Source: CCTV.com

10-25-2006 17:32

Beneath our plane is the second largest tropical forest on earth but amidst its woods wars are raging.

Kinshasa Stadium

In Kinshasa Stadium the violence seems far away.

It is May 17th and we have the opportunity to witness a grand military parade in Kinshasa.

The parade is to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the city’s conquest by former Congolese president Laurent Kabila, an event which marks the beginning of the continuous fighting and conflict that has shattered this country.

On May 19th 1997 Kabila, who had been leading guerrilla wars in East Congo, overthrew the Mobutu Regime with military support from Uganda and Rwanda and was sworn in as president. The Kabila administration failed to stop bloodshed between the ethnic groups in the Congo and, instead of paying back the support he got from Uganda and Rwanda, Kabila gave shelter to those two countries anti-government forces acting in the Congo, thus turning his supporters into enemies. One year later Uganda and Rwanda engineered a rebellion against the Kabila administration. At the height of the war the allied forces reached Kinshasa International Airport and Kabila turned to his allies Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia for help, thus turning the conflict into an African multinational war.

This fighting that lasted over a year badly ruptured the nation. The government army controlled the south and west of the Congo while the Front Liberation Nationale du Congo, or FNLC, controlled the north east, and the Congolese Rally for Democracy, RCD, held the east of the Congo.

Editor:Wang Ping