By: George Conger.
A “silent genocide” is unfolding in Central Africa, church leaders have warned, as soldiers loyal to rebel General Laurent Nkunda march upon government troops holding the city of Goma in the Kivu province of the eastern Congo.
In a statement released through the Congo Church Association, Bishop Bahati Balibusane of Bukavu warns that “over one million people” have been displaced by the fighting. “Men, women, children are living outside, in schools, in churches and in some hospitable families. They don’t have water, food, materials, clothes, utensils and latrines. These people living in hardship are exposed to hunger, illness and death of some fathers, mothers and children,” he wrote in a call for “urgent spiritual, material and financial support.”
Church aid agencies report the fighting between Congolese troops and the rebels has led to widespread atrocities. The Barnabas Fund reports “ young men [have been] killed, women raped by retreating government troops, children kidnapped and forcibly recruited as child soldiers to fight a war that is not their own, soldiers and militias [are] pillaging and looting, and hundreds of thousands of displaced people [are] fleeing for their lives.”
Hats off to George Conger for highlighting another world tragedy that tends to go unnoticed. Over a million people have been displaced, and thousnads killed, and yet this gigantic humanitarian catastrophe almost never rates any mention in the American press, whether in print, broadcast, or internet journalism.
In 1994, the world ignored the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. Now, 14 years later, the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s are at it again, this time in the eastern Congo. And the world is still turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to this appalling crisis of immense proportions.
Way to go, George!
David Handy+
[i] This gigantic humanitarian catastrophe almost never rates any mention in the American press, whether in print, broadcast, or internet journalism. [/i]
All too true. This colossal tragedy gets less attention than celebrities’ wardrobe malfunctions.
What if 80% of the money used in this year’s presidential election and its primaries had been donated to supporting efforts to protect and feed the helpless victims of violence in African ‘hot spots?’
By the way, what is the United Nations doing? Are the member nations of the UN ‘ponying up’ money and troops to aid the helpless?
Certainly the oil producing nations have a surplus of cash well beyond the ‘creature comfort needs’ of their citizens.
Maybe Venezuela could send some troops to the eastern Congo as part of a UN force.
Read Peter Hitchens’ recent piece on the Chinese enslavement of Congolese in their own country – nary a word in the press.