UN Radio

UN and Africa
Programme Number: 042
Week of: Sunday, 3 April, 2005
Recording Date: Thursday, 7 April, 2005

Topical Issue(s):
" The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Moreno Ocampo, has received a sealed list of names of people suspected of crimes against humanity in the Darfur region of Western Sudan.

" Rwanda commemorates the eleventh anniversary of the genocide in which hundreds of thousands of people died. Rwanda's UN Ambassador Stanislas Kamanzi says that the country needs assistance to rebuild and to promote reconciliation among its people.

" The Marburg haemorrhagic fever has killed more than 150 people in Angola. A World Health Organization spokesman, Dick Thomson says the agency is investigating rumours that the disease has spread to other parts of Angola, including the capital Luanda.

Editor / Presenter: Ransford Cline-Thomas
Producer: Derrick Mbatha
Production Assistant: Nyi Nyi Teza
Studio Engineer: Rosie Starr
Duration: 15'00"

PRESENTER: Hello and welcome to United Nations Radio from New York.

*** SIG TUNE ***
(Please, play briefly, dip upon hand wave, and hold under narration.)

PRESENTER:
This is, UN and Africa. I'm Ransford Cline-Thomas.

*** SIG TUNE ***: (Bring Sig Tune up briefly, dip and hold under)

PRESENTER:

This week the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Moreno Ocampo came to United Nations headquarters to receive a sealed list of 51 names of people suspected of crimes against humanity, committed in the western Darfur region of Sudan. Last week the Security Council adopted a resolution to refer the cases of war crimes suspects to the Court following intense negotiations on the text. Mr. Ocampo says the international community has now joined together to end impunity in Darfur.

Moreno Ocampo clip.
"As the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court my duty in this common task is to investigate the crimes and to respect the interests of the victims."

PRESENTER:
You will hear more from Moreno Ocampo in a moment.
In Rwanda and at the United Nations, April 7 is a reminder of genocide that happened eleven years ago. The representative of Rwanda to the United Nations explains how one group of the people of Rwanda, who had lived together for many years, sharing the same culture, was manipulated into turning against their compatriots and slaughtered them in hundreds of thousands in 1994.
And a killer disease known as Marburg has killed 150 people in Angola.

Dick Thomson clip
"There is no treatment for the disease. There is no vaccine. Generally there is a case
fatality rate anywhere from 25 to over 90 per cent."

That is Dick Thomson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization in Geneva. More from him later in the programme.

So stay tuned to UN and Africa.

*** SIG TUNE ***
(Bring up briefly, dip and hold under until end of first sentence.)

PRESENTER:
Armed militias who committed atrocities against civilians in the western Darfur region are probably beginning to worry about what may happen to them. This is because the process of prosecuting them has been initiated with the submission by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan of sealed documents to the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Moreno Ocampo. UN Radio's Diane Bailey reports.

NARRATOR:
The handing over of the documents to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Moreno Ocampo is one concrete step in the process of delivering justice to the victims of the atrocities committed by armed militias in Darfur. It happened in less than one week after the Security Council decided to refer war crimes suspects to the Court. Last year, the United Nations sent a commission inquiry to Sudan to investigate the atrocities .The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Moreno Ocampo recalls that the commission collected thousands of documents and issued a public report on its findings.
CUT 1 Moreno Ocampo
The Commission reports there were mass killings of innocent civilians, systematic rape of girls and women and the burning of home families.

NARRATOR
Mr. Ocampo says the task now is to end the culture of impunity in Darfur where tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than two million displaced in the fighting between the government allied militias and rebels.
CUT 2: Moreno Ocampo
As the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, my duty in this common task is to investigate the crimes and to respect the interests of the victims.

NARRATOR:

And now that the Prosecutor has received the documents and testimonies about atrocities committed in Darfur, he will start investigating possible cases for prosecution.

CUT 3: Moreno Ocampo

Before I start the investigation, I have to assess the crimes and the admissibility of the case. I will analyze the Commission documents and gather all existing information. I urge states and organizations with information on Darfur to provide it to my office.

NARRATOR:
Mr. Ocampo says he needs help in order to carry out the task of prosecuting the people suspected of war crimes in Darfur.
CUT 4: Moreno Ocampo
I call for partners to do my job, from independent citizens all over the world to governments, especially the African Union and the United Nations.

NARRATOR:
For its part the Sudanese government is opposed to referring cases of war crimes suspects to the International Criminal Court. It says that it has the capacity to prosecute the suspects itself and has started its own investigations. Mr. Ocampo says part of his job now is to assess the proceedings initiated by the Sudanese authorities.
CUT 5: Moreno Ocampo
I will carefully and independently assess these proceedings. I will closely monitor crimes ongoing crimes in Darfur as well as efforts to prevent and stop these atrocities. We all have a common task to protect life ending the culture of impunity.

NARRATOR:
On the same day that the Prosecutor received sealed documents from the United Nations Secretary-General, there were reports that displaced people in Darfur were still facing harassment by armed militias. UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard.

CUT 6: Fred Eckhard

In North Darfur, some 800 people at the Abu Shouk camp for displaced persons have staged a demonstration to protest the continuous insecurity and high level of rapes around he camps. And in South Darfur, tribesmen entered Kalma camp this past weekend and harassed the population. The local police, claiming there was no wrongdoing, refused to take action.

NARRATOR:
A unit of the African Union Civilian Police eventually dispersed the armed men following requests from humanitarian organizations in the area. Meanwhile, thousands of Sudanese have demonstrated against the most recent resolutions of the Security Council, including the one that referred the war crimes suspects to the International Criminal Court. Reporting for UN Radio, I am Diane Bailey.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME

PRESENTER:
The 7th of April marks the eleventh anniversary of the 1994
genocide in Rwanda in which Hutu militias and government
troops killed approximately 800,000 people. In Rwanda the day is
being commemorated day under the theme of fighting genocide
and its ideology in Rwanda and throughout the year. At the United
Nations headquarters in New York, Rwandan Remembrance Day
has been marked by holding a panel on "Healing the Past to
Provide Hope for the Future". Participants in the panel included
the representative of Rwanda to the United Nations, Ambassador
Stanislas Kamanzi. UN Radio's Derrick Mbatha discussed
the genocide with Ambassador Kamanzi who says that the
mass slaughter was not caused by the animosity between the Hutus
and Tutsis, but by the manipulation of the people by political
leaders.
SK: It's necessary to appeal on everybody to assess what happened as a result of policies of division that had been implemented by the government that held power in Rwanda following the independence, for some reasons where they used this policy inherited from the colonial period of dividing to govern.

DM: But how were they able to convince and mobilize people to commit such atrocious acts?

SK: Through political mobilization, the way they use the media, the way the government was fully involved in that at different levels from the President of the Republic to the grassroots level whereby most of the leaders were involved in sensitizing the lay people to participate in genocide using misleading messages, identifying the Tutsis as a threat to be gotten rid of.

DM: You mentioned the media. What role did the media play there?

SK: The media did play a very negative role. They were the ones that went along inciting people to be active in genocide perpetration. They would identify some people where they were hiding and these people could be easily taken out of their hiding places.

DM: What about the role of the church? I understand that some of church people or church leaders were implicated in the commission of this genocide.

SK: Yes some church members were indeed involved in the commission of the genocide. As a matter of fact we have some of them who currently are being prosecuted by justice. That's one perspective. From another perspective, you are aware that the church's mission is to teach brotherhood through the holly scriptures. The church's moral authority would have been to challenge the leaders and tell them that what was being planned and what was being done couldn't be acceptable. Churches would have been involved in mobilizing the believers of their regions not to follow the misleading or the politicians. But churches failed to do that. They kept being very passive. And we have instances where even people would seek refuge in churches and still the churches won't really use their moral authority and their influence to protect them and to prevent them from being massacred by the militia and by the governmental soldiers.

DM: How would you assess the response of the international community?

SK: Well, I won't go back to 1994 when we were totally failed by the international community who, through the Security Council, failed to acknowledge what was happening as genocide and withdrew the UN forces that were deployed in Rwanda at that period, leaving people to be massacred. Following that, we would have expected the international community to act in a bold manner in terms of bringing support to Rwanda in the process of reconstruction. Recently there have been some positive actions being carried out though the bilateral mechanism or multilateral mechanisms. But not enough was really done and currently Rwanda is still lagging behind in terms of recovering from the impact left by the genocide.

PRESENTER:

That was Ambassador Stanislas Kamanzi of Rwanda speaking
with UN Radio's Derrick Mbatha.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME

PRESENTER:
In Angola, more than 150 people have died of a rare virus, known
as the Marburg, which is named after a town in Germany where it
was first detected. This severe and highly fatal haemorrhagic fever
has no cure. The World Health Organization has sent surveillance
teams to the northern province of Uige where the cases have been
identified. The agency is also working with the Angolan
Ministry of Health to devise a plan to control the outbreak. The
Spokesman for the World Health Organization, Dick Thomson
discussed the outbreak of Marburg with Jean-Pierre Ramazzani
and first explained how the virus that causes the fever is
transmitted.
DT: Usually this is through body fluids which have health workers can come in contact during a hospital stay. So it's health care workers who may be the most vulnerable next to family members who might treat patients at home.

JPR: What are the characteristics of the disease?

DT: Initially and unfortunately the first symptoms look very much like other diseases. They have a high fever. They may have some nausea, some aches and pains. This could be confused with yellow fever, could be confused with malaria. As the disease progresses, patients develop a characteristic rash, some times on the chest. There could be blood in stool. These patients have diarrhoea as material is vomited.

JPR: Now how to recognize a person infected?

DT: That's going to be very hard to do and that's why it's been important that laboratories are now set up in Uige and another will be established in Luanda. It's important to identify cases right away so that these patients can be isolated and treated in a safe manner, and also to allow for richer contact tracing. If patients are identified earlier, it's easier to find out who their close contacts have been and then these people will be monitored.

JPR: Is this fever spreading out in the rest of Angola and in the neighbouring countries?

DT: There have been confirmed cases in the capital city of Luanda but these cases were from the focus of the outbreak in Uige. Contacts of those traces in Luanda are being followed and so far there have been no other cases identified in Luanda. There have been rumours of a spread to other provinces nearby. Those rumours are all being investigated.

JPR: What about neighbouring countries?

DT: Actually there have been a few rumours in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some of those rumours have been discarded as other diseases and I think one is still under investigation.

JPR: Is the disease curable? If so, how many people have been healed?

DT: There is no treatment for the disease. There is no vaccine. Supportive therapy may provide a role in survival times. But generally there is a case fatality rate anywhere from 25 to over 90 per cent.

JPR: If there is no treatment, what are you doing with the patient?

DT: The patients will be provided supportive care. They will be given intravenous fluids. Complications will be managed, that sort of thing but the most important thing about getting a patient into an isolation ward is that it reduces the chance of spread to the patient's family or other close contacts.

PRESENTER:
That was Dick Thompson of the World Health
Organization speaking with Jean-Pierre Ramazzalli.
*** CLOSING MUSIC ***:
(Please establish music briefly, dip and hold under)

PRESENTER:
You've been listening to, UN and Africa, from United Nations Radio in New York.
Thank you for listening to the programme and thanks also to the team here in our studios. That's our Producer Derrick Mbatha, Production Assistant Nyi Nyi Teza and our studio engineer, Louis Baiseter.
And from me Ransford Cline-Thomas bye for now.

*** CLOSING MUSIC ***
(Please bring music up and play till the end.)