Commonwealth should 'acknowledge' past wrongs, says Prince Harry

Yahoo – AFP, July 6, 2020

Harry, Duke of Sussex, seen here in conversation with Formula 1 champion Lewis
 Hamilton, had already spoken out last week against institutional racism (AFP
 Photo/PETER NICHOLLS)

London (AFP) - Prince Harry has urged the Commonwealth, which his grandmother heads, to acknowledge its uncomfortable colonial past, in video extracts published on Monday.

The 35-year-old royal and his wife, Meghan, joined a video conference call with leaders organised by the Queen's Commonwealth Trust (QCT) from their base in the United States.

The sessions were set up in response to the growing Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, during a US police arrest.

Harry last week outlined his personal commitment to tackling institutional racism, saying it had "no place" in society but was still too widespread.

On the July 1 call, posted on the QCT website, he said: "When you look across the Commonwealth, there is no way that we can move forward unless we acknowledge the past.

"So many people have done such an incredible job of acknowledging the past and trying to right those wrongs but I think we all acknowledge there is so much more still to do.

"It's not going to be easy and in some cases it's not going to be comfortable, but it needs to be done, because, guess what, everybody benefits."

Queen Elizabeth II is the head of the Commonwealth, a non-political organisation of 54 countries, most of which have links to the British Empire.

It comprises 2.4 billion people -- a quarter of the world's population -- of which 60 percent are aged under 30.

The QCT was set up to give younger people from member nations a platform to share ideas and insights.

The chief executive of the QCT, Nicola Brentnall, has said the body is studying how the Commonwealth's colonial past and its legacy should shape its future.

Harry and Meghan stepped down from frontline royal duties this year and have set up a non-profit organisation focusing on the promoting of mental health, education and well-being.

Meghan, a mixed-race US former actress, has previously talked about her own personal experience of racism and unconscious bias.

Former army officer Harry has also complained about the "racial undertones" of media coverage of his wife.

The couple are president and vice-president respectively of the QCT.

Belgian 'regret' for Congo past stirs bittersweet response

Yahoo – AFP, June 30, 2020

King Leopold II pillaged DR Congo and treated the colony as his personal
property (AFP Photo/SAMIR TOUNSI)

Kinshasa (AFP) - DR Congo hailed Belgium on Tuesday after its monarch, King Philippe, voiced his "deepest regrets" for the country's brutal colonial occupation, but some in the country demanded reparations for the past.

In a letter to President Felix Tshisekedi on the nation's 60th anniversary of independence, Philippe expressed unprecedented sorrow for colonial acts that historians say led to the death of millions of Congolese.

"I want to express my deepest regrets for these wounds of the past whose pain is reawakened today by the discrimination still present in our societies," Philippe said.

"Acts of violence and cruelty were committed which weigh on our collective memory," he said.

DR Congo Foreign Minister Marie Ntumba Nzeza, in statement to AFP, said the king's letter was "balm to the heart of the Congolese people. This is a step forward that will boost friendly relations between our nations."

Tshisekedi, in a TV address on the eve of the anniversary, paid tribute to Belgium, where he lived in self-imposed exile before returning to run successfully in the 2018 elections.

Philippe, he said, "is searching, just like me, to strengthen the ties between our two countries, without denying our common past, but with the goal of preparing a bright and harmonious future."

In contrast, Lambert Mende, the former spokesman of Tshisekedi's predecessor, Joseph Kabila, said, "It's not enough to say, 'I feel regret.'

"People should be willing to repair the damage in terms of investment and compensation with interest. That's what we expect from our Belgian partners."

Herve Diakiese, spokesman of a citizen's movement called Congolais Debout (Congolese, Stand Up), said the monarch's letter was "a step in the right direction."

"But this belated remorse can only be accepted after adequate reparations for these atrocities which enabled the personal enrichment of Leopold II and his friends," he said, referring to the former Belgian monarch who pillaged Congo from 1885 to 1908.

"Belgium's mischief-making after independence on June 30 1960 to control the DRC's minerals should also feature among reparation issues," he said.

Looted Congolese artefacts, too, should be returned, he added.

Jean-Claude Katende, the president of Asadho, one of the oldest rights groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, called for a greater effort to identify provinces where colonial Belgium carried out its worst atrocities.

"In Equateur (province), people were killed and others had their hands cut off," he said.

Belgium is contemplating setting up a parliamentary commission to investigate its colonial rule, which also extended over Rwanda and Burundi.

Survivors tell of France's 'dirty war' in Cameroon independence

Yahoo – AFP, Reinnier KAZE, December 28, 2019

Survivor: Odile Mbouma says she saw dozens of people slaughtered by French
troops who were hunting for Cameroonian independence fighters (AFP Photo)

Ekité (Cameroon) (AFP) - It was a "dirty war" waged by French colonial troops but it never made headlines and even today goes untold in school history books.

The brutal conflict unfolded in Cameroon, which on January 1 marks its 60th anniversary of independence -- the first of 17 African countries that became free from their colonial masters in 1960.

Many decades on, those who witnessed the violence recall events that shaped countless lives in the central African country yet remain unchronicled today.

"My life was overturned," Odile Mbouma, 72, said in the southwestern town of Ekite.

On the night of December 30, 1956, French troops arrived in the town and slaughtered dozens of people, perhaps as many as a hundred, she said.

"We were sitting under a tree when we suddenly heard the crackle of gunfire," she said. "It was everyone for themselves."

Taking to her heels, the seven-year-old found herself jumping over bodies. "They were everywhere."

The troops were looking for independence fighters -- members of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), a nationalist movement established in 1948 that faced repression first by the French and later by Cameroonian soldiers.

French authorities labelled the UPC "communist" and cracked down from 1955, driving the movement underground, though its charismatic founder Ruben Um Nyobe preached non-violence.

Benoit Bassemel was aged seven when his father was 

killed in the December 31 1956 massacre (AFP Photo)

Buried in cement

In September 1958, Um Nyobe -- nicknamed Mpodol (for "he who brings the word" in the Bassa language) -- was killed by French troops.

"His body was dragged around and displayed so that everybody (saw the corpse) of a man who was considered immortal," said Louis Marie Mang, UPC activist in Eseka, where Um Nyobe is buried in a Protestant graveyard.

"To prevent traditional rites from being held, he was put in a block of cement and buried (without) a coffin."

The conflict continued long beyond independence, for repression of the nationalists continued under Cameroon's first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, who also banned public references to the UPC and to Um Nyobe.

The violence "passed unnoticed, wiped from memories," according to Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue and Jacob Tatsitsa, authors of "La guerre du Cameroun" ("Cameroon's War"), published in 2016.

They estimate that between 1955 and 1964, tens of thousands of people, including civilians as well as UPC members, were killed.

In Ekite, a wreath of flowers lies on the soil of a scrubland field at the end of a dirt track. "The Nation will remember your sacrifice," says a memorial notice.

Louis Marie Mang, a UPC activist, stands before the tomb of anti-colonialist leader 

Ruben Um Nyobe (AFP Photo)

"This is one of the mass graves where the nationalists were buried," said Jean-Louis Kell, a UPC militant.

A second ditch was apparent a dozen metres (yards) away, and "a third was discovered not long ago," said Benoit Bassemel. He was seven during the French massacre and has tears in his eyes when he tells how his father was murdered.

'Free like the others'

UPC nationalists believe that the independence granted on January 1, 1960 was not what they fought for.

They view the country's two post-independence presidents, Ahidjo and Paul Biya, who has been in office since 1982, as working hand-in-hand with France.

"We wanted to be free like the other countries. We no longer wanted white people to subjugate us," said 80-year-old Mathieu Njassep, in his tiny family apartment in Petit Paris, a poor district of Douala, the economic capital.

In 1960, aged 21, Njassep joined the Cameroon National Liberation Army (ALNK), the UPC's armed wing.

After two years of fighting, he was appointed secretary to Ernest Ouandie, a leading figure in the movement. He was sentenced to death but escaped the firing squad, unlike Ouandie, who was executed in 1971.

A farewell to arms: Former independence fighter Mathieu Njassep (AFP Photo)

"We had almost nothing to wage a war with," Njassep said.

"We carried out ambushes" with machetes, sticks and homemade guns. "If we had had enough weapons, we would have beaten them."

At the time, the ALNK had established its headquarters in the village of Bandenkop, on the land of the main western tribal group, the Bamileke. Fighting was fierce between the nationalists and the French army.

In the rugged valley from which ALNK commanders led operations, there is no sign of human life today and the only sound is that of a bubbling stream.

"This whole zone was regularly bombed" by the French air force, said Michel Eclador Pekoua, a former UPC official.

Pekoua and other nationalists say French planes dropped napalm. France has neither confirmed nor denied the use of the notorious incendiary weapon.

Decapitations

On a road 30 kilometres (19 miles) to the north, in Bafoussam, a roundabout is known as the "crossroads of the guerrillas," for it was where the decapitated heads of nationalists were placed on show, said Theophile Nono, head of a historical association, Memoire 60.

The regime's methods "ranged from the arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of any Cameroonian suspected of 'rebellion' to systematic torture, with extrajudicial summary executions," Nono said.

A statue of Ruben Um Nyobe has been erected in Eseka to commemorate 

his part in Cameroon's independence (AFP Photo)

For many years the conflict mostly remained taboo in Cameroon. It was in the 1990s, when the authorities came under mounting pressure for democratic change, that people began to raise the historic past.

Biya, in a speech in 2010, paid tribute to "people who dreamed of (independence), fought to obtain it and sacrificed their lives for it... Our people should be eternally grateful to them."

After years of French silence, then president Francois Hollande in 2015 became his country's first head of state to speak of "a repression" of Cameroonian nationalists leading to "tragic episodes".

For many survivors, this is not enough.

"France must accept its responsibility," Nono said.

"It must undertake to compensate victims of the dirty war, which has been carefully concealed by both the French side and the Cameroonian side."

France to return Benin artworks by 2021: minister

Yahoo – AFP, December 16, 2019

President Macron pledged last year to hand back 26 artefacts "without delay" in
a landmark decision that has piled pressure on other former colonial powers to
restore looted artworks to their countries of origin (AFP Photo/GERARD JULIEN)

Cotonou (AFP) - France will return artworks taken from Benin during the colonial conquest of the region by the start of 2021, culture minister Franck Riester said Monday on a visit to the West African country.

President Emmanuel Macron pledged last year to hand back 26 artefacts "without delay" in a landmark decision that has piled pressure on other former colonial powers to restore looted artworks to their countries of origin.

The pieces -- including a royal throne -- were seized by French troops over a century ago and have been housed at the Quai Branly museum in Paris.

Riester said the artworks would be returned "in the course of 2020, perhaps at the beginning of 2021" as he met with Benin's president Patrice Talon in Cotonou.

Benin has welcomed France's decision to return the objects, but has warned against doing so too quickly as it works to build a proper facility to showcase the heritage.

Benin's culture minister Jean-Michel Abimbola told a joint press conference that the two countries had agreed that the artworks would be handed back "in several stages".

He welcomed "the commitment of the French President to return these works" and "the opening of a broader discussion" concerning other artefacts.

The Kingdom of Dahomey -- in what became modern-day Benin -- reached its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries and became a major source of slaves for European traders before conquest by Paris in the 1890s ended its rule.

Hidden for 21 years, Ethiopian crown set to return home

Yahoo – AFP, Jan HENNOP,  October 2, 2019

The ornate gilded copper crown, featuring images of Jesus and the Apostles,
was unearthed after refugee-turned-Dutch-citizen Sirak Asfaw (L) contacted
Dutch 'art detective' Arthur Brand (R) (AFP Photo/Jan HENNOP)

Rotterdam (Netherlands) (AFP) - A priceless 18th-century Ethiopian crown is set to be returned from the Netherlands to Addis Ababa after a one-time refugee found it in a suitcase and hid it in his apartment for two decades.

The ornate gilded copper headgear, featuring images of Christ and the Twelve Apostles, was unearthed after refugee-turned-Dutch-citizen Sirak Asfaw contacted Dutch 'art detective' Arthur Brand.

Brand, dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the art world" for his discoveries of missing works, said the crown, which is currently being held in a secure location, would soon be handed to the Ethiopian authorities.

Speaking at his apartment in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, Sirak told AFP the remarkable story of how he came into possession of the crown -- which experts say belongs to a series of some of Ethiopia's most important cultural artefacts.

Sirak, a former Ethiopian refugee who today works as a management consultant for the Dutch government, fled the country during the late 1970s during the so-called "Red Terror" purges.

Once settled in the Netherlands, Sirak used to receive a stream of Ethiopians including pilots and diplomats, along with people who had fled a continuous cycle of hardship in Africa's most ancient country.

Then, in April 1998, while looking for a document, Sirak stumbled upon the crown in a suitcase left behind by one of his visitors.

"I looked into the suitcase and saw something really amazing and I thought 'this is not right. This has been stolen. This should not be here. This belongs to Ethiopia'," he said.

'It would just disappear'

Sirak said he confronted the suitcase's owner -- whom he did not identify -- and told him that the crown "will not leave my house unless it goes back to Ethiopia".

Shortly afterwards Sirak posted a message on an Ethiopian chat group on the internet -- still a new phenomena back in 1998 -- asking what people thought he should do with "an Ethiopian artefact".

But he did not get a satisfactory answer "and I did not want to return it to the same regime that had made it possible for the crown to get stolen," he said.

The former refugee decided to become the crown's de facto guardian "until such time it could go back".

The crown, which is currently being held in a secure location

 in the Netherlands, would soon be handed to the 

Ethiopian authorities (AFP Photo/Jan HENNOP)

For 21 years the crown was hidden in his apartment as Ethiopia continued to be ruled by an iron-fisted one-party government.

During that time, Sirak was pressured by Ethiopians who knew he had the crown and wanted to force him to give it back.

"But I knew if I gave it back, it would just disappear again," he said.

Sirak said however that when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office last year, he felt that things had changed sufficiently in Ethiopia to finally give the crown back.

Brand said Sirak had contacted him and "told me he was in possession of an Ethiopian artefact of great cultural importance.

"It turns out that Sirak Asfaw had been the custodian of a rare 18th-century Ethiopian crown for the past 21 years and wants to give it back," said Brand.

"It was a story straight from a crime thriller," said the art sleuth, who became world famous in 2015 after finding two bronze statues of horses made by Hitler's favourite sculptor Joseph Thorak.

The Dutch government too confirmed to AFP that Brand had told them about the crown's existence saying "its authenticity will now have to be established in close cooperation with Ethiopian authorities," before the next steps will be taken.

'This is Ethiopia's identity'

The artefact is currently being stored at a high-security facility in the Netherlands, where it was seen by an AFP correspondent.

Jacopo Gnisci, a research associate at Oxford University who also examined the artefact and confirmed its authenticity, said there were less than two dozen of these crowns, called "zewd", in existence.

"These crowns are of great cultural and symbolic significance in Ethiopia, as they are usually donated by high-ranking officials to churches in a practice that reaches as far back as the Late Antiquity," he told AFP.

This crown has an inscription dating to 1633-34, but Gnisci said it was more likely to have been made a century later and was commissioned by one of Ethiopia's most powerful warlords, "ras" Welde Sellase.

Gnisci, who is currently writing a book about medieval Ethiopian manuscripts, said Welde Sellase likely donated the crown to a church in a village called Cheleqot near the modern-day city of Mekelle in northern Ethiopia.

The last time the crown was seen in public, it was worn by a priest in a photograph taken in 1993 before it disappeared, said Gnisci. An investigation was launched at the time but the culprits were never found.

"These crowns are of priceless symbolic value and it is important that they be retuned to Ethiopia," said Gnisci.

"This is Ethiopian cultural heritage, this is Ethiopia's identity and finally it feels good to give it back," said Sirak.

Tunisia's ex-president Ben Ali dies in exile

Yahoo – AFP, Kaouther LARBI, September 19, 2019

Former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is survived by his wife
Leila Trabelsi and six children (AFP Photo/Fethi Belaid)

Tunis (AFP) - Former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the first leader to be toppled by the Arab Spring revolts, died Thursday in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia's foreign ministry told AFP. He was 83.

"We had confirmation of his death 30 minutes ago," the ministry said on Thursday afternoon without giving further details.

His lawyer, Mounir Ben Salha, confirmed the news, citing family members and Ben Ali's doctor.

Ben Ali, who ruled his North African country from 1987 until 2011, was viewed by some as a bulwark against Islamist extremism, but faced criticism for muzzling the opposition and his reluctance to embrace democracy.

Eventually, growing frustration over unemployment and high prices snapped.

In late 2010, a young trader in Sidi Bouzid, in the impoverished centre of the country, set fire to himself in protest at humiliation by police.

The demonstrations of early 2011 brought soldiers onto the streets before
Ben Ali resigned on January 14 (AFP Photo/FETHI BELAID)

That sparked protests which rocked Tunisia and triggered a deadly clampdown.

But the protesters won: on January 14, 2011, Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia.

His rapid departure sparked a string of similar uprisings across the region, toppling Egyptian and Libyan strongmen Hosni Mubarak and Moamer Kadhafi.

The turmoil also triggered what was to become Syria's devastating eight-year war.

Pyjamas in exile

In mid-2012, Ben Ali was sentenced in absentia to life in jail for his role in the deaths of protesters during the uprising.

More than 300 people were killed in the initial repression of the protest movement.

Little verified information has emerged on Ben Ali's life in exile.

A Tunisian family watches TV on January 13, 2011 as Zine El-Abidine
Ben Ali resigns as president (AFP Photo/Fethi Belaid)

Photos posted on Instagram in 2013 showed the former strongman smiling in striped pyjamas.

Rumours of his death had circulated several times in recent years.

A week ago, Ben Salha said the former president was in a "critical condition", before denying reports that he had died.

"He is not dead, but his state of health is bad. He has left hospital and is currently being cared for at his home -- his condition is stabilising", the lawyer said at the time.

Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said last week that on humanitarian grounds Ben Ali could return to die in his own country -- "like every Tunisian" -- should he wish to do so.

It was not possible to ascertain immediately whether the former president's funeral would take place in Saudi Arabia or in Tunisia.

In this file photo taken on New Year's day 1986, former Tunisian President Habib 

Ben Ali Bourguiba (R) shakes hands with his then prime minister Zine El-Abidine 

Ben Ali, who went on to replace him the following year (AFP Photo)

'Part of Tunisia's history'

Tunisians canvassed by AFP on Thursday did not oppose a funeral in Tunisia.

"He deserves to be buried in his own country. It can't do any harm," said Moncef Balghaji in central Tunis.

"He is dead! This person was president and he was a part of Tunisia's history", he added.

Another resident, Mounir -- who did not want to give his surname -- said "I do not see him as a president, but as a Tunisian citizen... He has the right to buried here, regardless of what he did."

Ben Ali is survived by six children; three daughters by a first marriage and two daughters and a son by his wife Leila Trabelsi, who accompanied him into exile.

A career soldier, Ben Ali took power on November 7, 1987 when he toppled Habib Bourguiba, the ailing father of Tunisian independence who was by then reported to be senile.

A member of the Tunisian security forces takes aim towards a demonstrator who

 prepares to throw a rock towards them during clashes in January 2011 near

Sidi Bouzid (AFP Photo/STR)

Tunisians, including Islamists, hailed his bloodless, non-violent takeover.

He went on to make Tunisia a moderate, secular voice in the Arab world while Western governments viewed him as an effective bulwark against extremism -- despite criticism of his reluctance to embrace democracy.

Aside from his conviction over the death of protesters, Ben Ali was also sentenced in absentia to misappropriating public funds and ordering the torture of army officers who allegedly led a coup attempt against him.

Tunisia on Sunday held a presidential election, in which two outsiders -- law professor Kais Saied and detained media mogul Nabil Karoui -- made it through to a second round run-off.

The country's first post Arab Spring democratically elected president, Beji Caid Essebsi, had died in July aged 92, bringing the first round of the presidential polls forward by several months.

With the burial in Saudi exile of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia is turning the page on more than two decades of nepotism and repression with a large dose of indifference https://t.co/wToi3G7Br3

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 21 september 2019

Related Article:

"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

“.. A New Social System

There is a new kind of social system, a new way of communicating where everyone can talk to everyone all at once. Millions can do this, without borders or culture clash. Take a look at Egypt. It confounded all of those who sit in the power seats not far from here [Washington, D.C.]. The old energy thinking is afraid because there's a vacuum with no emerging leader. You see, everybody knows there has to be leadership, there has to be hierarchy. There has to be all of these things in order to create a revolution. Well, let me tell you, that's old, old thinking. Because you just saw revolution of consciousness without leadership, without hierarchy, without any one person whipping the others into a frenzy to convince them of anything. It just happened together, almost like there is a wave of consciousness that is spreading over the earth. There is. When everyone can talk to everyone, this is what you get. Dictators know this, so the first thing they wish to shut down are the new communications tools.

I want to go further than that. Let's get personal and interview a Syrian or a Libyan. Let's talk to an Egyptian for a moment. Let's find the man on the street and ask him some questions. I'll give you the question. "What do you want?" Here's what they're going to tell you. "We want to choose what we do in our own land. We want the glory of our culture back. We want abundance in our homes and towns. We want schools. We want to have some of the things the rest of the world has. We want to take some of the things that our country has in abundance and share it with the citizens. We want our grandchildren safe. We want good hospitals." That's what they're going to tell you.

So why do I tell you this? Because nowhere in their rhetoric is, "And we want to kill the Jews!" Because they're smarter than that, and they're becoming conceptual and beginning to understand this premise: War is hell. It leads to sorrow, death, destruction and heartbreak. It creates poverty and famine - and they know it. They're looking at Europe. They're looking around and they're starting to see unification being an answer to that which is what they want for their children. They don't want war. They don't want war! They may not like the Jews, but they now understand that in order to really have what they want, they must work with them.

So the uprisings you are seeing, dear ones, are not what you think, or what you are being told. Don't worry, thinking, "This is the beginning of the end." Oh, it's going to have a seesaw of energy; it's going to have fear. It will even have those terrorist leaders who want to control it. You're going to be told this and that, but in the end, in a decade, when you can go there and take a look, you're going to have states that are at peace with Israel. One of the most controversial things we have told you is this: Peace in the Middle East is not going to come from anything Israel does. It's going to come from that which the Islamic states do. The young people there don't want a war. Now, all you have to do is convince the Jews of this so that they don't create one of their own. Do you understand the sense of this? Higher consciousness and conceptual thinking brings about revolution that is not replaced by another dictator. The dictators are falling. Human Beings in these third-world areas want to raise their families the way you do - in peace and safety and stability.

The Evidence is Everywhere

What has happened in the last 50 years? Go to South America with me. How many dictators were there then and how many are there now? There is one left and his days are numbered. Watch him, for he'll want to ally with other dictators and there won't be any! A controlled economy will absolutely fail. His is starting not to work.

These dictators are falling because they represent an old energy paradigm, an old Human nature. A new consciousness is taking over. Look at the big picture. Get out of fear and understand again that time is slow to you and these things are generational, not seasonal! There will be battles won and lost for high consciousness. There will be one country that may even seem to go backwards a little before they go forward. This is the way time works and consciousness works. Here is the prediction we've given you: You're beginning to see the seeds of peace in the Middle East. Not in the news, but in the new social areas with young people. And when it settles, the biggest issue will still be the Palestinians. But perhaps for the first time, their Islamic brothers in countries around them will begin to include them instead of not including them as they are now. Watch for a compassion of brotherhood - not for war, but for eventual peace and stability.

And yes, there'll be those who tell you just the opposite, dear one. This is what we see. Turn on your news and you are seeing it. But you see it graphically, do you not? And you see the sorrow and the death, for that is the most dramatic. Just think of those who have come into this planet to give their lives and sacrifice for something grand - peace in their own land. It's just what you did to create this United States. You had to fight your way through it, didn't you? It seems like an old paradigm that sometimes you have to involve the bridge of swords between old and new. But sometimes you just do to slog through a Human nature which has been a certain way for thousands of years.  …”

Macron seeks to shine light on Rwanda genocide

France24 –AFP, 5 April 2019

Macron caused disappointment among genocide survivors by turning down an
invitation to attend this weekend's genocide commemorations in Rwanda POOL/AFP

Paris (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday appointed a panel of experts to investigate France's actions in Rwanda during the country's genocide 25 years ago, a subject that has dogged Franco-Rwandan relations since the 1994 massacres.

The commission of eight researchers and historians "will be tasked with consulting all France's archives relating to the genocide... in order to analyse the role and engagement of France during that period," the presidency said in a statement.

It will look at the period from 1990 to 1994 to "contribute to a better understanding and knowledge of the genocide of Tutsis," the statement said.

The findings of the researchers, none of them Rwanda experts, will be used in material used to teach people in France about the genocide, it added.

Rwanda has accused France of being complicit in the genocide of an estimated 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis through its support for the Hutu-led government of the day.

It also accuses the French forces who were stationed in Rwanda under a UN mandate of having helped some of the perpetrators to escape, with some seeking sanctuary in France, which critics say for years dragged its heels on bringing them to justice.

Macron announced Friday that the judicial unit in charge of prosecuting Rwandan genocide suspects would be boosted so that suspects "could be tried in a reasonable amount of time".

The creation of the commission and announcement of extra legal resources for genocide cases aim to help further mend the ties between Rwanda and France, which the genocide left in tatters.

Paris has consistently denied claims of complicity in the bloodletting.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebel force that eventually overthrew the genocidal Hutu regime, broke off ties with France between 2006 and 2009 but relations have improved over the past decade.

Confronting France's past

Macron had nonetheless caused disappointment among genocide survivors and experts by turning down an invitation to attend this weekend's commemorations in Rwanda.

Macron's office cited scheduling issues and announced that Herve Berville, a young MP of Rwandan origin who was orphaned during the genocide and adopted by a French family, would represent France instead.

The 41-year-old president, who came of age after France's colonial era, has already gone further than his predecessor in lifting the lid on France's murky past in Africa.

On Friday, he became the first French president to meet with representatives of Ibuka, the biggest association of Rwanda's genocide survivors.

And last September he acknowledged that France had instigated a system that facilitated torture during Algeria's 1954-1962 independence war, a conflict that also remains hugely sensitive in France.

He also announced that France would open up its archives on the thousands of civilians and soldiers who went missing during that war.

Franco-Rwandan relations hit their nadir in 2006 after a French judge recommended that Kagame be prosecuted by a UN-backed tribunal over the 1994 killing of Rwanda's president Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu whose death triggered the start of the genocide.

'Errors of judgement'

The turning point came in 2010 when former president Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged during a visit to Kigali that France had made "serious errors of judgement" in Rwanda.

While falling short of an apology it was seen as a breakthrough in Rwanda, a former Belgian colony which France jealously defended before the genocide as part of its sphere of influence in Africa.

The relationship hit turbulence again however under Socialist president Francois Hollande, before Macron's election set the stage for a new chapter.

During a visit to Paris last year Kagame appeared impressed by his French counterpart, later praising him for taking a "fresher", less paternalistic approach to Africa than his forerunners.

"It's a change from the neo-colonial positions of the past," he told Jeune Afrique magazine.

#UPDATE Timeline with maps documenting the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, 25 years on #RwandanGenocide pic.twitter.com/QB9VTXJPai

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 7 april 2019

Germany pledges to speed return of colonial-era loot

Yahoo – AFP, March 14, 2019

Germany has agreed to speed up the return of human remains and artifacts from
its former African colonies. (AFP Photo/John MACDOUGALL)

Berlin (AFP) - Germany has agreed to speed up the return of human remains and artwork from former African colonies where the country carried out brutal massacres and pillaged indigenous heritage.

The German culture and foreign ministries as well as regional and local cultural authorities signed a pledge late Wednesday committing museums and scientific institutions to completing an inventory on their "ethnology, natural history, art and cultural history holdings" from the colonial era.

The aim is to determine which "were acquired in a way that legally or ethnically would no longer be acceptable today" and work toward their restitution.

"The priority in this work are the human remains dating from the colonial period" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the signatories said.

The commitment comes after a study commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron in November 2018 recommended returning African treasures held by French museums -- a radical policy shift seen as putting pressure on other former colonial powers.

Germany is unique among the powers in having large holdings of African human remains at museums, universities and in private collections that were used in pseudo-scientific studies.

"Research" carried out by German professor Eugen Fischer on the skulls and bones resulted in theories later used by the Nazis to justify the murder of Jews.

Germany has on several occasions repatriated human remains to Namibia, where it slaughtered of tens of thousands of indigenous Herero and Nama people between 1904 and 1908.

The German government announced in 2016 that it planned to issue an official apology for the atrocities committed by German imperial troops.

But it has repeatedly refused to pay direct reparations, citing millions of euros in development aid given to the Namibian government.

Beyond German South West Africa (present-day Namibia), the German empire held colonies from Togoland (now Togo) and what was then Kamerun (Cameroon) in the west, across to the far slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanganyika (Tanzania) in the east, as well as Pacific islands.

Germany this year earmarked 1.9 million euros ($2.2 million) to research the provenance of holdings acquired by museums during the colonial period.

The project will be spearheaded by the German Lost Art Foundation, which also studies the provenance of art suspected of having been looted by the Nazis.