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A singer in jail, justice in DRC and Rwanda, Iraqi violence and Jean Sarkozy

by Tony Cross

Article published on the 2009-10-23 Latest update 2009-10-23 14:02 TU

A cartoon on Mondomix website
(Credit: Mondomix)

An imprisoned Cameroonian singer's wife gets a boost from World Tracks. Is international justice too soft on DRC atrocities and too tough on some Rwandans? Why do Iraqi suicide bombers do it? And why did Jean Sarkozy drop out of the race for a prestigious job?

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Daniel Brown’s World Tracks on the campaign to free Lapiro de Mbanga delighted the wife of jailed Cameroon musician, campaigners tell us.

Her husband was overjoyed when she let him know about the broadcast, she says.

RFI would be happy to hear the Cameroon government’s response to the programme, too!

The International Court of Human Rights should be taking action against those responsible for atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, thinks DRC charity worker Luis Mupemu. He is especially angry about the rape and murder of women in the region bordering Rwanda.

“Some girls here never bean mariage here seak by HIV/AIDS they have no future nothing good for them because of the war,” he writes. The warlords responsible for the violence have families to bring them comfort, he says “but these poore poeple … I have see more discrimination that aganst theme, some of the women here very young widows because of the war.

“I have no power to stand to speak for theme because the gouverment of DRC they not promote democratie for somebordy to speak for other persone.”

Parisian Yann-Loic Robert believes that international justice and public opinion are biased over Rwanda.

“One has to ask oneself if there is only one sort of justice in the case of the Rwandan civil war,” he comments after reading our report of a genocide suspect found working in a French hospital.

“The last 15 years’ media and personal hue and cry against alleged genocide perpetrators is, in my opinion, just a series of insidious acts by the current Kigali regime, supported by the western powers.

“It is clear that this doctor is simply accused because he is part of a Rwandan intelligentsia which frightens the country’s present government.”

“To blow up your fellow countrymen at a prayer meeting and claim that it in the name of God is absurd,” writes an anonymous contributor in response to our report of a suicide bombing in Iraq. “I'm sure a few years early that man who blew himself up was just like any other man praying in a Mosque and probably would have like to keep his life.”

And the rise and rise of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s son Jean continues to annoy Ousmane Moreau, even after he has bowed out of the race to head the body planning the redevelopment of Paris's La Défense business district.

“By refusing to take the job even when elected, Jean Sarkozy just saved his father's neck!” he comments. “Did the boy get mature overnight? Did the father and son step back because of the unabated booing?

“Accused of nepotism, Sarkozy,the father, whose overriding issues include, among other things,stop the "golden parachutes" in the wake of the recent economic meltdown, was rightly compared to a leader of a Banana Republic … People were just curious to know what type of advice this staunch defender of democracy would give to African Presidents, especially those bent on having their kins have a grip on power through undemocratic ways: Gabon, Togo, Egypt, Libya, Senegal where all signs point to the same succession pattern.”

News about RFI

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