Tuesday, November 14, 2006

DRC News: President Kabila Near Victory in Vote Count While Hundreds Are Arrested; Calm Prevails

Kabila near to DR Congo victory

Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila is close to winning the election run-off, with 90% of the votes counted, results show.

Mr Kabila has 60%, while former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba has 40%, according to results on the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) website.

Tension is high in the capital, Kinshasa, following weekend clashes in which four people were killed.

The vote is the first following DR Congo's five-year conflict.

The CEI is not declaring a winner until it investigates allegations of fraud by Mr Bemba and his supporters.

CEI spokesman Dieudonne Mirimo said Mr Bemba's party had now submitted five official complaints.

--------------------
RUN-OFF RESULTS
Kabila: 60%
Bemba: 40%
Turnout: 66%
Votes counted: 90%
Source: CEI
----------------------
Following Saturday's violence, the police have arrested 337 homeless people, including 87 children, the government says, blaming them for starting the trouble.

Eye-witnesses say that security forces loyal to the two candidates exchanged gun- and mortar-fire.

United Nations observers say the election is the most significant in Africa since Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa's president in 1994.

They are seen as the country's first free elections since independence in 1960.

Respect results

Turnout was 66%, according to the CEI.

The commission has until 19 November to announce the results and stresses that no "trend projection" can be made on the basis of the provisional results.

Both men have pledged to respect the outcome of the election.

The first round of elections showed a regional divide, with Mr Kabila gaining a landslide in the Swahili-speaking east, while Mr Bemba got most support in the west, where Lingala is the common language.

The world's largest peacekeeping force - 17,000-strong - is in DR Congo, tasked with ensuring security.

At least 23 people were killed in gun battles between security forces loyal to the two men in the capital, Kinshasa, after the announcement of first round results.

Mr Kabila won 45% of the vote, while Mr Bemba got 20%.

International observers generally praised the vote as being well-run, despite some disruptions in the north-east of the country.

The election was intended to close the door on decades of dictatorship and conflict.

Counting the votes is a time-consuming process as all the ballot papers had to be transported from sometimes remote locations to compilation centres.

DR Congo is two-thirds the size of western Europe and has just 300 miles of paved roads.

The country's rich reserves of minerals such as gold, diamonds and coltan - used in mobile phones - have attracted a series of armed groups, both Congolese and foreign, intent on looting.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6144136.stm
Published: 2006/11/13 14:42:38 GMT


Tuesday November 14, 12:53 AM

Police round up youths after clashes in DR Congo capital

Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo have rounded up hundreds of youths in Kinshasa after weekend clashes near the residence of Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba.

"In all 337 street kids have been picked up in the wake of the disturbances and put at the disposal of the National Service," an agency that gives training in farming, Police Provincial Inspector Patrick Sabiti said Monday.

Four people were killed on Saturday when police tried to disperse youths who gathered close to the official residence of the vice-president, who challenged President Joseph Kabila in an election where votes are still being counted.

Gunfire, mortar and rocket fire broke out as the police found themselves up against armed civilian members of Bemba's personal guard as well as young street gangs.

General Sabiti told AFP that the youths were not rounded up when the trouble took place but in subsequent police raids at the places where they settle down to spend their nights.

The city governor, Admiral Baoudouin Liwanga, issued a statement published in Monday's press announcing that the people detained included "87 minors and 35 (adult) women, three of them with babies."

The boys would be sent to an agricultural study centre at Kanyame-Kasese in the country's distant southeastern Katanga province, while the girls would go to another national service base at Menkao, on the eastern edge of Kinshasa.

They would all learn "to be useful to themselves and to the nation", the governor's statement said.

By Sunday morning, Bemba forces had vanished from the area around the vice-president's official residence, as UN soldiers and European troops reinforced their presence.

"The night was calm. We have no indication of any incident," Lieutenant-Colonel Thierry Fusalba, spokesman for the European Union peacekeeping force, said Sunday.

Tensions boiled over Saturday while electoral officials kept counting votes from the closing round October 29 of the first free presidential poll the DRC has known in more than 40 years, with Kabila strong in first place.

In the latest partial figures compiled on Monday by AFP from the results officially posted by the Independent Electoral Commission, Kabila had 59.6 percent of the votes while Bemba had 40.4 percent.

Those provisional results were based on figures from 156 of the 169 constituencies across the vast central African nation, covering 91.5 percent of the electorate of some 25 million registered voters.

Bemba's supporters have alleged that "systematic errors" in the vote count are an indication of fraud. The electoral commission is due to release the final result next Sunday, but it then has to be confirmed by the Supreme Court after challenges have been considered.


United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC)

13 Nov 2006

Kinshasa stays calm after Saturday's clashes

Eoin Young / MONUC

Kinshasa remains calm after the violence that erupted on Saturday November 11th 2006, in the central business district of Gombe, which involved the Congolese police and members of Vice President Bemba’s security forces, and left four people dead.

The trouble erupted at 11am close to one of Mr. Bemba’s offices on Kinshasa’s main Boulevard de 30 Juin, when street children aligned to Jean Pierre Bemba began protesting by burning tyres and blocking the flow of traffic.

The Congolese National Police (PNC) then scattered them by firing into the air. Subsequently, an exchange of light arms fire began between the PNC and the security forces loyal to Jean Pierre Bemba.

The unrest continued for a number of hours, with some mortars fired, but it was limited to a small area and did not spread due to the presence of MONUC armoured personnel carriers and patrols in the vicinity.

General Denis Kalume Numbi, the DRC Minister of the Interior, said on Saturday that the FARDC -the DRC armed forces- would intervene if the violence continued into the evening.

But this was not necessary as intensive negotiations and diplomacy between MONUC, Mr. Bemba and the PNC halted any further spread of the unrest.

UN special Representative for the DRC William Swing, and MONUC force commander General Babacar Gaye, met Mr. Bemba who agreed to billet all his troops for the remainder of the electoral process.

MONUC forces have now taken up positions close to Mr, Bemba’s residence as a preventative measure against further violence, in order to safeguard the integrity of the DRC electoral process.

EUFOR also maintained a proactive presence with patrols on the ground and continued air surveillance.

EUFOR spokeperson Lieutenant Colonel Thierry Fusalba said that they were ready to intervene on Saturday if required by MONUC.

“We were prepared and had all our resources ready at our disposal, and our air surveillance was monitoring the situation on the ground.”

Contrary to reports, he added that EUFOR did not witness the presence of any members of Kabila’s Republican Guard at the scene of the unrest.

This violence comes amid heightened tensions and accusations of irregularities in the electoral process in the last week.

However, the head of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), Fr. Apollinaire Malu Malu, stated last week that there were no irregularities in the process.

The IEC is due to announce the provisional second round election results on Sunday next November 19th.

4 comments:

Pan-African News Wire said...

Congo struggles with mining chaos

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Among the biggest challenges Congo's first elected government in nearly 50 years will face is bringing order to a chaotic mining sector whose riches provoked a regional war that killed millions of people.

Congo's vast mineral resources are worth an estimated $300 billion over the next 25 years. In the past, though, the earthly riches have only contributed to misery, and today most of Congo's 58 million people are mired in poverty.

Endemic corruption is the major impediment to development, says Babacar Cisse, head of the U.N. Development Program in Congo. "Our major concern as a partner is how they can come up with policies that will fight corruption in this country -- it's the whole system that needs to be cleaned up," he said.

The task could mean redrawing contracts with foreign investors worth billions of dollars.

"We are agreed that they will have to review all the contracts," Cisse said, "but it's not easy and there's a lot of pressure coming from some (country) partners."

Many question whether a new government expected to include players accused of participating in the plunder has the will to reform, and whether the international community that long has condemned mining practices in the Central African nation can help.

A parliamentary commission report denounces contracts signed under presidential decree by incumbent President Joseph Kabila, who has opened up a large lead over ex-rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba in ongoing vote counting from October 30 runoff elections. Results in the first multiparty presidential ballot in 45 years are expected by November 19.

"It is hard to imagine that anybody that has to report to a Kabila government will have the ability to order the cancellation of contracts that Kabila and his entourage have authorized and benefit from," said Patricia Feeney, executive director of the independent London-based organization Rights and Accountability in Development, or RAID.

The World Bank fears that renegotiating contracts would undermine investor confidence, she said, while Belgium's government warned recently of the need to avoid "a witch hunt" against mining companies.

Nothing has been done to act on a U.N. report that in 2002 recommended the U.N. Security Council place financial restrictions on 29 mining and airline companies working in Congo. The companies were based in Belgium, the British Virgin Islands, Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and South Africa.

The U.N. report also named 54 people -- including international business executives, military and government officials -- and recommended the seizure of their personal assets along with travel bans.

4 million dead

That report called for a review of all contracts and mining concessions made during back-to-back wars from 1997 to 2001. Aid groups say an estimated 4 million people died in the wars and their aftermath, most from violence-induced hunger or disease.

Congo's riches include cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, silver, tin and coltan, an essential ingredient of cell phones, as well as coffee, rubber and palm oil. Its resources were looted first by Belgian colonizers and then by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whose 32-year dictatorship ended in 1997 when Rwandan troops helped propel rebel leader Laurent Kabila, the current president's father, to power.

Rwanda became a major exporter of coltan, which it does not produce. When Laurent Kabila tried to end the pillaging he had started, Rwanda sent in fighters and Congo became embroiled in a war that drew in half a dozen African armies. Among them was Zimbabwe's, which Laurent Kabila allowed mining concessions in return for troops and war materiel.

A 2002 peace deal ended the war and brought rebel leaders into a transitional government. By then, Joseph Kabila had inherited leadership from his father, who was assassinated by his bodyguard in 2001.

Even after the peace deal, the U.N. report noted, the pillaging continued. Countries had set up conduits to continue stealing Congo's minerals before they withdrew their troops, the report said. And the plunder continues today, according to the parliamentary investigation that was published in February after months of opposition.

The commission singled out sales of Congo's crown jewels -- copper and cobalt concessions of the state mining company Gecamines, whose production has collapsed from an annual 450,000 tons of copper with a turnover of $1 billion in the 1980s to less than 10,000 tons worth some tens of millions.

Contracts were negotiated from positions of great weakness, said the head of the other large state-owned mineral extraction company, diamond-mining MIBA, Tshitala Luabeya.

"Our struggle is to get investment in difficult times when nobody has confidence in the country, when no bank will give us credit, and when we are known throughout the world as a high-risk country," Luabeya said.

Despite the peace deals, insecurity continues in Congo, particularly in the east where the military and the 17,500-troop U.N. peacekeeping force battle militants.

Deadly battles between security force loyalists of Kabila and Bemba, who is also a vice president in the national-unity government, have broken out twice in Kinshasa in recent months, including a gunfight between the sides Saturday that left four people dead.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/11/12/congo.mining.ap/index.html

pan-african news wire said...

Bemba rejects DR Congo poll loss

The coalition backing former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba has rejected results from the Democratic Republic of Congo's presidential run-off.

President Joseph Kabila is poised for victory with 90% of the votes counted, a preliminary result count shows.

Mr Kabila has 60%, while Mr Bemba, who has been vice-president since a peace deal, has 40%, according to the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI).

The Bemba camp said victory "was being stolen from the Congolese people".

It said in a statement, that if the CEI had cheated, they would not feel bound to comply with an earlier promise to respect the outcome of the election.

"The Union for the Nation will not accept an electoral hold-up that aims to steal victory from the Congolese people," the coalition said in a statement

-----------------------
RUN-OFF RESULTS
Kabila: 60%
Bemba: 40%
Turnout: 66%
Votes counted: 90%
Source: CEI
-----------------------

The vote is the first following DR Congo's five-year conflict, but tension is high in the capital, Kinshasa, following weekend clashes in which four people were killed.

The BBC's Mark Doyle says the challenge to the results could be highly dangerous, especially in the capital, Kinshasa, which is a Bemba stronghold and just a few thousand United Nations peacekeepers are deployed.

The UN is backed by a special European military mission but the numbers of European troops may not be enough to contain any widespread unrest if that occurs, he says.

Regional divide

The CEI is not declaring a winner until it investigates allegations of fraud by Mr Bemba and his supporters.

CEI spokesman Dieudonne Mirimo said Mr Bemba's party had now submitted five official complaints.

Following Saturday's violence, the police arrested 337 homeless people, including 87 children, the government says, blaming them for starting the trouble.

Eye-witnesses say that security forces loyal to the two candidates exchanged gun- and mortar-fire.

United Nations observers say the election is the most significant in Africa since Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa's president in 1994.

They are seen as the country's first free elections since independence in 1960.

The commission has until 19 November to announce the results and stresses that no "trend projection" can be made on the basis of the provisional results.

The first round of elections showed a regional divide, with Mr Kabila gaining a landslide in the Swahili-speaking east, while Mr Bemba got most support in the west, where Lingala is the common language.

The world's largest peacekeeping force - 17,000-strong - is in DR Congo, tasked with ensuring security.

At least 23 people were killed in gun battles between security forces loyal to the two men in the capital, Kinshasa, after the announcement of first round results.

Mr Kabila won 45% of the vote, while Mr Bemba got 20%.

International observers generally praised the vote as being well-run, despite some disruptions in the north-east of the country.

The election was intended to close the door on decades of dictatorship and conflict.

Counting the votes is a time-consuming process as all the ballot papers had to be transported from sometimes remote locations to compilation centres.

DR Congo is two-thirds the size of western Europe and has just 300 miles of paved roads.

The country's rich reserves of minerals such as gold, diamonds and coltan - used in mobile phones - have attracted a series of armed groups, both Congolese and foreign, intent on looting.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6148084.stm
Published: 2006/11/14 17:57:02 GMT


United Nations News Service
Date: 14 Nov 2006

Congolese presidential contenders will respect neutrality of security forces, UN says

As part of a series of agreements to abide by the outcome of the Congolese presidential elections, the contenders have pledged to respect the apolitical character of the national security services, the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) said today.

In this latest “Acte d’Engagement,” representatives of President Joseph Kabila and Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba agreed to respect strictly the chain of command of the armed forces and police, to encourage their supporters to cooperate with them, and to abstain from influencing them for political reasons, according to the Mission.

The Mission notes that this latest agreement is crucial to help ease tensions ahead of the official release of the results of last month’s runoff election, which is expected on 19 November.

Last week, the candidates reaffirmed their commitment to support the Independent Electoral Commission, which was tallying the votes, and to refrain from speculating on the outcome of the election, which was the first to be held in the country in over four decades.

Rampant speculation on the final tally triggered the IEC to issue preliminary results last week, when the Congolese High Authority on Media said it would impose sanctions on local media outlets that might deliberately misrepresent or disrupt the proper announcement of the election results, according to MONUC.

MONUC currently has over 18,000 uniformed personnel in the DRC to help the country conduct the massive poll and rebuild from the six-year conflict which ended in 1999.

With the exception of public UN sources, reproduction or redistribution of the above text, in whole, part or in any form, requires the prior consent of the original source.


Wednesday November 15, 4:56 AM

ICC prosecutor presents evidence against DR Congo warlord

The prosecutor of the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal presented evidence that a Congolese warlord forced children into his army, and kept them there with promises of wealth and weapons.

Thomas Lubanga, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, had "final power on all questions" whether they were military, political or judicial -- even after his imprisonment in Kinshasa, last year, said prosecutor
Florence Darques Lane.

Lubanga is the first -- and so far only -- suspect in custody at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Darques Lane cited testimony from a 14-year-old boy, allegedly recruited by force in February 2003. The boy "was taken to a car where Thomas Lubanga and other soldiers were sitting," she said.

"Other children were caught. Thomas Lubanga told them they would go as far as Beni (in northeastern DRC) and they would become rich," Darques Lane added.

Tuesday's testimony is part of a pretrial hearing to determine whether Lubanga will eventually stand trial before the court.

Lubanga, 45, is charged with abducting children under the age of 15 and forcing them to participate in attacks by the armed wing of his political Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) during wars that ravaged the DRC.

He has denied the accusations.

Darques Lane cited a report by Radio Okapi, of the UN's peacekeeping mission in DRC, in which Lubanga allegedly invited families "to participate in the war effort by either giving a cow, or money or a child to join the ranks of the Patriotic Liberation Forces of Congo."

Considered the armed wing of Lubanga's UPC, the group is suspected of a long series of crimes against humanity in the Ituri region of northeastern DRC.

She also presented several videos, including one showing Lubanga encouraging young recruits at a training camp.

"You'll receive weapons, you'll protect residents," Lubanga says in the clip. "It's a work of great importance, before men and before God."

Inter-ethnic clashes in Ituri, and violence between militias seeking control of gold mines and other natural resources, have left 60,000 dead since 1999, according to humanitarian groups.

The confirmation hearing is scheduled to run through November 28, after which the judges must determine whether Lubanga will become the first person to stand trial before the ICC. Their decision is expected late January.

AFP

pan-african news wire said...

Kabila wins runoff in Congo election

MICHELLE FAUL
Associated Press

KINSHASA, Congo - Congo's incumbent president has won a tense runoff, nearly complete election results showed Tuesday. He now has to make order out of the chaos that long has plagued a country bursting with natural resources and former warlords.

First Joseph Kabila, 35, must placate rival Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader whose fighters have clashed with his in downtown Kinshasa twice over election results.

Bemba's supporters issued a bellicose statement Tuesday saying their count gave Bemba a lead of more than 52 percent, which would mean he had won, and calling the official vote count an "electoral holdup."

They threatened to tear up accords promising not to use military force to resolve disputes about the Oct. 29 runoff.

Kabila's lead seemed insurmountable, with results from 90 percent of votes published on the election commission Web site giving him nearly 60 percent to Bemba's 40 percent.

No official announcement was expected while the commission completes its investigations into fraud complaints lodged by Bemba's camp.

The hints at violence, fraud allegations and criticism of the process were ominous in a country hoping to finally turn the page on brutal colonial rule, rapacious dictatorship and years of conflict. If Kabila is declared the winner, as seemed likely, he will face the enormous challenge of unifying a country with little sense of nationhood and little experience of resolving differences through politics.

"I ask the international community to abstain from all attempts to impose on the people of Congo he whom they have not chosen as their president," Cardinal Frederic Etsou, the top cleric in a country where the Catholic Church is the strongest institution, said in an interview with Radio France Internationale.

Belgian colonizers and former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko used force to keep the country of 200 tribes who speak a half dozen languages together.

The incumbent's father, Laurent Kabila, was propelled to power in 1997 as head of a rebel force that rose up against Mobutu but was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001.

The youthful Kabila, who has led a transitional government since 2001, has managed to convince foreign governments he is capable of governing, but that can raise suspicions among a people wary of outsiders meddling after decades of colonialism and a war that saw neighboring countries fighting for a share of Congo's natural resources. Many Congolese believe that the international community through the U.N., which has a large peacekeeping force and helped with the elections here, was determined to see Kabila win.

Bemba's camp has charged "systematic cheating" in the count.

"All we want is that the truth of the ballot comes out of these elections, which we have worked to make free, democratic and transparent," Bemba said in a televised address Monday night.

The Central African country's electoral commission said it disproved one of Bemba's first charges - that official results from a southern town didn't match those posted at the polling station. The commission said an investigation confirmed the results and noted that witnesses from Bemba's party signed off on figures that matched those posted on an official Web site.

Kabila's representatives have not commented on the fraud allegations. But Abbe Apollinaire Malu Malu, chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, has insisted on his commission's honesty, saying "no one has proof to say otherwise." He said Bemba officials checking the count were incapable of reading complicated spreadsheets.

Congo's people have never known prosperity. Today the average Congolese struggles to feed a family on the equivalent of 27 cents a day, one in five youngsters doesn't live beyond the age of 5 and most Congolese die by age 50.

Congo, the size of western Europe, has only a few hundred miles of paved roads, despite being a country with more mineral resources than half the continent and enough water to provide hydroelectric power from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt.

Those riches have bred corruption that pervades every aspect of life, a systemic looting rooted over the decades in the highest echelons of power in the nation of more than 50 million people.

Kabila himself has been accused by a parliamentary commission of illegally selling concessions including some of the richest copper and cobalt mines in the world to the benefit of foreign companies with little profit to the country.

Kabila has pledged to fight corruption but made no public comment on the commission's allegation.
---
On the Web:

The Independent Electoral Commission, http://www.cei-rdc.cd

manoela said...

Congo's conflict ist strutuctural. History explains its economic crises, not only geology. Gold, diamonds, minerals are seeked by "heroes", african and internacional politicians, butespecially by great trade companies.
Interesting to observe are the movements of the peacekeeping forces from UN and/or from other organizations.
There is a great ambiance for war, from all kinds.