Women Killed and Mutilated in Congo Attack

Women killed and mutilated in Congo attack
 
By David Lewis

KINSHASA (Reuters) - At least nine women have been murdered and their bodies mutilated by a militia terrorising civilians inDemocratic Republic of Congo's copper-rich Katanga province, the United Nations says.

The attack highlights lawlessness in the remote southern province where thousands have been displaced by ongoing attacks and U.N.peacekeepers are stretched due to conflict elsewhere in the vast central African nation.

"Nine women were killed and their bodies mutilated by a group of Mai Mai during an attack on government troops at Nkonga," SoniaBakar, head of special investigations for the U.N. mission's human rights department, told reporters on Wednesday.

Bakar said the attack happened last month, just over 500 km (312 miles) northwest of the provincial capital of Lubumbashi.

Peace deals struck in 2003 officially ended a five-year war in Congo, but fighting simmers in much of the east and nearly all of the U.N.'s16,000 troops have been deployed in Ituri and North and South Kivu, leaving hardly any for Katanga.

Little progress has been made integrating the plethora of armed groups into a cohesive national army and the Mai Mai, a rag-tag militiathat operates across eastern Congo, remains largely out of control in Katanga.

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5662547&cKey=1112811640000

My Comment: The Roaring Silence

Considering the UN record on women lately, I would worry that they might, "join in."

M

at the library this evening.

Some thoughtful people had letters ready to sign with stamped envelopes already addressed to congresspeople, etc. in regards to Darfur.

It's a powerful movie.

kept the people totally separated from any chance at building institutions. The Bush pal and for "king" of the Congo had more than 10 Billion dollars to his name. He robbed that country blind for 30 years.

By the way, just so you know, the Congo is 1/3 the size of the USA and is one of the most resource endowed places in the world. Those people should be well off. They should be into their 10th election cycle. They had an amazing leader in their first election but he was killed because he was to the left. Since then the people have got nothing.

It is the USA and Western nations who owe those people stability.

Guns, Money and Cell Phones
By Kristi Essick
The Industry Standard Magazine
Issue Date: Jun 11 2001

The demand for cell phones and computer chips is helping fuel a bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The offer turned up a few weeks ago on an Internet bulletin board called the Embassy Network. Among the postings about Dutch work visas and Italian pen pals lurked a surprisingly blunt proposal: "How much do you want to offer per kilogram? Please find me at least 100,000 U.S. dollars and I will deliver immediately."

The substance for sale wasn't cocaine or top-grade opium. It was an ore called Columbite-tantalite - coltan for short - one of the world's most sought-after materials. Refine coltan and you get a highly heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum. It sells for $100 a pound, and it's becoming increasingly vital to modern life. For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia (NOK) and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel (INTC) to Sony (SNE) stereos and VCRs.

Selling coltan is not illegal. Most of the worldwide tantalum supply - valued at as much as $6 billion a year - comes from legitimate mining operations in Australia, Canada and Brazil. But as demand for tantalum took off with the boom of high-tech products in recent years, a new, more sinister market began flourishing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There, warring rebel groups - many funded and supplied by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda - are exploiting coltan mining to help finance a bloody civil war now in its third year. "There is a direct link between human rights abuses and the exploitation of resources in areas in the DRC occupied by Rwanda and Uganda," says Suliman Baldo, a senior researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based nongovernmental organization that tracks human-rights abuses worldwide.

The slaughter and misery in the Congo has not abated since the country's president, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated in January. (Kabila's son, Joseph, was quickly appointed the new head of state.) Human Rights Watch researchers, working with monitors in the Congo, estimate that at least 10,000 civilians have been killed and 200,000 people have been displaced in northeastern Congo since June 1999. Rebels have driven farmers off their coltan-rich land and attacked villages in a civil war raging, in part, over control of strategic mining areas. The Ugandan and Rwandan rebels "are just helping themselves," Baldo says. The mining by the rebels is also causing environmental destruction. In particular, endangered gorilla populations are being massacred or driven out of their natural habitat as the miners illegally plunder the ore-rich lands of the Congo's protected national parks.

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Articles/TheStandardColtan.asp

that had it. So you can imagine what that does to a country during the last 20 years of the cold war. It was much worse than oil.

And the diamonds that would get snuck across the border to be sold elsewhere. And the copper.

Just a giant robbery of these people.