Eastern Congo is facing a devastating foreign invasion and Canada is once again assisting the imperialists targeting that tortured land.
In the latest stage of three decades of Rwandan instigated violence, its proxy M23 rebels recently took the biggest city in eastern Congo. Paul Kagame’s Rwanda has again captured Goma, a city of two million on its border. Four hundred thousand people have been displaced in fighting since the start of the year and over a million during the past three years of Rwandan instigated war.
The Canadian government has stayed silent on Kigali’s aggression while backing the brutal Rwandan dictator. On Sunday Global Affairs Canada released a statement critical of violence in Congo, which failed to mention the thousands of Rwandan troops in the country. The statement vaguely referred to “foreign troops” in eastern Congo.
While causing mayhem in Congo and solidifying his dictatorship, Kagame continues to receive Canadian support. In August Canada’s High Commissioner in Kigali, Julie Crowley,celebrated his presidential election ‘victory’ with 99% of the vote and Justin Trudeau has met Kagame multiple times. Six months into Rwanda’s latest invasion into Congo Trudeau attended the June 2022 Commonwealth summit in Kigali. Trudeau focused his discussion with Kagame on opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ignoring Rwanda’s aggression against Congo. It was also announced that Canada would open a full diplomatic high commission in the country.
Ottawa provides tens of million of dollars in assistance to Rwanda annually. As detailed in a September 2023 Globe and Mail article headlined “Ottawa greenlit funding for Dallaire Institute despite memo raising concerns about ties to Rwandan military”, Canada gave $19 million for a child soldier project that included the Rwandan military despite the fact it uses child soldiers in Congo.
Ottawa has backed Kigali as its unleashed mayhem in the Congo over the past three decades. Ottawa supported Rwanda and Uganda’s 1996 invasion. In the fall of that year Canada led a short-lived UN force into eastern Zaire (Congo) designed to dissipate French pressure and ensure the pro-Mobutu Sese Seko Paris didn’t take command of a force that could impede the Rwandan-led invasion. Rwandan forces marched 1,500 km to topple the regime in Kinshasa and then re-invaded after the Congolese government it installed expelled Rwandan troops. This led to an eight-country war between 1998 and 2003, which left millions dead. Since then, Rwanda and its proxies have repeatedly invaded the eastern Congo.
In 2002 a series of Canadian companies were implicated in a UN report titled “Report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the Congo.” Ottawa responded to the report by defending the Canadian companies cited for complicity in Congolese human rights violations.
At the G8 summit in 2010, the Canadian government pushed for an entire declaration to the final communiqué criticizing the Congo for attempting to gain a greater share of its vast mineral wealth. Earlier that year Ottawa obstructed international efforts to reschedule the country’s foreign debt, which was mostly accrued during Mobutu’s dictatorship and the subsequent wars. Canadian officials “have a problem with what’s happened with a Canadian company,” Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende said, referring to the government’s move to revoke a mining concession that First Quantum acquired under dubious circumstances during the 1998-2003 war.
Canada has long played a role in impoverishing the Congo, as I detail in Canada in Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitation. Over a century ago Royal-Military-College-of-Canada-trained officer William Grant Stairs participated in two controversial expeditions to expand European influence over the Congo. In 1887, Stairs was one of ten white officers in the first-ever European expedition to cross the interior of the continent, which left a trail of death, disease and destruction. A few years later the Halifax native led a 1,950-person mission to conquer the resource-rich Katanga region of the Congo on behalf of Belgium’s King Leopold II. Today Stairs is honoured with a street, island and multiple plaques, even though he was openly racist, barbarous and added 150,000 square kilometres to the Belgium’s king’s monstrous colony.
During this period Hamilton, Ontario’s William Henry Faulknor was one of the first white missionaries to establish a mission station in eastern Congo. Between 1887 and 1891 Faulknor worked under the ruler of the Yeke kingdom, Mwenda Msiri, who would later meet his death at the hand of Stairs. Faulknor’s Plymouth Brethren explicitly called for European rule (either Belgian or British) over Katanga and like almost all missionaries sought to undermine local ways.
Following Faulknor, Toronto-born Henry Grattan Guinness II established the Congo Balolo Mission in 1889. Congo BaloloMission missions were located in remote areas of the colony, where King Leopold’s Anglo-Belgian Rubber Company obligated individuals and communities to gather rubber latex and chopped off the hands of thousands of individuals who failed to fulfill their quotas.
Faced with the violent disruption of their lives, the Lulonga, Lopori, Maringa, Juapa and Burisa were increasingly receptive to the Christian activists who became “the interpreter of the new way of life,” writes Ruth Slade in English-Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State. Not wanting to jeopardize their standing with Leopold’s representatives, the Congo BaloloMission repeatedly refused British-based solidarity campaigners’ appeals to publicly expose the abuses they witnessed.
In the 1920s the Canadian trade commissioner in South Africa, G.R. Stevens, traveled to the Congo and reported on the Katanga region’s immense resources. In de-facto support of Belgian rule, a Canadian trade commission was opened in the colony in 1946. In response to a series of anti-colonial demonstrations in 1959, Canadian Trade Commissioner K. Nyenhuis reported to External Affairs that “savagery is still very near the surface in most of the natives.”
Ottawa backed Brussels militarily as it sought to maintain control of its massive colony. Hundreds of Belgian pilots were trained in Canada during and after World War II and through the 1950s Belgium received tens of millions of dollars in Canadian NATO Mutual Aid. Canadian Mutual Aid weaponry was likely employed by Belgian troops in suppressing the anti-colonial struggle in Congo.
Immediately after independence Canada played an important role in the UN mission that facilitated the murder of anticolonial Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961. Hundreds of Canadian troops worked to undermine an independence leader Prime Minister John Diefenbaker labelled a “major threat to Western interests”. Canadian Colonel Jean Berthiaume assisted Lumumba’s political enemies by helping recapture the popular leader. Lumumba was handed over to soldiers under military commander Mobutu.
Canada had a hand in Mobutu’s rise and Ottawa mostly supported his brutal three-decade rule. Paradoxically, Canada also backed the foreign invasion that toppled a leader who’d fallen out of favour.
Over the past three decades eastern Congo has been largely under the influence of Rwanda and its proxies.
Over the years, violent colonization, imperialism, neoliberal imperialism — resulting in millions of deaths — and Canada has supported it all, or at best stayed silent while watching it happen. Amazing to think that some people still think Canada is a force for good in the world.
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