Amid ongoing violence in Democratic Republic of Congo's Nord Kivu province, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a one hundred page report denouncing "horrific" crimes perpetrated there against civilians.
"Renewed Crisis in North Kivu," can be found at: http://hrw.org/reports/2007/drc1007/, and is worth the time and effort for anyone interested in the ongoing and ignored war in DR Congo where, at some estimates, ten million have vanished. As we have repeatedly said here at OpEdNews, there is plenty of blame to go around, and the Human Rights Watch Report confirms that atrocities including murder, rape, executions, mutilation, executions, and torture can be attributed to “all parties” in the eastern Congolese province.
"Efforts to resolve the conflict have not yet brought relief for the local population," HRW's senior Congo researcher Anneke Van Woudenberg said in a statement.
Eastern DRC has been awash in blood for over twenty years, and home to exploitation for over one hundred years. August 2007 was the benchmark for a new round of clashes between militias and the regular Congolese army (FARDC), which itself has not been exempt from charges of brutality.
Once an Ituri Village (keith harmon snow)
Supporters of dissident ex-general Laurent Nkunda are fighting government forces, local Mai Mai militias, and Rwandan Hutu rebels responsible in part for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
If that were not enough, the United States and other multi-national interests are using mercenary militias, cloaked in the guise of “gorilla conservation” to maintain a presence in eastern DRC. We have said it many times and will say it again: American tax dollars are supporting these clandestine “conservation” efforts to destabilize the region. The true “endangered species” is the people of Nord Kivu Province.
DRC is also the repository of the world’s purest minerals, some of which are crucial to the US Defense Department’s strategic initiative.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported over one hundred thousand people have been driven from their homes and land, with over 8,000 fleeing into neighboring Uganda.
Map of DRC from MONUC
Heavy fighting in recent days uprooted thousands of local residents, with many fleeing to neighboring Uganda,
MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, has not escaped criticism, with HRW accusing the troops of being “slow to respond.”
Having visited with MONUC earlier this year, this writer can remind critical readers that MONUC was established as a peacekeeping force, and is not there to establish a new front in the war.
Make no mistake about it, the war in Congo is being waged by multi-national interests which are engaged in a systematic, organized attempt to strip DRC bare of its people and resources.
Georgianne Nienaber is a writer, author, and investigative journalist. She lives in the world. Her articles have appeared in The Huffington Post, SCOOP New Zealand, Glide Magazine, Rwanda's New Times, India's TerraGreen, COA News, ZNET, OpEdNews, The Journal of the International Primate Protection League, Friends of the Congo, Africa Front, The United Nations Publication, A Civil Society Observer, and Zimbabwe's The Daily Mirror. Her fiction exposé of insurance fraud in the horse industry, Horse Sense, was re-released in early 2006. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was also released in 2006. Nienaber spent much of 2007 doing research in South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was in DRC as a MONUC-accredited journalist, and recently spent six weeks in Southern Louisiana investigating hurricane reconstruction. She is currently developing a documentary on the Gulf of Mexico DEAD ZONE.
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