For as long as I taught Conflicts, there was war in Congo, especially eastern Congo. The Rwandan genocide ended and that conflict overflowed and continued in Congo. Mobutu was overthrown, and the war continued. Laurent Kabila was killed, and the war continued. Mutanga was convicted of crimes against humanity, and the war goes on. Each year in Conflicts, there was a different aspect to look at: rape as a weapon, the use of child soldiers, cult leaders, the role of diamonds and other minerals, and so on and so on. Finally, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bravely visited eastern Congo, and the war goes on. The deaths from this war are now estimated to be over six million. It has been called Africa’s first world war. I just call it horrific. I did not think it could get worse, but it has. Now a new tactic has become known to the world: re-rape. Girls and women who were repaired and healed - at least physically - are returning to clinics after being raped again - and again. I thought that I had heard the worst until reading about a new tactic: autocannibalism. Militia soldiers cut flesh from living victims and force them to eat it.
How can the world allow this to continue in 2010? Not only the scope of the war, but also its brutality? Is it because it is taking place in Africa away from the attention of the world’s media? When will the world care about Africa?
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Horrific report. You wonder that a good leader does not come forward, but there is such a cycle of evil that it does not seem to be able to be overcome. It seems that no one is safe there but the evil ones.
ReplyDeleteMs. Hansbury, you always ask the most intriguing and probing questions. To these, I constantly seem incapable of providing or locating sufficient answers. However, during the past few days I have been thinking a lot about where the roots of many problems begin: Education (or lack thereof). After taking Conflicts, it is only second nature to read the international section of the NYT everyday. But I know this is not true for everyone, since there are many free daily papers still sitting in my dorm at the end of the day. Conflicts has taught me to value, more than many things, my ability to ingest and analyze news from all types of media, coming from all across the globe. When people start to value Geography as much as the quadratic formula, people will care. Once the blindfold is removed, it can no longer be effectively replaced. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is the pain felt around the world when I, and anyone, everyone else, decide to remain silent in the shadow of a fellow human's struggle. We must remember that humanity is not something that can be measured by a multiple-choice test. Education is where the change must begin.
ReplyDeleteAnita has some good points about geography and education. I fault our syndicated TV news for rarely covering international news except for natural disasters and then it might be so skimpy as to be ridiculous. There have been times when they report there was an earthquake in Italy without even mentioning which area, as if no one would care if it were Venice or Naples or Rome, etc. And that adds to people's ignorance of geography--not ever being reminded that there are other real people out there and this is where they are living, suffering, electing new leaders, and so on. Journalists can answer the basic questions without doing in-depth analysis like PBS--quit wasting time telling us what's "coming up next" and just tell us something substantial.
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