Thomas Lubanga verdict: stunned silence among friends in Congo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/mar/14/thomas-lubanga-verdict-congo-reaction

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Angel is sitting in a sombre room just off the dusty main road through Bunia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her brother is Thomas Lubanga, the first man to be found guilty in a trial at the international criminal court.

Dozens of activists from the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), the party founded by Lubanga in the midst of the brutal second Congo war, are gathered here in the party's headquarters for the verdict. Pictures of Lubanga cover the walls, mostly print-outs ofimages of him sitting in the dock in The Hague.

People crowd around a radio, straining to hear an update from the court, but the only thing being broadcast is a phone-in talk show. Despite the inanity of what they're hearing, the atmosphere is palpably tense and barely anyone says a word.

Lubanga was accused of recruiting and training child soldiers during a devastating ethnic conflict in Ituri, eastern Congo, between 2000 and 2003. The ethnic rivalry in Ituri was between the Hema and the Lendu tribes, but was made fantastically complicated by the involvement of international actors - especially the Ugandan army - and the presence of lucrative gold mines. Lubanga's UPC claimed to fight on behalf of the Hema.

The UPC office was nearly full at 11am on Wednesday, when the reading of the verdict began, and by midday three more benches have been fetched and crammed into the conference room. The long wait for any word from The Hague has cranked up the tension, but the midday news bulletin on Radio Okapi delivered the blow in one short sentence; a surgical precision and what seemed, in the context, an inconsiderate brevity.

Three judges at the ICC voted unanimously to pronounce Lubanga guilty of recruiting child soldiers as young as 11 and sending them into battle. NGOs, human rights groups and activist celebrities have welcomed the verdict, describing it as a warning to leaders and warlords who act with little regard to international law. Among Lubanga's friends and colleagues, however, satisfaction was in predictably short supply.

Everyone's reaction is, at first, stunned silence. Lubanga's family, colleagues and even his former soldiers had, the previous day, spoken only of their desire to see justice done and their certainty that he would be acquitted. Angel seems unmoved. Someone hands her a digital camera and she moves around the room, filming people as they speak. Contemplation turns to frustration and anger. "The ICC is a political institution," says Pele Kaswara, a UPC representative in the local government. "They're diplomats, not judges. You'll never see an American pass before the ICC. All of the accused there are Africans."

One speech inspires another and before long the air is full of furious rhetoric. "[Lubanga] came to protect us from being massacred and today he's been condemned by an international mafia. International powers started the violence that happened here, but we are blamed and punished for it," says Benedict, a long-term party activist. "The ICC is mocking the people of Ituri. What did Thomas do here? We were attacked, people were decapitated, and yet Thomas is bearing all the responsibility."

He was lucky enough to have a good education, so we always turned to him with our problems and he always found a solution," she said. "His children have found the trial incredibly difficult."

There's no doubt that the conflict here has left a lot of suffering to go around. Victims – and perpetrators – of violence are everywhere. That makes simple notions of right and wrong very difficult, and justice becomes a thorny issue. Much of the frustration among the UPC members seems to be inspired by a distant authority making a decision about a conflict it couldn't, in their view, possibly comprehend.

"What we want is for people to understand the conflict that happened here," says Jean-Baptiste Bongi, head of the UPC in Ituri. "When a hoard of people attacks you, your family, your friends, is it then wrong to defend yourself? There were massacres here, beheadings. How do you react to that? These people [at The Hague] don't understand anything."