Tagged with rwandan genocide
UNITED NATIONS (BNO NEWS) – The United Nations (UN) announced Thursday a week-long visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where both rebels and the national army have been accused of mass rape.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Margot Wallström is on her first tour since her appointment in February, making her way through the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu where more than 8,000 women were raped by warring factions in 2009, according to UN Population Fund.
Wallström mentioned that sexual violence is not exclusively an issue in Africa and even less so in Congo, as she expressed the necessity to fight sexual violence and find solutions. She also said, in a newspaper column in March, that sexual violence during conflicts was all too often downplayed and treated as part of local cultural traditions instead of being viewed as a war crime.
Although the mainly ethnic Hutu rebel militia, known as the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) – who have been operating in the Kivus since the 1994 Rwandan genocide – are thought to be responsible for most of the rapes, members of the national army are also guilty of sexual abuse in North and South Kivu provinces, according to UN experts.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) — The United States condemned Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles’ decision to jam Voice of America’s Amharic Service, the U.S. State Department said on Friday.
The U.S. also condemned Meles’ comparison of their programming to Radio Mille Collines, a radio station that projected racist propaganda and hate during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
“Comparing a respected and professional news service to a group that called for genocide in Rwanda is a baseless and inflammatory accusation that seeks only to deflect attention away from the core issue,” said State Department acting spokesman Gordon Duguid.
“The Prime Minister may disagree with news carried in Voice of America’s Amharic Service broadcasts; however, a decision to jam VOA broadcasts contradicts the Government of Ethiopia’s frequent public commitments to freedom of the press,” Duguid added.
The U.S. said the Ethiopian Constitution states that all citizens have the right to freedom of expression “without any interference” and that this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, “regardless of frontiers.”
