Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2000

Once again I shall rely on

the kindness of those who interpret our speeches, since

I am yet again putting them to the test of working

without a written text.

I shall switch between repetition and familiar

issues, between deception and truth.

First, repetition. As last year, the President of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Laurent-DÈsirÈ

Kabila, has sent me to this very same rostrum to speak

about the same issues. Once again our invaders and

aggressors from Rwanda and Uganda in

particular are in our country, and I shall speak about

this again. This falls under the heading of repetition.

I shall talk about this issue in the spirit and the letter of

the principles of the United Nations. The letter is

important insofar as it helps us make sense of this

situation. I would suggest to delegations a small

exercise regarding the reputedly historic work we do

here. By playing with historic a little, by transposing

a letter or two, another meaning can be found.

I am awaiting the letter of the solution that the

United Nations will adopt one day regarding the

problem of the aggression against, and occupation of

our country by, people who are here in this very Hall

and who have spoken falsely yesterday and today.

Uganda has said that it has come to my country in

order to solve problems among the Congolese. Have

the Ugandans come as tourists? Have they come as

scientific researchers?

We need to return to the letter of the definition of

aggression. These people, who ordinarily are our

neighbours, leave their country, cross our borders,

come into our country and are occupying it even as I

speak. And, as if they had not already gone too far,

they have taken it upon themselves to say what we

should do to settle the problems among the Congolese

people. They do not talk about inter-Ugandan dialogue;

they do not talk about inter-Rwandan dialogue. They

talk about the inter-Congolese dialogue. Perhaps that is

why they are slitting people's throats, massacring

people, cutting off penises, burying women alive. They

are planting fields of arms in the way that Van Gogh

planted fields of sunflowers, burying women alive and

leaving their arms sticking out of their graves with

the idea of later harvesting arms. They have multiplied

the number of Dachaus by thousands. They shut up our

populations in their humble huts and then set the huts

on fire. Perhaps this is their understanding of

participating in a solution to the Congolese problem.

Unjustifiably!

It is a deception for the head of State of one of

these countries to play around in New York and say

We will not leave the Democratic Republic of the

Congo. Notwithstanding the clear resolutions of the

Security Council resolutions 1234 (1999) and 1304

(2000) which state plainly that the Rwandans, the

Ugandans and Burundians must leave the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, representatives of those

countries come here and say We will not leave.

These impostors come to this very building and dare to

engage in such arm wrestling for the benefit of the

26

leaders and other representatives of the countries

gathered here.

I do not want someone to tell me even if it is

true

You have made a wonderful speech.

I want to be told We shall report back to our

Governments and heads of State what you said,

because it is the truth: truth in response to deception.

As the philosopher Spinoza said, Verum index sui et

falsi; that is, truth is a touchstone both of the truth

itself and of falsehood. One of our singers his name,

Koffi Olomide, is worth remembering sings, in one

of the languages that are well known to Africans who

listen to Congolese music and from which I am

translating: A lie takes the elevator, but the truth uses

the stairs. The phrase is even prettier in Lingala.

And so it is the lies of the aggressors have

quickly arisen to fool people. They are trying to pass

for little lambs, these people who are in a country that

is not their own, where no one wants them to be and

where they have not been invited. They are there. And

they have the nerve to say We will not leave,

notwithstanding the clear Security Council resolutions

that enjoin them to leave our country without delay or

conditions.

I am repeating today what I said last year;

however, I must repeat this because these people are

still in my country and show no sign of leaving. They

have outrageous plans, such as creating a Great Lakes

Republic by cutting up our country and joining entire

provinces of it to their countries.

All of this will seem quite clear if you look at a

map of my country. You will see that our 2.347 million

square kilometres are located amid small asteroids that

gravitate around it in some sort of Brownian motion.

They enter our country, massacre people and, as I said

earlier, shamelessly state that they are not going to

leave. They believe that this lie will prevail because it

has taken the lift, while our truth has to take the stairs.

But I believe that our truth is making headway in your

minds. Right is on our side.

None of our own soldiers are in Kigali or in

Kampala, but there is an unwanted multitude of foreign

soldiers in my country, growing in number as well as in

weaponry. No doubt they are there for tourism. Since

we are embarking upon a historic millennium and

we should consider the meaning of that adjective we

must remind those people that they have to leave now,

today. They should go home. They must not remain in

my country because what they are doing is abominable.

I have given the Assembly a Dantesque

description of what these people are doing in my

country, supposedly for peaceful reasons. They are

massacring people, as I have stated. They are burying

women alive and cutting off the penises of prisoners.

This needs to be analysed. Why would anyone do that

to prisoners? The lies in the lift will not tell you about

that, but the stairway will. I hope you will inform your

respective Governments of the realities of the situation

in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. People say it

is complex, but in fact it is not complex at all. Those

people are not in their country. They have crossed our

borders, supposedly to secure their own borders and

supposedly because the génocidaires are in my country,

occasionally returning to their own countries to sow

disorder.

Once again, look at a map of our country. You

will see that the asteroids that I mentioned, Rwanda in

particular, have borders on Lake Kivu. It is a very

small area that is the real border between us. If you

look at the map, you will see that these asteroids, in

order to secure their borders, have gone 2,000

kilometres beyond this real border, to the Atlantic, to

start a war. We do not know how they manage to move

their soldiers around because they do not have

aeroplanes; however, know that they manage. They

move heavy weaponry 2,000 kilometres in order to

start a war, the purpose of which is to defend their

borders 2,000 kilometres away. Who can possibly

believe this? Who can claim that this is the truth?

When you wish to defend and secure your border, you

put your troops at your border so that others do not

cross.

There is yet another lie: they say that they are

pursuing the perpetrators of the genocide that everyone

remembers from 1994. They claim that they are

pursuing them because they have hidden in our

country. Well, these people occupy two provinces in

the border area of our country and one other province

that is even farther away, farther from the equator.

They have never caught any génocidaires, living

or dead. It would be a shock if they did. The Rwandans

27

are saying that there are génocidaires in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to justify

their presence. However, they have never caught any.

Why have they never caught a génocidaire? I

think they are incapable of doing two things at once.

Each Rwandan or Ugandan has only two hands, and

those two hands are busy. Do you know what they are

doing? They are taking our diamonds, copper, gold,

precious wood and rare animals, which they do not

have on their asteroids. And they are becoming

diamond exporters. If you look at the stock exchange,

you will see that Rwanda this month exported so many

diamonds, but those diamonds are covered in the blood

of the Congolese people. The gemocracy that

employs them is doing the same thing in Sierra Leone,

Liberia and Angola. One could say that the common

denominator between those countries and ours is that

we are under the thumb of gemocrats who prevent us

from creating democracy. We have gemocrats against

democrats. That is the deepest meaning to be found in

these poor countries that wish to become rich through

pillaging and plundering, which they do in the full light

of day where everyone can see them. What is more

surprising still is that nobody tells them to stop their

plundering and go home. This is an absolute fraud, and

it threatens our African brothers as well. A country that

is one eightieth the size of ours, that not long ago,

before Lumumba, held the reins of our country, dares

to allow its justice system because in our country

there are patriots and nationalists

I come from a province near the Atlantic, 2,000

kilometres away from the Rwandan border. I see

appear in my province people who are easily

recognized by their phenotype, accompanied by some

Congolese passing through the province on their way to

Kinshasa. They even go to the airport to defend their

borders, which are 2,000 kilometres away. Our patriots

and nationalists stand up and do not welcome them. We

tell them what we must tell them, as a true patriot

would do in the face of the invader.

That country, one eightieth the size of our own,

allows its justice system to prosecute me, to issue an

arrest warrant against me and to inform all other

countries that if I go to their country, I should be

arrested for crimes against humanity, just because I

spoke as a patriot against those who have come into my

country.

One country, more powerful than the others, has

asked, because of the thrashing it has received, to be

allowed a corridor to the Atlantic. We do not know how

these people got to the province of Kivu, which they

have virtually annexed. They have changed the local

administrators, appointed new governors and changed

the telephone system. In order to call this province, you

have to dial the code for Rwanda. This is well known.

They even direct automobile traffic. In other words,

they have completely taken over our province.

Nonetheless, in their speeches they say they are in

favour of the territorial integrity and political

independence of the Democratic Republic of the

Congo. At the same time, though, they are appointing

governors in our country, changing the names of our

streets and making decisions as if it were their country.

These countries have spilled blood in our jungle

and dare to assume the right to tell us who our Minister

for Foreign Affairs should be. In threatening my

freedom of movement, perhaps they imagined that I

would not manage to reach New York, but we have

more than one trick up our sleeve. Here I am. I will

leave New York and go wherever my President tells me

to go. We hope that other countries that wish to

maintain good relations with us will refuse to heed

these uneducated judges.

I say uneducated because I have urged our

people to rise and crush the invaders and to make them

eat their words, but these judges thought I had called

for the invaders to be strangled. These judges are so

uneducated they did not realize that I was quoting

Voltaire. And now that I've admitted to quoting

Voltaire, they will probably issue international arrest

warrants for him, because they have no idea who he

was. Who are these countries to appoint themselves

universal judges and to prosecute people who are not

their citizens for acts that were not committed in their

territories? These judges do not rely on law since

their position is indefensible but on the law of the

jungle, because they are hunters. They made their

pronouncements two years ago. They are like hunters

who make no sound as they stalk their prey, but I too

am silent. I have not been warned or notified, but

INTERPOL knows it must arrest me if it gets its hands

on me. They have been just like big game hunters.

Everyone knows what happened to our Prime

Minister, Mr. Lumumba. In the tragedy in which a

Secretary-General of the United Nations lost his life,

the people one person in particular who carried

28

out that dirty work dissolved Lumumba's body in

sulphuric acid. Perhaps they are after me now because

they are suffering a shortage of sulphuric acid. This

gentlemen kept one of Lumumba's teeth as a talisman

and displayed it on television, admitting that they had

dismembered Lumumba's body, dissolved it in

sulphuric acid and kept his tooth as a charm. These

universal judges have not been moved to prosecute the

person who boasts of having dissolved Lumumba's

body and kept one of his teeth. I think these people

intend to open a museum some time soon and to grow

rich charging admission to see Lumumba's tooth.

My African brothers may also be prosecuted

when people arrogating the right to appoint members of

Government issue warrants for them. That is why my

brothers should not remain silent. They are foreign

ministers and the same thing could happen to them.

They should react. They should not think of me as

someone who is uneducated. These countries must be

prevented from acting beyond their rights. No one

assigned them the task of running the world's affairs

through their own brand of justice.

I do not wish to linger on this ridiculous topic,

but I would go even further in discussing truth and

mendacity. Everyone is convinced that we are erecting

obstacles to the diplomatic work of the United Nations,

but Lumumba's tooth should be a sign that we have

historical reasons for our actions. What goes around

comes around. I recognize that we have been very

particular about how the United Nations forces may be

deployed, but we have acceded to the Organization's

wishes. We agreed to the Mission and to the Lusaka

Ceasefire Agreement, although the fire has yet to

cease. People persist in believing in the validity of the

Agreement, but it was signed on 10 July 1999 and the

fires are still burning today and the war continues.

Still, people keep talking about the Lusaka Ceasefire

Agreement.

Well, the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement designates

the invaders, the aggressors, as parties. These parties

signed the Agreement, but Security Council resolution

1304 (2000) implies that they are the aggressors and

enjoins them to leave my country. Thus, they are no

longer parties, but aggressors who should leave as soon

as possible.

Moreover, their Congolese puppets are playing

the role of Trojan horse. These invaders have exploited

certain Congolese supporters of Mobutu to justify their

invasion of our country and their aggression. Now, one

of these asteroids is giving shelter to Mobutu's former

soldiers. They are training in Kampala and their aim of

returning to Kinshasa has been openly declared. One

large country is helping others to build military bases

on our borders and is training their soldiers in order to

increase tourism in our country.

We must be vigilant. We must act to ensure the

implementation of the United Nations resolutions. We

would tell the United Nations that, in order to be more

effective and to have a greater chance of success, it

must implement its own resolutions. I would express

the hope that I shall not have to return here next year to

repeat yet again that the Rwandans are still in my

country, sowing death and pillaging our land. The

United Nations must finally implement its own

resolutions.

How can it do so? It can compel the Ugandans

and Rwandans to return to their homes. We do not want

them in our country. They are our eternal neighbours,

asteroids that orbit our planet. Let them go home. Let

them talk to us. We want this war to end as all others

do: with negotiations. The Second World War ended in

negotiations; the war in Algeria ended in negotiations

between France and the National Liberation Front; the

war in Viet Nam ended in negotiations between the

host country here and the Vietnamese; the war between

Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, which

has broken all endurance records, is showing signs of

ending soon. How? Through negotiations between the

Catholics and the Protestants.

Just the other day, in reference to another topic, I

mentioned that Security Council resolution 242 (1967)

was adopted over 40 years ago, but that it is only now

beginning to be implemented. Now, we are not going to

wait 40 years for our Clinton and our Camp David. The

United Nations must implement its resolutions

immediately. It must support us to ensure that the

aggressors, whatever they may say, go home. They are

not at home. We do not want them in our country. They

must go home.

The Second World War erupted after a long

incubation. We now see hope for perpetual peace

following that war, but I agree with Paul …luard that we

must be vigilant because the womb that bore the vile

beast is still fertile. We want all men, even our

enemies, to be our brothers. We want to rebuild our

country, which was dismantled by the excesses of

29

Mobutu. Like luard, we want to turn water into light

and, as I said, to make every man our brother.

That is my message to the Assembly. I repeat: do

not tell me

(spoke in English)

You have made a wonderful speech.

(spoke in French)

Say We have understood your message and we shall

tell our Governments to implement the relevant United

Nations resolutions immediately so that the aggressors

go home. Please help us to talk with them, in order to

put an end to this war, which should end as all wars

end. Some of us lost all our hair waiting for the blessed

day, 17 May 1997, after 32 years of activity. Look at

President Kabila's head and mine; we can be

recognized by our advanced baldness, which came

about while we were waiting for the moment when we

could re-enter Kinshasa.

So, my African brothers and my brothers from

other countries, including many from Latin America, I

conclude with a Spanish saying. I do not wish to

translate it, so those who do not understand will have

to stop a Spanish-speaking colleague and ask What

did he say?:

(spoke in Spanish)

When your neighbour's house is on fire, watch out for

your own house.