|
|
Tags for This Article:
Military (3139) Corporations (965) Women (690) Atrocities (217) Rape (148) Congo (93) Humanitarian Crisis (50) Mining (46) Rwanda (24) Corporatocracy (16) Book Excerpt (3)
|
(more...)
(less...)
Add to My Group
And like all unrepentant hit men and war criminals, they belong in prison for the protection of society. 1 In this chapter, Congo refers to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the nation once called Zaire, whose capital is Kinshasa – as opposed to the Republic of Congo which borders the DRC and whose capital is Brazzaville. 2 Testimony in a congressional hearing conducted by Representative Cynthia McKinney, April 16, 2001, www.house.gov/mckinney/news/pr010416.htm 3 The International Rescue Committee estimated in 2004 that approximately 3.9 million people have died since 1998 because of the instability: 38,000 deaths occur in Congo every month above what is considered a “normal level” for the country, translating into 1,250 excess deaths every day. Over 70% of these deaths, most due to easily preventable and treatable diseases, occur in the insecure eastern provinces. “Less than two percent of the deaths were directly due to violence,” Richard J. Brennan points out. “However, if the effects of violence – such as the insecurity that limits access to health care facilities – were removed, mortality rates would fall to almost normal levels.” The British medical journal Lancet confirms the IRC statistic of 3.9 million war-related deaths between 1998 and 2004. It also notes that every few months “the mortality equivalent of two southeast Asian tsunamis [referring to the December 2004 catastrophe] ploughs thru its territory.” Lancet declares that the high mortality rates are ongoing: “Preemptive War Epidemiology: Lessons from the Democratic Republic of Congo.” The primary article discussing the procedure by which the IRC and the Lancet came up with their statistics is Benjamin Coghlan, Richard J. Brennan, Pascal Ngoy, et al., “Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A Nationwide Survey,” Lancet 367 (January 7, 2006), www.thelancet.com 4 In 1961, the US installed Mobutu, who had, with the support of the US and Belgium, assassinated Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of Congo/Zaire after Belgium granted the country independence. Lumumba was a Pan-Africanist and populist, unwilling to ally with either the US or the Soviet Union. After he publicly advocated using Congo’s resources to benefit the Congolese, the diamond corporation DeBeers feared it would lose access to Congo’s diamonds; Lumumba’s stand no doubt hastened his demise. Once Lumumba was out of the way, acting Prime Minister Adoula approved a deal with DeBeer’s negotiator Maurice Tempelsman and telegrammed the news to US President John F. Kennedy. A 1961 State Department memo headed “Congo Diamond Deal” concluded that the US ought to support the proposal: “How US Foreign Policy over Decades Was Influenced by the Diamond Cartel,” www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/diamonds1.htm. This website contains a partial transcript from an April 6, 2001 discussion held by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney at which Janine Farel Robersts testified. Roberts’ research appears in Blood-Stained Diamonds: A Worldwide Diamond Investigation (Bristol: Impact Media, 2001). Over the next decades, Mobutu pillaged the country, as the Belgians had before him, depositing billions of dollars in foreign banks. Tempelsman and his staff helped Mobutu run Congo/Zaire and secured funding for Mobutu from the Untied States. Mobutu, however, had begun to limit Western access to Congo’s resources, and this may also have been a motive for the US to support Kabila, Rwanda, and Uganda in their quest to overthrow Mobutu. Tempelsman is a major donor to the Democratic Party. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, he stayed at the White House several times and went sailing with the Clintons when they vacationed at Martha’s Vineyard: Susan Schmidt, “Tempelsman Plan Got the Ear of US Aides,” Washington Post, August 2, 1997. 5 Madeleine Drohan, Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force to Do Business (Guilford, Conn.: Lyon’s Press, 2004), pp. 302-3. 6 “Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” 2001, www.un.org/Docs/sc/letters/2001/3573.pdf; Asad Ismi, “Congo: The Western Heart of Darkness,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, October 2001, posted on the Mines and Communities website, www.minesandcommunities.org/Country/congo1.htm 7 Small coltan deposits have been mined from some time in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Zaire, where it is often found as a byproduct of cassiterite in industrial tin mining: Pole Institute, “The Coltan Phenomenon: How a Rare Mineral Has Changed the Life of the Population of War-Torn North Kivu Province in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” January 2002, www.pole-institute.org/documents/coltanglais02.pdf 8 All Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region and Genocide Prevention, “Illegal Minerals and Conflict,” Parliamentary Briefing, March 2003, www.appggreatlakes.org/cgi-bin/site/index.cgi?back=&pid=27&keywords=&topic=Briefing_Papers. See also the official Rwandan response to the “Report of the Panel of Experts,” 2001, at www.gov.rw/government/04_22_01news_Response_To_UN_Report.htm 9 “Report of the Panel of Experts,” 2001. See also Dena Montague and Frida Berrigan, “The Business of War in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Dollars and Sense, July-August 2001. The report covers plunder by Congolese and Zimbabwean political, military, and commercial interests, noting this network had transferred as much as US$5 billion of assets from the state mining sector to private companies. From 1998 to 2000, none of these transactions benefited Congo’s treasury. The report notes that the rates of malnutrition and mortality in the government-held areas were a result of diverting resources from state companies such as Gécamines to corrupt Zimbabwean and Congolese officials. 10 “Report of the Panel of Experts,” 2001, on the plunder of Congo, casts doubt on Rwanda’s assertions that it was invading Congo for its own security. The Panel had a letter dated May 26, 2000, in which the Military High Command for RCD-Goma (a Rwandan-backed Congolese militia group) urged its units to maintain good relationships with their Interahamwe “brothers.” A 30-year-old Interahamwe combatant living in Bukavu told United Nations personnel in 2002, “We haven’t fought much with the RPA [Rwandan Patriotic Army] in the last two years. We think they are tired of this war, like we are. In any case, they aren’t here in the Congo to chase us, like they pretend. I have seen the gold and coltan mining they do here, we see how they rob the population.” 11 In an April 16, 2001 hearing Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney investigated charges that Kagame had orchestrated the April 6, 1994 assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, shooting down their plane with surface-to-air missiles obtained from the US via Uganda. Cameroonian journalist Charles Onana made similar claims in his book, The Secrets of the Rwandan Genocide. Kagame sued him for defamation, but a Paris court found in favor of Onana. Sympathy for Tutsis in the West after Rwandan genocide has given Kagame carte blanche to commit egregious human rights abuses in much the same way that the world does not hold Israel accountable for human rights abuses because of Germany’s attempt to slaughter all the Jews during WW II. The Congolese resent this indulgent attitude toward Rwanda. At a guest house in Goma where our delegation stayed, the manager, discovering our intent to understand the roots of violence in the region told us, “The Tutsis are a cruel people.” He then described abuses committed by Tutsis in Rwanda before the genocide. 12 Montague and Berrigan, “The Business of War.” 13 McKinney hearing, April 16, 2001. 14 Ismi, “Congo: The Western Heart of Darkness.” 15 McKinney hearing, April 16, 2001. In 2004, Rady Ananda joined the growing community of citizen journalists. Initially focused on elections, she investigated the 2004 Ohio election, organizing, training and leading several forays into counties to photograph the 2004 ballots. She officially served at three recounts, including the 2004 recount. She also organized and led the team that audited Franklin County Ohio's 2006 election, proving the number of signatures did not match official results. Her work appears in three books.
Her blogs also address religious, gender, sexual and racial equality, as well as environmental issues; and are sprinkled with book and film reviews on various topics. She spent most of her working life as a legal investigator for private lawyers, and five years as an editor. She currently serves as a senior editor at OpEdNews.
All material offered here is the property of Rady Ananda, copyright 2006, 2007, 2008. Permission is granted to repost, with proper attribution including the original link.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Tell the truth anyway.
Thanks GN Be sure to read DR Congo: Peace Accord Fails to End Killing of Civilians and take action. by
Rady Ananda (127 articles, 290 quicklinks, 37 diaries, 1130 comments)
on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 11:07:16 PM
I have achieved nothing of consequence apart from raising children in a way that they would excel where I failed. And they are on good tracks.
The Entire Picture And Overall Costs? How about the damage to the environment, the massacre of wildlife, the rape of the planet. All of this for greed and nothing but greed. What are fututre generations going to think of us ? by
ramsheyi (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 549 comments)
on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 7:17:05 AM
Forget about wildlife think about the cost to women and children I am ready to take an AK57 to every one of my beloved gorillas if it would make it all STOP! Conservation is a front for the resource wars in DRC and elsewhere in Africa. by
Georgianne Nienaber (145 articles, 46 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 337 comments)
on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 10:20:09 AM
Thanks Georgianne and Rady! I've never had a cell phone but I do have a computer. How many people died so that I could post this comment? Well, it had better be a darned good comment then. I just joined Friends of the Congo and sent them a donation. I hope everyone reading this will do the same--it is the very least that we can do to begin to atone for the needless misery and death that fuels our materialistic lifestyles. Some animal rights activists say that anyone who wants to eat an animal should have to kill that animal themself. Maybe anyone who wants a cell phone should have to kill an African child themself before being allowed to buy it. There are some people on Care2 who constantly question why I describe myself as an anti-civilizationist. They should visit a few African villages untouched by war, and then visit the DRC to see what civilization brings with it. Anyone else remember a 1947 seven song from Danny Kaye and the Andrews Sisters called "Bongo Bongo Bongo"? Google it, read the lyrics, and listen to it again. They had it right. We've known it all along. by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 4:00:07 PM
Bongo bongo bongo, I don't wanna leave the Congo http://www.lyricstime.com/the-andrews-sisters-civilization-bongo-bongo-bongo-lyrics.html Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo) Bingo, bangle, bungle, he's so happy in the jungle, he refuse to go LISTEN to a version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MTGDncw5fo by
Rady Ananda (127 articles, 290 quicklinks, 37 diaries, 1130 comments)
on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 4:58:05 PM
Dian Fossey First, thanks for helping out Friends of Congo. Dian Fossey's favorite song was Bongo Bongo. She had an old reel-to-reel (battery powered) that she would crank up in her tent at Karisoke. Dian understood very well what was happening, and if you analyze her writings carefully, she predicts the current situation in Congo and elsewhere in Africa. Most people don't realize that conservation organizations of that time were in overdrive to discredit her, right up to the highest levels of the State Department. The movie, Gorillas in the Mist, is a complete fabrication, and National Geographic as well as conservation organizations "consulted" on the production to ensure that the truth was not told. Unfortunately, conservation organizations have wrapped themselves in her name and a distorted version of Dian's vision. Her biggest fear was that the gorillas would be brokered for multi-national interests. by
Georgianne Nienaber (145 articles, 46 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 337 comments)
on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 7:50:29 PM
The bottom-line problem... The bottom-line problem is not the that companies (multi- or single country) seek and mine coltan from areas of Congo and elsewhere in Africa, but rather that governments own or confiscate the land and then deal with the companies, or take over the mining operations themselves, sometimes even using forced rather than hired workers. There is no private property in that part of the world - or if there is it is only for those who are part of the government or friends of those who are part of it. There are no individuals as property owners negotiating with others who own companies, each for their own mutual benefit, with the coltan being the value sought by the companies and money or other trade value sought by the landowners. While the governments in industrialized countries are delayed a bit by trappings of legality before confiscating property they covet for some purpose, those in power in most of Africa just use assorted means of physical violence to accomplish the same thing. There is no free-market in this, or actually any, part of the world but its consequences are the most colorful here - if one thinks of the color of blood resulting from the inevitable violence of such a situation. by
Kitty Antonik Wakfer (22 articles, 4 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 128 comments)
on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 6:52:05 PM
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
