Reply #43: and timber? and minerals?

[Hannah Bell]

While the people of Congo resign themselves to believing that “the page has been turned” in Congolese affairs, much of the ongoing exploitation today can be directly connected to banking, plantations and mining interests that plundered the Belgian Congo (1908-1960) and then the “independent” state—the Democratic Republic of Congo (1960-1972) and then Zaire (1972—1997)—controlled by Joseph Mobutu and his western business partners and backers.

Amongst the many prominent people involved are Belgian nationals like Louis Michel, Étienne Davignon, Philippe de Moerloose and Andre Flahaut, and U.S. nationals like Henry Kissinger, Bill Richardson and Maurice Tempelsman.

The interests of the Royal Family of Belgium are also involved.

The predatory meddling and plundering of such people is rendered invisible by the international “community”—press, think-tanks, non-government organizations, foreign policy institutes and especially by academia—e.g. anthropology, international relations, political science, and African affairs departments.

Louis Michel is EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian AID, a gatekeeper position that insures that millions of Congolese people suffer miserably. ...He is reportedly a diamond merchant exploiting the diamond rich Tshikapa region of DRC. Michel also has ties to Congo’s diamonds through the Societe Miniere De Bakwanga (MIBA), a mainstay of Belgian neocolonialism in Congo; Michel’s son is reportedly directly involved at MIBA.(9)

Belgian business tycoon Viscount Étienne Davignon is chairman of the board of directors of S.N. Brussels Airlines, which he co-founded after the bankruptcy of Sabena, the Belgian national airline that carried Patrice Lumumba to his own death in 1961 and shipped DRC’s plundered minerals out of Rwanda (1998-2005) in partnership with the Kagame regime.

Davignon is also a member of the board of numerous Belgian companies, and a former director of Anglo-American Corporation, the big Oppenheimer/DeBeers mining conglomerate operating in Congo in partnership with G.H.W. Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation.

A 2001 Belgian parliamentary enquiry concluded that Davignon played an important and active role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.(10) Like Maurice Tempelsman, Davignon was deeply involved in the Western coup d’etat that put Joseph Mobutu in power, and kept him there.

From 1989 to 2001, Étienne Davignon was chairman of the Belgian bank Société Générale de Belgique, one of the most lasting and perfidious enemies of the Congolese state.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of minerals were plundered by the Societe General de Belgique through its majority-owned subsidiary the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK)—the Belgian Royal family’s mining company that exploited Congo’s copper, cobalt, tin, uranium and zinc from 1908, and later became GECAMINES, the parastatal mining company “controlled” by Mobutu and his closest cronies and Western allies. ...The U.S. purchased uranium from UMHK’s Shinkalobwe mine and later used it to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Étienne Davignon was a director of Kissinger Associates, the intelligence and defense-consulting firm set up by Henry Kissinger, whose list of notable associates includes Clinton’s former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson, who put a “humanitarian” face on the US invasion of Zaire (1996-1998).

Henry Kissinger is on the board of the International Rescue Committee, a prominent “relief” agency in the Congo—and one of the reasons the death toll is so high.

Étienne Davignon is also a director of Gilead Sciences, a “biotechnology” company whose past directors include Donald Rumsfeld (1988-2001).

Gilead directors today include George Shultz, a Bechtel director and former U.S. Secretary of State; Carla Hills, International Crisis Group director and NAFTA architect; John Madigan, a former Tribune Company (mass media and “news”) director and current member of the Defense Business Board of the U.S. Department of Defense; and Nicholas G. Moore, another Bechtel director, and former CEO/Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1994-2004. Gilead Sciences was involved in the “Tamilflu” scare.(13)

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) is involved in the Lueshe niobium mine in DRC’s North Kivu province, a mine currently kept off-line—and soaked in blood—by Rwandan-backed General Laurent Nkunda, the warlord in eastern Congo, in order to drive up world niobium prices.

Belgian Étienne Davignon is also Special Adviser to EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel.

Belgian Philippe de Moerloose, a member of Kinshasa’s elite, supplies jets, helicopters and other presidential toys to Joseph Kabila.(15) De Moerloose’s firm Demipex—based in Brussels, Kinshasa and Lumumbashi—deals in equipment and logistics and holds the sole Nissan distributorship in DRC. His firm Overseas Security Services is responsible for atrocities against desperate Congolese in MIBA held diamond concessions.

MIBA is reportedly $US 100 million in debt, with some $US 20 million owed to De Moerloose. De Moerloose’s Belgian aviation company, Demavia Airlines, partnered with the DRC-based Hewa Bora airlines, is accused of arms shipments to DRC. De Moerloose companies served as intermediaries shipping helicopters between France’s Aeromechanic Corporation and Britain’s Sloane Helicopters Ltd. to Air Katanga, a “Congolese” firm controlled by other notable Belgian nationals.

Philippe de Moerloose has business ties to the companies connected to George Forrest, a mainstay of exploitation in Congo since 1922;

De Moerloose also operates in Rwanda and Burundi, putting him in business relations on both sides of Congo’s wars. De Moerloose vehicles sold in Rwanda and Congo are used by armed forces, and De Moerloose (2002) confirmed that the Rwandan Ministry of Defense buys directly from his companies. Paul de Moerloose, a brother, married Marie-Pierre Pairoux, of the wealthy French Pierre Pairoux family—partners of George Forrest businesses.

Patrick de Moerloose has lived in Katanga’s copperbelt zone for 30 years, and was accused of stealing coltan and copper from Gecamines, the massive Congolese mining concern. De Moerloose companies are believed to be involved in illegal diamond, copper and cobalt smuggling out of DRC. Philippe De Moerloose is also implicated in selling weapons to Angola.(16)

Joseph Kabila is married to Sandrine Nguesso, the daughter of Dennis Sassou Nguesso, the President of Congo-Brazzaville. There were reportedly only two white men who attended Joseph Kabila’s wedding: one was Israeli-American diamond magnate Dan Gertler, the new King of the Congo, and the other was Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose. France has very close ties with Sassou Nguesso...

Many of the same families behind the European colonial enterprise—rooted in slavery, white supremacy and terror—are behind the warlords in Congo today. The mainstays of exploitation, like the interests of former Belgian Barons or the Ministers of Colonies, have morphed into more insidious corporate entities.

New players have dislodged some interests, like the Israeli-Americans dealing in blood diamonds through the Tel Aviv diamond exchange with the support of the White House. And now China is deeply involved in the fray, but that’s another story, another page to be unturned, and a hidden history to be excavated from the rubble of Central Africa.

http://www.otabenga.org/node/95