Politics

M23 Angola peace talks break down as Congo, Rwanda dash hopes

Published

7 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Hopes of an agreement to end Congo’s M23 rebel conflict, which has displaced over 1.9 million people, were dashed when the presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced that their planned meeting would not proceed as scheduled.

In Angola, where protracted talks have attempted to reduce tensions between the neighbours connected to the almost three-year-old M23 rebellion, the gathering was intended to see a rare in-person meeting of the central African leaders.

A settlement was expected to be struck, which stoked expectations of ending a deadlock that has further destabilised eastern Congo and stoked worries of a wider battle in Africa’s Great Lakes area that might resemble the two catastrophic wars that killed millions of people between 1996 and 2003.

“The cancellation of this tripartite meeting is caused by the refusal of the Rwandan delegation to take part,” Congo’s presidency said in a statement.

It said that Congo rejected Rwanda’s conditional signature of a peace deal on Congo having direct negotiations with M23 rebels.

According to Rwanda’s foreign ministry, the country would not have been able to sign the deal on Sunday due to this lack of agreement.

Congo stated in a statement that delaying the meeting would give them more time to speak with M23 directly.

The proposed peace agreement called for Congo to eradicate the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel organisation that had attacked Tutsis in both countries, in exchange for Rwanda removing what it has described as its defensive measures in the conflict.

By using its troops and weaponry to back M23, an organisation established to protect the interests of Congolese Tutsis, the ethnic group to which Rwandan President Paul Kagame belongs, Rwanda is accused by Congo, the UN, and others of inciting the insurgency in North Kivu region. Rwanda disputes this, admitting only that it has resorted to defensive tactics, and charges Congo of enlisting FDLR fighters to fight alongside it.

According to U.N. specialists this year, there were between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwandan forces in Congo that had “de facto control” over M23 activities.

According to Jason Stearns, a Congo expert at Simon Fraser University in Canada, more has to be done by the international community to pressure Rwanda to compromise.

“There’s very little pressure, especially as the country putting the most pressure on Rwanda so far is the United States, which is going through a transition of its own,” he said.

Related Topics:Angola Congo DR Featured Rwanda

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Politics

Egyptian court upholds ex-presidential candidate Ahmed Tantawy’s sentence

Published

1 hour ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Former presidential candidate, Ahmed Tantawy, and his campaign manager, Mohamed Abou El-Diar, were found guilty of faking election paperwork, and given a one-year jail term with labour by an Egyptian court, Tantawy’s legal team announced Tuesday.

Last year, Tantawy was the most well-known candidate to run against Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for a third term, winning 89.6% of the vote.

To avoid receiving the necessary number of public endorsements to be on the ballot, he halted his campaign before to the election, alleging harassment and arrests directed at hundreds of his family members and associates.

Egyptian authorities criticised Tantawy’s tactic of distributing unapproved copies of endorsement forms to garner popular support, but they denied any misconduct.

Egypt’s Misdemeanour Appeals Court upheld the May court ruling on Monday, which prohibits Tantawy from seeking public office for five years and mandates that he pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($395).

Tantawy’s defence team member and well-known human rights attorney Khaled Ali said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the appeals procedure was riddled with anomalies.

Ali said lawyers struggled for months to confirm court dates, with hearings appearing absent from official schedules and case files missing from court registries.

The public prosecution was not immediately available to comment on the ruling or on Ali’s allegations over the process.

Politics

Court orders Uganda to compensate LRA war crimes victims

Published

2 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Uganda’s tribunal has ordered the government to pay up to 10 million Ugandan shillings ($2,740) to each victim of Lord’s Resistance Army commander, Thomas Kwoyelo, the first senior rebel leader to be convicted.

Kwoyelo, a mid-level LRA leader, was sentenced to 40 years in jail in October for war crimes like murder, rape, slavery, torture, and kidnapping.

Kwoyelo’s “indigent” status prevented him from compensating the victims, thus the court ordered the government to compensate.

Kwoyelo’s crimes were “a manifestation of failure on the part of the government that triggers a responsibility on the state to pay reparations to the victims,” the verdict added.

The court also ordered various financial compensation to Kwoyelo’s property destruction and theft victims.

From strongholds in northern Uganda, the LRA brutalised Ugandans under Joseph Kony for over 20 years while it fought the military to destroy the government.

The militants raped, abducted, cut off victims’ limbs and mouths, and bludgeoned them to death using crude implements.

Under military pressure, the LRA withdrew to lawless forests in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic in 2005 and perpetrated civilian atrocities.

Although assaults are rare, Kony and splintered groups are reported to dwell there.

Kwoyelo was taken by the Ugandan military in 2009 in the northeastern Congo, and his case made its way through Ugandan courts until he was found guilty in August.