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Integrated Regional Information Network for Central Asia

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Central Asia
IRIN-CAS Weekly Round-up 236
17 - 23 July 2004


CONTENTS:

GREAT LAKES: Rwanda backed dissident troops in DRC - UN panel
DRC: IMF praises reform but predicts slow recovery
BURUNDI: More prisoners join strike action by detained soldiers
RWANDA: Businessman in custody of international tribunal
RWANDA: Hundreds of judges appointed
RWANDA-UGANDA: Rights workers urge Kigali "to look to the future"
RWANDA-UGANDA: Ex-soldier charged with 1999 murder of tourists
UGANDA: UNICEF highlights plight of children in the north
KENYA: EC defers decision on request for funds amid concerns over graft
TANZANIA: Denmark donates US $93 million for health-care facilities


ALSO SEE:

DRC: Interview with Eugene Serufuli, governor of North Kivu Province at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42318

TANZANIA: Focus on pay increases for civil servants at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42272

BURUNDI: Interview with Carolyn McAskie, head of the new UN mission at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42248


GREAT LAKES: Rwanda backed dissident troops in DRC - UN panel

A UN panel has accused Rwanda's government of supporting dissidents in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who seized the eastern town of
Bukavu in June, and thus breaking an arms embargo instituted a year ago by
the UN Security Council. The accusation came in a report issued on
Wednesday by the UN Expert Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural
Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the DRC.

The panel also accused Rwanda of recruiting and sheltering some of the
dissident soldiers led by Col Jules Mutebutsi and Gen Laurent Nkunda, who
were involved in the latest round of fighting in eastern DRC.

Rwanda's minister for regional cooperation, Protais Mitali, described the
report as a "fabrication lacking credible evidence", and accused it of
being biased. "We have no soldiers in DRC, we have not helped, trained or
recruited for any dissident group in eastern DRC," he said. [Full report
at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42300 ]


DRC: IMF praises reform but predicts slow recovery

The DRC government has implemented "far-reaching structural reforms",
according to an IMF study issued this month, but it also predicts that the
country will take 45 years to reach the level of development it had in
1990. Since 2001, "the government has been restructuring with a view to
creating an environment conducive to private sector development and
economic recovery," says an IMF working paper entitled "Sources of Growth
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Cointegration Approach".

The report found improvements in the social sectors, the judiciary and
regulatory bodies, and the financial sector. Inflation sharply decelerated
from an annual rate of 511 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2002. The
government has rehabilitated key infrastructure, namely transport,
telecommunications, water and electricity.

DRC's growth rate will average 5 percent between 2002 and 2005, the report
predicts. But it also says the country has "a long way to go" to recoup
ground lost from the political turmoil of the past decade as well as from
four decades of "total mismanagement" and "pervasive corruption". [Full
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42324 ]


BURUNDI: More prisoners join strike action by detained soldiers

Thousands of detainees in Burundi's prisons on Monday joined a strike
started on 9 July by soldiers held at Mpimba, the country's main prison in
the capital, Bujumbura, to demand their unconditional release, according
to statements issued from five prisons.

The statements, issued from the prisons of Mpimba, Gitega, Ngozi, Muramvya
and Ruyigi, said prisoners who considered themselves to be political
prisoners had joined strike, which entails barring new detainees from
entering the prisons and preventing others from appearing in court for the
hearing of their cases. The striking prisoners, estimated to be at least
4,000, include former soldiers, rebel combatants and others. According to
the statements, the prisoners have given the justice minister up to 2
August to look into their cases or they "would take other measures".

The detainees also want to be considered under a provisional immunity
stipulated in the Peace and Reconciliation Accord signed in Arusha,
Tanzania, in August 2000, and the global ceasefire accord. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42314 ]


RWANDA: Businessman in custody of international tribunal

Businessman Gaspard Kanyarukiga, accused of supporting the 1994 Rwandan
genocide, was transferred on Monday to the custody of the UN International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. He had been
arrested on 16 July South Africa.

In a statement, the ICTR reported on Monday that Kanyarukiga, 59, has been
indicted on four counts, comprising genocide, complicity in genocide,
conspiracy to commit genocide and extermination as a crime against
humanity.

He is accused of transporting police and Hutu extremist Interahamwe
militia to Nyange Church in the commune of Kivumu in the western province
of Kibuye. The group allegedly poured fuel through the roof, set the
building on fire and used grenades and guns to kill about 2,000 Tutsi
civilians who had taken refuge there. According to the tribunal's office
of the prosecutor, Kanyarukiga allegedly supervised the massacre, and then
ordered the removal of the corpses from the church.

[Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42263 ]


RWANDA: Hundreds of judges appointed

As part of a major restructuring of the national courts system, the
government of Rwanda appointed 223 judges on Tuesday to courts at the
district and provincial level, as well as to the newly created high court.
"We must focus on expediting justice," Rwanda's chief justice, Aloysia
Cyanzaire, told judges at the swearing-in ceremony. "The public should not
be kept running back and forth from the courts."

For the last three years, the government has been restructuring the
judiciary with changes to the judicial code of ethics and by harmonising
common and civil law, especially with regard to court procedures.

The government has also been dismissing judges it considered unqualified.
The newly recruited judges had been closely scrutinised and were mostly
professional lawyers, justice ministry officials told IRIN. "We want to
improve on transparency and professionalism in the judicial system,"
Johnstone Busingye, one of the officials, said. "We want to give a new
image to the system." [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42296 ]


RWANDA-UGANDA: Rights workers urge Kigali "to look to the future"

Officials of a Rwandan human rights organisation who recently fled to
neighbouring Uganda, fearing for their lives following charges by a
parliamentary commission that their organisation had a genocidal ideology,
on Tuesday called on their government to "look to the future and stop
being a hostage of Rwanda's tragic past".

Seven members of the Rwandan League for Promotion and Defence of Human
Rights (Liprodor) fled to Uganda almost two weeks ago, fearing arrest
after a report by a Rwandan parliamentary commission of inquiry
recommended Liprodor's dissolution, along with four other civil society
organisations, for allegedly promoting ethnic division.

The Rwandan government is due to make a decision on Thursday on the
parliamentary commission's recommendation, but the fugitive officials, who
deny the accusations levelled against their organisation, told IRIN that
Liprodor's bank accounts had been frozen by the government "even before a
judicial process" and that many of its officials still in Rwanda lobbying
the government not to dissolve the organisation had received threatening
telephone calls from unidentified people. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42288 ]


RWANDA-UGANDA: Ex-soldier charged with 1999 murder of tourists

A Rwandan national has been charged in a Ugandan court with the 1999
murder of eight foreign tourists in a national park in southwestern
Uganda, court sources have confirmed. "Jean Paul Bizimana, aged 30 years,
also known as Xavier Van-Ndame, was charged with nine counts of murdering
two Americans, four Britons, two New Zealanders and a Ugandan. He was not
allowed to enter any plea and was remanded until 2 August when his case
returns for mention," an official at Kampala's magistrate's court told
IRIN in an interview on 16 July.

Bizimana was a soldier during the government of the Rwandan former
president, the late Juvenal Habyarimana, and had been arrested by the
Ugandan security service a week earlier, according to the Criminal
Investigation Department chief, Elizabeth Kuteesa.

On 1 March 1999, attackers estimated to have numbered between 100 and 150
and believed to have been Rwandan Hutu militias known as the Interahamwe,
attacked unarmed tourists and their guides at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest
National Park. The prosecution alleges that Bizimana and others still at
large kidnapped the tourists. After releasing some of the hostages, the
attackers used machetes to kill the eight people, leaving their bodies in
the forest. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42326 ]


UGANDA: UNICEF highlights plight of children in the north

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said the plight of
thousands children abducted by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in
northern Uganda as child soldiers or sex slaves, is being forgotten. "The
world may be awakening to the emergency in Sudan, but it has all but
forgotten the tragedy of neighbouring Uganda, where in the past two years
some 12,000 boys and girls have been abducted by the LRA," UNICEF
Executive Director Carol Bellamy is quoted as saying.

Bellamy noted, in an article published on 16 July in the International
Herald Tribune and reproduced in a UNICEF news release on Monday, that the
conflict in northern Uganda was "unlike any other: it is a war on
children".

The attacks invariably involve appalling human rights abuses. "Children
are often forced to kill their parents or other children. Those who are
taken, some as young as six, are used as sex slaves in the rebel force,
made to work as slaves, or forced to become soldiers. The LRA believes
fighting age begins at seven," she added. "We are calling on the
government of Uganda and the international community to bring the kind of
potent political will to the problem that has been brought to bear
elsewhere." [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42265 ]


KENYA: EC defers decision on request for funds amid concerns over graft

The EC has deferred a decision on Kenya's request for =80125 million (about
US $153 million) in budgetary support to allow for further discussions on
the issue of governance, amid concerns that high-level corruption has not
yet been properly addressed.

"It is true that further consideration of the proposed EC Budget Support
programme has been deferred until September/October, pending discussions
between the government and the EU on the governance situation and on the
ongoing financial management reforms agreed under the programme," the EC
delegation in Kenya said in a statement.

Kenya asked for the funds in a bid to bridge a deficit in its 2004/2005
budget, of which US $633 million, or 11.5 percent of the total spending,
is expected to come from aid donors. The EC statement said that
disbursement of the budgetary support programme would depend on "Kenya
remaining on track with the IMF, progress on ongoing financial management
reforms, as well as progress against targets in the Economic Recovery
Strategy in the areas of health and education."

[Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=42297 ]


TANZANIA: Denmark donates US $93 million for health-care facilities

The Danish government has given Tanzania a 560 million kroner (US $93
million) grant to support its health-care services for the next five
years, Tanzanian and Danish officials said in a joint statement. "The
support will go towards improving the quality of services offered,
including rehabilitation of public hospitals, health centres and
dispensaries," Mariam Mwaffisi, the permanent secretary of the health
ministry, said following the signing of the grant agreement in Dar es
Salaam on Wednesday.

In the past eight years Tanzania has received 840 million kroner from
Denmark to finance the implementation of the country's Health Sector
Programme Support (HSPS).

The HSPS focuses on improving access to health care for the poor, which
includes rehabilitating public health centres and providing them with
medical equipment. The programme is divided into three phases, with the
country now entering the third and final medical-rehabilitation stage.


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004


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