Reuters reported on the United Nations Mission to DR Congo (MONUC) website today that police in North Kivu province opened fire on refugees during a violent protest over food distributions, killing a child and wounding 11 civilians. Hundreds of villagers have been driven from their homes in recent weeks by fighting between government soldiers (FARDC) and rebels. According to the sketchy Reuters report, the villagers erected barricades in the town of Kiwanja, 60 km (37 miles) north of the provincial capital, Goma. They surrounded a local military base for Congo's U.N. peacekeeping mission, hurling stones and injuring 17 peacekeepers, before local police intervened and fired into the crowd. MONUC peacekeeping forces did not fire on the crowd, according to MONUC.
"There are 11 wounded and one dead, a 6-year-old child," Dominique Bofondo, the administrator of Rutshuru territory where Kiwanja is located, told Reuters.
The villagers had been isolated for three weeks without any humanitarian aid and were demanding food and assistance. A desperate people in desperate times. OpEdNews has driven this road north of Goma and you cannot find food in ordinary circumstances. If you are lucky, you can find an ear of roasted corn at a roadside market.
We were on this road in February. Since that time, 370,000 Congolese are on the run for their lives as fighting continues between the regular army (FARDC), Tutsi insurgents loyal to General Laurent Nkunda, Rwandan Hutu refugees (or rebels, depending upon which side the observer is on), and local militias and police forces. Barricades are common on this road and we were stopped many times by local militia as we traveled north through Virunga Park. Our MONUC credentials were respected and we were allowed to pass.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday September 19, 2007, the US State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the provision of $496,000 of new funds for wildlife conservation in the Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to a State Department press release, poaching, armed conflict and “demographic pressures” are justification for the grant.
Mbingi Orphans
But investigations in Eastern Congo reported by us over the past nine months indicate that USAID “conservation” funds — millions of taxpayer’s dollars — have been misappropriated, misdirected, and have disappeared. Evidence suggests that ongoing guerrilla warfare in Central Africa has and is continuing to receive clandestine financial support in AID-for-ARMS type financial transfers. Gorilla rangers are outfitted with well-oiled machine guns, courtesy of fundraising campaigns by conservation organizations. What is going on here?
In addition, the whistleblower on conservation corruption has been driven into exile by ICCN (DRC’s “conservation” organization) by authorities with hands dirtied by money-laundering and other atrocities perpetrated against the Congolese people.
The individual who robbed us of our video testimony of conservation money laundering is now working for ICCN and posting on the wildlife forums that the zoos in Kinshasa need help. This individual is asking for donations for zoo animals, while the people in Kivu starve.
According to an appeal by the African Conservation Task Force , “The DR Congo has undergone years of instability and the wildlife has suffered dramatically. Kinshasa and the western side of the country is now experiencing a period of peace. Finance for economic development is pouring into the capital.”
Peace, for whom? The money changers?
Where is the outrage in this country about what is happening? Newsweek features gorillas on its cover and ignores 1,000 people A DAY who are dying horrible deaths in Kivu.
Google satellite photos clearly show refugee camps in northern Uganda. Rough estimates indicate 1000 huts for a population of maybe 4000. Put a family of four in there and each person gets a four foot by five foot patch of ground to stay out of the rain and sun.
Thousands of villagers fled to Kiwanja and nearby Rutshuru town last month, when clashes between Nkunda loyalists, the army, and local Mai Mai militia erupted around Bunagana, a town on Congo's border with Uganda.
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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