Over the last week, I've put together and posted several polls which have given us a glimpse into who we are as a community. Light-hearted, non-action oriented. All you had to do was vote and maybe leave a comment or three.
Today I'm returning to a subject I've focused on in the past - violence in African nations. Most of my previous diaries have focused on the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan, and this important issue is starting to get a little more attention here and around the world as celebrities like George Clooney get involved. Africa is a continent ravaged by poverty, disease and violence, and the Congo is no different.
This diary doesn't include a poll, but in some ways I hope it will give us some insight as to the capacity for caring and our ability to take action to help people half-way around the world - people who are suffering immeasurable pain from violence we can't even begin to imagine from our comfortable living room or office.
More after the flip...
In an article titled "Rape, brutality ignored to aid Congo peace",
http://www.cnn.com/... CNN sheds light on the brutal and violent world of the women, girls & even boys in Congo. I'll let selected excerpts from the article tell the tale...
At a makeshift recreation center at a hospital here in eastern Congo, about 500 women surround one of their own, who's lying on the floor.
She clutches a cane as she struggles to get up. The women begin singing, slowly at first and then the song picks up momentum. Before long the young woman lifts herself, drops the cane and begins to walk around the room as if in a trance, singing and clapping. The other women clap along with her as the singing gets louder and louder.
The young woman's name is Tintsi and she's barely 20 years old. She arrived at the hospital three weeks ago on a stretcher carried by relatives who walked 100 miles to get here. Doctors weren't sure Tintsi would ever walk again.
"Some of them have knives and other sharp objects inserted in them after they've been raped, while others have pistols shoved into their vaginas and the triggers pulled back," said Dr. Denis Mukwege Mukengere, the lone physician at the hospital.
The people terrorizing these women & girls are in uniform - soldiers of the Congolese government of President Joseph Kabila
Also in the room is 28-year-old Henriette Nyota. Her spirit is all but broken. Three years ago, she said, she was gang raped as her husband and four children were forced to watch. The men in uniform then disemboweled her husband and continued raping her and her two oldest daughters, 10 and 8. The assault went on for three days.
"I wish they'd killed me right there with my husband," she said, "What use am I now? Why did those animals leave me to suffer like this?
Misery permeates this tiny hospital in this huge country the size of Western Europe. Last year there were more than 4,000 reported rape cases in this province alone, or about 12 a day, officials say.
And it's not just women who are being raped; so are some men with equally devastating consequences.
Fifteen-year-old Olivier was sitting down to dinner with his family when the front door of their house was smashed in. Olivier's father was the first to be killed followed by his mother, right in front of the children.
They then raped Olivier's three sisters, and when he tried to fight them they turned on him. One at a time, more than a dozen in all, he said.
There's only one doctor and a staff of very dedicated nurses at this hospital to care for all of these brutalized people...
Mukengere takes us from ward to ward, where the beds are filled with sexual abuse patients in various stages of recovery. Colostomy bags hang off their cots and bed pans are everywhere. Once in a while, you hear a woman scream in pain as she's raised by the team of tireless nurses to have something to eat or drink.
Mukengere, who attends to an average of 10 new cases a day, explains bed-by-bed the cruelty that has become the Congo.
"Helene, over there, is 19 years old. She first came here five years ago after having been raped," he said. "We treated her and discharged her, and off she went back to her home village. Five years later, she's back after being attacked and sexually violated over and over again. This is pure madness."
Aid, and time are running out - we need to do something to end this brutalization of these innocent people.
Equally troubling is that aid money designated for victims of sexual abuse here may run out at the end of June despite the relative success of this program, the only one of its kind in the region.
"It's so tragic that the world can afford to sit back and let these atrocities continue like this," said aid worker Marie Walterzon of the Swedish Pentecostal Mission. "Possibly because it involves poor, voiceless Africans," she said.
...
The peace process is too delicate. And at this hospital in the eastern Congo, the rooms are too full.
How is it that a peace process depends on allowing this to continue? The State Department released it's 2006 report on Congo in March of this year. It gives some great background on the situation there and can be found here http://www.state.gov/... The first two paragraphs of the introduction follow...
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is nominally a highly centralized republic with a population of approximately 60 million. President Joseph Kabila heads a national transitional government, which was formed in June 2003 to end five years of civil war and is composed of former belligerent factions, including representatives from the former government, former rebel groups, civil society, and the political opposition. President Kabila came to power in 2001 after the assassination of his father, Laurent Desire Kabila. There have not been free national elections since 1960, but elections were scheduled to be held in early 2006, and the transition period will end on June 30, 2006.
At year's end despite the presence of 16,850 UN peacekeeping troops in the country, government control of certain areas of the country remained weak, particularly in the rural areas of North and South Kivu, the Ituri District of Orientale Province, and northern Katanga, where armed groups continued to operate outside of government control. Although the government made progress integrating key institutions such as the army, police, and local administrations, different components of the government sometimes acted independently of, or contrary to, the interests of other components. Civilian authorities generally did not maintain effective control of the security forces, which were poorly trained, poorly paid, undisciplined, and committed numerous serious human rights abuses with impunity, particularly in eastern parts of the country.
There has to be something we can do to draw attention to this situation - one that's been ignored and allowed to continue for several years now. Amnesty International has some great information here http://www.amnestyusa.org/... and offers suggestions on what we can do about it here http://www.amnestyusa.org/...
Human Rights Watch published a report this time last year and can be found here http://hrw.org/...
We can help. Contact your CongressCritter and Senators and ask them what they're doing to help stop this violence.
Let the White House know you're looking for leadership on this issue - like Darfur, the people of the Congo need our help and the intervention of good people from the UN and the African Union. Send an email to Junior at comments@whitehouse.gov.
Send a note to the State Department expressing your concerns. http://contact-us.state.gov/...=
Lastly, contact the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - their web-site is http://www.ohchr.org/... and you can contact them via information on this page http://www.ohchr.org/...
I'm not sure how to wrap this up other than to ask if this would be allowed to continue in a non-African nation. Imagine if a European government were brutalizing its people in such a horrific manner.
Would the world remain silent? Would it refuse to take action?
Would you?
