Nearly a year after being installed in a senior position in the
Congolese armed forces, former rebel-general Bosco Ntaganda has formed with others the Front for the Liberation and Emancipation of the Congo (FLEC).

Bosco Ntaganda

Unlike some other rebel groups in the Congo – including Mr. Ntaganda’s Tutsi-led National Congress for the People Defense (CNDP) who wrecked havoc on the country last year – FLEC does not appear to be built along ethnic lines.

Violence both against and between Hutu and Tutsi in eastern Congo have broiled the region in an on-again-off-again struggle that, over the last fifteen years, has directly and indirectly led to millions dead.

While it remains unclear whether FLEC will be an armed insurgency or just a way to make more money, the emergence of the group is the latest sign that the CNDP is breaking up, and the Congo’s army is unraveling in its year long war against Rwandan Hutu rebels.

“According to local sources who speak with this reporter in Goma town, FLEC was established because of the reported refusal of pro-Nkunda elements and the former political leadership of the party to associate CNDP with the reported Coalition pour la protection et la promotion du
Congo (CPPC).”

Mr. Ntaganda, who became military commander of the CNDP at the beginning of the year when its charismatic Laurent Nkunda was arrested by Rwanda, was supposed to lead the group into integration with the Congolese national army, along with a menagerie of other rebel groups
and splinter factions.

In the United Nations-backed offensive against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – Hutu rebels accused of orchestrating the 1994 Rwandan genocide – Mr. Ntaganda is accused of playing a senior role.

In South Kivu, where the bulk of the fighting is focused, Ntaganda’s CNDP lieutenants are the ones doing the fighting and the
killing.

But now, he and other CNDP officers are spending their time organizing FLEC and already control some of North Kivu’s most fertile grounds, including large swaths of Masisi territory according to reliable sources.

And there’s no much that can be done, saying that the police in the
region were “neither equipped nor paid” by the Kinshasa government.

For years, Rwanda and Congo have battled over the presence of Rwandan genocide suspects hiding out on Congolese soil, killers that fled after the Rwandan genocide.

Rwanda’s own military has repeatedly invaded the Congo in pursuit and have left behind residual militias to do the fighting for them.

Last year, things began to get out of hand, when one of these
generals, Mr. Nkunda went on a strong offensive in North Kivu, taking important parts of the province and coming within a few kilometers of the capital Goma.

The Congolese military didn’t stand a chance, instead fleeing with civilians from the oncoming rebel group, looting, killing and raping in the process.
It all changed, investigators have argued, when Rwanda and Congo struck a deal that placed Ntaganda in the drivers seat and Mr. Nkunda supposedly behind bars.

Now, the Congolese army was no longer fighting the CNDP, but the Hutu rebels, and in the process Ntaganda and his troops took command of the war.

It’s been a sweet role of reversal for Mr. Ntaganda. According to the
United Nations Panel of Experts report leaked Tuesday, he is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in illegal tax revenues from the lands he patrols. His elite CNDP that follow him is about 60,000.

But as the atrocities mount, Ntaganda has been losing friends.

The people who put him in power – including Rwanda – have not gone out of their way to keep all the soldiers below him in line and, as the The New York Times has reported, much of the region has descended into ‘warlordism.’

From Mai-Mai generals to FDLR splinters, new groups have sprung and popped, since the beginning of the year, feeding off each other like water wheels.

A spokesperson for the United Nation in Congo said that the latest developments reflected a “possible division within the CNDP itself,” those working with Ntaganda, and those loyal to the arrested Laurent Nkunda, who remains in Rwanda, somewhere.

“He is our man, he always will be,” says Claude Mutebutsi, a Congolese Tutsi originally from South Kivu. He insists Nkunda wasn’t simply sponsored by Rwanda. According to him, “95%” are still faithful to Mr. Nkunda, who has acquired a Che Guevara-like mystique with his constituents.

The political arm of the CNDP – Nkunda had said he was fighting for the protection of Congolese Tutsi – has accomplished little on paper since peace agreement that culminated integration into the army.

Two party members are in parliament.

Mr. Ntaganda’s new group is the latest manifestation in a breakup of the CNDP that has been ongoing for months. The first incarnation was the Coalition for the Promotion and Protection of the Congo.

Initially built around Ntaganda and other CNDP soldiers, it fell apart due to deteriorating support for Mr. Ntaganda.

uganda art

uganda art

Yoweri Museveni makes PolPot look like Mother Theresa

Yoweri museveni

Commonwealth Pros And Cons

By: Adam Boulton

Every two years when Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet for CHOGM, at least one think tank produces a report branding the organisation irrelevant or worse.

For the 2010 CHOGM, an internal report commissioned by the Commonwealth itself has rained on the parade. The Policy Studies Unit and Electoral Reform International claim the Commonwealth has lost “moral leadership” for failing to stand up for democracy, particularly in Zimbabwe.

Ironically the Commonwealth’s commitment to democracy is enshrined in the so-called “Harare Principles”, agreed in the 1990s at the Zimbabwe CHOGM back when Robert Mugabe was regarded as a good guy.

So is the Commonwealth making a stand on Zimbabwe this year? No it’s not – or at least, as so often before, it’s deploying the carrot rather than the stick.

Gordon Brown has backed a message to Zimbabwe’s new national unity government, that subject to many further reforms, President Mugabe and his UDC rival, the Prime Minister Morgan Tvangirai, could be back round the table as soon as the next CHOGM in 2011.

Britain is taking a tougher line on who should get the “honour” of hosting that CHOGM by opposing Sri Lanka because of the way it conducted the campaign against the Tamil Tigers and Tamil population.

However it is far from clear that the other countries will back Britain’s ban and there is already much huffing and puffing along the lines of “Who do the British think they are, they are not still in charge of the British Empire, you know”.

Yet for all the criticism the Commonwealth is actually growing – up to 53 member states – and thriving as indicated by two developments here in Trinidad. Rwanda, which was not a British colony is applying to join the club.

And President Sarkozy of France is stopping off on the way back from Brazil to discuss climate change with the meeting. (He will be allowed to speak French because they’ll be s special sidebar meeting with him not formally part of CHOGM).

For all it’s weakness as a deliberative council, and the highly questionable democratic credentials of many of its members, the Commonwealth remains a unique body at least encouraging, if rarely enforcing, better behaviour by its members.

As Gordon Brown likes to point out the grouping gathers a cross section of the Globe: from the richest nations (including Britain, Canada and Australia), to the rapidly rising (India, South Africa, Malaysia) to some of the world’s poorest mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa and here in the Caribbean.

If a Climate Change agreement is to be reached next month, the discussions in this forum will be crucial. To help the process on its way Gordon Brown has today proposed “the Copenhagen Launch Fund”.

This is a further component of the payments developed countries will make to developing countries to secure an agreement.

In the transition period before a Copenhagen Agreement comes into force in 2013, the new fund would offer up to $10billion, half of it on a conditional basis if action is taken.

In other words countries would only get the cash if they stop cutting down trees or start reforestation.

Britain’s payment into the fund would be about £800 million. In these times this is unlikely to be popular with voters at home. But it’s the way international politics works and the Commonwealth still amplifies Britain’s voice.

Germain Katanga, who faces war crime charges

Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, who faces war crime charges

The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui

The trial in the case of The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui will start on Tuesday, 24 November, 2009, at 9:30 a.m. (The Hague local time) (hearing schedule). The hearings will be conducted before Trial Chamber II until 11 December, 2009 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. After the judicial recess, the hearings will resume on 26 January, 2010.

Background information on the case

On 17 October, 2007, Germain Katanga, (a DRC national), alleged commander of the Force de résistance patriotique en Ituri [Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri] (FRPI), was arrested and transferred to the Court pursuant to a warrant of arrest issued under seal on 2 July, 2007, by Pre-Trial Chamber I at the request of the Prosecutor. On 6 February, 2008, Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui (also a DRC national), alleged leader of the Front des nationalistes et intégrationnistes [Nationalist Integrationist Front] (FNI), was arrested and transferred to the Court pursuant to a warrant of arrest issued under seal on 6 July, 2007, by the same Chamber at the request of the Prosecutor.

On 11 March, 2008, Pre-Trial Chamber I decided to join the two cases and, on 26 September, 2008, it confirmed charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Katanga and Ngudjolo Chui. On 24 October, 2008, the Presidency of the Court constituted Trial Chamber II and referred the case of The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui to that Chamber, which has since convened status conferences and held a number of hearings. Trial Chamber II set the date for the commencement of the trial as Tuesday, 24 November, 2009.

The case of The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui is the second case in the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after that of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, whose trial commenced on 26 January, 2009, before Trial Chamber I. A forth warrant of arrest was issued by the Pre-Trial Chamber I on 22 August, 2006, against Bosco Ntaganda, who remains at large.

Bosco ntaganda: Ituri and KIvu War Criminal

Demonstrators targeted Uganda’s UN mission in New York on Thursday to protest a proposed law that would punish homosexuality with life in prison in the eastern African country.


About 40 people picketed the UN mission at Uganda House in Manhattan, chanting: “Gay rights are human rights. Dismiss the law now!”

Uganda has come under international criticism for the draft law that would punish “touch(ing) another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality” with life behind bars, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which organized the protest.

The law would impose the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” including by those who are HIV positive.

“It’s unimaginable. You’re talking about the death penalty and prison for an entire class of human beings,” said protestor Brendan Fay, 50, a filmmaker.

“It’s incredible that in 2009 a nation’s parliament is considering this,” he added.

Mark de Solla Price, 49, came to the demonstration with his male partner Vinny Allegrini and said Uganda was “on the wrong side.”

He waved a placard that read “love should be legal everywhere” on one side and “shame on Uganda” on the other.

France and the United States have condemned the bill.

One of the bill’s supporters, Ugandan lawmaker David Bahati, responded earlier this month by saying that “homosexuality is not a human right”.

“The fact that the moral fabric of America and Europe has been put under siege by the supporters of this creeping evil of homosexuality should not suggest that we follow suit.”

AFP

Tyrant Museveni has officially joined the anti-gay crusade, saying he had received reports suggesting that “European homosexuals” had launched a recruitment drive in Africa.
Expressing his homophobic tendencies, Tyrant Museveni said the youth must stand firm and abhor the divergent sexual orientation.

“I hear European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa,” said the Tyrant on Saturday, to an audience of mainly youth at the Kampala Serena Hotel that homosexuality is not natural.

“We used to have very few homosexuals traditionally. They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be.”

“You should discourage your colleagues [involved in homosexuality] because God was not foolish to do the way he arranged,” said the Tyrant, adding, “Mr and Mrs, but now you have to say Mr and Mr? What is that now?”

The tyrant a fool as always, can’t explain why “God” created animals or plants that has both male and female reproductive organs, hermaphrodite. Why isn’t this possible with genes or blood, i.e.sickle cell disease-caused by a genetic disease that affects the haemoglobin molecules in red blood cells?

As a straight person, I feel its our duty to educate the public that homosexuality is not a choice but a disability that we as a society need to understand and sympathise with rather than persecute them.
How many times have you heard, people persecuting epileptic people of which Mrs Janet Museveni suffers from? Never!!

Homophobic tendencies are the same as that of racism. Period!!
We shall stand-by our Lesbians, Gays and Trans-genders community 100%, during these dark-times!!!!

American protesters target Uganda anti-gay law

Demonstrators targeted Uganda’s UN mission in New York on Thursday to protest a proposed law that would punish homosexuality with life in prison in the eastern African country.


About 40 people picketed the UN mission at Uganda House in Manhattan, chanting: “Gay rights are human rights. Dismiss the law now!”

Uganda has come under international criticism for the draft law that would punish “touch(ing) another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality” with life behind bars, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which organized the protest.

The law would impose the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” including by those who are HIV positive.

“It’s unimaginable. You’re talking about the death penalty and prison for an entire class of human beings,” said protestor Brendan Fay, 50, a filmmaker.

“It’s incredible that in 2009 a nation’s parliament is considering this,” he added.

Mark de Solla Price, 49, came to the demonstration with his male partner Vinny Allegrini and said Uganda was “on the wrong side.”

He waved a placard that read “love should be legal everywhere” on one side and “shame on Uganda” on the other.

France and the United States have condemned the bill.

One of the bill’s supporters, Ugandan lawmaker David Bahati, responded earlier this month by saying that “homosexuality is not a human right”.

“The fact that the moral fabric of America and Europe has been put under siege by the supporters of this creeping evil of homosexuality should not suggest that we follow suit.”

AFP

for a very long time now, African girls have felt completely unsupported because European fashionistas teams designed limited clobber for them.


Forget every preconception you ever heard about organic clothing, because it just hit the high street and its all meant for the Euro market.

Accessories are taken seriously in europe: the right scarf or bag is considered important. No day to-evening looks. Every occasion has its own requirements: there are distinct looks for brunch, lunch, cocktails, dinner, and balls. But this does not guarantee for someone to look beautiful but some kind of schlep.

Africans girls can look beautiful in anything simple.

african beautiful girls
To be continued…

second life

I’ve been asked what my SL name is? Uhh, its Fierenza.

I decided to go to Club Industry, a club that plays mostly Industrial, Goth, Darkwave, Synthpop, EBM, Electro, but has some Future pop, Techno, Trance and JRock music, as well.

I realised that this place had no jobs but good time. So I decided to go back to Hyde park and rethink about my strategy, whether looking for a job was my thing or I rather become self employed.

second life at hyde park

Maybe I would become a Pimp and build a pimping empire in second life.

My first pimping move

I sweet talked her and she was all melting… like an Italian ice-cream.

I then realised that pimping was in in ma genes and would become a career in second life.
Joram jojo

To be continued next week.

Uganda has crossed the line, from supporting verbal assault on gay Ugandans to posing a serious threat to any gay Ugandan’s security and the security of any person or NGO who even knows a homosexual in Uganda. Since 2004, Uganda has received $1.2 billion for AIDS-related programs; and this year Uganda is receiving an additional $285 million. During this time, Uganda has moved toward ever more violent homophobic verbal assault and legislative proposals.

An open letter to the global AIDS coordinator U.S. must denounce dangerous rising tide of homophobia in Africa before sending more aid money

By: Charles C. Francis

DEAR DR. GOOSBY:

Allow me to add my congratulations on your appointment as Global AIDS Coordinator. Your record of work and leadership is so much appreciated by all who care about the global AIDS pandemic.

As a former member of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA), who is openly gay, I respectfully come forward to tell you of the increasing concern — even alarm — among Americans at the tide of dangerous homophobia in Africa.

This homophobia is neither “traditional” nor “cultural”; it is political and dangerous. The sense of alarm is sharpened by the fact that American lawmakers are asked to appropriate billions of dollars through the PEPFAR program to many of the countries now escalating anti-gay rhetoric into a verbal assault with threats to imprison gay Africans and NGO workers.

A growing number of PEPFAR countries are considering legislative proposals to criminalize homosexuality with a death penalty, enact bans on homosexual organizations and to imprison homosexual citizens. This is painful for all who have been supportive of humanitarian programs such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and PEPFAR.

PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) is the largest public health program in our nation’s history, authorized for up to $48 billion by 2013, the largest initiative ever committed to a single disease, and it is for Africa.

I urge you to convey to PEPFAR aid recipients that the current verbal assault and threats to gay Africans are contrary to the core humanitarian values that are the foundation of PEPFAR. Most important, this will backfire in the United States Congress as the American public learns of this persecution.

I will be encouraging my fellow “alums” of PACHA, who have served since its formation in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, to call for a “hold” or “review” of PEPFAR funding for those countries that jail homosexuals, invent new crimes such as “aggravated homosexuality” (Uganda), threaten death penalties for homosexuals, require citizen-informants to identify homosexuals and scapegoat gay Africans.

Uganda has crossed the line, from supporting verbal assault on gay Ugandans to posing a serious threat to any gay Ugandan’s security and the security of any person or NGO who even knows a homosexual in Uganda. Since 2004, Uganda has received $1.2 billion for AIDS-related programs; and this year Uganda is receiving an additional $285 million. During this time, Uganda has moved toward ever more violent homophobic verbal assault and legislative proposals.

This culminated following your successful trip there, with the introduction — by a parliamentarian from the government majority — of the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009.” This proposed legislation puts any person alleged to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender at risk of life imprisonment and, in some circumstances, death. Under this proposed legislation, citizens and NGO’s who might “harbor” a homosexual will be required to report any suspected homosexual to the government or face jail.

THIS IS A critical juncture for PEPFAR before the world community. Will we stand by and let national governments scapegoat a sexual minority for HIV/AIDS while receiving major funding for AIDS relief? Will the U.S. fund radical, anti-gay prevention programs that could become a model for other parliaments and governments?

In conclusion, “verbal assault” is not individual expression of political opinion or free expression of strong differences in civil society. “Verbal assault” is designed by government — and promoted by government — to instill fear, divert people with scapegoats, galvanize electoral majorities and to accrue power by creating a pariah, a man or woman who is made “socially dead” (Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners).

If not checked, verbal assault leads to physical violence and imprisonment. PEPFAR must call for a cessation, through diplomatic and public channels, of the verbal and legislative assault on African gays.

Similarly, in a “multi-partner world”, PEPFAR partners — businesses, foundations, universities and faith-based partners — need to come forward and make their views known. Silence is a form of passive assent in this situation.

AMERICANS HAVE BEEN supportive of international AIDS relief efforts, but we cannot be asked to turn our backs on African gays and NGO workers subjected to the most demeaning and dangerous verbal assault and threats of imprisonment with gay death penalties.

The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission has called for a swift dismissal of the Ugandan legislation and campaign, and an end to homosexual persecution across Africa.

The time for “quiet diplomacy” has passed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been sent a congressional letter of concern, raising the PEPFAR issue, signed by Howard Berman, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.).

I believe there are many former members of PACHA who are people of good will, Republican and Democrat, secular and religious, who will agree that these brutal appeals, unless confronted, will threaten PEPFAR and Global Fund appropriations at current levels, and reasonably raise the question of whether the U.S. should spend more of our AIDS dollars at home.

DR Congo War Criminals

Lydia Draru, the lady in whose shanty house the War criminal, Maj Gen James Kazini, died

War criminal James Kazini in his own blood

DR Congo War Criminal, Maj Gen James Kazini

War criminal, James Kazini

May his soul rot in hell!!

War Criminal James Kazini

About the war criminal’s Portfolio:

Victims of Maj Gen James Kazini

Victims of Maj Gen James Kazini

Victims of Maj Gen James Kazini

Mass-scale looting

War criminal, James Kazini

32.Between September 1998 and August 1999, occupied zones of the Democratic Republic of the Congo were drained of existing stockpiles, including minerals, agricultural and forest products and livestock. Regardless of the looter, the pattern was the same: Burundian, Rwandan, Ugandan and/or RCD soldiers, commanded by an officer, visited farms, storage facilities, factories and banks, and demanded that the managers open the coffers and doors. The soldiers were then ordered to remove the relevant products and load them into vehicles. The Panel received numerous accounts and claims of unlawful removal of products by Rwandan or Ugandan armies and their local RCD allies. The Panel has chosen to illustrate this point with some examples.

33. In the mining sector, SOMINKI (Société minière et industrielle du Kivu) had seven years’ worth of columbo-tantalite (coltan) in stock in various areas. From late November 1998, Rwandan forces and their RCD allies organized its removal and transport to Kigali. Depending on the sources, between 2,000 and 3,000 tons of cassiterite and between 1,000 and 1,500 tons of coltan were removed from the region between November 1998 and April 1999. A very reliable source informed the Panel that it took the Rwandans about a month to fly this coltan to Kigali. The Panel, however, received official documents including one in which RCD acknowledged removing 6 tons of coltan and 200 tons of cassiterite from SOMINKI for a total of US$ 722,482.

34. Late in late August 1998, General Kazini’s soldiers absconded with the stockpiles of timber belonging to the logging company Amex-bois, located in Bagboka. In December that year, the same General ordered the confiscation of all the stocked timber belonging to the logging company La Forestière. General Kazini was reportedly seen in the area at least twice during the period when the looting occurred and temporarily established his headquarters in the area.

35. Then, in January 1999, in Equateur Province, Jean-Pierre Bemba and General Kazini organized a large operation for the confiscation of coffee beans. Mr. Bemba initiated, encouraged and perpetuated such practices in the Province. In a written letter to one of his commanders, he urged him to release a bigger vehicle he was using because it was needed urgently. The source indicated that this was later used to carry away tons of coffee beans. A participant in this operation, who has since left the movement, explained that two months were required to remove the enormous quantities of coffee. In the past, this province produced 60 per cent of the country’s robusta coffee. The localities of Bumba, Lisala, Bosonzo, Binga and Mindembo for a year did not have coffee stocks to export because of these seizures. The Société congolaise du café, the largest owner of coffee stocks in the area, went bankrupt. The mass-scale looting reached such levels that, in one instance, Mr. Bemba seized 200 tons of coffee beans from the SCIBE company, which was owned by his father, Saolona Bemba. The matter remains unresolved in court.

36. In some cases, factories were dismantled or machinery spare parts were taken away, as in the case of the sugar factory of Kaliba in South Kivu. When the Panel asked about the dismantling of some factories, the RCD cabinet replied that investors were free to dismantle their factories and relocate wherever they wanted. In essence, RCD recognized the phenomenon, but explained it in terms of the investors’ decision to relocate the factories while taking the raw materials from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cars and other items were apparently also taken from the country, as statistics on Ugandan registered cars reflected an increase of about one quarter in 1999.

37. The financial sector was not left untouched either. A defector from RCD who participated in some looting informed the Panel that Rwandan soldiers systematically targeted local banks as soon as they conquered a town. In many cases, they would use the RCD soldiers to collect the money while those who were armed would surround the bank. For example, the Kisangani Bank, a branch of the central bank, received a visit of RCD staff accompanied by Rwandan soldiers. Depending on the source (central bank in Kinshasa or eyewitness), anywhere between $1 million and $8 million worth of Congolese francs was taken. The Panel was told that the operation took place a couple of days after the central bank and Ministry of Finance officials deposited money to pay civil servants and old Congolese franc notes were replaced by new ones.

38. Under the escort of soldiers, the money was taken to the Palm Beach Hotel. The hotel management recalled that bags full of money were stored in one of the rooms and that during those few days armed soldiers who could not speak Lingala (the most commonly spoken Congolese language) guarded the hotel premises. Could such an operation involving a number of armed soldiers be carried out without the knowledge and consent of the highest Rwandan commander in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

39. Aides of Jean-Pierre Ondekane (an RCD leader) reportedly collected the money from the Palm Beach Hotel, flew with it to Goma and handed it over to Emmanuel Kamanzi (former chief of the Finance Department of RCD), who then flew on to Kigali. The Panel could not identify the final recipient of the money or how much disappeared between Kisangani, Goma and Kigali. However, some sources told the Panel that Mr. Kamanzi was imprisoned briefly at some point after this transaction. According to the same sources, he had apparently helped himself to the money he was ordered only to transport. Mr. Kamanzi told friends that he simply took a break of two months in Kigali.

40. During the period when this operation was under way, in Equateur Province, Mr. Bemba’s men visited several banks. According to a reliable source Mr. Bemba’s instructions to his soldiers were to systematically empty the bank once a town was captured. His troops took an equivalent of $400,000 from the Banque commerciale du Congo branch in Bumba, $500,000 in Lisala, and approximately $600,000 in Gemena.

41. The pilfering was also occurring in Kinshasa. The Panel has evidence of a widespread practice by which the late President Kabila would by proxy have companies give a certain percentage of their profits. For example, certain oil companies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, under the umbrella of taxe parafiscale, were delivering sums of money, in hard cash, daily or weekly to the late President via his Minister, friend and right-hand man, Mr. Mpoyo. Other companies, such as MIBA, were asked to hand over part of their profits to the late President’s regime, and all parastatals and important private companies were invited to open bank accounts in the Banque de commerce et du développement (BCD) (see para. 78).

42. However, over time the mass-scale looting described above diminished and theft by individual soldiers became more visible. For example, in Bunia, during Panel discussions, local non-governmental organizations, eyewitnesses and victims mentioned cases in which Congolese civilians were injured or murdered for resisting the attempted seizure of property by the RCD rebels and foreign soldiers. In Bukavu, individuals have told Panel members how Rwandan soldiers confiscated their life savings in dollar notes and some of the gold they were buying and keeping as monnaie refuge in the face of the repeatedly devalued Congolese franc. Partially, this has contributed to the increasing resentment felt by the Congolese population towards foreign soldiers and some rebels.

43. The looting of manufacturing plants, stocks and private property were not only acts of isolated individual soldiers but were encouraged, sometimes organized and coordinated, by the highest army commanders of both Rwanda and Uganda.

44. General Kazini used the same method to facilitate looting activities. He would appoint loyal commanders and reliable civilian Congolese in the civil administration in areas potentially rich in natural resources in order to secure his networks. This was exactly the case in Ituri, where he appointed Adele Lotsove in 1999 (see para. 71). In turn, these top layers of collaborators, colonels and majors utilized their right-hand men to carry out the actual looting.

45. The Panel has strong indications after talking to numerous witnesses (key and others) that key officials in the Governments of Rwanda and Uganda were aware of the situation on the ground, including the looting of stocks from a number of factories. In some cases, the level of production of mineral resources would have alerted any government, such as those of gold for Uganda and coltan for Rwanda (from 99 tons in 1996 to 250 tons in 1997).

Read full UN Report:

Hyde Park is a great place to make contacts

I decided to go from door to door to look for a job.

Lookinf for a job in second life

The cafe and club was all empty

I had to look for another club that had some potential for employment.

To work in this club you earned 150 lindens

maybe a job...

My application was rejected because my looks weren’t all that.
So I decided to shop around for a new look.

Looking for a new look so I can work in a Club

job hunting in a club..

Ploting a move on the lovely miami vice..

A Secutity job would be the thing for me here..