PRESS RELEASE:
Wiesbaden, May 2, 1997
Former Ugandan President Godfrey Binaisa,
US politician Lyndon LaRouche,
Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp LaRouche,
and leading opposition politicians from Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi
call for a policy of Peace through Development for Africa's Great Lakes Region
For More Information Please Call: 703-777-9451 x 250
On April 26 and 27, 1997, the Executive Intelligence Review, Forum für Frieden and Demokratie (Bonn), and the Schiller Institute, cosponsored a seminar on the crisis in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Almost exactly 25 years after the genocide against the Hutu population in Burundi began in April of 1972, the participants of the seminar accused the international community of scandalous indifference to the ongoing genocide against the mostly Hutu refugees in Zaire. They appealed to President Clinton, to intervene militarily to stop the genocide and protect the refugees from further mass murder by the Kabila forces, and to exert political pressure on Uganda's President Museveni, Rwanda's strongman Kagame and Burundi's putschist Buyoya to stop their war in Zaire.
Forty guests from Africa were present at the seminar. From Uganda, former ambassador Dr. Peter Jjumba led a delegation.
Burundi was represented by a high-level delegation of the Council for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD). The delegation was led by the CNDD's General Secretary, William Munyembabazi, and the international spokesman, Jerome Ndiho, and included former high-level appointees of the murdered President Melchior Ndadaye: Jaques Bacamurwanko, former ambassador to Washington; Perpetue Nshimirimana-Gashaza, former ambassador to the United Nations; and Joseph Bangurambona, former ambassador to Nairobi. Also Joseph Ntakirutimana, Frodebu member of the Burundian parliament, and Dr. Evariste Gafumbegete, secretary of the CNDD for Germany, as well as the secretaries for France and Belgium, were present.
For Rwanda, the Rally for the Return of Democracy and Refugees (RDR) was represented by its president, Francois Nzabahimana, former Minister of Trade. He led a delegation of representatives from Rwandan refugee organizations from France, E. Rwirangira; from the Benelux countries, Dr. J. B. Butera; from England, J. Habimana; and, from Germany, Str. Musoni. Furthermore, Rwanda Pour Tous was represented by Nkiko Nsengimana. Jean Gahururu and Ignace Murwanashyaka from Rwanda participated as the cosponsors of the Forum fuer Frieden and Demokratie.
From Kivu, Convergence BEK was represented by its President Advocat, Hamuli Rety. Other intellectuals from Zaire, and John Agame, the Agofe of Lado, also took part.
The seminar analyzed, how these conflicts in East/Central Africa are being manipulated from the outside. It was stated, that the responsibility lies with that group of the Anglo-American establishment which locates its power in the British Commonwealth, and which is out to establish a new form of control over the raw materials of the region through warlords and mercenaries, while at the same time inciting fratricidal wars, such as between Hutu and Tutsi, to reduce the African population. The motivation of the heirs of Cecil Rhodes from London is, to grab assets in minerals before the great financial crash occurs. The seminar documented the tragic history of the conflicts in the region and exposed the hypocrisy of the West in treating Museveni, Kagame or Buyoya as respectable leaders, only because they make themselves willing tools of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank colonial policy, called structural adjustment.
Instead, the seminar called for a policy of Peace through Development in the tradition of Pope Paul VI. The participants signed a call to President Clinton to convene a New Bretton Woods conference to establish a new, just World Economic Order. The seminar resolved to put together a plan for the building of modern infrastructure, such as railways, highways and water projects, to facilitate the rapid development of modern agriculture and industry in the region, which would benefit the people and bring the countries up to European or American standards of living. The seminar ended with a passionate call by Godfrey Binaisa, who is the founder of an African Civil Rights movement: "We, the people of Africa, must finally throw off the yoke of the new colonialism and exercise our sovereignty by choosing `twentieth-century methods' for the most rapid economic development, which will enable all the men in all the lands of Africa to live out their lives in freedom from fear and want."
