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Crimes against humanity

It is no secret that military regimes are heavy handed in crushing any uprising. The despots everywhere don't tolerate dissent as if the power is their birthright. These 'electile' dysfunctional despots use oppression as viagra to prolong their stay in power. Even the fact that some of these uncrowned tyrants had to run for their lives at the end, even facing prison sentences and at times cruel death, doesn't deter the current ones from exercising the absolute power. Torture camps and mass graves are the byproducts of the corruption of this absolute power.

Marxist and Maoist states have their gulag labor camps to re-educate the 'counterrevolutionaries'. Then in the emerging theocracies, where the concept of democracy is alien, mullahfication of politics, based on following the letter of the law from ancient texts, purportedly given by the Almighty, lead to primitive ways of punishments like flogging and beheading, making the Almighty a creator of criminal as well as constitutional law.

But, the sad truth is even the democratically elected governments resort to bullets and blood in defeating rebellions and dissent. Even a peaceful demonstration can be broken up by the state, showing what a state can do to the very people who put it in power.

As these are happening more commonly in the developing world, the western democracies selectively condemn or overlook these violations as they see fit. Now under the guise of fighting terrorism, they too are denying their own citizens the same human rights they proclaim to safeguard. Cracking down on terrorism may not be as brutal as quashing a rebellion. But in west, where individual rights are cherished, the powerful media and civil rights groups, and the eventual punishing at the polls keep the politicians from declaring an all out war on terror by taking away the civil rights. It is not simple as legislating an emergency declaration in the third world. They wish they could stuff the ballots and rig the polls or make the results 'null and void'. Luckily, in these places where public policy is often shaped by opinion polls, human rights violations don't happen in mass scale.

Even revolutions and rebellions have their own way of dealing with dissent. They too have their own skeletons in the closet. In that world, branding somebody a traitor is a simple licence to kill. Pretending to be looking at the big picture, their apologists consider it as the collateral damage and try to sweep it under the carpet, or in the closet!

At the end, it all comes down to the power. When the absolute power is questioned, in the name of order, individual human rights are violated. It isn't much about the safeguarding democracy or law and order. It is just a game for the powers that be to cling to their power.

The scale in which these power setups deal with dissent may vary. But the intention is all same.

The purported violators of order can be branded from separatists to terrorists, from criminals to traitors. This will make them punishable in the public's eye.

When the 'terrorists' can't be apprehended or eliminated, there begins the collective punishment. In the era of aerial bombardment and explosive laden vehicles, collective punishment of the innocent civilians causes death and destruction in mass scale. Most of the times, number of innocent people caught in the crossfire exceeds the intended targets. This doesn't prevent the power to claim of 'inflicting heavy casualties on enemy'.

Sadly, those who suffer most are the society's vulnerable... children, women and elderly.

Lately we are bombarded with the images of human suffering caused by the war. Media is filled with the images, from refugees to mass killing, from amputated children to headless bodies

Here we have the powers that be in play, trying to cash on this unbearable human suffering. Suddenly, those who never show any regard for human life, are overwhelmed by the loss of precious human life. To support their 'heartfelt sorrow', their propagandists come with the images with gruesome details which an editor dares to publish, only to earn some extra political mileage by exposing the opposing party.

While the perpetrators are trying to cover up, whoever could benefit from the exposure are hell bent on spicing up, at times doctoring, the damages with imagination and exaggeration.

Believing this propaganda as truth 'as seen on TV', their supporters can literally make a scene to grab the attention of the media and the world. Holding placards with the images and words Genocide and Atrocities, they often try to get the sympathy for their side, while brushing off criticism about their own doings.

Often, those who beat their breasts against human rights abuses, are often the worst violators. Close to home, LTTE has made an art of this display lately. Though Allaipiddy, Vankalai and Vallipunam images are flashed in Tiger web, opportunistic and shameless exploitation of these images wouldn't nullify the horrific crimes Tigers committed against muslims, sinhalese and tamil civilians... women and children.

On the other hand, atrocities suffered by individuals get lost in this drama. When the victims are individually targeted, many of them are brutally tortured and killed. Headless bodies and mass graves popping everywhere show the brutality. Unless they are of some fame, the victims become 'unidentified' or mere person and forgotten.

When the victims are women, for these violators power seems to be coming from the double barrel guns. Rape is a part of torture procedure for woman in captivity. Systematic rape is often used as a weapon in ethnic wars as a way to humiliate the ethnic group of its impotency to protect its women and to rob its ethnic purity.

The dark continent of Africa, where dictators are dime a dozen, is cursed with dictators with one hand in the trigger and other in the treasury and the ethnic tribes with the real intention of genocide. This is the place where barbarism meets the abuse. From Congo to Dafur, from Uganda to Liberia, horrific atrocities committed by the dictators and tribes are documented by the media.

It is an ethical dilemma for the editors to decide whether public's right to know outweighs the horror illustrated in the images. Unlike the warring parties which try to score political points over dead bodies, media is thrust on with the social responsibility to expose the crimes against humanity. Many times, media's self imposed censorship deletes some images from making to the front page. Those who dare are criticized for their 'poor judgement'.

By exposing these atrocities, media could play a role in stopping them. Many a time, public opinion is swayed by these images. It is the picture of the naked little girl, burnt by the US napalm bombing, that became the turning point to opposition to Vietnam war.

It was the image of the body of the US airman being dragged in Mogadishu made the US to get out from Somalia.

Horror displayed by the images was the proverbial last straw that broke the nation's confidence in military might.

When the power, that comes from the barrel of the gun, falls in the wrong hands and goes unchecked, this is what we get.... crimes against humanity and images with horrific details.

(We are reproducing an article about the war in Congo and its effect on women and children. Article includes two pictures which may offend some. Be forewarned that these images are not for the fainthearted.

We believe our readers are mature enough to comprehend the context it is being reprinted. )

George R.Ckrhushchev (www.thayagam.info)

Rape of the Congo –

the war against women and children

Adam Sloan meets Johann Hari, The Independent writer, and discusses his experiences

covering the war in Congo It is the most deadly conflict since the Second World War,

raging across nine countries and causing four million deaths. Yet weeks will go by and

the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo barely gets a mention in the

media. For years eastern Congo has effectively been outside central

government control. Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, has

seen hundreds of thousands of children orphaned since 1994. Every day,

women are kidnapped by militias, and rape is used as a weapon of war.

Last week I travelled down to London to meet Johann Hari, the 27 year

old columnist for the Independent, author and playwright who last month

visited Congo to see for himself why the war has continued and to listen

to the voices of the women and children who are most affected by the

continuing violence. I met with Hari, a left-leaning journalist and

member of the Labour Party, in his trendy Brick Lane apartment.

As well as writing for the Independent, Hari has contributed to the New

York Times, Le Monde and The Guardian, won the 2003 Young Journalist of

the Year award and been the youngest ever person to be nominated for the

Orwell Prize for political writing. Hari famously described religion as

"organised superstition" and has been labelled "fat" by the Dalai Lama

as well as being called a "c***" by Busted.

Hari visited Congo along with a fact-finding mission from the Labour

Party that also included his friend, ex-MP and York graduate Oona King.

Hari was particulary interested in the consequences of the conflict for

Congolese women. Hari visited a "rape clinic, the only rape clinic in

Eastern Congo, where there were dozens of women who had been gang raped

and shot in the vagina." This is an increasingly common occurrence in

Congo. Rather than fighting each other, the militias are trying to

destroy the other side's moral by fighting their women; "sexual violence

is now absolutely endemic as a tool of war in Congo," said Hari.

- Sexual violence is now endemic as a tool of war in Congo

Hari also visited a hospital run by Denis Mukwege, whom he described as

"the Oskar Schindler" of the Congolese. For many years Dr. Mukwege was

not allowed to treat rape victims, so he ran his hospital in secret. "He

had a three year old girl brought in where, as he put it, 'everything

had been shot away', and the father committed suicide because he

couldn't cope with it." Hari described how Dr Mukwege saw an old woman

who had been gang raped in front of her sons-in-law." The relationship

between a mother and her son-in-law is a very holy one in Congo, "she

just said 'don't feed me, I want to die, I can never go back.'" The

women that make it to Dr. Mukwege's hospital are, of course, the lucky

ones. Most women are just left to die.

So why have things ended up like this? Why does this war that officially

ended in 2003, with the Lusaka peace accords, continue to destroy so

many lives? The answer is probably sitting right in front of you, in

your computer, in your iPod and in your mobile phone. All of these

electronic devices contain a metal called coltan, 80% of known supplies

of which lie under Congo.

The official story of how the war started centres around the tiny

mountain state of Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, many of its

perpetrators it fled across the border into Congo. What is said to have

happened is the Rwandan forces then went across the border to capture

them. Other countries then invaded as a countervailing force resulting

in what former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called Africa's

first world war.

The UN panel of experts set up to look into the causes of the war

discovered a more sinister story. What it found was that Rwanda did not

invade to go after the perpetrators of the genocide, but to seize the

mineral resources of Congo and sell them on to us in the West. Due to

the increasing popularity of mobile phones and PlayStations, the price

of coltan has boomed This made it much more attractive for Rwanda and

the other international armies and militias to go into Congo and take

it. "As Oona King puts it, kids in Congo were being sent down mines to

die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in

their living room."

Hari and King visited an orphanage just outside the capital, Kinshasa;

"we were told this was one of the best orphanages in Congo. When we

arrived, the first room we went into, the children were just lying on

the gloor covered in s***, and flies and vomit. They said this was where

the Aids babies go."

"One boy was just rocking back and forward, we asked, 'what is wrong

with this kid?' They said, 'he's been like that since he arrived here.'

We asked what his name was and they said 'he doesn't have a name.'"

It is not only Congo's physical landscape that is in ruins, but its

psychological one too. Stories of witchcraft have been around for a long

time in Congo, but now as a consequence of the war, people have started

accusing children of being witches; "in the orphanage we saw a child who

they called 'Fidel', who had his penis cut off by his parents because

they thought he was a witch. I went to one of the evangelical churches

promoting this idea of witchcraft in a place called Bukavu. I met a

14-year-old girl who was accused of being a witch. She said that her

grandmother had came to her in her sleep, and forced her to eat an evil

doughnut, and this had meant she had killed her baby sister." At this

point of the interview Hari paused for a while and said, "if Britain had

4 million people murdered, and the rest of us displaced from our homes,

living in terror and gang raped, we would start to believe some pretty

crazy things too."

For more information visit:

MONUC

http://www.monuc.org/

Web page of the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of

Congo.

Johann Hari

http://www.johannhari.com/

Visit this website to find out more about the Independent columnist,

author and playwrite.

_____

Article printed from Nouse.co.uk <http://www.nouse.co.uk/>

URL to article:

http://www.nouse.co.uk/2006/05/26/rape-of-the-congo-the-war-against-wome