OWN CORRESPONDENT, Geneva | Wednesday 10.10am.
RWANDAN Hutu rebels have turned to drug trafficking in order to finance their military operations in the Great Lakes region of Africa, according to a United Nations report issued in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday.
The report said ex-soldiers of the Hutu nationalist regime ousted in 1994 after one of the worst genocides in Rwanda’s history, are trafficking in drugs between India, South Africa and Europe.
Drugs from Latin America are also being smuggled into Southern Africa via the same network, said the report — which was compiled by an international fact-finding commission headed by Egyptian UN Ambassador Mahmoud Kassem. “Mandrax destined for South Africa is smuggled from India into Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania, mainly through Mombasa and Dar es Salaam. Most of the drugs are then shipped to Europe. “Narcotics are also said to come from Latin America to Southern Africa,” the report said.
UN investigators said many ex-soldiers of the former Armed Forces of Rwanda and the extremist Hutu Interahamwe militia have returned in the past two years to Rwanda to fight the present Tutsi-led regime. They are believed to number between 10000 and 15000 in August, the report said. Other, who fought on one or other side in last year’s civil war in Congo where they had taken refuge. Rwandan Hutus had also crossed from Congo into the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo to enroll under the banner of President Laurent Kabila who is fighting a Tutsi-led rebellion.
The UN commission said these members of the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe, now make up a significant portion of the military alliance helping Kabila crush a rebellion he claims is being stage-managed by Rwanda and Uganda. The Interahamwe have been blamed for much of the bloodshed in the 1994 genocide in which at least half a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus are estimated to have been massacred. –AFP