Fwd: Eelectronic petition to prevent genocide in Africa
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Sender: [email protected]
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 12:48:16 +0300 (EET DST)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: Fwd: Eelectronic petition to prevent genocide in Africa
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Alexei Avtonomov <[email protected]>
Fwd: Eelectronic petition to prevent genocide in Africa
ELECTRONIC PETITION TO PREVENT A SECOND GENOCIDE IN AFRICA
Dear Friend, Dear Colleague,
I am taking the liberty of sending you a petition "to prevent a second
genocide" in Africa. Events in the Congo and neighbouring countries
have taken a very worrying turn, and risk degenerating into a full
scale genocide unless the international community takes urgent action
- something it has failed to do in the past.
There cannot possibly be a more important issue than this.
1. To express support for the petition, please write back to me at
[email protected] expressing your support for the petition, e.g.:
"I support the petition to prevent a second genocide in Africa".
Please also ensure that you write your name below the text.
2. To encourage more potentially concerned people to sign onto the
petition, please send this petition onto all those people you have
electronic contacts with. You may want to adapt this introduction to
the petition in order to personalise it. However, please do not change
the text of the petition itself.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Nicolas Tavitian
[email protected]
________________________________________________________
PETITION FOR ACTION TO PREVENT A SECOND GENOCIDE IN THE GREAT LAKES
REGION OF AFRICA AND IN THE CEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
- To halt ethnic hatred in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in the
Great Lakes Region
- To ensure that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against
humanity do not remain unpunished
- To ensure that European citizens1 money is not used to reinforce
those who call fellow human beings "waste", "vermin", "microbe", and
who call for their "methodical" and "determined" extermination.
- I join this call to the European Parliamentarians, and ask them to
appeal accordingly to European governments and to the European
Commission.
Brussels, 16 September 1998
Dear Sir or Madam,
Ethnic hatred is a threat to all peoples and regions of the world.
When this evil finds a suitable environment to prosper in, when it
meets no force capable of containing it; when it is cleverly excited,
exploited and brought to an extreme, it can lead to genocide. This
happened in Rwanda in 1994, under the eyes of the International
Community. There is a real risk that this may happen again in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, if the International Community fails to
react with determination.
We have all witnessed on television the hateful speeches made by
members of the government of Congo, including President Laurent Desire
Kabila, since the new war started in Congo. These speeches have
started to produce results. The information available shows that from
the very first days of August, numerous civilians, and particularly
Congolese and Africans "of Tutsi morphology" have been the victims of
massif and systematic violence.
In the capital, Kinshasa, hundreds of them have been arrested, locked
up in a stadium or in repulsive jails inside military camps or secret
detention centres. They have been deprived of water and food for days
on end, beaten up, tortured, raped and arbitrarily dispossessed. In
rural areas such as the outskirts of Kalemie and Moba, in the north or
Katanga, or in villages close to Uvira in the Southern Kivu,mass
murders have been perpetrated. By now, thousands of Congolese and
other Africans have lost their lives by summary execution for no other
reason than their assumed belonging to an ethnically suspect group -
the Tutsi group - of for their friendship with members of this group.
These atrocities are being carried out in several parts of the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) controlled by Laurent Kabil1a's
government. They are often the work of civil servants and military
personnel, acting on the orders of the government or of "Self-Defense
Committees"; in other cases, pogroms are carried out by hysterical
crowds, incited by government members1 calls echoed by dozens of
public and private media.
Recent condemnations by the Arusha International Criminal Court of
some of the perpetrators of the Genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda
represent an asset in the fight against impunity and a clear message
to governments in the region. Nevertheless, this message has come out
too weakly and too late to prevent ethnic hatred from spreading to the
entire region of the Great Lakes, not to mention the entireAfrican
Continent.
Other clear signals must be sent by the international community, and
particularly by the European Parliament, to all political and military
actors in the area, to ensure a minimal respect of human rights and of
international humanitarian law which stem from international
agreements all of which have been signed and ratified by the DRC and
neighbouring countries.
The International Community should demand that all parties involved in
the conflict should treat fairly and humanely civilians and unarmed or
injured combatants and that they allow full by access by humanitarian
organisations to needy individuals and populations.
The International Community should also ensure that the authorities of
the DRC publicly and unambiguously denounce all encouragement to
racial hatred and all persecution towards Congolese or foreign
citizens on the basis of their ethnic origin.
Additionally, efforts towards a negotiated solution to the Congolese
conflict must be strongly encouraged.
The proposed call by the European Parliament to the regiona1 political
and military political actors should be accompanied by a clear
warning, concerning inter alia the need to bring all those responsible
for inciting racial hatred before the courts, including the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, whose mandate could be
extended for this purpose.
The European Parliament could thus, at this stage, support through all
means at its disposal the organisation of an independent investigation
on serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights
law committed in the DRC since the beginning of the war, on 2 August
1998. The conclusions of such an enquiry would not doubt assist
considerably in the launching of criminal proceedings against those
responsible for these violations.
The European Parliament could also demand the suspension of European
aid to those governments supporting directly any warring party
committing war crimes or crimes against humanity. In this respect, and
in view of the many calls to commit war crimes and other exactions on
the part of the government of Laurent Kabila, the coalition supporting
him which includes Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia (and possibly also the
Sudan) should be the target of a stern warning without delay.
Fighting ethnic hatred and preventing a possible genocide is a heavy
responsibility, which the international community has failed to honour
in the past. We believe that as European Parliamentarians you are
ideally placed to appeal to the governments of Europe and to the
Commission, notably on the basis of the conditionality of development
aid to respect for human rights.
That is why we are asking you to defend these positions in the
relevant bodies, including the European Parliament1s Development
Committee, the ACP-EU Joint Assembly, the EP Foreign Affairs Committee
as well as before all other bodies and authorities capable of halting
the progress of ethnic hatred in the African region of the Great Lakes
and of preventing the catastrophe threatening the entire African
continent.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Contact Address for this petition:
Marek Poznanski
56 Quai aux Briques
1000 Bruxelles
Tel (home): ++32 2/512 54 85
Tel (office): ++32 2/412 06 61
Fax: ++32 2 412 06 66
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