[This is my contribution to ZCommunications's "Reimagining Society" project]

I returned from Bukavu yesterday. A sign of a country not having full sovereignty is the fact that you have to get there through another country. Those who have business in Rwanda can go through Rwanda, flying into Kigali and going overland into Bukavu via Cyangugu, which is Rwanda's sister city to Bukavu (and the place that the Rwandan army and militias have invaded Bukavu from numerous times during the war). An alternative is to fly into Kenya, from Kenya to Bujumbura in Burundi, and overland from Bujumbura.

BUKAVU, DRC - Like everything else, reading material is scarce and expensive here. There isn't a daily newspaper in Bukavu, and after visiting several libraries and bookstores in different parts of the city, I didn't see one even from another region. The media that people rely on seems to be the radio, but I've met a few radio journalists and they have the same scarcities, which makes it very difficult for them to cover issues and stories (not to mention the fact that journalists who cover controversial topics get assassinated every so often - more on that later).

I'm in Bukavu, in South Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's a big city! About a million people, in the uplands, on the coast of a strange and geologically fascinating volcanic origin Lake Kivu. The city, and the province (which has about 4-5 million people according to estimates I've heard and read), have seen too much of too many kinds of violence over the past 15 years. I have wanted to come here for a long time, for various reasons.

Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, actually presented a dossier from his intelligence agencies when he visited Canada. The intelligence agencies were claiming, based on a magic laptop, that there were FARC guerrilla cells operating in Canada, masterminded by the cousin of the assassinated guerrilla leader Raul Reyes.

In my question/answer about the Canada Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA), I cited a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization that has a board with people like George Soros, Kofi Annan, Richard Armitage, Louise Arbour, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Ernesto Zedillo on it - not exactly raging radicals, in other words.

The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA) was withdrawn from the table while being debated for its second reading in Canadian Parliament on May 27, 2009. Stalled for now, the CCFTA will certainly be back: it has not been defeated, and its proponents (the Conservatives and some of the Liberals) await an opportunity to bring it back.

The following set of questions and answers are intended to help those in Canada trying to stop the CCFTA (or see to it that it stays down).

As hard as I tried, I never managed to meet Fr. Jean Juste. I was in Haiti when he was a political prisoner of the coup government/UN regime. At that time, he was also a presidential candidate - the movement put him up while he was in jail. It was a good move, a tactic movements use with imprisoned leaders, to raise visibility and provide some protection.

[UPDATE MAY 17/09: The Tigers seem to be trying to surrender, or at least concede defeat and pursue a ceasefire, although the government seems to be continuing to pursue (and announce) a military victory.]

Sorry for the break. Short of a substantial posting, here's an update on what I'm up to these days.

* Working with Colombia solidarity groups against the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The best source right now I'd say is the Canada-Colombia project of La Chiva.