DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO INVISIBLE WAR – INVISIBLE COUNTRY

How aware are you of what is happening in the west African country of the Democratic Republic of Congo? Think it’s just one of the last places in the world that you can still see the wild gorillas? Oh, you better think again. It’s wild, alright – but not in any good sense.

So you want to take an adventure trip to the Congo? You better think long and hard before you make that decision. The war in the Congo has been described as the African equivalence of the German holocaust. For many years, the war in the Congo continues to kill approximately 45,000 people per month. Some of these are killed by their home displacement, malaria, starvation and other diseases. Out of this huge death toll, approximately 50% of these who die are children. Since 1998 about 5.4 million people have been killed, there is no other conflict that has had so many death tolls other than World War II. Yet not a lot of people are ware of what is going on in the Congo.

How did this all begin? The Congo had been invaded twice and endured a long civil war after Rwanda's genocide spilled across the border in 1994. More than a million Rwandan refugees crossed over into the Congo border. The years that followed resulted in millions of people fleeing their homes and finally they saw the collapse of what infrastructure still remained after decades of neglect under their then ruler, Mobutu Sese Seko.

When the displaced attempted to return to their homes, they found their homes destroyed, their water resources destroyed, and their way of making a living destroyed. Women especially were vulnerable to trying to go back to any type of work for fear of being raped or murdered. The country came to an economic standstill. And it only would get worse.

Just like in Sierra Leone, the war is also about greed. Gold, natural resources, the Congo is rich in them and there is a great global demand for them. Where there is a willing buyer, a sale will always result. The means to attaining these wealths include enlisting children at a very young age into the war. They have become brainwashed, deadly baby soldiers.

The war is savage and continues. It is not your typical political war. It is a horrific war. A war of terror and atrocities. The war uses rape as a weapon. Women of all ages, from the old down to little female children have been raped. Their sexual organs have been mutilated, destroyed. The number of these rapes is in the 100,000’s. This is happening before the world’s eyes, but the communities of the world choose to keep their eyes closed to these atrocities and do not lend a helping hand to try to stop this type of torture from continuing. This war in the Congo has claimed at least 30 times more lives than the recent Haitian earthquake. The world rallied to rush to Haiti’s aid, but the ongoing suffering in the Congo continues while the world turns her back on it.

We used to think that tyrannical governments were the cause for their population’s suffering. But in the Congo, this is not the case! There is no functioning government at all – their name, the Democratic Republic of Congo is definitely misnamed! There is no democratic government or any other type of formal ruling government in the Congo.

Is there a light at the end of this terrifying tunnel? Not at this point. Not while the world continues to turn her back on what is happening in the Congo. To turn the tide in the Congo, there needs to be a concentrated joint effort of the global community. Who is going to lead the charge? What country will stand up and say, ‘ENOUGH”? The powerful countries of the world need to focus their strength against this already weak society and lend a positive hand to stop the horror and give the Congo a new beginning, a new rebirth.

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