Blogging on Meds

At least 9 people died today when a plane crashed in a residential area of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is certainly an event worthy of attention in a country where hundreds died in plane crashes in August and October of 2007. However it is important to note that another 100 planes would have to crash with similar fatalities today, just to equal the amount of people in Congo who will die today from malnutrition and disease.
That’s right, over 1000 people a day die in Congo, and it gets worse.

This weekend I went to a UN-sponsored screening of a new documentary by Lisa Jackson called The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. The film, which won the Special Jury Prize for documentaries at Sundance premiered last week on HBO. It documents the untold stories of the tens of thousands of women (and girls) who have been raped during the conflicts there over the past decade. Though the 3.3 million people killed in the civil war are well known, these stories rarely make it out of the victim’s mouths, much less into international press.
In Congolese society to be raped is a shameful event, and the blame is often cast on its victim. Many of the women in the film speak about being left by their husbands after being gang raped by members of the various militias and the DRC Army. The attacks are not just acts of sexual frustration by young men forced into war, they are a cruel method of the deadliest conflict since World War II. Often when a rape is finished, the attackers will use their guns, knives or sticks to make sure that the woman’s ability to reproduce children of a warring ethnic group, clan or family is gone forever. The scenes from an overcrowded fistula clinic caused audible gasps and several exits from the theater. Of course those who are left intact are often burdened with the child of their attacker (there is now a whole generation growing up as children of rape there) and high probability of AIDS or HIV contraction.
I left unsettled to say the least, and a bit confused as to where the Darfur or even Tibet-like outcry was. I couldn’t quite grasp why the story of the Congo was flying under the radar. Then today I got the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs in my mailbox.
Severine Autesserre writes a detailed history of the conflict, and the myriad obstacles to resolution (yet notably devotes all of one word in one sentence to the issue of rape there). Reading, I realized that the reason the conflict is under-reported and under-condemned is because there is no easy target to point a finger at. Unlike the government sponsored militias in Darfur, there are dozens of parties committing atrocities against one another in Congo. The past decade of violence in Congo has “involved three Congolese rebel movements, 14 foreign armed groups, and countless militias,” mostly over claims on land that has changed hands frequently among groups since the days of King Leopold II. Atrocities can be blamed on any ethnicity, clan, neighboring country, political party, wealthy family and yes, even on UN peacekeepers.
A topic that was touched on briefly in both the film and the Foreign Affairs piece is the exploitation of the situation in Congo by parties looking to cash in on the abundance of natural resources there. Warlords cheaply smuggle resources to eager companies in exchange for money that buys more guns. Much of the land the groups fight over is rich in diamonds and a mineral called coltan. If you are a Leo DiCaprio fan, you probably already decided to pay more in American dollars than in African blood for that engagement ring, and are saving up for a conflict-free diamond. However, with Congo holding 80% of the world’s coltan (a mineral necessary for capacitors that are in every single laptop or cellphone) it is a bit harder to dodge the issue. Does that mean that there is in an 80% chance that I am typing this on a machine that supported rape and genocide? If so, there is an 80% chance you are reading this on the same. Are we ready to boycott Macworld this year or tell Motorolla to please charge us more for conflict-free RAZRs?
Below is a trailer for The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. Be warned, the movie was one of the saddest and most horrific things I have ever seen. The trailer is just a glimpse.