DR Congo: Lord’s Resistance Army Rampage Kills 321

http://www.hrw.org/node/89348?tr=y&auid=6156318

Regional Strategy Needed to End Rebel Group’s Atrocities and Apprehend Leaders

March 28, 2010

A man with machete wounds to his head after being attacked by LRA rebels near Ngilima, northern Congo. February 21, 2009.

© 2009 Reuters

This 37-year-old man from Bangadi was attacked by the LRA on January 24, 2010, when he risked going to his banana and sugarcane farm 2km outside of town. A group of LRA found him there and shot him twice – both bullets grazed his back and neck. An LRA then grabbed him by the ankles, shook him to see if he was really dead, and cut him by machete just below the neck and lower down on his back, leaving him unconscious. When he came to, he eventually found his brother who had also been shot by the LRA. Covered in blood, they made it to a Congolese army position and found soldiers who took them by bicycle to a health center.

© 2010 Human Rights Watch

Women mutilated by the LRA near Bangadi in December 2009. An LRA combatant cut each victim’s lips and an ear with a razor and sent the victim’s back to their villages with a chilling warning to others that anyone who heard or spoke about the LRA would be similarly punished.

© 2010 Béatrice Petit

Related Materials: 

Trail of Death

Other Material: 

New York Times: Weakened Rebel Group Kills Hundreds of CongoleseBBC: DR Congo Rebel Massacre of Hundreds is Uncovered

The Makombo massacre is one of the worst ever committed by the LRA in its bloody 23-year history, yet it has gone unreported for months. The four-day rampage demonstrates that the LRA remains a serious threat to civilians and is not a spent force, as the Ugandan and Congolese governments claim.

Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher

(Kampala) – The rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others, including at least 80 children, during a previously unreported four-day rampage in the Makombo area of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2009, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

«The Makombo massacre is one of the worst ever committed by the LRA in its bloody 23-year history, yet it has gone unreported for months,» said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. «The four-day rampage demonstrates that the LRA remains a serious threat to civilians and is not a spent force, as the Ugandan and Congolese governments claim.»

The 67-page report, «Trail of Death: LRA Atrocities in Northeastern Congo,» is the first detailed documentation of the Makombo massacre and other atrocities by the LRA in Congo in 2009 and early 2010. The report, based on a Human Rights Watch fact-finding mission to the massacre area in February, documents the brutal killings during the well-planned LRA attack from December 14 to 17 in the remote Makombo area of Haute Uele district.

LRA forces attacked at least 10 villages, capturing, killing, and abducting hundreds of civilians, including women and children. The vast majority of those killed were adult men, whom LRA combatants first tied up and then hacked to death with machetes or crushed their skulls with axes and heavy wooden sticks. The dead include at least 13 women and 23 children, the youngest a 3-year-old girl who was burned to death. LRA combatants tied some of the victims to trees before crushing their skulls with axes.

The LRA also killed those they abducted who walked too slowly or tried to escape. Family members and local authorities later found bodies all along the LRA’s 105-kilometer journey through the Makombo area and the small town of Tapili. Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that for days and weeks after the attack, this vast area was filled with the «stench of death.»

Children and adults who managed to escape provided similar accounts of the group’s extreme brutality. Many of the children captured by the LRA were forced to kill other children who had disobeyed the LRA’s rules. In numerous cases documented by Human Rights Watch, children were ordered to surround the victim in a circle and take turns beating the child on the head with a large wooden stick until the child died.

The United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Congo (MONUC) has some 1,000 peacekeeping troops in the LRA-affected areas of northeastern Congo – far too few to protect the population adequately, given the area’s size.  Yet instead of sending more troops, the peacekeeping force, under pressure from the Congolese government to withdraw from the country by July 2011, is considering removing some troops from the northeast by June in the first phase of its drawdown.

«The people of northeastern Congo are in desperate need of more protection, not less,» said Van Woudenberg. «The UN Security Council should stop any drawdown of MONUC peacekeeping troops from areas where the LRA threatens to kill and abduct civilians.»

In mid-April, the Security Council is due to visit Congo to discuss the peacekeeping force’s   plans for withdrawal and the protection of civilians.

The Makombo massacre is part of a longstanding history of atrocities and abuse by the LRA in Uganda, southern Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Congo. Pushed out of northern Uganda in 2005, the LRA now operates in the remote border area between southern Sudan, Congo, and CAR. In July 2005, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the senior leaders of the LRA for crimes they committed in northern Uganda, but those indicted remain at large.

The Human Rights Watch research indicated that the Makombo massacre was perpetrated by two LRA commanders – Lt. Col. Binansio Okumu (also known as Binany) and a commander known as Obol. They report to Gen. Dominic Ongwen, a senior LRA leader who is believed to command the LRA’s forces in Congo and who is among those sought by the International Criminal Court. Human Rights Watch urged investigations of these commanders’ alleged participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In December 2008, the governments of the region, led by the Ugandan armed forces, with intelligence and logistical support from the United States, began a military campaign known as Operation Lightning Thunder against the LRA in northeastern Congo. A surprise aerial strike on the main LRA camp failed to neutralize the LRA leadership, which escaped. In retaliation, the LRA attacked villages and towns in northern Congo and southern Sudan, killing more than 865 civilians during the Christmas 2008 holiday season and in the weeks thereafter.

On March 15, 2009, Operation Lightning Thunder officially ended, following pressure from the Congolese government, which found it politically difficult to support a continued Ugandan army presence on Congolese territory. But a covert joint military campaign continued, with the quiet approval of the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila. Both governments publicly maintain that the LRA is no longer a serious threat in Congo and that the bulk of the rebel group has either moved to Central African Republic or has been killed or dispersed.

These public declarations might have contributed to burying information about ongoing LRA attacks, leaving many victims feeling abandoned. An 80-year-old traditional chief, whose son was killed during the Makombo massacre, told Human Rights Watch: «We have been forgotten. It’s as if we don’t exist. The government says the LRA are no longer a problem, but I know that’s not true. I beg of you, please talk to others about what has happened to us.»

While the Makombo massacre is the most deadly documented attack by the LRA since the Christmas massacres of 2008, dozens of attacks against civilians have also been carried out in other areas in recent months – near the towns of Bangadi and Ngilima in Haut Uele district, in Ango territory in Bas Uele district, as well as in the Central African Republic.

In the December 2009 attacks near Bangadi and Ngilima, LRA combatants horribly mutilated six civilians, cutting off each victim’s lips and an ear with a razor. The LRA sent the victims back to their villages with a chilling warning to others that anyone who heard or spoke about the LRA would be similarly punished.

On March 11, 2010, the US Senate unanimously passed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. If it becomes law, it will require President Barack Obama’s administration to develop a regional strategy to protect civilians in central Africa from attacks by the LRA, to work to apprehend the LRA’s leadership, and to support economic recovery for northern Uganda. The bill is currently before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

«The people of northeastern Congo and other LRA-affected areas have suffered for far too long,» said Van Woudenberg. «The US and other concerned governments should work with the UN and regional parties to develop and carry out a comprehensive strategy to protect civilians and apprehend abusive LRA leaders.»

¿Quién indemniza a un parque natural?

Por: Ferran Ramírez/ CanalSolidario.org el 02/04/10 07:07 Tiempo estimado de lectura : 2 minutos

La imagen es del blog de Greenpeace

Es lo que se pregunta Greenpeace respecto el hotel ubicado en El Algarrobico (Almería) y defiende que la construcción vulnera toda la normativa medioambiental. La ONG ha sido llevada a los tribunales por la promotora del hotel por una pintada en la fachada que hizo como acto de denuncia.

Todo empezó en el año 2007, con una acción de denuncia pacífica de Greenpeace contra el hotel ubicado en la playa de El Algarrobico, dentro de los límites del Parque Natural Cabo de Gata, en Almería. Dos claras y grandes palabras fueron pintadas en la fachada del edificio. Éstas eran “hotel ilegal” y hacían referencia a los 75.000 metros cúbicos de hormigón que habían mermado este patrimonio natural que es una de las últimas playas vírgenes del Mediterráneo.

El pasado mes de febrero, la coordinadora de campañas de la organización ecologista, Maria José Caballero, declaraba como imputada por el supuesto delito. La promotora del hotel, Azata del Sol, reclama a Greenpeace una indemnización de casi 200.00 euros por los daños, y para poder volver a pintar la fachada. También reclama al Estado, por otro lado, “millones de euros en compensación por su hotel, aún a sabiendas de la ilegalidad de las obras que inició en 2003”, afirma Caballero.

Según un informe de Greenpeace sobre la zona afectada, los tribunales han ratificado hasta en 17 ocasiones la ilegalidad de este edificio de 21 plantas que se encuentra a 28 metros de la orilla del mar y vulnera toda la normativa ambiental existente en el Estado, incluyendo la Ley de Costas. Precisamente esta semana se cumplen cuatro años desde que el juzgado de Almería dictaminaba la paralización cautelar de las obras del hotel y durante los cuales varias sentencias han subrayado que “un hotel de estas características supone un daño irreversible a los animales y plantas que viven en el Parque Natural”.

La Consejera de Medio Ambiente de la Junta de Andalucía se ha defendido afirmando que no existe tal daño. “No perjudica medioambientalmente hablando” al espacio protegido, porque el “edificio en sí no está provocando ningún daño a ninguna especie, ni de flora ni de fauna”. Así lo mantiene la consejera Cinta Castillo, quien añade que, en el caso de que al final el hotel sea “ilegal”, habrá que “tirarlo y recuperar esa zona”. Y cuestiona que dañe el paisaje: “Si hubiera un daño paisajístico, visual, en todo el Mediterráneo tendríamos que derribar los edificios”.

Greenpeace, por el contrario, pide su derribo inmediato: “Si el Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y la Junta de Andalucía fueran verdaderos líderes en gestión medioambiental, la demolición del hotel sería inmediata, sin dilación y sin excusas, sin embargo, se está haciendo todo lo contrario y Greenpeace está siendo partícipe de un gran teatro que sólo beneficia a aquellos que han conducido al país a una gran crisis económica”, concluye María José Caballero.

¿Y qué puedo hacer yo?

Puedes descargarte el informe de Greenpeace 20 años de ilegalidades en El Algarrobico y enterarte de la situación medioambiental de la zona.

También puedes consultar todas las campañas de la ONG y difundirlas.

En marzo asesinaron a cinco periodistas en Honduras

http://www.agenciapulsar.org/nota.php?id=16975

Durante el pasado mes de marzo 5 periodistas fueron asesinados en Honduras. Desde el Golpe de Estado ocurrido el 28 de junio pasado son 150 las muertes por estos actos de violencia.

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (UNESCO) repudió los crímenes contra los comunicadores sociales.

La directora general de la UNESCO, Irina Bokova, sentenció que «estos despreciables crímenes contra profesionales de los medios vulneran el derechos fundamental a la libertad de información, piedra angular de una sociedad democrática».

La titular de la UNESCO exigió a las autoridades hondureñas que se «arreste a los responsables y se ponga fin a la ola de violencia».

El Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP), el colectivo de Artistas en Resistencia junto a otras organizaciones, emitieron condenas a la escalada de violencia desencadenada por el gobierno de Porfirio Lobo.

La Coordinadora General del Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH), Bertha Oliva, afirmó esta semana que en el país se puso en marcha un «plan de exterminio».

Según datos del Comisionado Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Ramón Custodio, Honduras tiene el actualmente el índice de homicidios más alto de Centroamérica.

Y explicó que la situación más grave se registra en los departamentos hondureños de Colón, Francisco Morazán en el centro del país, Yoro en el norte y Copán en el oeste. (PÚLSAR)

Karzai tries to smooth spat with U.S. over speech

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6311OG20100402?feedType=nl&feedName=ustopnewsevening

Jeff Mason and Peter Graff

WASHINGTON/KABUL

Fri Apr 2, 2010 5:27pm EDT

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks at Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) in Kabul April 1, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Ahmad Masood

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai tried to smooth over his fraying relationship with Washington on Friday after the White House said it was troubled by a strident anti-Western speech he delivered in Kabul.

World  |  Barack Obama

In his unprecedentedly bitter speech to election officials on Thursday, the Afghan leader accused embassies of perpetrating election fraud in Afghanistan, bribing and threatening election officials and seeking to weaken him and his government.

«Obviously some of the comments of President Karzai are troubling. They’re cause for real and genuine concern,» White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, adding the White House was seeking clarification.

Later, Karzai’s spokesman said the Afghan leader had spoken to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by telephone.

During the call, «President Karzai said the Afghan people and Afghan government were grateful for the support and sacrifice of the international community for peace in Afghanistan and the world,» Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer said.

Omer said parts of Karzai’s remarks had been misunderstood.

«Obviously there is a difference of opinion on certain issues between Afghanistan and its international partners, but the president wanted the international community to pay attention to the concerns of the Afghan people and the Afghan government.»

In his speech, Karzai accused foreigners of carrying out «massive fraud» in last year’s presidential vote in a deliberate effort to undermine his authority, and said they also wanted to wreck a parliamentary election this year.

«Foreigners will make excuses, they do not want us to have a parliamentary election,» Karzai said. «They want parliament to be weakened and battered, and for me to be an ineffective president, and for parliament to be ineffective.»

At a news briefing, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley responded: «Suggestions that somehow the international community was responsible for irregularities in the recent election is preposterous.»

CHILLY RELATIONSHIP

Karzai’s speech came at a time when President Barack Obama’s administration has been increasingly critical of his record on corruption, an issue Karzai has said is overblown and largely the fault of the West for failing to safeguard its aid budgets.

Karzai’s relationship with the Obama administration has been chilly from the outset, and deteriorated last year when a U.N.-backed watchdog found widespread fraud in a presidential election, throwing out a third of the votes cast for him.

The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, wrote in a classified cable last November, later leaked, that Karzai was «not an adequate strategic partner».

Karzai is now wrangling with parliament and the United Nations over rules for a parliamentary vote due in September, and has tried to strip U.N. appointees from the vote-fraud watchdog.

Obama made a quick, unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Sunday night to visit U.S. troops and hold talks with Karzai. Some Afghans saw the visit as a snub, because Obama arrived and left under cover of darkness and avoided answering media questions.

Gibbs said Obama «was quite clear with President Karzai over the weekend of the necessary steps that have to be taken to improve governance and corruption in order to deal with the problems that we face there.»

Asked if a planned meeting between Obama and Karzai in Washington in May was still on, he said: «As of right now, yes».

Mistrust between Karzai and the West could hurt the campaign on the battlefield in coming months, when U.S. troops launch the war’s biggest operation in the southern city of Kandahar, said Tim Ripley, defense writer for Jane’s publications in Britain.

«The obvious problem is, the aim of counter-insurgency war is to win the population to the cause. And if you don’t believe in the cause, it’s difficult to sell it to the population,» he said.

«They seem to be not having much confidence in the Afghan government, and the Afghan government doesn’t have much confidence in us either.»

(Editing by Ralph Boulton; Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in WASHINGTON)

GLOBAL: EU raises the bar on food assistance ~

 

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=88666

Photo: IRIN More attention is now being paid to the quality of food assistance available

JOHANNESBURG, 2 April 2010 (IRIN) – Handing out cash or vouchers for food, or buying food aid in or near the country in need of emergency food assistance, has become official policy, the European Union (EU) announced on 31 March, breaking the link between donors supporting their own farmers and foreign food aid. «By this step it has institutionalized the use of response tools such as cash transfers and vouchers,» said Chris Leather, Food and Agriculture Policy Adviser to Oxfam International. The statement also called on EU members to adopt similar national policies. «That is where the challenge could lie – it would be interesting to see how all the members respond,» said Leather. The announcement was part of two new policy frameworks adopted by the European Commission (EC) to help developing countries address food security in emergency and long-term situations. A new humanitarian assistance framework contains the policy on response tools to enhance food security, and also spells out EU efforts to tackle acute food insecurity and malnutrition in crises. The development agenda The framework on food security takes a longer view and spells out the need to support agriculture in poor countries to help them reach the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving hunger and poverty by 2015, one of eight such goals. In 2010 over a billion people in the world are food insecure, said an EU press release providing the background to the new policy documents, and many poor countries seem unlikely to reach the MDG. Making real progress towards sustainable reduction of hunger in countries in protracted crisis is the big challenge for the coming several years «EU action needs to give priority to those food-insecure countries most off-track in reaching MDG1 [to halve hunger and poverty], in particular in Africa, but also South Asia and elsewhere (e.g. Bangladesh, Cambodia, Haiti, Nepal, Timor Leste),» said the framework on food security. Leading food aid expert Daniel Maxwell, an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in the US, commented that «it would be good if other donors would take similar steps». «While there is always some gray area that is not so clearly defined as either ‘humanitarian’ or ‘developmental’, it is still good to see that the EC’s commitment to humanitarian food security emergencies is still governed by humanitarian principles, particularly at a time when other donors seem increasingly willing to subordinate humanitarian assistance to political or security objectives.» Key messages The new EU policy aims to strengthen the four pillars of food security in developmental as well as emergency settings, said a press release: (i) increasing availability of food, (ii) improving access to food, (iii) improving quality and ensuring people eat nutritious food, (iv) boosting the effectiveness of crisis prevention and management. It called for a special focus on small-scale farmers and women, which should be commended, Leather said. It would also want to help the African Union accelerate the implementation of the African Land Policy Guidelines, completed in 2009, to secure people’s rights to land. «[What] the EU framework does not address are the concerns around the purchase of land [in Africa] by foreigners,» said Leather. A recent report by ActionAid, a development agency, claimed that EU companies have acquired, or are negotiating for, at least five million hectares of land in developing countries. In another significant move the EU called for support in reforming the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) «to become the pivotal global institution on food security». The CFS is a technical committee of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and serves as a forum in the UN system for the review and follow-up of policies on world food security, food production, nutrition, and physical and economic access to food. The challenge All this will need resources, «but we don’t know how – the documents lack that detail,» said Leather. «That is where the challenge will lie – the policies will come before the finance committee [of the EC] in May.» Maxwell raised another issue: «Increasingly, the concern of food security agencies and activists is the growing list of countries in protracted crisis, … which are also not attracting development funding for the MDG goals because the likelihood of success, or even progress, remains in doubt,» he noted. «Making real progress towards sustainable reduction of hunger in countries in protracted crisis is the big challenge for the coming several years.» jk/he

Too soon to know H1N1 vaccine total: U.S. official

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63046G20100402?feedType=nl&feedName=ushealth1100

JoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON

Fri Apr 2, 2010 3:27pm EDT

A nurse holds up a vial of H1N1 flu vaccine prior to an inoculation at the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania October 28, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Brad Bower

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It is too soon to determine whether tens of thousands of doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine may have to be thrown out if they are not used before their expiration date, a U.S. health official said on Thursday.

Barack Obama  |  Health

The United States ordered enough antigen to make 229 million doses of vaccine as the swine flu pandemic began to ramp up a year ago. About 162 million doses have been shipped and between 81 and 91 million doses have been administered, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Washington Post reported that an estimated 71.5 million doses of H1N1 vaccine may have to be discarded if not used before expiry, costing millions in taxpayer dollars.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, head of the CDC’S National Center for Immunization and Respiratory, said it was difficult to say how many H1N1 vaccine doses may be discarded.

She said most of the vaccine has yet to expire, some by the end of June and more next year. Schuchat encouraged providers, pharmacies and health departments to keep offering the vaccine as long as they could unless it had expired.

«We really made a conscious decision to be prepared and to assure that we would have more than enough vaccine instead of less than enough vaccine,» Schuchat said.

It was not uncommon to discard seasonal flu vaccine every year, she said, and the only difference with the H1N1 vaccine was that the federal government had bought the supplies.

When the swine flu outbreak was first detected last April, officials got flu manufacturers working on a vaccine within weeks, and the CDC said more than half the U.S. population should be vaccinated quickly.

As of the end of January 2010, only about one fifth of U.S. adults had been vaccinated and more than one third of American children, according to CDC estimates.

Schuchat said it was still a good idea for people to be vaccinated to protect against swine flu. «We may see situations like what we’re seeing in Georgia where ongoing vaccinations could be very beneficial,» she said.

Health officials reported a spike in H1N1 cases in the southeastern United States this week, with Georgia being the hardest hit.

Early in the pandemic, there were long lines and chaos with people clamoring for H1N1 vaccines but there was not enough to go round. By the time vaccines were available in ample supplies, most of the public had lost interest.

The United States has contracts with five influenza vaccine makers — Novartis, AstraZeneca unit MedImmune, Sanofi Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Australian vaccine maker CSL.

Schuchat said U.S. officials are reviewing their response to the pandemic to see what they could have done better.

The CDC estimates H1N1 has killed about 12,000 Americans and put 265,000 into the hospital.

Schuchat said health official were seeing few signs of seasonal flu, which kills about 36,000 people in the United States each year and puts 200,000 in the hospital.

(Editing by Chris Wilson)