Posted on 11/01/2008 3:23:51 AM PDT by BlackVeil
CONGOLESE government soldiers swept through the besieged strategic town of Goma yesterday, looting shops and killing the citizens they were meant to protect.
Frightened people who crouched in their homes and improvised refugee camps had been expecting the violence to come from the rebel Tutsi guerrilla army, which shelled Goma overnight and halted its advance about ten miles to the north and east of the town.
Instead, the bloodletting came from the retreating Congolese government army, whose angry fighters, many of them drunk, looted homes and shops as panic gripped the town on the northern shore of Lake Kivu. One intoxicated soldier was seen wearing a Darth Vader mask.
From Goma, television reporter Patrick Barth told The Scotsman: "A restaurant owner was shot dead by government soldiers. His bullet-ridden body was left on the street. At least eight other civilians, including a 17-year-old boy called Merci, were killed by the soldiers.
"Earlier, at the border crossing point with Rwanda, just a couple of miles away, the road was clogged with vehicles fleeing the expected Tutsi assault. The immigration post was swamped with many of Goma's civilians and foreign aid workers desperate to leave as rumours circulated that the Tutsi fighters were on the way."
One Tutsi man, fleeing into Rwanda with his family, told Barth: "I've been here for hours, trying to get our exit documents. Look at them. Look in their eyes. People are gripped with fear."
He added that people feared Hutus in Goma would carry out reprisals after the rebels' advance to within a few miles.
Tutsi-Hutu enmity in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) mirrors tension between the two ethnic groups that led to the 100-day genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which 800,000 were killed.
The present fighting for Goma is, in large part, a Tutsi-Hutu conflict, as well as a complex struggle to control some of the world's richest sources of minerals.
Hutus are the biggest tribe in eastern Congo, making up about 40 per cent of the population. Tutsis are about 3 per cent.
Barth, from the independent production company Frontier Africa TV, said hotels on the Rwandan side of the frontier were full with people fleeing the fighting.
Vehicles of numerous international aid organisations from DRC packed with expatriate staff were on the road from the border towards Kigali, Rwanda's capital. Frontier Africa TV, two of whose three directors are Scots, has been filming the Congo conflict for the past three days.
As government troops went on the rampage in Goma, the besieging Tutsi army honoured a temporary truce and stopped its advance in the hills on the outskirts to allow people trapped by the fighting to flee. However, the rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, a renegade Congolese army general, hinted that the final push would not be long delayed.
Some 800 United Nations peacekeeping troops and a ragtag collection of demoralised government soldiers are now the only obstacles to a complete rebel takeover of Goma, home to 600,000 people before tens of thousands began fleeing.
Nkunda, in a phone call from a forward base, warned his men would open fire on UN soldiers if they tried to halt the advance.
How pathetic. Soldiers murdering the people they were sworn to protect. What a disgrace!
It is pathetic, and it is a disgrace. But it is not a surprise ...
Yes, they would kill me, but it will not be as easy as these poor folks.
When civil war broke out in the Congo during the years following its independece om 1960, the Congolese army gained notoriety as “the killing machine.” Seems as though not much has changed.
Just more proof of Whitey keep the Black Man down.
Maybe Obama could go over there and “Negotiate” a peaceful settlement. I will volunteeer part of the plane fare if he leaves today.
Yeah ... it is. I apologise that I forgot to mention race relations when I posted the article.
Looks like these things run in the family, no?
man, what a country, if thats the word for it
Historically, this is just the way soldiers treat people.
The comparatively restrained behavior of Western and Western-influenced armies over the last few centuries is very much the exception, not the rule.
It's not their fault. It's just one more part of the legacy of colonialism.
The Leftist intellectual will look at the restrained use of violence by the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and say: "Western imperialism oppresses and kills innocent people."
Inserting the obligatory Joseph Contad “Heart of Darkness” reference here.
I have a good friend who lived through the horror of the genocide. He now lives in Canada with his family. He’s one of the lucky ones. But desires to go back to the churches he founded there. He’s from Goma. Someday I hope to write his story. It’s a powerful message of grace and forgiveness in the midst of the worst forms of hatred and evil.
I think I hear a liberal whining somewhere “In this day of age, why do we need guns that just kill people?”
With the DRC rich in metals and minerals used for the manufacture of electronics, what we have here is the 2nd (3rd?) wave of invasions from the surrounding countries trying to divvy up the resources of the DRC and take it for themselves. This much is obvious. What is less clear is who these national and private armies are working for. The main culprits are multi-national companies who hire countries out to do their bidding for them, suh as securing rich seams of metals, diamonds, gold, and other resources that should have the DRC as one of the richest and most prosperous nations in Africa.
Anglo-Dutch, Anglo-American, De Beers are just a few names that are cited as being part orchestrators of the ongoing war (which has killed over 5 million). The latest outbreak of fighting has come about because the ‘rebels’ and other parties inside the DRC were coming around to negotiations and a relative peace. This would have surrendered the mines and resources to the government of the DRC (primarily in the West of the country), and out of the control of the various sponsored factions that had previously secured regions of land for their corporate paymasters.
Why else would there be nearly a dozen different factions, invading armies and corporate interests invade the DRC (formerly Zaire), if not for profit? This is certainly not simple tribal emnity, but it sure uses such factors to its advantage.
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