DRC

The convening in the splendid metropolis of New York of this last General Assembly session of the millennium affords me the happy opportunity, on behalf of the people, the Government of Public Salvation and the head of State, His Excellency President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to convey our warmest greetings to all people the world over who love peace and justice. It is my pleasant duty also to congratulate the President of the General Assembly and the other Assembly officers on their unanimous election to the leadership of the Assembly at its fifty-fourth session. My country views the election to the presidency of Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab as recognition of his many sterling qualities, both human and professional, and as an acknowledgement by the international community of the important role played by his country, Namibia, in building an Africa and a world that will be marked by peace, political stability and economic prosperity. The President may be sure that the delegation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo will unreservedly support him in fulfilling his mandate and in guiding the work of the Assembly to a successful conclusion. I also extend to his predecessor, Mr. Didier Opertti, our full appreciation of the extremely important work he did during his presidency, as well as the commitment he showed throughout to the triumph of the ideals embodied in the United Nations Charter. Finally, my delegation would like to welcome here in our world Organization three new Members: the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru and the Kingdom of Tonga. I invite Members to read my prepared text at their leisure, so that I may say a few other things. I begin with a good quotation, from Article 2 of the United Nations Charter: “The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles. “1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members. “2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter. “3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peach and security, and justice, are not endangered. “4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”. I say to representatives: This is the United Nations Charter, your Charter. Are there represented in this Hall — yes or no — Members that violate these principles governing relations between nations? Are there represented in this Hall — yes or no — Members that do worse than those that do not pay their dues, or pay them late, regarding which immediate reminders are sent, and rightly so, since the rules of procedure of the Organization of which they are Members prescribe that for its proper functioning each Member must pay its dues? Failing to do so even means being stripped of the right to speak here at the United Nations. So, if you have your right to speak taken away, if you are punished as a Member of the United Nations because you do not pay your dues, what about those who violate Article 2 of the Charter, who cross the boundaries of another State with their armies, sow hardship in that country, occupy vast portions of its territory, plunder its natural resources, steal the fauna and rare species of animals which international organizations recognize as being received by other countries, carry out a blitzkrieg such as the one in the early 1940s, without warning, without provocation, entering the country of another people with their arms and everything else they need, under pretexts which I shall expose in a little while. On 2 August 1998, some two years ago, our brothers from the hills of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda invaded our country in an unprovoked blitzkrieg, without having declared war, and it continues to this very day. For two years now those Members of the United Nations have been violating Article 2, and they continue to violate it, with arrogance and total impunity, which is not the case for those who fail to pay their dues. 28 It is perhaps better to violate Article 2, occupy other countries, pillage them, deport their inhabitants and torture children, women and old persons, than it is to commit the mortal sin of failing to pay up. There are two yardsticks, double standards, which we regard as an immense injustice. As I speak I feel the presence of illustrious persons who have spoken from this rostrum in the past, such as Cabral, Nkrumah and — I say this with a great deal of emotion — Lumumba, who came here to denounce what was being set in train more than 30 years ago, under United Nations banners which is now being repeated. We know the United Nations. The French rightly say “A cat that has been scalded is even afraid of cold water.” They have already come, those United Nations forces; they came to restore peace, and the result was that for one of the most illustrious sons of our people, the most admired African nationalist President Patrice Lumumba, the flag of the United Nations served as a shroud. We do not wish, we will not allow, that same flag to be a shroud for those who have taken up the torch that fell from Lumumba's hands and who carried it, with some help of course, as far as lying down — with their boots on — in Mobutu's bed. This is something with which the Assembly is familiar. It is on behalf of my President, my friend, my long- time comrade, that I speak. As representatives will see, and as I often say, we will have no more charming “Rastas”, because we lost our hair waiting for President Kabila to return to relight the torch that fell from Lumumba's hands. If people do not watch out, if they let things slide along, if they tolerate arrogance and do not stand up to impunity, there are those who will begin to dream of wrapping Kabila up in the United Nations flag, as was done in the case of Patrice Lumumba not long ago. When events are repeated, they do not always happen in exactly the same way, but sometimes the repetition strikes a familiar chord. Now we see the United Nations delaying putting an end to what it calls euphemistically the “conflict” in the Great Lakes region. This terminology is being used for some reason — but what? A foreign army crosses the border, occupies the country, a part of the country; it pillages the country's wealth — and the United Nations calls this a “conflict”? We should check our dictionaries. This is a war. Instead of shouting themselves hoarse about sending peacekeepers, Member States must send people who can put an end to the war. This is what I am waiting for. Our Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundi brothers must be solemnly requested here and now to go back home. They have no business being in our country. They are undermining all national reconstruction efforts. This should be clear to those who understand the condition in which we found this country, which used to be called Zaire and which we now call, as Lumumba called it, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The presence of these outsiders, their occupation, impedes our efforts to reconstruct our country. They came upon us like thieves who attack without warning. They attacked while we were busy sowing corn, peanuts and beans, and we were doing so because that was what we was needed in this country that is overflowing with diamonds, gold, cobalt, copper and so forth. In order to help our people we had begun by planting peanuts, corn and beans, but our efforts were stopped cold by these people who are now in our territory, who came from the hills, who came to defend their borders — their borders that, according to them, were threatened by genocidal bands in our country. I ask the Assembly to look at a map of Africa, a map of the Congo in particular. I come from the Atlantic Coast province of Bas-Congo. Do you know where these people who began the war came from, in order to secure their borders? They came from 2,000 kilometres away from my province. They began in my province in order to secure borders 2,000 kilometres away. They brought soldiers 2,000 kilometres from their borders in order to begin the occupation of our country. Luckily, they took a licking, and they would all have been wiped out if the Americans had not asked us to allow them to return home along a designated route. They retreated after their thrashing and tried their luck in the east of our country. After the ceasefire requested by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, United Nations staff went to the area to carry out an order of the World Health Organization to vaccinate all children up to five years of age. We have vaccinated them in the part of the country that we continue to control. But these others — who only have two hands, both of which are busy pillaging — have yet to vaccinate the children in this age group. Thus, these children are in danger not only of polio, but also of other diseases that the agencies of our Organization have been striving to eliminate from our continent. These soldiers do not have time to vaccinate our children. They do not even have time to pillage effectively because these Horatii and Curiatii have taken to fighting each other on our soil. They came to take control of our country, but now, how strange, they are fighting each other, these people who came to teach us 29 democracy, these people who came to restore peace. In order to have a break from their looting, they are enjoying a little war on our land, and in the process destroying the 3 million doses of vaccine that the United Nations, through the World Health Organization, sent to Kisangani. They shoot at each other, each band allied with this or that local. This is what is happening. And then these people take their place here as United Nations Members — after having treated us like that, and as they continue to do so. They are building up their arsenals, bringing in troops, taking towns. What reassures us is the teaching of the Marquis de Sade that taking is not the same as possessing. Thus, these people are taking towns but they do not possess them. And they will not posses them because, just as in erotic relations, there is no possession without consent — that consent that has been given to us. Otherwise, our people would not have fled to the forests to escape from these people who come from the hills. Our citizens' lengthy stay in the forests has led to the reappearance of some diseases that were eradicated as long ago as the Belgian colonial era. Having to flee the invaders like the plague makes our citizens' lives more difficult. And these people from the hills continue to advance even though they signed with us, last 10 July, a Ceasefire Agreement that lacks both fire and a cease, as they continue to advance and lay siege to our cities. Their latest exploit, which they are now engaged in, is to lay siege to the city of Mbuji-Mayi, the world diamond capital, but also the world capital of children afflicted with polio. I do not think that their haste and willingness to return to Mbuji-Mayi are out of desire to vaccinate the poor Congolese children who are infected with or at risk of getting polio. These people from the hills do not have a third hand, as I said earlier, yet I am sure that, driven by their greed, they are going to take as many diamonds and as much copper and cobalt as they can — and at the risk of fighting each other for these minerals, since Uganda also wants to take them. The statistics on sales of diamonds indicate that last month our Rwandan brothers sold more than a million carats of diamonds — a mineral not mined in their country — and with the money from the sales they are buying weapons so as to be able to fight us. Then they take more diamonds, buy more weapons and continue to fight us. In this Hall speeches have been made against dirty money. Therefore, we are outraged to see bloodstained cobalt, bloodstained copper, bloodstained gold and bloodstained diamonds for sale on the international market, and to see that it does not occur to the buyers of this booty to put a stop to this practice by refusing to buy it — even though they oppose dirty money. Double standards continue to prevail. Dirty money poses a threat to the world. And yet, while the blood of the Congolese people is spattered on our cobalt, our copper and our gold, that doesn't seem to bother those from all over the world who buy them and give money to the pillagers and occupiers our country. If we revisit this issue, I reserve the right to address it again. I wish, however, to speak out loud and clear against the infamous pretext that has aroused the world's prurience and sensitivity about genocide. Those who are guilty of genocide are in our country right now. Let them leave and go on sowing misery in their own countries: Rwanda, Uganda or Burundi. As I said at the outset, President Kabila has raised Lumumba's torch and welcomed those who sought refuge in our country, because over there you do not seek refuge — you get your throat slit. I was just a schoolboy when I saw Hutus fleeing cutthroat Tutsi and Tutsi fleeing cutthroat Hutus. They all sought refuge with us. That is how those who helped us, who walked with us on our march on Kinshasa, came to be refugees in our country — they fled Hutus who would have cut their throats. That is at the heart of the current instability and reflects the values of our brothers in Rwanda. We must help our Rwandese to change their political culture. When the “one man one vote” law was enacted in 1960, the obsession of each of these groups was to seize power and abuse it in order to hasten the carnage. This carnage has been alternating and reciprocal and did not begin in 1994. I cited a date when I was in short pants, and I can assure the Assembly that it was not yesterday. It is the open faucet that produced the interahamwe that we must close. Rwanda must become democratic; Rwanda must adopt a culture of politics and abandon its culture of carnage. Rwanda must leave our country; Uganda must leave our country; Burundi must leave our country and turn over the task of providing security to United Nations observers, who will take their place and serve as a buffer force between us. Those people are our neighbours and we can never replace our neighbours, but they are on our territory, which means they are no longer our neighbours. I ask the Assembly to help us to resume our status as neighbours. Let them go back home and if 30 there are problems that we must settle among ourselves, we shall settle them by peaceful means. I am speaking without acrimony. We hold out our hands to our brothers from Rwanda, who have been here for several days. I offer them signals of friendship when we pass, and they respond. We are here so that in three months, when the new millennium dawns, we will not still be fighting. One must deal with urgent matters quickly. The Lusaka process, in which I participated, raised hopes that have been dashed by dilatory tactics. One moment the Congolese and Rwandese affiliates who refuse to come; the next, it is the Ugandans or their Congolese puppets. Here we are on 29 September and nothing has yet been done seriously to implement an Agreement that was reached on 10 July. That is why we ask the Assembly, if only out of respect for the Articles of the Charter, to do something about it. It is intolerable and incomprehensible that these people remain, and may even take the floor here, while they continue to violate the United Nations Charter and the principles that bring us together here. If you violate the principles of an organization to which you belong, you are no longer worthy of belonging. We must remind our brothers that, as Members of the United Nations, they are bound to respect the Charter. This cannot be done by occupying other people's countries. If differences must be settled by invasion and plunder, there will no longer be a United Nations, because there will no longer be any rules to unite us. That prompts my request to the Assembly, because the suffering being endured by the Congolese people and the atrocities being visited upon us are unimaginable. Under the very nose of the Vatican, in the Italian mission of Kasika, these new-style Huns entered, tore open the chest of a traditional chief, pulled out his heart, shredded it and distributed the pieces like hosts. The killers who did this sucked on the bloody heart as if it were an ice-cream cone. We have seen this and continue to witness such acts. Our United Nations mission is at Members' disposal to provide irrefutable testimony, which we have published in a three-volume white paper that could easily grow into further volumes describing similar incidents. We have requested that this white paper be issued as a working document of the Security Council. All are invited to study it in order to understand precisely what is happening and to put an end to this situation — to save the United Nations itself, to help us Africans, and the Congolese in particular, who had to wait 32 years to defeat and eliminate a regime of notorious satraps, only to see new satraps step in two months later to occupy our country and put it to the sword. Help us to make our Rwandese, Ugandan and Burundian brothers understand that they must go home. They have no business in our country; let them relinquish their place to United Nations forces, which will secure their borders. That is in itself a fiction that we have not had an opportunity to dwell on. They helped us to raise Lumumba's torch. They were in our army. Most officers in our army were from Rwanda, as was the Chief of Staff, who dispatched his troops on the basis of his particular military skills. Moreover, these people have occupied that region of our country for two years and are still hunting the Interahamwe, as the Incas were once hunted here. They will not stop until Joe the Ugandan and Bill the Rwandese have extended their hunting grounds to the entire territory of our country while they prance after the Interahamwe. This is just a pretext. If they were not able to catch a single Interahamwe while their officers were in our army; if they have been unable to stop the interahamwe in their two-year occupation of that region, then the task is beyond them. It must be left to the United Nations to unseat these Interahamwe, if they exist, and let us pursue our national reconstruction. I have a great deal more to say and believe that we will have further opportunities in due course.