By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, January 23, 2001

Although it might be initially surprising, on reflection it seems quite fitting that Cuban president Fidel Castro recently signed decrees ordering flags in that nation to be flown at half-mast to pay tribute to Laurent Kabila, the slain president of the |Democratic Republic of Congo|. Kabila was killed last week in an unsuccessful coup attempt.

Kabila and Castro have a lot in common. Like Castro, Kabila led a rebel movement that overthrew a corrupt dictatorship and gained widespread support among the people of Congo by promising a return to democracy and free and fair elections. And just like Castro, once Kabila actually held the reins of power, he indefinitely postponed the promised elections.

Kabila also promised to dispense with the corruption and attendant economic problems faced by his nation under the leadership of former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Instead, the corruption continued and Kabila managed to escalate the numerous conflicts that Seko rushed into, placing the DRC at the heart of what has been termed Africa's World War, with seven nations in the region committing troops to one side or another.

Human rights, never a priority with Seko, hardly improved under Kabila with a recent United Nations high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson recently saying,

At this moment, men and women are being pursued for having expressed their opinions, the freedom to association is severely compromised by restrictive legislation and torture and mistreatment remain common practices in detention centres, in particular military ones.

Just the sort of man that Castro would want to honor as "a follower of the revolutionary and nationalist ideas of Patricio Lumumba" (Lumumba was briefly Congo's first post-colonial president before being tortured and murdered in a military coup five days after the nation's independence).

In fact, Jorge Risquet Valdes of the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee noted that as far back as 1965, Cuban revolutionary Che Guevera was impressed after meeting Kabila, writing in his diary that "it seems the only man who has the real quality of a leader of masses is Kabila," and Risquet adds that Kabila was "a patriot, anti-tribalist, progressive, anti-colonialists and anti-imperialist."

Source:

Cuba pays tribute to slain Congolese leader Kabila. Reuters, January 21, 2001.

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