Black Looks

Most of us probably havent even heard of cassiterite – the mineral used in electronics especially laptops.  There was a time when laptops used to be hugely expensive. Now you can pick up one for a couple of hundred pounds.  I dont know whether there is a relationship between the cheap price of laptops and the slave mining of cassiterite but it is quite possible.

At a remote mine in central DRC, workers with torches and pick axes hack at the ruddy earth. They are mining cassiterite, a mineral vital in the production of laptops and mobile phones. But dispersed among the miners are Congolese Government troops — in plain clothes for the camera — literally forcing most workers to work at gunpoint. ‘The soldiers always steal everything. They even come to shoot people down the mineshafts,’ complains Regina Maponda. Western greed for cassiterite is fuelling the boom — at an airfield near the mine, soldiers jealously guard their loot as it makes it way to Japan and the West. Conflict mining is a curse, and it is difficult to see what the G8 leaders can do. [Ota Benga]

There is much the G8 can do where mining feeds conflict.  Oil bunkering in the Niger Delta is made much easier through the low intensity war taking place between militants and the Nigerian army.  Both are involved as well as politicians – there are huge amounts of money to be made.  Like with diamond mining in Angola , copper and cassiterite in  the DRC, oil from the Niger Delta are all traded on the London and New York stock exchange.   Buyers, sellers always claim they know nothing about the conditions of the mining but that cannot be true. Some named multinationals involved in the trade of  mineral  in the DRC are Anglo-Gold Ashanti [financial support to armed groups in exhange for concessions] Belgian company Sogem and the UK’s Afrimex though not named in human rights violations, its hard to imagine they dont know the conditions  in which the mining takes place since they,  Afrimex,  buys the cassiterite in it’s raw form.      Across the border in Rwanda in the town of Gisenyi there is a cassiterite smelting plant owned by Metal Processing Association which is owned by South Africans.

This comment speaks on a video produced by Journeyman speaks to what the G8 could do if there was a will – after all the minerals end up being shipped,  traded and made into electronics by G8 countries.

Another white man sailing up the wrong river. Instead of sailing up the Congo, he should be sailing up the Thames, which is where Coltan is traded – at the London Metals Exchange. And who owns these concessions? Who is the plunderer? HOW does coltan end up in London? Start acting like a journalist and do your job for a change.

Here’s how the supply chain works.

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Friends of Congo provide some context into complex situation between the Congo and Rwanda and the arrest of Laurent Nkunda.

Is Laurent Nkunda’s arrest a positive development?

We have reasons to doubt that Laurent Nkunda has been arrested. Rwandan Maj. Jill Rutaremara said that Nkunda was in Rwanda but “not in jail.” If Nkunda has in fact been arrested it would be a positive development but not a massive change as some analysts would like you to believe. A true marker of the veracity of Rwanda’s claims of arresting Nkunda will be the extradition of Nkunda to the Congo where he committed the crimes against the Congolese people. If Nkunda is not extradited to Congo in short order then that will be a clear sign that this is part of the shell game that Rwanda has been playing for the past 12 years, a period during which they replaced one proxy leader with another while they continued to occupy Eastern Congo.

What role are great powers playing in what is unfolding in the Congo?

They facilitate the ascension to power of those who demonstrate a proclivity for killing their fellow Africans. Once these feckless leaders are in power and predictably incapable of governing, western diplomats condescendingly intervene on the premise that those they have assisted in acquiring power either through elections or otherwise cannot in fact justly govern. This narrative is buttressed by superficial media coverage of African society, intellectuals for hire by Western powers and the humanitarian industry….Continue reading.

For many of us the hourly news reports showing the horrific slaughter and devastation of the Israeli attack on Gaza is still very much fresh in our minds. Daily coverage on TV, radio and news media with endless analysis, pundits as well as live reports. At some point in the war I remember thinking how fickle is the news media as by the end of the 3rd week, reports had dwindled to a few hours a day, a few articles a day from a height of almost continuous cover in the early days. I began to think about the amount of time devoted to these and other Middle Eastern wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan compared to the coverage of wars in Africa such as the DRC, Somalia and Darfur. I came across a site called “Stealth Conflicts” which is based on the book of the same name by Virgil Hawkins. Stealth conflicts are those conflicts which remain marginal in relation to the overall agenda of the various industrial complexes that constitute global capital – the media, academia, NGOs, policy makers and so on.

Perception defines our reality. Where access to information that may enhance our perception is limited, the reality we see becomes distorted and warped. Our view of the state of armed conflict in the world today is one of the most unfortunate victims of such distortion. In spite of supposedly unprecedented access to information, the information presented to us on conflicts occurring throughout the world is so skewed that the reality is almost unrecognisable..

This is particularly true of the most conflict-torn region of the world – Africa, which has produced more than 90 percent of the conflict-related deaths since the end of the Cold War. Despite the scale of the human suffering, it seems that Western-centric consciousness (and outrage) ends at the Suez Canal.

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Jacques Depelchin, peace activist and Executive Director of the Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity based in the DRC, has written a poem “From Africa to Haiti to Gaza: Fidelity to humanity”. The poem makes the connection between historical and contemporary struggles for liberation and justice from Africa to the Americas, to the Caribbean and to Palestine.

the consequences of
of Relentlessly violating humanity
Now Palestinians, then Africans centuries ago
Today displaced, refugees, best fodder
For humanitarian missions
The modernized version of abolitionists
On a mission which has not changed:
Violate humanity,
Eradicate it if too vocal
But Sabra, Shatila can still be heard

He concludes with a challenge to give name to the truth of what has and what is now taking place.

Palestinians, Africans, in the same boat
When the unending story of negating humanity started
Like Africans they are being processed and branded
Fit to be fodder for humanitarian crisis because what is being done
Must not be called
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

No one dares to call the slaughter of civilians
In Gaza by its proper name
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

From the times of the Arawaks
Violating, torturing, liquidating
Humanity with impunity
Has led to greater and greater
Crimes against humanity
Franchised differently
Preparing the biggest holocaust
Humanity has ever known and,
When that unfolds, as before,
We shall hear the usual
Shameful lame lie
‘We did not know’.

Read this exceptional poem in full here.

I and I think many other bloggers wonder which media we can trust which makes it difficult to post and or comment on what we read in papers such as the Guardian, Independent, NYT etc. I read this story two weeks – an awful awful account of the most hideous rapes by women survivors in the DRC. It’s a rewind of what took place in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Congo rape testimonies

“They forced my son to have sex with me, and when he’d finished they killed him. Then they raped me in front of my husband and then they killed him too. Then they took away my three daughters.” She hasn’t heard of the three girls, 13, 14 and 17, since. A small woman, she speaks softly and without visible emotion, but as she describes being left naked while her house burned, she raises a hand to cover her face.

“I was on my way to market with some of the other women when I stopped off to pee,” one woman told Chishugi. “I was carrying wood and I was taken by the rebels. Five of them raped me. I still have pain in my legs because they were so violent. Afterwards they said, ‘You must not walk alone any more.’ I have two children born from the rebels.”

Violence is like a vampire – it feeds off blood and drugs to the point where all sense of reality, humanity, feeling disappears. It becomes like a drug additional whereby the actors are blind to their actions feeding only off the violence like starving vultures. But we must hear these stories because there are a hell of a lot of people who need to be held to account. The rapists as vile as they are do not act in a vacuum – and those who are not instantly visible in these atrocities must also be called out.

They came out of the forest. Men with guns appearing barely human to the frail, ageing woman who months later recounted her ordeal, bent double after surgery to save her womb.

“They didn’t look like men. Their skin was covered in cuts. Their clothes were completely torn. They became someone else, not humans,” she said at a hospital in the often fought-over town of Rutshuru in eastern Congo.

But the woman still recognised the men who descended on her village as members of the Mai Mai ethnic militia. Their preference for wearing animal skins and amulets, popular for their supposed magical powers of protection, distinguished them from the government soldiers, foreign rebels and other armed gangs who have also contributed to the wholesale rape of hundreds of thousands of women and girls over more than a decade of conflict.

It took months for the 58-year-old woman from Kindu to reach Rutshuru hospital for treatment and to tell her story. The Mai Mai shot her husband when he didn’t have any money to hand over. When her children screamed they shot them too. Then the woman was raped by five men. One of her attackers nearly destroyed her womb by thrusting his gun into it. She fled her village. As she travelled to Rutshuru she was raped again, this time by Rwandan Hutu extremists who fled to Congo after leading the genocide in their own country………………....Continued

Yesterday I was listening to a phone in on Zimbabwe – listening to a misguided so called Pan Africanist apologist for Mugabe muttering about white rule, land rights and western imperialism – all true but no, Mugabe you are not excused!

DRC + Rape

Trying to understand and give some context to the renewal of conflict in the DRC is extremely difficult. I recently spoke briefly with Dieudonné Wedi who is a DRC national and a human rights defender who has written on the violence perpetrated on women and children, for his thoughts on the present crisis.

SE: What is your thoughts on the origins of the conflict?

DW: When in 1996, the Rwandese president Paul Kangame backed the rebellion led by the Laurent Desire Kabila who latter overthrew Mobutu one of the former Congolese president and become president, the reason was that Rwanda was backing Laurent desire Kabila in order to eradicate the presence of those responsible of genocide in 1994 in Rwanda, but later on it was shown that Rwanda was looting Congolese natural resources.

Indeed, Rwanda with RCD a rebellion backed by Rwanda occupied the Eastern DRC for three years where those responsible of genocide are based but they could not eradicate them because they (Rwanda and RCD) were more busy looting natural resource than fighting those criminal. Thus the real origin of the conflict is the need of access and exploitation of the mineral resource and the land occupation.

SE: Do you think the mining multinationals have any contribution to the conflict

DW: Yes, indeed, many reports released by ONGs and UN panel have confirmed the involvement of multinational and mining,

SE: What are your thoughts on the UN – the reports we get is that they are not doing enough by far:

DW: The current problem of the UN peacekeeper is the mandate. Instead of being a peacemaker force, the current is a peacekeeper. Those who are supposed to make peace in DRC case are those who are fighting and none of them are willing any peace. Indeed, peace in Eastern seems not to be a common concern. The conflict allows the looting of Congolese natural resource, traffic of weapon and other illegal practice through which multinational, arm groups, neighbouring countries as well as individual are earning a lot of money. Thus, instead of waiting for those involved in conflict to make peace the better way will be for international community to oppose peace because the main objective of those who perpetuate conflict in Eastern DRC is to keep this area in state of a no man land..

SE: You have written many times child soldiers and violence such as rape against women. Are these kind of violence still taking place in the present conflict?

DW: Unfortunately once again sexual violence remains a weapon in conflict in eastern DRC. The impunity is one of reason encouraging the practice ; The recruitment of child soldier is one of the worse thing happening in conflict in DRC. But we have to distinguish two kinds of recruitment of child soldier.

Those who abduct children as soldier and those who recruit them through promise of money and other advantage they can get by being soldier. But all those recruitments have to be condemned and those responsible prosecuted.

SE: Do you think this is a problem from the Tutsi fighting the Hutu in DRC or more complex

DW: The problem is more complex than Tutsi fighting Hutu because the real reason of conflict is the looting of natural resource of DRC and the research to occupy the land .The current rebellion is backed by Rwanda which is interested by land and natural resource of DRC. Of course there are those who committed genocide in Rwanda but their presence becomes a pretext for Rwanda to explain his presence in DRC because the same Rwanda and the previous rebellion backed by Rwanda the RCD had occupied the eastern DRC for three years where are based those responsible of genocide without ending their presence.

In my opinion, Nkunda is just playing a role: To create and maintain a state of conflict in Eastern DRC in order to allow Rwanda to loot and try to gain a piece of land which will be one day claimed like Kosovo was. The RCD, the previous rebellion played the some role.

Dieudonné Wedi is an expert in the transitional justice field. He is research and publishing peace building, conflict resolution, reconciliation and implementation of democracy.

Tags:
DRC

Park Ranger, Benjamin Mujinya from the Virunga National Park recounts how the rebels killed his father.

DRC;
Virunga National Park;

“Half-baked software” or not Ushahidi makes a timely deployment to map the conflict in the DRC

The mobile number to send SMS reports to is +243992592111.

For more on the “fight for DRC resources” see this piece by Mandisi Majavu

It is reported that the cutback on tin production, which has forced tin buyers to rely on the metal from the DRC, is likely to remain in effect until the rest of the year. According to Reuters, the renewed fighting in the DRC has had a ‘disproportionately large effect on tin prices as international buyers increasing rely on the relatively small producer’ – the DRC as major producer Indonesia cuts output. “Benchmark tin prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) closed at $15,225 per tonne on Wednesday, up 31 percent since Oct. 27, the day after heavily-armed rebel troops began marching toward major eastern city and tin trading centre Goma” says Reuters.

AFP reports that what prevented Laurent Nkunda and his men from completely taking over Goma was the UN peacekeeping forces, which used helicopter gunships to stall the rebel advance. The idea of Laurent Nkunda capturing the city of Goma makes global capitalists anxious to say the least Continued………………. .

TAGS:
DRC
Ushahidi

Today’s BBC reports rapes and killings by rebels and DRC forces as 250,000 people are displaced hiding in the bush or simply trekking along roads to nowhere. One only has to listen to stories by asylum seekers and refugees in the UK to know what horrors women, children and men are faced with. Most of the reports in the media explain the conflict in terms of rebels and Congolese forces, Tutsis, Hutus – yet more African tribal warfare and unspeakable acts of violence. These simplistic explanations are easy and do not require much thought just use the copy from a few years ago or from some other conflict.

Sidebar
I listened to a report from the DRC on photographer Rankin who has documented life in the DRC with his exhibition of people. Asked why, he responds that people don’t want to hear about doom and gloom so happy photos instead. Well surprise surprise there are real people in the DRC – they laugh, love, fight, have babies, go to work, work the farms, fish, go to school – that is the reality as much as the reality is that right now and for the last 20 years hundreds of thousands have lived in an almost constant state of terror. We don’t need happy photos to know people live!

Back to the conflict. Take this Q&A from the BBC site

What is the conflict about?

For years fighting in DR Congo has been fuelled the country’s vast mineral wealth.

DR Congo is about the size of western Europe, but with no road or rail links from one side of the country to the other. That makes it easy for all sides in a conflict to take advantage of any anarchy and plunder natural resources.

And

Why has the fighting broken out again?

It is not entirely clear.

But Gen Nkunda has always said he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom are accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide.

The Congolese government has often promised to stop the Hutu forces from using its territory, but has not done so.

But the truth is far more complex and much deeper than these cheap explanations. Johann Harris provides some real depth and home truths. We are all culpable in the conflict and the West’s uabated greed and desire for the many mineral resources in the Eastern Congo. Describing those involved as the “armies of business” whose aim it is to “seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling”. The BBC and other media present what Harris calls the “official story” quoted above, one that conveniently ignores Western complicity and the true story, one which has been around for 200years.
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