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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 297
17 - 23 September 2005


CONTENTS:

RWANDA: Genocide convicts begin community service
RWANDA: Genocide suspect transferred to tribunal
UGANDA: 15 die in inter-clan violence in Karamoja region
UGANDA: Human rights group urges conditional military aid
GREAT LAKES: Ugandan LRA rebels flee Sudan for Congo
GREAT LAKES: MPs vow to speed up regional peace
BURUNDI: Free schooling starts with huge logistical problems
TANZANIA: Zanzibar electoral body says voter lists are faulty
DRC: No plan to arrest dissident ex-general, UN official says


RWANDA: Genocide convicts begin community service

Hundreds of genocide convicts in Rwanda, released under a presidential
decree, began community work on Friday as part of the punishment for
their role in the 1994 killings, an official told IRIN.

"Instead of keeping them in prison, it is more productive to have them
do communal work," Emmanuel Twagirumukiza, the official in charge of the
work, said on Thursday.

Rwandan authorities refer to the community service as "work of general
interest". It involves the building of homes for genocide survivors
whose houses were destroyed or burnt down during the genocide.

The first lot scheduled to undertake the community service are at least
1,000 convicts in the central province of Gitarama. They were released
after they confessed to genocide.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49201]


RWANDA: Genocide suspect transferred to tribunal

Genocide suspect Joseph Serugendo, who was arrested last week in
Libreville, Gabon, was transferred on Friday to the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, an official of the
tribunal said.

Tribunal Prosecutor Hassan Jallow said Serugendo would shortly make an
initial appearance before the court. Serugendo, 52, faces five counts of
conspiracy to commit genocide and persecution, as crimes against
humanity.

Serugendo was the technical director and board member of Radio
Television Libre des Mille Collines, a station that broadcast hate
messages before and during the genocide. Jallow said Serugendo was also
a member of the National Committee of the Interahamwe militia, that
carried out many of the killings.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49209]


Meanwhile, Jallow welcomed Monday's decision by the tribunal's Appeals
Chamber to uphold a lower court life sentence on the former Rwandan
minister of higher education and scientific research, Jean de Dieu
Kamuhanda, for his role in the genocide.

"The decision clearly indicates the hard work put up by the prosecution
team to prove the case beyond any doubt," Jallow said. "It also confirms
the credibility of our witnesses."

Presiding Judge Theodor Meron, of the United States, dismissed
Kamuhanda's appeal, saying it lacked sufficient grounds to overturn the
22 January 2004 ruling of the tribunal's Trial Chamber, the lower court.

The judgment was live broadcast from The Hague, the seat of the UN Court
of Appeal.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49146]


UGANDA: 15 die in inter-clan violence in Karamoja region

At least 15 people, mainly women and children, were shot dead while 10
others were wounded this week when inter-clan fighting erupted in
Uganda's northeastern region of Karamoja, officials said on Thursday.

"The attack on Kodike village left 13 people dead, mainly children and
women, while five others were injured," Richard Nambafu, the resident
district commissioner for Moroto, one of Karamoja's district's, told
IRIN.

He said the wounded were being treated at a local hospital.

Nambafu said warriors from the Pian clan attacked their Bokora rivals on
Monday in revenge for a cattle-rustling raid the previous day that had
left seven Pians wounded.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49190]


UGANDA: Human rights group urges conditional military aid

Military aid to Uganda should be tied to human rights performance in
order to stem numerous rights violations by the military and the rebel
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rights watchdog said on Tuesday.

"It will be good for governments that give Uganda military aid of any
kind, especially the United States, to tie such aid to human rights
performance," Jemera Rone of the New York-based Human Rights Watch
(HRW), told reporters in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

She made the comments during the launch of a report entitled "Uprooted
and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda",
which catalogues acts of abuse by both the military and the rebels.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49147]


GREAT LAKES: Ugandan LRA rebels flee Sudan for Congo

Sixty fighters of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have left their
areas of operation in northern Uganda and southern Sudan and crossed
into northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ugandan army
spokesman Lt-Col Shaban Bantariza said on Monday.

"The area they have entered is a national park in the DRC and I think
here they will be able to access water and animals for food," he said in
Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

He said the development posed a new "inconvenience" for Uganda. The
group, he said, was being led by the movement's second in command,
Vincent Otti.

Uganda and Sudan's defence chiefs have begun discussing joint operations
against the LRA, Uganda's State House, the official home of the
president, announced on Sunday. It said Sudanese President Umar
el-Bashir had made the proposal to Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni in
New York, through Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail. [Full
story on: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49132 ]


GREAT LAKES: MPs vow to speed up regional peace

In efforts to foster peace, legislators from three Great Lakes countries
resolved on Friday to follow up and get involved in the implementation
of peace treaties agreed upon by governments in the region.

"We have agreed to identify and collect all the agreements that have
already been signed by the respective governments in terms of security
and conflict resolution," the Members of Parliament said in a communique
issued at the end of a two-day meeting in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

The MPs, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, had
met under an umbrella organisation of the Great Lakes parliamentary
forum on peace, known as AMANI forum, to work out ways of accelerating
peace in the region.

The 600-member AMANI forum groups together parliamentarians from
Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49212]


BURUNDI: Free schooling starts with huge logistical problems

Teachers and administrators of Burundi's primary schools faced
logistical problems on Monday as hundreds of thousands of primary school
pupils lined up to enroll for the first time for the 2005-2006 school
year which the president promised will now be free.

"We will not be able to cope with the increases," Donat Hatungimana, a
primary school teacher in the capital, Bujumbura, said.

On Thursday, the new minister for education and culture, Saidi Kibeya,
said 500,000 new school children might enroll in the first year of free
primary education. The ministry projects that some 2,400 extra teachers
and 2,400 new class rooms will be needed.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49129]


TANZANIA: Zanzibar electoral body says voter lists are faulty

At least 700 people have registered more than once to vote in Tanzania's
semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar, the head of the local electoral body
said on Tuesday.

"More names are likely to be discovered," Masauni Yussuf, the chairman
of the Zanzibar Electoral Commission, said in the statement. "We are
still going on with the verification exercise."

Authorities recently revoked a contract with the South African firm
Waymark Infotech, to audit the vote independently. Supporters of the
main opposition party on the island have accused authorities of rigging
previous elections and of also planning to rig the polls due 30 October.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49173]


DRC: No plan to arrest dissident ex-general, UN official says

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) does not plan
to capture a dissident former general of the Congolese army against whom
an international arrest warrant was issued recently, an official told
IRIN on Thursday.

"Mr Laurent Nkunda does not present a threat to the local population,
thus we cannot justify any action against him," Gen Narena Satiya, the
commander of MONUC's Indian brigade based in North Kivu Province, said
from the provincial capital, Goma.

UN and local authorities went on Thursday to Nkunda's alleged stronghold
in eastern Congo to try to meet him as well as government troops who
deserted their posts a few days earlier.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49207]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005


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