Nkunda Refs Unperson

People who had incurred the displeasure of the Party
simply disappeared and were never heard of again.
One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them.
The only real clue lay in the words 'refs unpersons',
which indicated that the person was dead.
He did not exist: he had never existed.

IS NKUNDA REFS UNPERSON?

Your name was removed from the registers.
Every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out,
your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten.
You were abolished, annihilated:
vaporized was the usual word.
~ 1984

One month ago today - on January 22, 2009 - Congo's fighter-for-freedom, Laurent Nkunda, was allegedly arrested in Rwanda and hasn't been seen or heard from since. When journalists asked Rwandan authorities for news about Nkunda's status and his whereabouts - or to interview him - they were told that nothing more about him would be said; that the subject was closed and that Nkunda was "going off the radar":

Mystery deepens as Nkunda chapter is 'closed'
by Josh Kron, Kenyan East African, Feb 7, 2009

Calling "the chapter on Nkunda closed," the last Rwandan public official communicating to the outside world about the excommunicated Congolese rebel under their custody said today it was going off the radar. After promising new information, the Rwandan military has instead fallen silent, this time they say for good, in regard to apprehension of General Laurent Nkunda, leader of the dominant rebel group, the National Congress for the People’s Defence (CNDP). This chapter may have closed, but this is a story still unfolding. The Congolese government, upon whose soil Nkunda, a Congolese citizen, launched a bloody rebellion in 2008, has publicly called on its neighbour and supposed co-partner in arresting him to hand him over to Kinshasa. But Rwanda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies even receiving official requests. Late on Wednesday, the spokesperson for the Rwandan army said "things were being discussed," and that they would "talk soon." By Thursday morning, events had turned pointedly, with Rwanda Defence Force spokesperson Major Jill Rutaremara, stating that nothing more on the subject would be said. "It is not my business any more," said Mr Rutaremara. "The chapter with Nkunda is closed, we will be speaking about it no more."

Nkunda, who worked alongside, but not necessarily under, the Rwandan government and military in the late 1990s in Congo as part of the Rally for Congolese Democracy, was said to still be supported by the Rwandan government in a December 2008 United Nations report. Though strongly denying the accusation, the government of Rwanda has repeatedly turned down opportunities to defuse the growing sense that intimate associations exist. Multiple sources in the Rwandan city of Gisenyi have said Nkunda has been spotted moving freely around town, though he may not be allowed to leave the city. Rwanda Defence Force spokesperson Maj Rutaremara has said Nkunda’s "movements are limited," and that he is in fact in Gisenyi, opposite the Congolese city of Goma the Tutsi general once threatened. Now, Nkunda has been "pushed out of business in Congo," according to one source remaining anonymous in Kigali, but is enjoying his days in Rwanda, peacefully and comfortably. "He’s the type of person who will hurt you if you hurt him." So instead of treating him like other criminals who cross borders armed and illegally, a general soft-spoken consensus among many Rwandans is that his life is more "precious" than that. His days are said to be spent at around the Lake Kivu city, and one source spotted Nkunda at the La Corniche café. But this has not been independently confirmed.... [end quoting]

And, true to their word, Nkunda's name - since then - is never mentioned in their newspapers or anywhere in their media - even though the Rwandan army is allegedly fighting alongside Nkunda's CNDP forces continuing his mission of removing negative forces - ie Rwandan Hutus - from the Congo.

Prior to his arrest, Nkunda's nationalist militia - the CNDP - had been single-handedly fulfilling the peace-conference mandates of going after Congo's negative forces - especially the Rwandan Hutus - and had made great headway in fulfilling that mandate. In the areas of Eastern Congo that Nkunda controlled - North Kivu - the various tribes of Congolese (including Hutu and Tutsi) were living safely in their homes and on their plots of land growing food and raising cattle in that most fertile of all of Congo's land.

Now that Nkunda has been taken out of the equation the old status quo has returned to Eastern Congo with the corrupt United Nations feeding off the misery their 17,000 warmaking peacekeepers thrive on - backed by the corrupt government of the Congo, under President Kabila whose FARDC soldiers haven't been paid in months so resort to looting and raping alongside the Rwandan Hutu and Congolese Mai-Mai they're supposed to be fighting against.

This lack of news about Nkunda is very Orwellian and reminds me of passages straight out of "1984" (although different circumstances entirely):

"...In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers. Every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word....

"...People who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them. The only real clue lay in the words 'refs unpersons', which indicated that the person was dead. He did not exist: he had never existed. Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents, had disappeared at one time or another. Very occasionally some person whom you had believed dead long since would make a ghostly reappearance at some public trial where he would implicate hundreds of others by his testimony before vanishing, this time for ever....

"...Winston worked in the Records Department (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times [London newspaper]. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify....Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one....

"In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed....)

"Winston's friend (actually comrade, people didn't have friends these days), Syme, worked in the Research Department of the Ministry of Truth. Syme, a specialist in Newspeak, was one of the enormous team of experts engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary....

"Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought....There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox....Yet a faint air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians....

"The eyeless creature with the quacking voice would never be vaporized. The little beetle-like men who scuttled so nimbly through the labyrinthine corridors of Ministries - they too, would never be vaporized. It seemed to Winston that he knew instinctively who would survive and who would perish: though just what it was that made for survival, it was not easy to say....

"Syme had vanished. A morning came, and he was missing from work: a few thoughtless people commented on his absence. On the next day nobody mentioned him. On the third day Winston went into the vestibule of the Records Department to look at the notice-board. One of the notices carried a printed list of the members of the Chess Committee, of whom Syme had been one. It looked almost exactly as it had looked before -- nothing had been crossed out -- but it was one name shorter. It was enough. Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed...."

"...Working hours had been drastically increased in anticipation of Hate Week. The preparations for Hate Week were in full swing, and the staffs of all the Ministries were working overtime. Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork displays, film shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked. Julia's unit in the FICTION DEPARTMENT had been taken off the production of novels and was rushing out a series of atrocity pamphlets. Winston, in addition to his regular work, spent long periods every day in going through back files of The Times and altering and embellishing news items which were to be quoted in speeches. Late at night, when crowds of rowdy proles roamed the streets, the town had a curiously febrile air. The rocket bombs crashed oftener than ever, and sometimes in the far distance there were enormous explosions which no one could explain and about which there were wild rumours...."

Nkunda off-radar since arrest in Rwanda (no one in world has seen or heard from). Jan 22 - Feb 22, 2009. Go to 20.Thought Police & 27.Goodthink (people who incurred displeasure of Party disappeared & never heard of again) & 36.Hate Week

Joseph Kabila has control over Congolese affairs (The Struggle Continues). CNDP, Feb 22, 2009
The only control that Joseph Kabila has shown since he won the elections bought for him by the international community, is to get rid of anyone who reminds him that one is elected to serve the people, not himself. Since 2006, the same community doesn’t stop telling us that Congo is now a democratic country. The very expensive leadership, too content to be found within the institutions purchased with Western taxpayers’ money has so far produced no results for the Congolese people. The zeal against those who courageously challenge this mediocrity seems to be the only activity in which Joseph Kabila and his faithful falcons are skilled for. We will never remind enough the way he got rid of the MLC Chairman. HRW, in a burst of common sense, but for its own interests, made a report detailing the hunt to opponents. The Kinshasa dictatorial system has reached its peak in the phlegm with which Joseph Kabila despises the Congolese people and behaves like a leopoldian colonialist. Here are some indicators of its colonialist tendencies. The use of ethnicity tactics to create the scapegoat on which he can guide the diversion of all Congolese and make them forget about his regime’s failure. General Nkunda was highly against the exploitation of this tactic. A fierce opponent because he understood that it was not only about the destiny of an ethnic group, but of all the Eastern DRC and the Republic in general. We have long said, Kabila’s racist game has multiple sides and is played in various phases. But they all have the same denominator: they are a diversion that plays on the Congolese imagination described by me several times on the blog. A diversion to prevent people from seeing the economic collapse, the military disaster, the lack of political vision focusing on Congolese’s dignity, the lack of diplomatic strategy at regional and global level, the shameful and outrageous greed in economic negotiations with China, the contempt of Congolese workers, the squandering of human and natural resources, the incredible educational irresponsibility and most recently, the opening of borders for an official foreign occupation, etc.... You understand then that accusing one man, be it Nkunda, is not enough to hide this lack of leadership....

Joseph Kabila used the ethnic tactic to have foreign army back in the DRC. By buying Bosco Ntaganda’s dissension within the CNDP, he created a new ethnicist line. You have the proof in the outcome of the talks led by Raymond Tshibanda in Goma this week....The Minister should not be proud of changing interlocutors as shirts. It is just like colonizers who bought local chiefs with small squares of mirror and this is again what Kabila did when he invited Kivu traditional leaders in Kinshasa. Instead of mirrors, there are U.S. dollars. Same operation, with different amounts for the trio-Munyampenda-Kamanzi-Ntaganda. I wonder if they remember the troops or if they are already acting as FARDC officers, starving the men in uniform....Kinshasa has actually pretended to be surprised by the absence of the CNDP members, those who were in Nairobi. One must be stupid! How to believe that the masquerade taking place in Goma could be a continuity of the work done in Nairobi? Maybe they realized they were not dealing with the real CNDP. However, Kinshasa is happy to deal with a team that does not question the leadership that ruins the DRC. Kamanzi’s team performs this function but for how long?....A minister of cooperation should know however that dealing with an illegitimate movement that lacks support can bring neither a solution nor peace. What underlines the loyalty of membership to CNDP Nkunda is the national character of its political claims, which of course includes the issue of minorities, but it does not constitute the substance of it. The essential of the CNDP’s vision can be summarized as follow: a political governance that stands out completely from the current corrupted system. As far as this system is in place, despite all the kitchen talks we can organize in Goma, the CNDP struggle remains not only complete, but more urgent than ever. It is a shame that in the 21st century, the DRC continues to survive by other countries’ diplomacy. The struggle continues and therefore the resistance.

The soldiers are hungry, CNDP, Feb 15, 2008 (Since the "mixage" of CNDP and FARDC troops that started on January 27, 2009, food for soldiers is lacking. Yesterday February 13, 2009, the troops in operation against the FDLR in North Kivu had spent three days without eating.... Starvíng the troops is normal and common in the FARDC while Senior Officers laze in 4X4 jeeps and use the most expensive wine ordered from western capital cities with money from misappropriated soldiers’ salaries....CNDP's soldiers are those suffering the most. They were used to eat twice a day, at fixed hours and can not understand that a soldier would spend a whole day without eating....Some sources told us that starving the troops is part of a deliberate manoeuvre - with the assistance of some dark forces - to discourage young motivated soldiers and for the sole purpose of breaking up troops that could constitute a basis for a real system of security and defense for the country. If such information is confirmed, we would then ask: who benefits from the absence of a strong army in the DR Congo?...)

Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~

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