Reply #4: Thanks struggle4progress

[seemslikeadream]

3.5 million


On the Trail of the Congo's "Cannibal Rebels"
Eliza Griswold traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo twice to investigate claims of cannibalism as a weapon of war. Reports of the attacks helped to mobilize the media, the United Nations, and the International Criminal Court to respond to a war few people know about.

From: Eliza Griswold
Subject: Using Sensationalism To Bring Attention to a Human Rights Abuses
Wednesday, March 24, 2004, at 7:44 AM PT

Child soldiers in Eastern DRC

On my way to see the man who first told Amuzati's story to the world—a Catholic bishop named Melchisedec Sikuli Paluku—I watch a group of child soldiers run away into the jungle. They are tripping over their fatigues and weapons. Thanks to the influx of arms from the DRC's neighbors, an AK-47 costs only $30-$50. Most end up in the hands of children, who form an estimated 60 percent of the DRC's rebel fighting force. These days, their leaders, courting legitimacy, have heard enough from the international community to know that child soldiers are a major no-no. The kids know it too. So when they see a car full of white people coming along the road, they split.

In his redbrick bishopric on a hilltop in the town of Butembo, Bishop Paluku, a squat and somber man, has consented to meet with yet another pushy journalist who wants to talk to him about cannibalism. It is Sunday afternoon, and he has already celebrated several masses.

We dance around the subject for several minutes, but the bishop knows how the press works by now, and he wants to get started on his story. On the wall, there is a giant decal of a formal French garden. He leans against the arm of a plush chair in his reception room. The bishop has grown both wary and weary of the press. For him, these interviews are a devil's bargain: He trades his story's potential sensationalism for the media's ongoing attention to his waning human rights campaign.
Since the fall of 2002, he has been loudly decrying rebel groups waging war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Recently, under a peace deal with the government, the rebels have been taking government posts. It's as if they're being rewarded after warlords-turned-politicians like Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba and a host of others have exploited DRC's mineral wealth for all that they can. Despite their newfound legitimacy, the bishop continues to accuse them of cannibalism.

"Bemba's men were cutting fingers and ears off," the bishop tells me as we eye the shrubbery on the wall. "But that was normal; it wasn't astonishing. But when they started feeding them to the prisoners—that was something new."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097314/entry/2097325/


When Westerners reach for their cell phones or pagers, turn on their computers, propose marriage with diamond rings, or board airplanes, few of them make the connection between their ability to use technology or buy luxury goods and a war raging in the DRC, half a world away. In what has been called the richest patch of earth on the planet, the DRC's wealth has also been its curse. The DRC holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built using Congolese uranium), niobium, and tantalum. Tantalum, also referred to as coltan, is a particularly valuable resource - used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and capacitors (the component that maintains the electrical charge in computer chips). In fact, a global shortage of coltan caused a wave of parental panic in the United States last Christmas when it resulted in the scarcity of the popular PlayStation 2. The DRC holds 80% of the world's coltan reserves, more than 60% of the world's cobalt, and the world's largest supply of high-grade copper
Also in 1997, Bechtel, the engineering and construction company, established a strong relationship with Kabila. Bechtel - whose history of collaboration with the CIA is well-documented in Laton McCartney's 1989 book, Friends in High Places - drew up a master development plan and inventory of the country's mineral resources free of charge. Bechtel also commissioned and paid for NASA satellite studies of the country for infrared maps of its mineral potential. Bechtel estimates that the DRC's mineral ores alone are worth $157 billion.

U.S. military aid has contributed significantly to the crisis. During the Cold War, the U.S. government shipped $400 million in arms and training to Mobutu. After Mobutu was overthrown, the Clinton administration transferred its military allegiance to Rwanda and Uganda, although even the U.S. State Department has accused both countries of widespread corruption and human-rights abuses. During his historic visit to Africa in 1998, President Clinton praised Presidents Kagame and Musevini as leaders of the "African Renaissance," just a few months before they launched their deadly invasion of the DRC with U.S. weapons and training. The United States is not the only culprit; many other countries, including France, Serbia, North Korea, China, and Belgium, share responsibility. But the U.S. presence has helped to open networks and supply lines, providing an increased number of arms to the region.
more
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Africa/Business_War_Congo.html