Imagine telling the cops to walk
their beats and not to intervene as long as the criminals do not endanger people's lives. This equates to giving the green light or carte blanche to criminals
to commit all types of crimes and walk free as long as they do not cause any wound to the
civilian population. It is like telling them that they can steal, loot,
enslave, rape, and do all unimaginable atrocities provided they do not cause
any wound to their victims! Unfortunately, this has been the mandate the United
Nations gave to its largest mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo! In
the DRC, those criminals are the Rwanda-and-Uganda backed rebels whose atrocities
have been well documented and publicized enough in recent months throughout the
world.
As a criminologist and law
enforcement expert, I strongly believe that any United Nations military or
paramilitary force must be tasked with enforcing international law through the
use of all tools to force belligerent groups to comply with civilized codes of
conduct. Therefore, I urge the United Nations to strengthen its 19,000 troops
in the Congo so that they can respond with fire any time criminals in uniform,
also known as rebels and their foreign backers, violate decent norms of
conduct.
On the other hand, the most
perverse idea that has been floating in the international community in recent
months is that Congolese have the obligation to share their natural resources
with their neighbors. In other words, they sustain that the governments of Rwanda
and Uganda have to loot Congo’s resources because these two countries are so
poor that they rely on international donors to pay their own government
employees. This is what we call “neutralization” in criminology. Criminals use
neutralization techniques all the time. They tend to justify or rationalize why
they steal or commit any crime. I strongly believe that Congolese are
intelligent enough to reject any form of justification of predatory lootings of
Congo’s natural resources by Rwanda and Uganda during the last 15 years. The
truth is that no country in the world has to be forced to accept to be looted, period. It is stupid to camouflage the looting of Congo's resources by calling it "sharing" this time!
Foreign investment will always be
welcome in the Congo and we will make it paramount as we get rid of our own
dictatorship. Congolese must beware of those “mega investment projects or ideas” for the
entire Great Lakes region. Their only purpose is to legalize the looting of
Congo’s natural resources. It is sad that some individuals in the world want to
replace the term “looting” by “sharing”. Neutralization techniques at work!
UPDATE: The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided, four days after this post was published, that the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the DRC must be beefed up and that Tanzania, a key transit point for looted goods from the Congo, must be involved. I'm glad the message went through. FOLLOW LINK BELOW for Ban Ki-moon comments:
