Behind the Numbers
Untold Suffering in the Congo
by Keith Harmon Snow and David
Barouski
www.zmag.org, March 1, 2006
The British medical journal Lancet recently
took greater notice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
than all western media outlets combined. A group of physicians
reported that about 4 million people have died since the "official"
outbreak of the Congolese war in 1998 (1). The BBC reported the
war in Congo has claimed more lives than any armed conflict since
World War II (2). However, experts working in the Congo, and
Congolese survivors, count over 10 million dead since war began
in 1996-not 1998-with the U.S.-backed invasion to overthrow Zaire's
President Joseph Mobutu. While the western press quantifies African
deaths all the time, no statistic can quantify the suffering of
the Congolese.
Some people are aware that war in the
Congo is driven by the desire to extract raw materials, including
diamonds, gold, columbium tantalite (coltan), niobium, cobalt,
copper, uranium and petroleum. Mining in the Congo by western
companies proceeds at an unprecedented rate, and
it is reported that some $6 million in raw cobalt alone-an element
of superalloys essential for nuclear, chemical, aerospace and
defense industries-exits DRC daily. Any analysis of the geopolitics
in the Congo requires an understanding of the organized crime
perpetrated through multi-national businesses, in order to understand
the reasons why the Congolese people have suffered a virtually
unending war since 1996.
Some people have lauded great progress
in the exposure of illegal mining in DRC, particularly by the
group Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose 2005 report "The Curse
of Gold" exposed Ugandan officials and multi-national corporations
smuggling gold through local rebel militias. The cited rebel groups
were the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and the People's
Armed Forces of Congo (FAPC). The western companies targeted by
HRW were Anglo-Ashanti Gold, a company headquartered in South
Africa, and Metalor, a Swedish firm. The HRW report failed to
mention that Anglo-Ashanti is partnered with Anglo-American, owned
by the Oppenheimer family and partnered with Canada-based Barrick
Gold described below (3). London-based Anglo-American Plc. owns
a 45% share in DeBeers, another Oppenheimer company that is infamous
for its near monopoly of the international diamond industry (4).
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a director of Anglo-American, is a director
of Royal Dutch/Shell and a member of U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan's Advisory Board (5). The report also suppressed the most
damning evidence discovered by HRW researchers-that Anglo-Ashanti
sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid rebel militia leaders
arrested there.
Several multi-national mining companies
have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report.
One is Barrick Gold, who operates in the town of Watsa, northwest
of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the
Congo. The Ugandan People's Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the
mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim
that Barrick executives flew into the region, with UPDF and RPF
(Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts, to survey and inspect their
mining interests (6).
George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor
for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney,
former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada
and chairman of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former
U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian
Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton's lawyers (7).
Barrick Gold is one of the client companies
of Andrew Young's Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew
Young is the former Mayor of Atlanta, and a key organizer of the
U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President
Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund
in October 1994. Goodworks' clients-or business partners in some
cases-include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments
of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited
below). Young is a director of Cox Communications and Archers
Daniels Midland-the "supermarket to the world" and National
Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick)
and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board
of The Carlyle Group.
Barrick Gold's mining partners have included
Adastra Mining-formerly named America Mineral Fields (AMFI, AMX,
other names), formerly based in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton's
hometown. Adastra had close ties with Lazare Kaplan International
Inc., the largest diamond brokerage firm in the U.S., whose president,
Maurice Tempelsman, has been an advisor on African Affairs to
the U.S. Government and has been the U.S. Honorary Consul General
of the Congo since 1977 (8).
Maurice Tempelsman accompanied Bill Clinton
during his African tour in 1998, and he sails with the Clintons
off Martha's Vineyard. He serves on the International Advisory
Council of the American Stock Exchange, and is a director of the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a
"scientific" front for his offshore diamond mining-raking
the seabed into oblivion.
Adastra also purchased a diamond concession
on the Congolese-Angolan border from the Belgian mercenary firm
International Defense and Security (1998), and currently has cobalt
and copper concessions in Congo's Katanga (Shaba) province (9).
Adastra is a member of the Corporate Council on Africa, along
with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman,
GE, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel and SAIC-the latter two being secretive
intelligence and defense entities involved in classified and supra-governmental
"black" projects.
In April 1997, Jean-Ramon Boulle, a co-founder
of Adastra (then AMFI), received a $1 billion dollar deal for
mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from
Laurent Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation
of Zaire (ADFL) before they were even officially in power. The
ADFL were even allowed to use Boulle's private jet (10). Meanwhile,
directors of Adastra are also former directors of Anglo-American
(11). Other Clinton-connected founders of Adastra include Michael
McMurrough and Robert Friedland-both involved in shady, criminal,
offshore businesses in Indonesia, Africa, Burma and the Americas
(12).
Barrick sub-contracts to Caleb International,
who has also partnered with Adastra in the past. Caleb is run
by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's half-brother Salim Saleh,
the former acting General of the UPDF. When Uganda withdrew from
the Congo in 2002 following a so-called "peace" agreement,
Saleh began training paramilitary groups to act as Ugandan proxies
to sustain the flow of minerals into Uganda (13).
Salim Saleh is a shareholder in Catalyst
Co. of Canada, who has a 100% interest in Uganda's Kaabong gold
fields (14). He is a part owner of Saracen, a private military
company created by the mercenaries-for-hire firm Executive Outcomes
(15). The U.N. Panel of Experts on Illegal Exploitation of Congo's
Mineral Resources recommended Salim Saleh be put on a travel ban
and have his assets frozen, but nothing was done.
Recent interventions by the armed U.N.
peacekeeping mission in the Congo (MONUC) have concentrated on
disarming or eliminating the Forces for the Democratic Liberation
of Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel group that opposes Rwanda, and the Allied
Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group that opposes Uganda. (Note
that the Rwanda military has partnered with its erstwhile "enemies"-the
FDLR-when necessary to secure resource plunder while Uganda has
its own pattern of complicity with its "rebel" enemies.
Rebel alliances are to perpetually shifting.) The removal of
these rebel groups will effectively clear the eastern Congo for
large-scale multi-national mining. The Mai-Mai militia, whose
stated goal is "to protect Congo from Rwandan and Ugandan
invaders," has committed documented human rights abuses,
yet they appear to be off the agenda for MONUC. The Mai-Mai operate
in northern Katanga (Shaba) province and in the Kivus.
Katanga's militias and racketeering are
connected to criminal networks of businessmen, including Zimbabwe
President Robert Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach, John Bredenkamp, and
Marc Rich. U.S. diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman has profited
from Katanga concessions since the Kennedy era. Lawrence Devlin,
the old CIA station chief of Lubumbashi under Eisenhower, maintained
Tempelsman's criminal rackets with direct ties to Zaire's former
President Mobutu, and was subsequently employed by Tempelsman
(16).
The Forrest Group has the longest history
of exploitation in the Congo, gaining its first mining concessions
before the Congo declared independence from the Belgians. The
group, which includes the Ohio-based OM Group, has numerous concessions
in Katanga (Shaba). Chairman George Forrest is the former chairman
of the Congo's state-owned mining firm GECAMINES, and owner of
the New Lachaussee weapons manufacturing company.
Coltan ore is widely used in the aerospace
and electronics industries for capacitors, superconductors and
transistors after it is refined to tantalum. The U.S. is entirely
dependant on foreign sources for tantalum, an enabling technology
for capacitors essential to aerospace weaponry and every pager,
cell phone, computer, VCR, CD player, P.D.A. and TV. U.S. import
records show a dramatic jump of purchases from Rwanda and Uganda
during the time they were smuggling tantalum and cobalt out of
the Congo.
Sony dramatically increased their importation
of coltan following the release of their Playstation 2, while
Compaq, Microsoft, Dell, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nokia,
Intel, Lucent, and Motorola are also large-scale consumers (17).
Sony's current Executive Vice-President and General Counsel Nicole
Seligman was a former legal adviser for Bill Clinton through the
D.C. firm Williams and Connelly, LLP, whose clients included Bill
Clinton and Oliver North (18). Sony Executive Vice-President
and Chief Financial Officer Robert Wiesenthal is a former banker
with First Boston, a supporter of Refugees International's "humanitarian"
relief efforts at Rwandan refugee camps in Eastern Congo, just
before the fall of Mobutu in 1995; Wiesenthal was also financial
adviser to Cox Communications, OM Group, Time Warner and The New
York Times (19).
Walter Kansteiner, the son of a coltan
trader in Chicago, is the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa
and former member of the Dept. of Defense Task Force on Strategic
Minerals. Kansteiner's speech at The Forum for International Policy
in October of 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo (then Zaire)
into smaller states based on ethnic lineage (20). Ironically,
while the speech was given, Laurent Kabila and his ADFL were beginning
their march to overthrow Mobutu with the aid of Rwanda, Uganda,
and the U.S. (21). Kansteiner is a trustee of the Africa Wildlife
Foundation-another euphemistic front for resource acquisition
in Congo.
Bechtel, a U.S. aerospace & construction
company, provided satellite maps of reconnaissance photos of Mobutu's
troops for the ADFL invasion of Congo in 1996; they also created
infrared maps of the Congo's mineral deposits (22). The Rwanda
Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan
President graduate of the U.S. Army officers school at Fort Leavenworth,
used Bechtel's NASA maps to locate Rwandan Hutu civilians that
fled the cataclysm in Rwanda in 1994. An estimated 800,000 refugees
were hunted down and killed in the Congo's forests (23). Bechtel's
friends in high places include former Secretary of State George
Shultz (Board of Directors), former Secretary of Defense Casper
Weinberger (Bechtel Counsel) and retired U.S.M.C. general Jack
Sheehan (Senior Vice President), who is also a member of the Defense
Policy Board at the Pentagon (24). Riley P. Bechtel is on the
Board of J.P. Morgan (25). Bechtel's Nexant Company is the prime
contractor on the Uganda-Kenya pipeline project, believed to ultimately
facilitate petroleum transport out of the Semliki Basin of Lake
Albert.
The U.N. Panel of Experts named New England-based
Cabot Co. for conducting unethical business practices (26). Cabot
is one of the largest tantalum processors in the world. The current
Deputy Director of the U.S. Treasury, Samuel Bodman, was CEO and
chairman of the board for Cabot from 1997-2001 (27). Current
Director John H. McArthur is a Senior Advisor to Paul Wolfowitz
at the World Bank (28).
Private Military Contractors (PMCs) are
also big business in Africa. Brown & Root, a subsidiary of
Halliburton, helped build a military base near Cyangugu, Rwanda
just next to the Congo-Rwandan border. "Officially,"
Brown and Root was there to clear land mines, but instead housed
mercenaries from Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) who
trained the RPF and Laurent Kabila's ADFL for invasion of the
Congo in 1996, and the Rwandan army's re-invasion in 1998, after
Laurent Kabila threw out the Rwandans, Ugandans, Bechtel and the
IMF (29). The French intelligence service reported that U.S.
Special Forces and mercenaries from MPRI participated in the murder
of Rwandan Hutu refugees on the Oso River near Goma in 1996 and
even claims to have turned over the bodies of two American soldiers
killed in combat near Goma (30). The circumstances surrounding
the unofficial recovery of these two U.S. soldiers remain very
mysterious (31).
MPRI is based in Arlington, Virginia and
is staffed and run by 36 retired U.S. generals. It is contracted
by the Pentagon to fulfill the African Crisis Responsive Initiative
(ACRI). This program includes the Ugandan military, and it supplied
military training in guerrilla warfare to Ugandan officers at
Fort Bragg, North Carolina in July 1996. During the invasion
of the Congo in 1998, Ugandan soldiers were found with ACRI equipment
while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have implicated
Ugandan battalions trained by ACRI in rapes, murders, extortion,
and beatings of Ugandan civilians (32).
Executive Outcomes founder Tony Buckingham
has established other Private Military Companies that operate
around Africa. Buckingham's Heritage Oil & Gas works closely
with his PMC Sandline International to manipulate the petroleum
options around Lake Albert, and is believed to have signed concession
deals with warring armies and governments on both sides of the
Uganda-Congo border. Branch Energy is another Buckingham affiliated
company operating in the Great Lakes region.
Investigations of illegal weapons sales
to Rwanda last year, in violation of the U.N. arms embargo on
the region, have been hampered by the Rwandan government's refusal
to provide a list of serial numbers of the 5000 AK-47s delivered
there. The shipping country, Bulgaria, also refused to provide
serial numbers, and would only confirm that the weapons were sold
legally to a non-embargo country, Nigeria, en route to Rwanda
and DRC. The governments of Uganda, Congo, South Africa and Equatorial
Guinea-a major U.S. petroleum protectorate-are equally culpable
in supporting the clandestine arms sales to the region (33).
Weapons shipments arriving by boat from
Tanzania, and the Government of Tanzania's role in supporting
war in DRC, are never questioned. This may have something to do
with Barrick Gold's mining licenses in Tanzania's Masaai territories.
Aircraft flying between Tanzania, DRC, and from Kenya, are allowed
to do so without proper documentation, record-keeping or customs
oversight.
Another shady "untouchable"
arms dealer operating behind the scenes in the region is an Indian-American
named Mr. Kotecha. Kotecha's interests in South Kivu are substantial,
and he is openly fingered as dealing in money laundering, arms,
coltan and diamonds. After the first U.S.-sponsored invasion of
the Congo in 1996, Kotecha is known to have repeatedly boasted
of being the "United States Consulate" in South Kivu.
Kotecha holds a U.S. passport and owns a mansion in California.
When an outspoken local defender of human
rights working for a small NGO (Pascal Kabungulu of Heritiers
de la Justice) was assassinated during the summer of 2005 in Bukavu,
the alleged killers, including a local Congolese military commander,
were identified but MONUC and the international "community"
took no action. The killing revolved around his role in exposing
the Congolese commanders' involvement in contraband smuggling
(which continues today).
A U.N. Panel of Experts in a forthcoming
report will challenge many airlines and companies for undertaking
illicit flights (illegal, secret, unregistered or falsely registered)
into and out of DRC. One of many notable companies apparently
connected to Victor Bout's arms trafficking networks is Simax,
an Oregon-based company using an address in Sierra Leone. However,
the U.N. Panel of Experts has once again ignored certain western
agencies-with histories of illicit activities-whose flights remain
equally surreptitious and unaccountable. At the top of the list
is the International Rescue Committee (IRC)-directors include
Henry Kissinger -whose flights in and out of Congo, and internal
flights to and from isolated airports in eastern DRC, are completely
unmonitored by MONUC arms embargo inspectors. In Bukavu, for example,
all light aircraft are subject to MONUC arms embargo inspections,
but IRC flights are not within the MONUC mandate. As one MONUC
Military Observer admitted, "The IRC should be subject to
the same standards as everyone else; otherwise we have to assume
they are shipping weapons, because they do not let us confirm
they are not."
Similarly, while the U.N. Panel of Experts
have investigated and reported on certain illegal criminal networks
and activities in Congo, they never attend to the top-level deals
brokered behind closed doors by executives from Adastra, Anglo-American,
the companies of Sweden's Adolph Lundin (a close friend of George
H.W. Bush), who have control of mining concessions in Lubumbashi,
Kolwezi and Mbuji Mayi areas in the Katanga (Shaba) and Kasai
provinces. U.S.-based Phelps Dodge is partnered in Katanga copper/cobalt
mining projects with Lundin's Tenke Mining. Phelps Dodge director
Douglas C. Yearly is also a director of Lockheed Martin, and the
World Wildlife Fund-partnered with USAID and CARE in "conservation"-read:
acquisition-projects all over Congo while CARE's "humanitarian"
agenda is also funded by Lockheed Martin.
"Conservation" interests provide
the vanguard of western penetration in Central Africa: USAID,
WWF, AWF, and Conservation International lead the charge. Evidence
from USAID cases all over Congo quickly contradicts all fanfare
about USAID bringing "sustainable" or "community
development" projects. Most notable are the Central Africa
Region Partnership for the Environment (CARPE) and Congo Basin
Forest Partnership (CBFP), two programs pressing hidden military,
intelligence and economic agendas. Notably, National Geographic
is involved in furthering the mythologies of conservation, democracy,
community development, or the lip service paid to respecting and
supporting indigenous people.
Some people have suggested the reason
that there isn't greater awareness and equitable intervention
in the Congo is because "we simply don't know what to do"
to remedy the situation. However, it is fairly clear what needs
to be done, the West is just unwilling to do it because of powerful
economic and geopolitical reasons.
1. U.S. Military Training programs must
have an oversight committee and total transparency. Western governments
must end their hypocritical stance and ensure they don't train
any "rebel" or "dissident" groups, especially
if they are against a democratically elected government (provided
the elections weren't fraudulent), even if the elected government
isn't politically aligned with the western ideology and/or economic
ideals. To do otherwise would refute claims that the west is
intervening to "spread democracy."
2. In parallel with number 1, a committee
must be set up to ensure the same doesn't occur for the private
military companies. As multinational corporations, these firms
aren't subject to obey laws of warfare as an established country's
armed forces are supposed to. The U.N. must pass resolutions
mandating the World Court and International Criminal Court (ICC)
to prosecute such corporations. Lastly, when such companies are
exposed for conducting illegal activities, such as aiding coups
or trafficking human slaves, the corporations who conduct these
activities must be blacklisted from receiving government contracts,
domestic or international, and the guilty individuals must be
prosecuted (34).
3. In the arms arena, more substantial
efforts must be created to intercept and prosecute "embargo
busters," illegal brokers, and arms sellers. Furthermore,
those selling, transporting, brokering, funding, or wiring arms
transactions for weapons specifically intended for children should
receive the harshest of the penalties (certain "small weapons"
are modified to reduce their weight to make it easier for a child
to carry). Firms that participate in arms shipments, transport
and/or the movement of the flow of the money generated from these
sales with countries, people or organizations that are embargoed
or act against national or international law should be held accountable
for their crimes. Assets can be frozen, travel bans imposed,
and all government and economic business ties with such firms
severed. These penalties must also have an assurance of enforcement.
4. Debt relief is essential, but ways
must be found to protect IMF and World Bank loans from being used
for military expenditures. The motivations of World Bank President
Paul Wolfowitz are suspect. Dr. Wolfowitz is a former Deputy
Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush, a former ambassador
to Indonesia under Ronald Reagan, a PNAC member, and dual citizen
in Israel. Likewise, the World Bank and IMF must shift their
policy of privatization as a stipulation for loan approval in
order to stimulate business growth within the state instead of
having the business sector growth be almost entirely from multinational
corporations. The World Bank and IMF must also provide debt relief
to the counties that need it most according to economic indicators.
Some countries receiving debt relief, like Uganda and Rwanda,
are among the biggest spenders of their loans in the military
sector (35). It must be ensured that a majority of spending occurs
on infrastructure and public services, and that this does not
benefit the standard set of "embedded" western corporations.
It must also be ensured the loan money is used in areas that
need development the most. For example, in Uganda, the loan money
Museveni has used for development has focused in the south in
Kampala, the capital, and in Mbarra, his hometown. Meanwhile,
the Acholi people, who always vote against Museveni's party in
the polls, are ignored and the situation in the Lira, Gulu, and
Kitgum districts continues to deteriorate. In addition, individual
countries must examine the aid they give to countries that spend
a high percentage of capital on military, as well as commit human
rights abuses. Lastly, debt relief doesn't harm banks that gave
the loans in the first place and collect on some of the interest
rates, not to mention the American businesses that make profit
on the privatized businesses as part of the loan deal. The debt
is transferred to the taxpayers, so transparency is needed to
insure that costs are also incurred by the firms granting the
loans (if they want credit for their "humanitarian"
debt relief).
5. Western countries must end the impunity
for those responsible for looting minerals from Congo. Firms
that purchase smuggled minerals, and/or purchase concessions from
illegitimate rebel groups must be prosecuted. The World Court
recently made a start by convicting Uganda and fining the government,
but Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe remain unaccountable
for their direct pirating, as are the Western firms that purchased
the minerals, and Western individuals supporting them. (The Kimberly
Process, established with the support of academic and intelligence
experts at Harvard University, is a perfect example of the gatekeepers
policing their own gates: the huge, entrenched, but secretive
interests like the Oppenheimer/DeBeers and Maurice Tempelsman
owned companies are legitimized as dealers of "clean"
diamonds; while the other, far less connected competitors and
challengers of the status quo, including Congolese children sneaking
into mines and being shot for "stealing" the diamonds
off their own starving families' former lands, are demonized as
dealers of "blood" diamonds.)
6. The World Court and International Criminal
Court must hold all military and civilian leaders-African, U.S.,
European-that are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity
accountable for their actions. The West must not be allowed to
shield criminals from prosecution by virtue of their economic
and political alliances with Western governments. Governments
that harbor these criminals should be subject to prosecution.
Economic sanctions may not be proper, as poor nations generally
suffer severe civilian casualties as a result; specific involved
individuals in government and the military must be held accountable.
7. "Peacekeeping" forces, in
particular MONUC, must be examined to ensure that the mission
is being conducted with the interests of promoting stability in
the country. As illustrated, elements of MONUC have used the
mission as a cover to further the agenda of the West and its corporate
sponsors under the banner of "peacekeeping," causing
the death of civilians in the process: those responsible should
be tried and prosecuted. It must also be ensured that the investigations
don't stop at individual soldiers or brigades committing crimes,
but to examine the chain of command and their allegiances to uncover
the motivations behind MONUC operations. There have been reports
of MONUC troops looting ivory, gold, and animal skins in National
Parks. Villagers say that they have seen murders occur right
in front of MONUC soldiers and they didn't act to prevent the
killings (36). MONUC soldiers have raped Congolese women (37).
When pro-Rwandan rebel leaders Laurent Nkunda and Jules Mutibusi,
both war criminals wanted by the U.N., took over Bukavu by force
in May 2004, MONUC provided them with weapons and vehicles. Nkunda
himself has stated the head of MONUC, William Swing, personally
gave him a telephone to use during the raid. (38)
8. The international media is completely
silent on virtually every major issue of significance with respect
to war in DRC-and the international and criminal networks behind
it. Misinformation about Africa prevails due to a concerted effort
by the mainstream media to blackout the truth. A boycott of key
publications is imperative, and must include the most offensive:
Boston Globe, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, US News & World
Report, USA Today, New York Times, the New Yorker (Conde Nast
Publications), Harper's, Atlantic Monthly (highly subsidized by
Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman) and, especially, National
Geographic.
9. The fog of war needs to be cleared
away from so-called "humanitarian" and "human rights"
programs, organizations and individuals currently aligned with
the Western corporate enterprise. Notables in this category include:
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, CARE, USAID, Norwegian
People's Aid, International Crises Group, International Rescue
Committee, Refugees International, the Genocide Intervention Fund,
and many U.N. bodies, but especially UNHCR. Most of these agencies
appear to exist merely to perpetuate their own survival. Doctors
Without Borders also deserves scrutiny for their recent actions
in DRC.
10. The peace and justice community remains
unaccountable for its failure to take any significant actions
to mitigate war in Congo and expose the true reasons behind it.
A first step should be open up the spaces to alternative voices
currently excluded by major social justice media venues. Second
is to declare a total boycott on diamonds and gold, and an organized
campaign to protest and economically castigate diamond stores
where Lazare diamonds are sold. A third action is the commitment
of meaningful funds-both from individuals and from organizations-to
support the vibrant grass roots organizations and individuals
working for human rights, women's health, disarmament, education,
food security, rainforest and environmental defense in Congo.
Fourth, people need to break through their fear (inculcated by
the western media) of taking action to help people in the Congo:
there is no reason-except the unacceptable-that westerners cannot
establish a "Witness for Peace" program situated in
the Congo.
11. Rights groups with missions pertinent
to Congo's need must expand their missions to include Congo.
Rape is endemic in the Congo: a source of psychological and physical
trauma, it contributes to the spread of HIV, Ebola and other sexually
transmitted diseases. Survivors often give birth to HIV positive
children with no prospects for medical or financial help. This
has lead to an insurmountable need for aid to care for the orphans.
Mothers of children conceived of rape are often disowned by their
village and families. Western feminist and women's rights activists
and organizations must get involved and provide resources for
the victims of rape in Congo. Those responsible for rapes must
be tried and punished as per the law if guilty. Indeed, evidence
from rape cases in rural DRC shows that sexual violence is significantly
reduced simply by holding military officers accountable for their
troops' actions, but this is not happening.
12. MONUC's Radio Okapi is the lifeline
of news in DRC today, but programming is largely comprised of
U.N. programming. The United Nations needs to be pressured to
open up the Radio Okapi network, eliminate the "fluff"
pieces, and diversify and deepen its programming and reportage.
As a simple example of how things could easily be improved in
DRC, programs that sensitize the public o the issue of rape, and
sensitize the military to the punishment for it, could easily
be implemented; such programming is never considered.
13. The transitional government in Congo
is comprised of military leaders and government officials who
must be held accountable for their crimes. Like the individuals,
organizations, corporations and governments that have supported
them, all are responsible for crimes against humanity. The current
profiteering in DRC is enabled by these key players, who hold
the highest levels of the DRC government, and whose crimes remain
hidden by the western press. The transitional government must
not be allowed to appoint war criminals to cabinet or parliamentary
positions, as well as local governor positions in the provinces.
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