[lil'babykitten]

Please take the time to read this in it's entirety. It's a truly shocking story.
From Here

Danny leaned into the plane and asked if we were all strapped in. Then he paused, as if thinking about what he was going to say next.

"Folks, as we are missionaries, we always start our flights with a prayer," he said.

Then he began to pray.

He asked that we be safe on our journey. He asked, too, that his passengers might find the story they were looking for in Congo.
By now Danny would have known exactly the kind of story we would find.

He had grown up in Africa. It was his home.
Every other day he flew into north-eastern Congo. He had helped evacuate hundreds of people when the fighting erupted around Bunia in late spring and summer.

Danny knew Congo alright but he wore his faith like armour, and from his world above the clouds this missionary pilot saw a different Africa.

From up there, one could see the well tilled fields of Uganda, the silver immensity of Lake Victoria, the occasional fishing boats speckled on its surface, and then the land sloping upwards into mountains and forest and another expanse of water, Lake Albert.

An invisible line divides the lake and at half past three on a sunny afternoon we crossed into Congo.

As I said, from the vantage point of these skies, one saw a different Africa.
It was a green place, a peaceful place.

We passed over small brush fires, the thick white smoke curling into the sky and then dissipating as it hit the cold air further up.
From here Congo was at peace. Then we began to descend.

We crossed a line of hills and banked to the left, then circled and flew over a large town.
This was Bunia - our destination, its streets busy in the sunlight.

Coming in to land we could see the tents of the UN troops, their white armoured vehicles, the barbed wire encircling the airport perimeter.
Blue helmets, white vehicles, the green hills of Central Africa.
For one jolting moment I was carried back to another place, a central African nation where I had watched the UN fail to halt genocide.

Rwanda.

Over the next few days the echoes of that other tragedy would follow wherever we went.
The UN compound in Bunia is encircled by razor wire and guarded by Uruguayan troops.

They looked tired, dusty and uncomfortable.

There were Bangladeshis too, and Pakistanis and there are Nepalese on the way.

The armies of the world's poorest countries, just as was the case in Rwanda.

For, here at the outset, let us be clear about one matter: that Congo is a tragedy the developed world has done its best to ignore.

Four million people have died from massacre, famine, disease.

Four million in just five years.

In that period the armies of no fewer than seven African countries have fought here.

They did not fight for the good of the Congolese but as part of a latter day scramble for Africa, a war for the country's rich resources of diamonds, gold and minerals.

In recent years we've recoiled at fresh accounts of the horrors inflicted on Congo under the colonial rule of the Belgian king Leopold.

Yet even as a powerful new account of his terrible reign was being published, a new age of evil was overtaking Congo.

That night in the Lushakavini hotel I pulled out a copy of the latest report on Congo by Human Rights Watch.

Its chief researcher is a remarkable woman called Alison Des Forges.

I remember during the Rwandan genocide, meeting a group of survivors and one of them pressing into my hand a letter for Alison.

"She is my friend, and she must be told what has happened to us," the woman said.

Alison Des Forges and the brave Congolese activists who help her are heroes of our time.

They are brave because recording the testimonies of the traumatised survivors of Congo's horror is in itself traumatising work.

They are brave because it can also be dangerous work: human rights activists have been abducted, tortured and murdered.

It is only when you hear the testimony that they record, that you understand why they are so driven to bear witness.

For example, this story recorded from a Pygmy man, in late 2002.

"About 20 miles from Mambasa, the militia attacked a pygmy camp."

"A man called Amuzati who was hunting in the forest heard shooting. As he wasn't far from his camp he returned to see what was happening."

"About half a mile away from the camp he heard shouts and crying, and then there was silence."

"He came closer and saw several militia men."

"He saw the corpses of his family, including his nephew who was five-years-old, with his stomach cut open."

"They were cutting the flesh and eating the victims... he was filled with emotion and afraid that if he shouted, they would catch him too, so he crept away."

continued...

[lil'babykitten]

Or there was the story told by the aunt of a rape victim - there is an epidemic of sexual violence in north-eastern Congo.

This is the story she told: "One day in early November we were on the road near Mambasa when we ran into the militia."

"Some had camouflage uniforms and others just had green ones; some of them had green berets."

"They took our things from us including our bicycle and goats and then they took our niece who was only 15-years-old and they raped her in front of us."

"Then they took her away with them. We have not seen her since."

"Her name was Marie Anzoyo. I know other girls who were taken including a girl called Therese and another called Vero."

Marie Anzoyo, Therese, Vero.

Three names out of millions.

We rose before dawn on the second day and set out on the road north.

I use the word "road", but it hardly describes the dirt track which leads, over five bone-crunching hours to the village of Kachele, scene of Congo's latest massacre.

The landrover slid in the mud, bounced over ruts. In places the bush was so thick it brushed the windows of the car.

This was perfect ambush country, a landscape of concealment and hidden watchers.

In this part of Congo, alone 50,000 people have been killed in the past five years.

Many of them members of two warring ethnic groups: the Hema and the Lendu.

Close to Kachele we saw a log lying across the track leading into the hills.

Our guide, Dego, told us it had been placed there by Lendu tribesmen, those accused of carrying out the slaughter of Hema people at Kachele.

"They are just over that hill," he said.

Not for the first time in Central Africa, I was reminded of WB Yeats' line: Little room / great hatred.

Here, desperately poor people fought each other for the sake of land.

This is not mindless tribal violence.

In this part of the world land means food and that means survival.

If these people lived in a country with a functioning state, these disputes over land would likely never have erupted into such appalling violence.

Congo's vast natural wealth should provide prosperity for all of its people.

But instead, they have been cursed to live in a land ruled first by a venal Belgian king, and by Mobutu Sese Seko, the world's most corrupt dictator, and now a country where foreign armies like Uganda and Rwanda have come to plunder and fight.

In Kachele the survivors sat around in their rags.

Some looked bewildered. An old woman crouched outside the hut in which her family had been murdered. A cluster of children sat together in the open space between the mud and thatch huts.

Too late

Here are the facts of the massacre at Kachele.

Shortly after 0500, as the light crept over the valley, a party of Lendu militiamen approached the village.

One of them fired shots. It was the signal for the killing to begin.

Families panicked by the shooting ran out of their huts.

They ran into the militia and were cut down, mostly with the weapons used by Africa's poor: machetes, clubs and spears.

Sixty-five people were killed.

Forty of them were children.

Forty children hacked and bludgeoned at the hands of adults.

The killers escaped as they nearly always do, and a few hours after that the UN peacekeepers arrived.

Too late to do anything but count the corpses.

Kachele's chief is bitter.

Antoine Dhabi is 37-years-old. He inherited the chieftaincy from his brother who was murdered by the Lendu.

He told me that his daughters - eight-year-old Esperance and 13-year-old Antoinette - had been abducted by the attackers.

Antoine Dhabi said he felt like giving up and leaving for the town.

The land of his ancestors had become too dangerous.

"The Lendu want to wipe us all out," he said.

But talk to Lendu people who have been attacked by the Hema militias and you will hear the same thing.

They too have suffered appalling massacres.

Howl of grief

As we were leaving the village we heard singing.

I got out of the landrover and walked in the direction of the voice.

I say singing, but it is hardly an accurate description

It was partly song, but also, partly, a howl of grief.

An old woman was performing a ritual of mourning - dancing on the mass graves which contained the bodies of the dead.

Her name was Marianne and she had just come back to the village to find that her son and several of his children were dead.

I asked our guide Dego what she was singing.

"She sings that her children are gone, that they are decaying in the earth," he said.

Then the old woman climbed down from the grave and got down on her knees, and then threw her arms across the mound of earth.

And in this way, she said farewell to her children.

I just cannot comprehend how such actions can go so unnoticed.
Discuss.

[nonhuman]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
I just cannot comprehend how such actions can go so unnoticed.
Discuss.

Because people don't want to notice them. Then they'd get depressed and be less able to enjoy the luxury they live in.

[spacefreak]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
I just cannot comprehend how such actions can go so unnoticed.

Has the UN addressed this issue? Have they prepared a solution?

[lil'babykitten]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
Has the UN addressed this issue? Have they prepared a solution?

Read the article!

[spacefreak]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
Read the article!

I did, and always do. Now I've read it twice. I see a mention of a UN compound encircled by razor wire, and a mention that UN peacekeepers missed some killers.

So I ask again, has the UN addressed these issues? Have they proposed solutions?

You're the one who said "I just cannot comprehend how such actions can go so unnoticed." Well, there is a BBC article on it, and there appears to be some sort of UN peacekeeping presence there. What's unnoticed?

[lil'babykitten]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
So I ask again, has the UN addressed these issues? Have they proposed solutions?

Oh I see, I took your original post as asking if there was a UN presence there.

Anyway, as we know, there are UN peacekeepers there. But what they are doing is beyond me. These atrocities are still be carried out regardless of their presence. This is receiving absolutely no attention from the international community, nor is it receiving good media coverage. (at the very least)
I happened to come across it in a sub section of the BBCs web site.

This article gives a little background: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2928127.stm

[moki]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
I just cannot comprehend how such actions can go so unnoticed.
Discuss.

I certainly have noticed, and I agree that they are deplorable. The situation there is really just uncontrolled savagery.

[chris v]

For comprehensive reading, I suggest (in this order):

1. Heart of Darkness
2. King Leopold's Ghost
3. The Poisonwood Bible

The Belgian Congo has been a mess since the mid-1800's, beginning with Stanley's "expeditions" (read: conquests). They had a brief fling with democracy in 1960, but it went to hell in a hand-basket with the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the subsequent military takeover by Mobutu Sesi Seko. (The C.I.A. has been implicated in this situation, but not much has come to light in the mainstream media, so who knows.)

They haven't had a fighting chance since. I'd say that on the scale of human atrocities largely ignored by the "western" media, the Congo from 1961 on would have to be top of the list, merely because of the magnitude of suffering. I don't know if a million U.N. troops would be enough, but it sure would be nice if it even registered on the U.S.'s or Europe's foreign policy radar.

CV

[neigh-neigh-woo]

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR620462003

Amnesty international wrote this today.
At least its recognised in some quarters.
Even if its not mainstream media,
which it should be.

[MacGorilla]

This is truly a sad situation and its even sadder that its mostly ignored by the rest of the world.

[Uday's Carcass]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
This is truly a sad situation and its even sadder that its mostly ignored by the rest of the world.

and what would you have the world do? Have the UN send in troops? Have Europe? The French? America?

[OAW]

Originally posted by chris v:
For comprehensive reading, I suggest (in this order):

1. Heart of Darkness
2. King Leopold's Ghost
3. The Poisonwood Bible

The Belgian Congo has been a mess since the mid-1800's, beginning with Stanley's "expeditions" (read: conquests). They had a brief fling with democracy in 1960, but it went to hell in a hand-basket with the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the subsequent military takeover by Mobutu Sesi Seko. (The C.I.A. has been implicated in this situation, but not much has come to light in the mainstream media, so who knows.)

They haven't had a fighting chance since. I'd say that on the scale of human atrocities largely ignored by the "western" media, the Congo from 1961 on would have to be top of the list, merely because of the magnitude of suffering. I don't know if a million U.N. troops would be enough, but it sure would be nice if it even registered on the U.S.'s or Europe's foreign policy radar.

CV

Just wanted to reiterate that King Leopold's Ghost is an awesome read. Great suggestion!

OAW

[chris v]

Originally posted by OAW:
Just wanted to reiterate that King Leopold's Ghost is an awesome read. Great suggestion!

OAW

If you like that sort of history reading, check out my other favorite book in the same vein; The Fatal Shore, which is about the penal colony period of Australia. It's flat-out amazing that anybody survived the first ten years or so. Scary stuff, and just as well-written as King Leopold's Ghost.

CV

[Psychonaut]

I searched the forums hoping to find at least one topic on "Hotel Rwanda", but I was surprised when I found none. This is the closest I could find.

A couple of days ago I saw this film. Oh. my. God.
Please guys, I urge you to see it. I've made donations to the Human Rights Campaign and the International Fund for Rwanda in honor of Don Cheadle, but there most be more that I can do, I just don't know what.

Have any of you seen it? What did you come away thinking?

[Krusty]

Originally posted by Psychonaut:
I searched the forums hoping to find at least one topic on "Hotel Rwanda", but I was surprised when I found none. This is the closest I could find.

A couple of days ago I saw this film. Oh. my. God.
Please guys, I urge you to see it. I've made donations to the Human Rights Campaign and the International Fund for Rwanda in honor of Don Cheadle, but there most be more that I can do, I just don't know what.

Have any of you seen it? What did you come away thinking?

I haven't seen it and its not even playing in my town (yet). Looks fantastic though (I've watched all the clips). One of the most interesting things I saw in relation to this was a clip of a college student asking Bill Clinton about this in 2003. He stated (and I paraphrase) that that was one of the biggest failures of his presidency. They waited too long to do anything (80% of the killings occurred in the first 6 weeks or so). He said that if they'd only sent 10-15k troops they probably could have saved half of the people killed there.

Its a shame really ... damned if you do and damned if you don't. What most people don't realize is that Rwanda only has about 8 million people ... the 1 million killed there was a catastrophe equivalent to about 35 million Americans getting killed in the US. Unbelievable.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
I just cannot comprehend how such actions can go so unnoticed.
Discuss.

I don't think they've gone unnoticed. But facing them would force the UN to confront an unpleasant issue, one which they desperately want to avoid because it would void everything they've ever stood for.

Ancient hatreds, such as those flaring up in more than one African nation, don't die easily. In fact, it's fair enough to say that in few if any cases have they ever truly died out, save when one party or the other was completely eradicated. There are times when they've been suppressed for a time, but the suppression hasn't ever come from within. Look at the Balkans, which managed a semblance of peaceful coexistence under the heel of the Soviets, only to erupt once again when the USSR fell.

And now we see it in Africa. Colonialism meant oppression, but they were able to quell the ancient ethnic violence for a time. But once again, even this was not able to stop the old hatreds; as these nations have begun to re-develop their own identies, the old genocides have returned. We see it in the Sudan, we see it in the Congo, and we see it elsewhere.

Of course, old hatreds aren't the only ones to persist even in the face of oppression. Look at Israel, where two peoples which had (more or less) coexisted peacefully for centuries are now hell-bent on genociding each other. Even in the US, the old cultural hatred between black and white has yet to completely subside (though the situation has improved greatly over the last few decades, to the point where it has little real power anymore and most no longer subscribe to it).

To stop the violence quickly, the only solution is ruthless suppression by a third party (since neither party will stop on its own). But this is only a temporary solution, because when hate is suppressed it feeds on itself and only grows stronger, until one day it explodes. What we see in Africa today is a direct result of that.

To stop it permanently, then, it cannot be suppressed. Instead, it must be allowed to vent, to bluster about and be seen for the idiocy it is without becoming violent, until it blows itself out. To do this requires two things: a strong rule of law to punish those who do become violent, and true freedom of speech so that they can vent but -even more importantly- so that they can be mocked by saner folk. This takes a long time, of course, and it's not pleasant while it's happenning. But it does work, and the effects are permanent; every time hatred loses a hold it never regains it.

It sounds crazy, I know. How can hate speech and oppression, the two things by which hate spreads, also be the cure? But the pattern holds: what other than an invader force has ever stopped cultural violence temporarily, and what but venting has ever weakened or eliminated cultural hate permanently?

Neither solution, however, is palatable to the UN. Oppression means war, and the UN treats these things as nonoptions: not even acceptable as a last resort. As for letting it vent, this means allowing even hate speech, which the UN has decided "violates human dignity" and thus is worthy of being suppressed. Given this, what can the UN do? It's hamstrung by its own charter, powerless to act in situations like these.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
I just cannot comprehend how such actions can go so unnoticed.

Because Africa doesn't get as many votes as Iraq.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Psychonaut:
Have any of you seen it? What did you come away thinking?

I saw it in my Dialogs of American Culture class. We also watched Osama. It only affirms my belief that most of the politicians of this country care for little more than public opinion polls.

[bubblewrap]

watched the UN fail to halt genocide.

The UN is useless. Just like the Leauge of Nations was a joke.
And INTERPOL. The UN is to worried what the world will think if they actually try and use force. Remember who actually inhabits most of Africa. Which atrocities are SUPPOSE to be against the beliefs of the ones we shall not mention. The brutality is universal. It is a virus.
If the UN actually does something in Ruwanda, the ones we shall not mention will start a terror campaign in their countries.
That's the way I see it anyway.

[Salah al-Din]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
The UN is useless. Just like the Leauge of Nations was a joke.
And INTERPOL. The UN is to worried what the world will think if they actually try and use force. Remember who actually inhabits most of Africa. Which atrocities are SUPPOSE to be against the beliefs of the ones we shall not mention. The brutality is universal. It is a virus.
If the UN actually does something in Ruwanda, the ones we shall not mention will start a terror campaign in their countries.
That's the way I see it anyway.

Ignoring the spelling and grammar I thought I'd just add this from the CIA factbook.

Democratic Republic of Congo
Religions:

Roman Catholic 50%, Protestant 20%, Kimbanguist 10%, Muslim 10%, other syncretic sects and indigenous beliefs 10%

Rwanda
Religions:

Roman Catholic 56.5%, Protestant 26%, Adventist 11.1%, Muslim 4.6%, indigenous beliefs 0.1%, none 1.7% (2001)

and last:

Today, nearly fifty per cent of the people in Africa identify themselves as Christians.

from here

You were saying?

[ThinkInsane]

I'm guessing, and I could be wrong, that bubblewrap is using Sudan as his reference in that post.

[Salah al-Din]

Originally posted by ThinkInsane:
I'm guessing, and I could be wrong, that bubblewrap is using Sudan as his reference in that post.

He could very well have meant that and he would still be wrong.

In Sudan you have Muslims against Muslims. That wouldn't have any effect on the rest of the Muslim world in the way he portrays it.(I'm just "guessing" he was referring to Muslims and Islam in his post)

edited to add: Just compare the Western reaction to the uprising in the South and the Darfur uprising. It's pretty obvious what the difference in what causes the West to act and not to act.

[BoomStick]

Y'all aren't suggesting that the US go in and do something are you?

Why has the UN been so impotent?

[chris v]

Originally posted by BoomStick:
Y'all aren't suggesting that the US go in and do something are you?

Heavens forbid! No rational conservative president would advocate mucking around in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

[BoomStick]

C'mon "progressive" "thinkers", give them a solution since y'all seem to have all of the answers.

Or is bashing the US the only one ya got?

[Millennium]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
The UN is useless. Just like the Leauge of Nations was a joke.

I wouldn't call the UN useless; it has served as an excellent point of organization for various international aid programs. If you mean to talk about the General Assembly and Security Council, however, then we can speak of uselessness. The problem is not so much the core ideology -world peace- as the contradictory interpretations which have sprung up around it, to the point where any move that has any hope of being effective would violate one allegedly-core tenet or another of the UN's existence, and so it cannot be done.

No course of action is acceptable, and so there isn't any choice but to not act. I can't blame them for inconsistency, I suppose, but perhaps this should be taken as a lesson in what happens when you try to please everyone: you end up pleasing no one.