Yearbook 2007
Congo. Despite general elections in 2006, Congo remained
worried. Struggles erupted in Kinshasa in March when two
losing presidential candidates' private bodyguards refused
to be disarmed. Nearly 600 people were killed, according to
UN estimates, in fighting between army troops loyal to
President Joseph Kabila and, above all, former Vice
President Jean-Pierre Bemba's forces. Bemba sought
protection at the Embassy of South Africa, from where he was
later escorted out of the country. He went with his family
to Portugal, where he remained. When he did not take his
seat in the Senate within the prescribed time, the
prosecutor requested that the legal immunity of Bemba
accused of treason be revoked.
Riots erupted in February in the Bas-Congo province
during protests that the opposition-dominated provincial
assemblies there and in Kinshasa had elected presidential
governors. According to the UN, 134 people were killed in
clashes with the army.
In the Senate elections, carried out in January by the
provincial assemblies, the party alliance around President
Kabila was given a majority of seats. Nevertheless,
opposition candidate Léon Kengo wa Dondo was elected
President. Kengo wa Dondo was prime minister for several
periods in the 1980s and 1990s.
A large number of convictions were handed down for
murders and other atrocities committed during the civil war
and thereafter. two death sentences and about 20 life
sentences. One of the militia leaders from the Ituri region
in the northeast, Germain Katanga, was brought to the
International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. When three
other Itur leaders surrendered to the army, the conflict was
declared there ended. In the province of Northern Kivu,
however, unrest continued for much of the year. When the
army announced in August that it would suspend operations
against the Rwandan hutumilis FDLR, which has been operating
in eastern K. ever since the 1994 homeland, Congolese Tutsal
General Laurent Nkunda responded by interrupting a
short-term ceasefire and launching an attack on the army.
Nkunda considers itself struggling to protect the country's
Tutsis and has refused to join the new national army.
According to the UN, the fighting in North Kivu with Nkunda,
the army, the FDLR and local so-called Mai-Mai militias made
375,000 civilian homeless during the year. In November, the
governments of K. and Rwanda agreed to jointly try to stop
all irregular militias in eastern K. The UN force MONUC
promised active support.
In April, the government canceled twenty forest
harvesting contracts that were concluded for a number of
years. A commission that examined 61 international mining
contracts recommended that 37 should be renegotiated and 24
demolished.
According to
CountryAAH, the Chinese state granted Congo a US $ 5 billion loan
primarily for infrastructure investments. In return, China
was promised access to natural resources, primarily timber,
cobalt and copper. At a World Bank meeting held in November,
international donors pledged US $ 4 billion for the period
2008-10. Three quarters of the sum was said to be brand new
money.
In April, together with Rwanda and Burundi, K. decided to
revive cooperation in the Greater Zealand Economic Community
(CEPGL) which has been down for 13 years.
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