180 Congo Refugees Massacred in Burundi in UN camp.

[frigidmagi]

CNN Reports

180 Congo Refugees Massacred in Burundi
By ALOYS NIYOYITA

GATUMBA, Burundi (AP) - Attackers armed with machetes and automatic weapons raided a U.N. refugee camp in western Burundi, shooting and hacking to death at least 180 men, women and children, U.N. officials said.

Burundian Hutu rebels claimed responsibility, insisting the camp for Congolese Tutsi refugees fleeing tribal fighting was a hide-out for Burundi army soldiers and Congolese tribal militiamen.

But most of the victims appeared to be women and children. Their charred remains lay among the cooking utensils and the smoldering remnants of their former homes on Saturday.

The attack late Friday echoed the killing during the 1994 genocide in Burundi's neighbor Rwanda and raised fears of retaliatory violence that could undo peace efforts in Congo.


The camp, 12 miles from the border with Congo, sheltered ethnic Tutsi refugees, known as the Banyamulenge, who fled fighting in Congo's troubled border province of South Kivu, U.N. officials visiting the camp after the attack said.


``People were sleeping when the attack happened,'' Eliana Nabaa, spokeswoman of the U.N. mission in Congo said. ``People were killed as they tried to escape.''


Isabelle Abric, spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Burundi, said 159 people were killed on the spot and 101 others were wounded in the attack in Gatumba. At least 30 of the wounded died later in hospital, she said.


Leaflets distributed before the raid warned refugees to leave the camp or face attacks by a coalition of Burundian, Rwandan and Congolese factions seeking ``to fight the Tutsi colonization in the region,'' survivors said.


The attackers spoke languages and dialects from the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi and were believed to have crossed into Burundi from Congo, witnesses told The Associated Press. They asked not to be named for fear of retribution.


Later Saturday, Burundian officials and aid workers moved the refugees to a nearby school where they will be protected by the army, said Louis Niyonzima, the local mayor.


A spokesman of the U.N. refugee agency said the attackers raided a nearby army camp before attacking the refugees.


``These guys were armed with grenades, machetes, and automatic weapons. While the attack was going on they were beating drums,'' said Fernando del Mundo, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.


Pasteur Habimana, spokesman for the National Liberation Forces, justified the attack, saying Burundian soldiers were hiding in the camp, located about a half mile from an army position.


``We were also attacked by armed Banyamulenge militiamen who lived in this camp,'' he said. ``The camp was a genuine Banyamulenge militiamen headquarters.''


The National Liberation Forces is the last main rebel movement fighting the government in Burundi's 10-year-old civil war, which has killed some 260,000 people.


War broke out in 1993, when Hutus took up arms after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu. Burundi's Tutsi minority has effectively run the country for all but a few months since independence in 1962.


Army spokesman Col. Adolphe Manirakiza denied rebel claims that Burundian troops fled into the camp and said there was no attack on the nearby army position.


Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye described the massacre as ``a shame'' and asked the Congolese government to assist in investigations.


``What I can say is that it is Burundi which has been attacked. The attackers killed innocent refugees who sought refuge in Burundi,'' Ndayizeye said. The rebels ``declared that they attacked a military camp and that the soldiers fled in this camp but I saw no soldier's body except those of young children, women and old persons.''


Congo's President Laurent Kabila said he ``energetically condemns this ignoble act,'' and demanded an international investigation.


In a statement, Kabila also called on the Burundian government and the U.N. refugee agency to secure the area and protect ``the vulnerable population.''


The attack occurred one day after Congolese Vice President Azarias Ruberwa visited the camp to encourage the refugees to return home.


United Nations officials are studying whether the attack was carried out with the assistance of Congolese tribal fighters known as the Mayi Mayi or Rwandan rebels based in eastern Congo, Nabaa said.


The Rwandan insurgents include members of the former army and the extremists Interahamwe militia who fled to Congo after playing a key role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.


More than 500,000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed in the 100-day slaughter organized by the extremist Hutu government then in power.


Rwandan President Paul Kagame said Friday's massacre proves ``that there have been incidents that are ignored by the international community and the U.N. where people are being killed in eastern Congo, being targeted for who they are.''


Ongoing ethnic strife in the region threatens to undermine peace efforts after Congo's 1998-2003 war, which drew at least five countries' armies into fighting. The seeds of that conflict lay in Rwanda's genocide, which sent hundreds of thousands of refugees and suspected genocidal killers into eastern Congo.


Associated Press writer Jack Kahorha contributed to this report from Goma, Congo

Fuck, just... Fuck.

[Knife]

A UN safe zone, not being safe? NO, I refuse to believe it.


Honestly, sad. Plain out sad.

[frigidmagi]

I don't know how many of you remember my Sudan Safe Zone thread, but this honestly makes me believe that Sudan is being set up for greater tradgey. Of course the Sudan government won't be a part, because has members of the human rights counsil they would neveeerrr commit a human right violation

I'm going to come right out and state it.

I no longer believe in the UN ability to do it's job.

[Knife]

I no longer believe in the UN ability to do it's job.

Call me a pestimist, but I never had faith in an international political body. The UN has merit in Humanitarian Relief, but as an international body for peace or law or stability, hahahahahahahahhaahhahaah.

[Master of Ossus]

I no longer believe in the UN ability to do it's job.

Call me a pestimist, but I never had faith in an international political body. The UN has merit in Humanitarian Relief, but as an international body for peace or law or stability, hahahahahahahahhaahhahaah.

I agree. I even think it has some major problems in relief. I would remind everyone that Sudan is on the Human Rights committee.

[frigidmagi]

Along with mainland China.

[Stofsk]

I no longer believe in the UN ability to do it's job.

Call me a pestimist, but I never had faith in an international political body. The UN has merit in Humanitarian Relief, but as an international body for peace or law or stability, hahahahahahahahhaahhahaah.

I agree. I even think it has some major problems in relief. I would remind everyone that Sudan is on the Human Rights committee.

What are the alternatives to a UN then? As much as I hate the UN for bureaucratic bumbling, it still exists to foster in a global community.

I mean, that's a good thing yes? If the UN disappeared tommorow, would we be better off, worse, or ... what? Should there be something like the UN but without the setbacks?

[MKSheppard]

A UN safe zone, not being safe? NO, I refuse to believe it.

I was about to post this articul then I saw it was already posted; my first
thought; oh look a UN Safe Zone.......being worth jack shit.

[Ma Deuce]

I mean, that's a good thing yes? If the UN disappeared tommorow, would we be better off, worse, or ... what? Should there be something like the UN but without the setbacks?

If the UN vanished tommorow, I doubt it would really make any difference either way. A UN style international body is a good idea in theory, but not in practice: Why? because each of the member nations (including the members of the Security Council) are far more concerned with their own interests the interests rather than the interests of the collective whole, an thus nothing can get done in the UN. Until that changes (probably not in my lifetime), a UN style international body cannot be effective.

[Master of Ossus]

What are the alternatives to a UN then?

Get rid of it, and move the nominally effective departments that it has (like the WHO) into private charity groups, which have historically been more effective, anyway.

As much as I hate the UN for bureaucratic bumbling, it still exists to foster in a global community.

Is that what it's doing?

I mean, that's a good thing yes? If the UN disappeared tommorow, would we be better off, worse, or ... what?

I would say we would be better off, or at least the same. The UN has proven itself to be totally ineffective. It is completely incapable of doing its job, or living up to its original purposes.

Should there be something like the UN but without the setbacks?

Yes. That doesn't mean that the UN should be kept around. In fact, the existence of the current UN is damaging the ability of governments to create other such groups.

[Xon]

I no longer believe in the UN ability to do it's job.

The UN did its job perfectly, which is a forum which the end of World War 2 powers could talk on neutral ground.

Not to sure what you expect it todo, its just a political forum for countries to meet in a somewhat neutral context.

[Prozac the Robert]

Not going to happen anytime soon, but if we allowed it to raise some of it's own money in taxes of some kind, or gave it the poiwer to demand money off nations, removed the veto's and gave it a stronger executive, it might actually be capable of doing things.

[PainRack]

You guys seem to forget that the role of the UN, is to help facillate peace. Unless member nations are willing to contribute forces to actually stop violence, it can't do that. Unfortunately, the idea of mission creep began its rot in after the fall of the Berlin wall, so..........

[Knife]

Not going to happen anytime soon, but if we allowed it to raise some of it's own money in taxes of some kind, or gave it the poiwer to demand money off nations, removed the veto's and gave it a stronger executive, it might actually be capable of doing things.

The problem in that, IMO, is that you'd be handing a corrupt, self interested, bueracracy more money and more power and as it is the only check and balance we have on the UN is not giving it money. After you make the UN a world power, what is there to reign it in?

[frigidmagi]

Not to sure what you expect it todo, its just a political forum for countries to meet in a somewhat neutral context.

I'm really hoping you forgot the smiley, because the UN itself claims to be more in it's own charter. UN Charter Chapter 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

How can these aims be reached when the UN either refuses or cannot maintain safety in it's own safe zones? When dictatiors use money meant for food and medicane to surround themselves with luxury under the nose of UN investgators meant to prevent that? When two of the biggest violatiors of human rights are on the committee meant to stop and police against such violations?

That fact is in this case they proclaimed a safe zone and did not keep it safe, again! 180 people who trusted in the United Nations are dead because of their trust and this isn't the first time and I'm afraid this won't be the last.

Either the UN made a safezone they couldn't protect and if so lied to the refugees, or made a safezone they wouldn't protect and all but put these people on a firing range. Or they made a safezone and forgot about it.

[Prozac the Robert]

The problem in that, IMO, is that you'd be handing a corrupt, self interested, bueracracy more money and more power and as it is the only check and balance we have on the UN is not giving it money. After you make the UN a world power, what is there to reign it in?

A few things could perhaps be done. Firstly we could allow a vote of no confidence in the executive, secondly we could come up with a more representative method of deciding our representatives to the UN and giving them some sort of (perhaps [UN or national] constitutional) freedom from their respective governments.

Also, reform is possible from within any organisation. Starting with a deal of freedom of the press built in, and with the new UN helping to educate greater numbers of the planet's population, I wouldn't discount the chance of gradual improvement.

[PainRack]

How can these aims be reached when the UN either refuses or cannot maintain safety in it's own safe zones? When dictatiors use money meant for food and medicane to surround themselves with luxury under the nose of UN investgators meant to prevent that? When two of the biggest violatiors of human rights are on the committee meant to stop and police against such violations?

Did you read the last portion?

To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

That's right, anything and everything the UN can be, requires that member nations act on it. Its as simple as that. The UN is exactly what you make it out to be, if a regional or super-power decides to use the UN to build safe zones, it will, if a regional or super-power enforces accountability for its money, it will. And the committee isn't meant to stop and police against such violations, its meant to notice such violations and bring them up to the GS.

Its really nice and easy to bash the UN for not being able to do more, until one realises that nobody else is even willing to do more.

[frigidmagi]

That's right, anything and everything the UN can be, requires that member nations act on it. Its as simple as that. The UN is exactly what you make it out to be, if a regional or super-power decides to use the UN to build safe zones, it will, if a regional or super-power enforces accountability for its money, it will. And the committee isn't meant to stop and police against such violations, its meant to notice such violations and bring them up to the GS.

Its really nice and easy to bash the UN for not being able to do more, until one realises that nobody else is even willing to do more.

Frankly that's a load of bull. No one forced the UN to start estblishing safezones. No one forced the UN to allow the Sudan and China into the Committee. It was all done by the UN. And just who is suppose to be able to do more than the UN? The US? The rest of the world has made it quite clear that it would prefer for the United States to mind it's own business. Europe? Even if the population supported such actions, screams of neo colonization could be hard from Io.

The UN has failed here, no one else.

[PainRack]

Frankly that's a load of bull. No one forced the UN to start estblishing safezones. No one forced the UN to allow the Sudan and China into the Committee. It was all done by the UN. And just who is suppose to be able to do more than the UN? The US? The rest of the world has made it quite clear that it would prefer for the United States to mind it's own business. Europe? Even if the population supported such actions, screams of neo colonization could be hard from Io.
The UN has failed here, no one else.

The UN started the safezones as part of its efforts to stabilise the nation so that humanitarian aid can be done. However, anything and everything the UN does, is only effective when member nations enforce it. Saying that the UN is powerless to enforce such decisions is all nice and fancy, but it ignores the fact that the UN was purposely designed not to have any real military power, nor decision making abilities unless member nations contribute military, economic and diplomatic upon it.

Blaming the UN failed efforts is easy, failing to see that the reason it failed is because no one will do anything is not.

[Xon]

I'm really hoping you forgot the smiley, because the UN itself claims to be more in it's own charter. UN Charter Chapter 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

Nice to see what a poor level of reading comprehension you have.

All four of those listed points depict the UN as a political forum. What each point does is provide topics for the political forum to cover. Which, not suprisingly, where the major topics to setup a political forum between near equals(aka end of World War 2 powers).

The UN was never designed to have any military or political power beyond for what the member nations of the security council wanted it to have. All the UN has ever been used for is a neuralish ground to host a political forum.

Any UN resolution is worthless if the member nations dont back it up, thats if a member of the security council doesnt veto it.