by Sunda San
Congo is a beautiful country in central Africa, It is the size of western Europe, and the richest country on earth in terms of its mineral wealth. It has gold, diamonds, copper, oil, gas, cassiterite, tantalum as well as so called ‘tech’ minerals such as coltan and cobalt, needed for cell phones, computers etc.
The Kingdom of Congo had its first contact with Europeans during the late 15th century, when Portuguese traders arrived and gradually began fomenting strife in different parts of the Kingdom, until it disintegrated into a mass of mini states locked in unending conflict. The prisoners from those wars contributed to the numbers of people shipped across the seas to the Americas to become slaves.
In 1874, Henry Morton Stanley “explorer” (knighted by Britain and elected to Parliament) made his third trip to Africa, when he “attacked and destroyed 28 large towns and 2-4 score villages” (his words) as he pillaged and plundered his way into Africa. In 1879 Stanley again travelled to Africa on commission from King Leopold II of Belgium to colonise the Congo for him. Leopold took Congo as his personal property, robbed and murdered its people to build Belgium and enrich himself.
After Stanley left in 1884, Leopold sent in hordes of thugs to terrorise the people and ship out the wealth (See A Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost). Congo, like the rest of Africa, fell victim to the 1885 Imperialist Berlin Conference which carved up the continent among the European powers. Belgium got the Congo, and in the next ten years King Leopold reduced the population from 31 million to 10 million. The greatest single holocaust in the 20th Century in numbers was the destruction of the Congo. Nobody lifted any voices against that holocaust which started 500 years ago and is still in progress.
Initially, the Europeans were mainly interested in ivory but then an Irishman, John Dunlop, discovered how to make an inflated rubber tyre for his bicycle. He set up a tyre company named after himself and the rest as they say is history. Rubber became the new gold. Wild rubber was all over Congo, but tapping it was very difficult. People who refused to gather rubber for the Belgians had their right hand chopped off. Even children were not spared. The violence continued unabated until the population declined so much that labour was not as available and killing people meant less profits. It was the decline in profits that reduced the killings. The Belgian Government was forced to ‘buy’ Congo from Leopold because his crimes were exposed by Sir Roger Casement’s report to the British Parliament.
The French, Germans, and Belgians looted the Congo and the Belgians collected the severed hands of the Congolese as trophies in their mission to pillage the rubber resources of Congo. There is a museum in Brussels which has replicas of children’s hands decorating the exterior in homage to mass murderer Leopold.
Today all over Belgium there are monuments to the mass murderer Leopold, which continues to remind us of the suffering and horror and is irrefutable evidence of their lack of remorse. How would the world respond to a statue of Hitler in Germany?
Leopold (like the slave holders in the Americas) was paid 50 million francs “as a mark of gratitude for his great sacrifice for the Congo”. So once again we see that evil is profitable and goes unpunished.
The Congo is still traumatised, psychologically destroyed and unable to recover from these atrocities and the up-to-300-million Africans deported and killed en-route to the Americas in the Transatlantic deportations.
Today the resources beneath the earth are at the root of the Congo’s suffering. Many of these minerals are necessary for the functioning of modern society. Particularly in the technology sector e.g., coltan. Coltan is mined in Congo by virtual slaves who work just for a meal, have no protective garments to protect them from the toxic and radioactive minerals, and so will certainly die of cancer due to this exposure. Not to mention the pollution of the environment and the poisoning of the water table caused by mining these toxic minerals.
Recently released documents show that after independence Belgium and the CIA assassinated the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Last year the Belgians and the French admitted their role in the murder and said that after they tortured and shot him, they dissolved his body in acid, but kept a tooth for DNA purposes which they have just returned to his family.
After they murdered Lumumba they installed a corrupt despot, Mobutu. (See The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo de Witte and Chief of Station by Larry Deolin). Since 1996 the US and Britain have waged a proxy (resource) war against Congo, using Rwanda and Uganda.
Over 7 million people have been killed (UN Report, Dec 12th 2008-Congo, Deadliest Conflict since World War 2) yet it is never mentioned in the news because Western corporations are benefiting from the slaughter. Colonial exploitation created a situation where various ethnic/religious groups vie for political power granting them access to economic resources. The French had at one stage favoured the Tutsi group in Rwanda but changed their position and favoured the Hutu group. This has resulted in civil wars displacing large groups and forcing them to flee.
In 1996 and 1998 there were two Civil wars in Congo, they were caused by the Rwandan genocide in 1994 which was triggered by the assassination of the Hutu President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana. During the genocide extremist Hutus killed nearly a million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. After this there was an ethnic cleansing of Hutus and over one million Hutus fled to neighbouring Congo
Kagame created a group of fighters from the Rwandan Army known as M23 which invaded Congo, committed summary executions and forced people to work in the mines which M23 seized. Rwanda is a very small country with no mineral resources.
On Feb 8th 2024 information was released from two EU sources (1. Nazionale Audiencie- Espana and (2) Tribunal de Grande instance de Paris-France) confirming that Bill Clinton and the US military were behind the plot which triggered the Rwandan genocide.
Michael Hourigan, Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from Australia discovered during an Investigation that Kagame and Clinton were responsible for the shooting down of the aircraft carrying the Hutu President of Rwanda (Habyarimana), triggering the tragedy.
16 years after this crime Hourigan called his boss in the Hague (Holland), ICTR Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour (Canadian). She called New York to inform the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan knew that it was Bill Clinton who ordered the assassination of Habyarimana. So, Annan immediately informed Madelene Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State (it was Albright who chose Annan to replace Boutrous Ghali as UN Secretary General). Albright went immediately to Clinton’s office and said “Mr. President, our action against France in Rwanda has come out, the ICTR investigators have discovered we shot down the French aircraft”
In order to cover up the story, Louise Arbour was ordered to fire the ICTR Prosecutor Michael Hourigan and kill the investigation. Kofi Annan was ordered to send Michael Hall from the UN Security Services to Rwanda to arrange Michael Hourigan’s swift departure from Rwanda. Bill Clinton then ordered Albright to pressure the ICTR Judges not to investigate the event which triggered the Rwanda genocide, the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s aircraft. A former aide to Clinton recalls Clinton saying “No one must know I shot down Habyarimana”. Clinton went to Rwanda and ordered Kagame to kill all the people who may know about the Habyarimana assassination, starting with people who were listed on the memo Hourigan sent to Louise Arbour at the Hague. This was the beginning of a long list of assassinations around the world. The two people who helped Clinton’s agents shoot down the plane, Seth Sendashonga and Theoneste Lizinde, were assassinated in Nairobi, Kenya a few weeks later.
Clinton advised Kagame to assassinate Rwandan General Faustin Nyamwasa in South Africa. The assassination failed so Clinton went to South Africa to press for a cover up.
On November 25th 1987 General Colin Powell went to President Regan and said “Mr. President, the Cold war with the Soviets is over, the Kremlin no longer has the stamina to carry on, Defense Secretary Shultz has reached a nuclear deal with the Soviets”. Reagan asked General Powell to ”find a new enemy to fight” The new enemy would be the French Empire in Africa. It was decided that the resources in Congo were crucial and must be seized at any cost, including genocide…
The French President Mitterrand perceived the threat and attempted to subvert it by calling together all the African Presidents under French control and proclaiming a new democracy…to correct “French mistakes”. Washington was intent on capturing Congo’s immense mineral wealth, the Pentagon decided to invade Rwanda via Uganda, using the RPF rebellion as a cover. On the 1st October 1990 Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was in Washington and the State Department offered him asylum, in exchange for giving all power to Kagame’s RPF. He refused and went back to Rwanda. From October 1990 to January 1993 the Pentagon provided Kagame with money, materials, everything he asked for in order to overthrow the Rwandan Government. When France landed its troops in Rwanda to ask for negotiation between the Rwandan Government and Kagame’s RPF, Washington realised that they could not invade Congo if there was a democratic government in Rwanda. Washington decided they should assassinate the Hutu leaders.
In September 1993 Clinton ordered the Pentagon and the CIA to help Kagame to assassinate the Hutu President of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, Rwanda’s neighbour and ally of France. On the 20th October 1993 Kagame, his death squads, and CIA agents flew to Bujumbura. President Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated. When Kagame flew back to Rwanda, he met the USAID Director to finalise the plan of assassinating Rwandan President Habyarimana. An informer recalled that Kagame was reluctant and warned of the consequences of such an act. But Clinton, through his ambassador George Moose, told Kagame that assassinating Habyarimana was the only way to win the war quickly. The CIA had estimated that 50 thousand people would be killed as a consequence of Habyarimana’s assassination and that this was a good sacrifice for a just cause. The Pentagon would provide everything necessary for the job, including military assistance.
Kagame invited two Hutu rebels and former allies of the Rwandan President, Lizinde and Kanyarengwe, to prepare the assassination plan. They decided to shoot down the plane near the airport at Kagera Park. The Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and the Tanzanian President were in on the plot. Habyarimana’s plane was hit by two missiles during descent to the runway. No one on board survived. Anthony Lake, National Security Adviser to Clinton, went to him with the news. “We did it – Congo will be American” Clinton agreed to support Kagame’s rebels in return for Kagame acting as a US proxy to invade Congo and overthrow Mobutu. Clinton, using Kagame as his cover, invaded Congo and killed 8 million people including Spanish nationals, overthrew France, and looted Congo.
Hundreds of millions of US dollars ended up in Clinton’s pocket and Kagame could then afford two luxury private jets and a huge building in London with Tony Blair as co-shareholder.
In January 2009 when Obama became President, he ordered Kagame to arrest the Congo General Laurent Nkunda. Kagame was furious and plotted to kill Obama. He sought help from Clinton and Tony Blair to shoot down Air Force One. The information became public so Clinton had to distance himself from Kagame. At that same time the ICTR revealed the perpetrators of the Habyarimana assassination so the families are now seeking justice in the Courts.
The Lawsuit is seeking 350 million US dollars for compensation for wrongful deaths in the terrorist assassination over Kigali Airport on April 6th 1994, money Kagame cannot afford. Kagame killed 8 million people including Spanish nationals during the illegal invasion of Congo on Clinton’s orders.
The Congolese government is unable to control M23 as well as other armed groups in their struggle to seize mineral rich territories; this has now provoked a prolonged humanitarian crisis in Congo. Millions are now in need of food, shelter and healthcare.
The ‘international community’ has remained indifferent to the suffering in Congo. There has been no initiative to engage all parties to negotiate to bring an end to the conflict.
The UN security force has been in Congo for 25 years, yet the violence continues unabated. Since 1996 the Civil War has killed more than 5 million Congolese.
In September 2023 the Government asked the UN to leave. On the 3rd November 2023 a UN drone crashed in Eastern Congo and when people went to the crash site to render help, they found piles of gold bars and guns. A week later a UN ambulance crashed and again the people found gold bars in the vehicle. This has led the people to believe that the UN is causing instability and resource plundering, rather than providing security and peacekeeping as the UN claims. On the 12th February 2024, there were huge protests outside the French, British and US embassies in Kinshasa. The people attempted to burn down their embassies.
Unless Africa reverses what was done at the Berlin Conference 1884-85, (the boundaries drawn on policies of divide and rule), there will be no meaningful unity of the peoples of Africa. Africa must unite to fight and win against Imperialism.
