Review of G. Brausch's book on the Belgian colonial administration of the Congo

Although more moderate than some Belgian colonial administrators, Brausch isn't able to rise above the pervasive sense of paternalism with which Belgian colonials approached Congo. 

Furthermore, he simply isn't honest and straightforward in his analysis of key aspects of the Belgian administration. For example, he claims there wasn't significant official racial discrimination against Africans, but he doesn't discuss the frequent Belgian use of corporal punishment against Africans but not against Europeans in Congo. This hippo-hide whip created severe wounds and quite often resulted in death. Another important aspect of Belgian unequal treatment of Africans are the "parades" carried out by Belgian military during which they detained suspected dissidents and beat them, as a way of discouraging resistance. 

Brausch also isn't honest about features of Belgian political manipulation of Congolese political parties. It was well-known then as now that the very unpopular PNP party was initiated, organized, and funded by Belgians.

His criticisms, also, are not balanced in regard to the races. For example, he lambasts the Balubakat youth party for creating disorder but doesn't mention how the Belgian military organized the Abako youth party to carry out demonstrations against Lumumba for bribes and other emoluments. 

There are inaccuracies in the book: the January 4 demonstrations in then Leopoldville against Belgium were in 1959 not 1960. And, the posthumous book attributed by him to Lumumba was created by Belgian forgers.

ABOUT EVANSTON

The City Council's decision to accept the proposal for the
Northwestern University "visitor center" parking garage was an
incredibly bad decision on all counts.

Our Lake Shore Park beachscape is one of the town's chief amenities,
along with our abiding diversity.  It exists only because the
residents have risen up en masse when it was threatened with
development.  These are some of the reasons:

1. Conversion of public park recreational greenspace to a multistory
concrete structure mainly for cars is extremely poor land use
management.  NU has many acres of parking lots, any one of which could
be used as a base for this new structure.

2. Converting public greenspace space to a construction to benefit a
private entity, however meritorious that entity, is an inappropriate
act by elected public representatives and is irresponsible to our
citizenry.  They are not NU trustees or administrators but town
functionaries and have no business letting public resources depart the
public sphere.

3.  Forcing the proposal through despite its rejection by the Planning
Commission, despite the significant opposition from town citizens, and
the absence of the representative for the ward in question, verges on
the abuse of public responsibility.

In the discussion after this debacle, many of the town's residents
have been discussing the need for a thorough sweeping out of office of
the aldermen who carried out this cavalier act.  People are now going
and calling about the recruit fresh faces to be candidates for these
positions and will support them vigorously in the campaigns to come.

Remembering Patrice Emery Lumumba

Today, January 17, fifty years to the day after the assassination of Congolese Prime MInister Patrice Lumumba, with his colleagues Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo in what was then Elizabethville, Katanga, let us remember, reconsider, and look forward.

This crime has long been presented as a fratricidal crime by Congolese. The NATO countries only have admitted that they tried to do it but failed and have justified the crime as an act to save the free world from communism. Two who should know well the falsity of this justification, Mark Eyskens in Belgium and Frank Carlucci in the US, have both recently come forth with disinformative statements along these lines. Theirs are just the most recent of a huge corpus of falsified writing about the murder.

But, little thanks to either country’s declassification programs, which, with the UN, still censor most of the relevant archives, enough evidence of what happened has finally leaked out to allow these stances to be revised and rejected.

Far from being a “Bantou affair”, Operation Lumumba was very much a “NATO affair”, an expansive conspiracy by Belgium and the US with some help from England, France, Portugal, and South Africa. Though Congolese figureheads and men willing to look the other way were definitely used as cover for both his removal and his death by shooting, these acts were conceived, planned, staffed, funded, armed, and carried out by Westerners. We can forget the various other scenarios promoted over the years. All are false, even the one in Raoul Peck’s movie on the assassination. There were no enraged villagers, no sinister bayonet-wielding ministers, and no Katangan firing squads. The truth is less dramatic, more grisly, and even more sad. The three men, who had served their country honorably in extremely difficult circumstances, were taken to an empty farmhouse, beaten, tortured, and shot in the head gangland style by members of what the CIA reported was an “all White” squad.

The leaders of this death squad and the superiors who commanded them were under-cover Belgian security officers working with both the Belgian government and the CIA. The transfer of the prisoners to their doom was organized by them in cahoots with Sabena airlines officials. Both countries’ armed forces were put on readiness for the two days of the event, so they could invade Congo if Lumumba escaped. The CIA chief transported Lumumba’s body, and a Belgian officer employed by the CIA did the job of destroying it in sulfuric acid. (He kept body parts and showed them gleefully on TV a few years ago.) The use of acid was suggested by the Belgian field assassination project field director, and the UMHK mining company probably supplied it. The Belgian field director wrote the Lumumba Soviet forgeries, false cover-up stories for Katangan leaders to deliver, and forged transfer and execution orders implicating Congolese and Katangan ministers.

An investigation to find and punish the murderers ordered by the Security Council was kept out of Congo by UN secretariat officers working with the CIA. The Belgian field director fed the commission further false accusations about Katangan ministers.

Belgian officers on the assassination team, most of whom came from so-called colonialist “Ultra”, secret White Supremacist and anti-communist groups, carried out war crimes of racial cleansing among tribes who supported Lumumba’s party at the time. They organized, staffed, armed, transported, and directed squads of foreign paramilitaries to shoot tribespeople on sight, burn their villages, and interrogate and kill prisoners. A low estimate given of the deaths was 7,000.

If both governments and the UN are still withholding their archives on the crimes, where has this information on criminal culpability come from? Mainly from publications and testimony by the perpetrators, who were boastful and hungry for recognition. Within hours of the murder they were drunk and blabbing about town (The first to leak was a Belgian CIA agent from the team.), and soon many people had heard the tale from their lips.

Yet neither the assassinations nor these war crimes were ever investigated or brought before a judge or jury. The three commissions formed to investigate covered up rather than illuminated the crime. Why could they do this? Because of the overweening power of the Western nations compared to post-colonial countries. The West has long controlled the money, technology, transportation, the international arena, the press, and the academic community that still dominates discourse about the murders.

More than 16 members of the Lumumba operations team are still alive, and several are still working covertly against the interests of Congo. There are at least three in the US, one in South Africa, one in Germany, and the rest, in Belgium. These men must be brought to justice and removed from public spheres where they can still do damage. A team of courageous lawyers in Belgium have begun the process by writing a criminal complaint. Many human rights scholars and workers are helping them with their research findings. May their work bear fruit.

Billions of dollars were spent on these crimes, so these countries owe Congo and the families of the victims that much and more in reparations. They should also supply high speed internet and netbooks for all Congolese for the next 50 years and provide the where-with-all for advanced transportation and sustainable energy systems.

As anthropologists have shown, African societies have a long tradition of communal leadership and justice. Of all those involved in the crisis, it was Congolese who held most firmly to the principles of democracy. A much larger proportion of registered voters voted than do in the West. Parliament held firm in its support for Lumumba as long as he lived. The constant drumbeat against the elected leaders and Parliament came from the West, and it was the West that ultimately engineered the abusive thirty-year dictatorship of Mobutu.

Congo deserves and will one day have the peace, prosperity, success, power, and influence that it deserves. With its history of rich, technologically and culturally advanced, long-lived empires and kingdoms such as the Luba, Kuba, Kongo, and Mangbetu, this country has the cultural heritage for making the most of its size, resources, population, and location. Let all good-willed people work to make that happen.

Long live the Congo!

Secrecy, National Security, and Democracy in America

Many of us who worked for Barack Obama’s election have been seriously disappointed by his administration’s actions against openness and accountability in our national security agencies. If things continue as they have, many of us won’t vote for him the next time around, not to speak of working on the campaign.

Why do we feel this way? Isn’t a strong national security something necessary to our safety and world peace? Well, yes. The problem is that what he and the leaders of his justice department and intelligence agencies have been doing is actually diminishing the rule of law and the competence and relevance of our security agencies for supporting a democratic society both here and in foreign countries.

The founders, coming fresh from their armed confrontation with a colonial tyranny, instituted a balance of powers among the executive, congress, and the courts. Even the conduct of war was divided between among the powers, and the courts were given the power to limit war powers in the interests of the citizens.

Yet, presidential actions and edicts have recently been used to upset these much needed balances. President Obama and President Bush before him have gone against our laws to eavesdrop extensively on citizens without court orders. There is absolutely no national security interest that requires the by-passing of the wisdom of our judges in the balancing of national security interests and those of citizens. Many times in human history, national security agencies have become abusive when freed from the rule of law and accountability before citizens. Frequently, such abuses have been carried out at the behest of presidents. When security agencies do not have to justify their policies and practices to the people’s representatives and to judges that they become abusive. Abusive security agencies never enhance their countries security. Their engagement in illegal and counter-productive activities only hurts national security and it is fatal to democracy.

It is a sad fact that few human organizations are able to effectively investigate and punish incompetence or possible wrong-doing within. The most common stance is defensive: deny, cover up, and keep doing the questionable activities. This is one of the reasons for the balance of powers. When Presidents Bush and Obama weakened judges supervision over their surveillance of citizens, they helped to weaken the competence and relevance of surveillance.

Just as President Bush erred grievously in allowing illegal arrest, imprisonment, and torture in US and allied countries’ prisons abroad, so did President Obama in not investigating and punishing the destruction of the torture films and records. Most interrogation experts agree that torture is not necessary or helpful in getting good intelligence. It usually is practiced for misplaced revenge or hatred of an ethnic, racial, class, or national group. Rather than solve national security problems, it deeply corrupts the practitioners and spawns yet more terrorists among those harmed by the practices.

Let us work for our and our country’s safety and security by holding our executive accountable for his responsibilities to uphold the constitution that is the reason our country is great.

Viva Tunisia!

After so many years of dictatorship, Tunisians have taken a first step to freeing themselves. Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, a man too cowardly to face the electorate and too power-hungry and greedy to give up his ill-gotten presidency, has abjectly fled their protests. But, rather than obey Tunisia’s constitution, which requires that authority now transfer to Parliamentary leaders, the president’s cronies who stayed behind are trying to keep the power.

President Obama’s thoughtful and encouraging words on this occasion may give them pause, despite past US support for the dictatorship. It’s shameful that US foreign policies have been such as to require the help of dictators rather than freely elected leaders chosen by the people. Maybe our country’s leaders need to thoroughly re-think these policies and develop goals that can be pursued in ways that fosters freedom and peace in the world. Many dictators supported by the US, its NATO allies, Russia, or China, would not survive long without their help. Let’s hope that he means what he says and walks his talk. It’s all well and good for Mrs. Clinton to fulminate about the abuses of Arab leaders, but American leaders need tailor their actions to fit their words and stop propping up illegitimate leaders.

And journalists of big, corporate newspapers like the New York Times can help our country by doing as David Kirkpatrick did in his story on the Tunisian story: give the context of events in past and present US policies and actions and those of their allies. He makes clear that this burdensome and illegal presidency has long been backed by the US., purportedly in support of anti-terrorism. Too often events in African countries are reported in the US without this vital context, leaving out that important clue to their causality. This practice fosters uninformed opinions about the world among Americans and their representatives, leading to more ill-judged foreign policies in the future. The proliferation of dictatorships under the overt and covert guidance of the US and other powerful countries only leads to more terrorism, as the citizens of the countries in thrall find peaceful, democratic options closed to them. In Tunisia, as in many countries, police forces, probably trained by foreign security agencies, often respond to political demonstrations with unwarranted violence and abusive arrests.

May this hopeful event both be a harbinger for better things ahead for Tunisia and a warning to the big countries to keep their oars out if they can’t support the sea change toward democracy and the rule of law.

Extrajudicial Detentions in US's prison at Bagram Air Base

For those who prize the rule of law as one of the most important factors protecting human rights worldwide, it is outrageous that the Obama administration is OK with holding prisoners at Bagram Airbase in long-term, extrajudicial detention. Despite the recent sop thrown by the US to Human Rights organizations -- to at least set up a review of prisoners's cases -- the prisoners still don't get the basic legal rights to have a lawyer, contact their families, see written charges, respond to the charges, and have access to a trial with a judge, to contest the charges, and get a decision onthe case. Those who would review the cases will not be independent prosecutors or judges, and the detainees still don't have the rights people have in the majority of countries in the world.

The long detentions are frequently linked to weak cases against detainees. Mistakes in identifying culprits are very common, as is shown by the unraveling of rape cases since DNA allows secure identification of rapists, and in war zones or terrorism hot spots the confusion and lack of communication is great, making mistakes even more likely. Many long-term US prisoners have been quietly released with time because the government simply has no case to prosecute. And both CIA and FBI officers have said in public that most of the cases of US refusal to publicize charges against long-term detainees were not related to legitimate national security issues but to hide official incompetence or illegality.

All US foreign detentions need to be properly legally handled, whether the prisoners were "rendered" or are incarcerated in their own countries. US citizens and contractors must be accountable to US laws no matter where they travel. Just as US sexual abusers who go to southeast Asia are subject to prosecution in the States, US authorities who illegally and abusively detain people abroad must be subject to adjudication in the US system. In a country practically occupied by the US, like Afghanistan, the obligation to properly adjudicate cases is even stronger. If classified information really is at issue in a case of detention, a US judge still can hear and decide the case.

Erroneous detention of people for suspected terrorism is very harmful to the protection of Americans from terrorist attacks because the true culprits were not apprehended, detained, and their cases prosecuted. When military or police incarcerate people without adequate evidence simply to appear to "do something" about a crime that has been committed, it means that the real criminals went scott free to continue. This is the true harm to our security.

Americans need to ask themselves how it would be if they found themselves detained in this way. Citizens who get into trouble abroad will become even more vulnerable to problems in foreign legal systems if the US does not uphold universal legal rights for foreigners. What comes around goes around.

Gettleman off the point in NYT Week in Review Aug 16/09

In an unnecessarily long and windy piece in the NYT week in review Jeffrey Gettleman, "Our Man in Central Africa" opines that the excessive news coverage of the gaffe about Mrs. Clinton and her husband happened because "Americans" care more about celeb personals than about Africa. But here's an obvious case of the media mistaking its own interests and inclinations for those of the public. Gettleman spent many paragraphs over several days on the gaffe but just one or two on an African's opinion about US foreign policy in Africa.

(A Congolese student asked Mrs. Clinton if the US would assassinate him if he became president are followed an independent course of policy not in synch with US's perceived interests. She gave a dignified but humble answer that acknowledged problems with past US actions there.)

Contradictorily, Gettlement criticizes Mrs. Clinton's young team as elitist for hurrying the news team along and getting her quickly to the airport on a highway closed for that purpose.

In the same article, though, he describes how Mrs. Clinton courageously organized several public forums in Congo so that citizens could question her and express their views. Too, she put herself on the front lines in eastern Congo to interview refugees and focus on the massive problem of rape in the war zone.

Maybe this reporter should have slept in yesterday and waited until he had more illuminating, useful, and consistent comments on our Secretary of State's truly historic trip to a huge, rich, vital country that, but for colonial and neocolonial abuses should be the "US" or "Brazil" of Africa.