Atrocities and Cannabalism in the Congo

You won't hear about this in any Amerian "news" program.

I am sure that news program directors won't cover the story because it is too "graffic."

Sure, this is a rather graffic story but it must be told and repeated until we as a global community decided to step-in and help.

There has been a long and vicious civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and despite a peace treaty signed two years ago ghastly violence continues in the eastern part of the country.

This is the same geographic area that hosted the violence in Rwanda and the on-going violence in Sudan.

Yet, hardly anyone knows that anything is going wrong.

This from the BBC's Africa correspondent Hilary Andersson:

But the region in and north of the forests of central Africa has hosted Rwanda's genocide, the massacres in Burundi, the devastation of southern Sudan, the mutilations in Uganda, and the atrocities of the north-eastern Congo.

In the north-east, at least seven warlords are locked in brutal scramble for personal power and control.

Lots of the fighters are children.

Rape is more widespread than possibly anywhere else on Earth (GOI: Bush was SO concerned about the "rape rooms" of Saddam's Iraq but you don't hear a peep from the Prez about this one).

And the war is not about any principle at all, violence has just moved in where there is no authority.

GOI: Mutilation here has been the norm according to Andersson:

Their relatives had their hearts ripped out, their heads cut off, their sexual organs removed.

This, it seemed, was the standard way of killing here.

Why?

You want to know why?

Yes there is war, but this is different.

This is not just killing, or taking territory.

It is deliberate mutilation on a scale that makes you reel with horror.

We met a woman whom I will call Kavuo, not her real name.

To talk to her about her story we had to travel to a remote location in the jungle, where we could not be seen or heard by others.

What she had to speak of is an atrocity shrouded in secrecy here, an atrocity. It is taboo to even speak of it.

The events she told me about happened two years ago and hers was one of the first public testimonies of its kind.

Kavuo was on the run with her husband, her four children and three other couples.

They had spent the night in a hut, and got up in the morning to keep moving.

But they had barely left the hut when six militia men accosted them.

Kavuo and the women were ordered to lie with their faces on the ground.

The militia ordered Kavuo's husband and the other men to collect firewood.

Then the women were told to say goodbye to their husbands.

They obeyed.

The militia then began to kill the men one by one.

Kavuo's husband was third.

Her testimony is that the militia men lit a fire and put an old oil drum, cut into two, on the flames.

I will omit other details. But Kavuo says the militia cooked her husband's parts in the drums and ate them.

Fighters told us that those who carry out such acts believe it makes them stronger.

Some believe they are literally taking spiritual power from their victims. That once they have eaten, they have the power of the enemy.

These atrocities are also designed to instil utter fear into the enemy.

It is estimated that four million people have died in the Congo as a result of the long running war.

That is truly staggering. It is more than those killed by Cambodia's Pol Pot and more than those killed in Rwanda.

**GOI Comment: This story made my blood boil with anger toward the great western powers but especially toward my home country of America and our Presidents. Clinton did nothing about this OR Rwanda and Bush is carrying the torch of turning a back to these atrocities which in my view makes them accomplices.

Surely the Bush Administration knows what is going on there for the President receives daily briefs about troubled spots from all over the globe. Yet, he chooses to do nothing or to even say that anything is going wrong over there. Certainly our tabloid journalism is never going to say anything about this.

The only reason that Bush and Blair and other western powers are not doing anything is that there is nothing in it for them. If Congo had vast oil reserves then you better believe that Bush would have sent troops into there long ago.

Africa should be known as the "Forgotten Continent" because no one cares what goes on there. Thank GOD for the BBC and Reuters for reporting the events of this troubled continent.

Everyone talks about how troubled the Middle Eastern region is and I do not doubt this but with Africa you have an entire CONTINENT in trouble and (for the most part) these matters are being blown off.

Please, PLEASE do not forget Africa.


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