motivation comes from the fact that they realize that they might have been part of an unwitting support system to the slaughter of millions of innocent Congolese.
If the testimony is accurate, it appears that the United States planned an invasion of Zaire from Northern Uganda and Rwanda, beginning in 1996.
Eyewitnesses reported to OPED NEWS and keith harmon snow (www.allthingspass.com) that barracks at Masindi and the airstrip at Gulu in northern Uganda served as the staging grounds for the invasion.
In an under-reported story, the fallout included the forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of Ugandan Acholis into concentration camps in the fall of 1996, “often by bombing and burning villages and murdering, beating, raping and threatening those who would not comply,” according to reportage compiled by keith harmon snow.
According to testimony from the eyewitnesses, on Oct 26, 1996 the top Ugandan brass behind the invasion of Zaire met at the village of Paraa, in the Murchison falls National Park, near Lake Albert, in the Gulu District of Uganda.
The main road from Karuma to the border town of Pakwach was closed. This road apparently served as a primary transport route for Ugandan and non-Ugandan military—including black U.S. Special Forces—who invaded Zaire, according to the eyewitnesses who have come forward. The testimony is very specific.
From November 21-23 Boeing C-130 military aircraft passed over the border region every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, heading both north and south. The C-130’s apparently landed at Gulu airstrip—closed by the Ugandan government for a two-week period—and offloaded military equipment which was then moved by roads to the border. Some C-130’s were observed on a course believed to take them to Goma, Zaire.
An armored 4x4 Humvee, heavily rigged with sophisticated communications equipment inside and out was observed carrying two black U.S. Special Forces who were wearing Ugandan uniforms.
In addition, the eyewitnesses encountered two busloads of black U.S. Special Forces at a checkpoint. They were wearing civilian clothes, carried duffel bags, and showed U.S. passports. They claimed they were “doctors” heading to the tiny Gulu hospital. Two busloads of black doctors from the US!
The US support of the invasion of Zaire and possible US complicity in the deaths of millions of Congolese is an additional issue that the UN special commission should investigate and it is hoped that they will do so. However, three months is barely enough time to mobilize a thorough investigation, let alone complete the assimilation of testimony and the exposure of Special Ops cover-ups.
In DRC, several massacres have been reported again and again. The continuing violence is fallout from the destabilization of DRC following the events of 1996.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
