“Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms,”

Links: Playstation Wars

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DRC

Two important events from the DRC - The one month campaign against sexual violence in the DRC took place between March 17-April 17th and coincided with a new law to ending the crimininalisation of children by accusing them of witchcraft. The campaign was funded by the UN Population Fund. However the question is in a country where tens of thousands of women have been raped and mutilated why did this campaign end after just one month. What happens now? The rapists remain free, and no one has been called to account for their crimes. Jacques Depelchin of the Otabenga Alliance raises two important questions -

Is it too harsh to ask oneself whether the campaign stopped after one month because that is what had been budgeted by the UN and other supporting NGOs, and agencies? Could it be that in a country like the DRC, moral and ethical values have been so badly eroded that nothing can be done unless one is paid for it–including getting rid of crimes like sexual violence against women and children,? The dominant mindset is not just one that is standing above us. It has taken root within ourselves. It has taken root within the minds of those who are the primary victims of its dominance.

If sexual violence were to be considered, like slavery, as a crime against humanity, would one be so nonchalant toward it? From 1791 through 1804, the Africans who had been enslaved in Haiti got rid of slavery. They did not achieve this through one month campaigns and fundraising exercises. They had no support from outside, no human rights organization

Then, the mindset of the enslavers accepted as normal that Africans were meant to be slaves. Step by step, over centuries, the mindset of the enslavers has enslaved parts of humanity to the notion that women and children are fair game for the abusive sexual behavior and pleasure of men.

The points raised by Jacques are equally applicable to the sexual violence and torture against women in South Africa of whom lesbians are a specific target. The stigma of rape is not on the rapist but on the women who are raped and this is the same mindset whether in the DRC, South Africa, the Niger Delta, Haiti or here in the UK. The UN has the resources to the maintain a continual campaign against sexual violence in the DRC as well as the resources to bring justice to the thousands of women survivors of some of the most horrific acts of sexual violence - Funding a one month campaign is pathetic and in fact could very well cause more harm against women who have come forth and spoken out about the crimes commited against them. What happens to them when the UN is gone and the campaign ended - the rapists remain free.

The second event is the continued assassination threat against Professor Wamba dia Wamba and Deputy Kiakwama of the Otabenga Alliance who has been actively protesting the continued brutality by the government of the DRC against the people of the “Bas-Congo (Lower Congo)–especially toward members of the Bundu dia Kongo (BDK), a “movement for the cultural and spiritual emancipation of the Congo people” For more information on this see the Otabenga Alliance website.

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DRC
Wamba dia Wamba

Google Earth and the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) have added a new layer of refugee camps around the world - Chad, Darfur, Palestine, Western Sahara to name a few.

Google Earth’s new mapping programme takes you on a virtual reality tour with the UN refugee agency of some of the world’s major displacement crises and the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the victims.

The first use of this geospatial tool focuses on refugees and displaced people located in remote areas of Chad, Iraq, Colombia and Sudan’s volatile Darfur region. Sit in front of your computer and, with a few clicks, see, hear and develop an emotional understanding of what it is like to be a refugee.

Highlighted are not only the physical area of the camp and surrounding country, but key parts of daily life such as education and health in photo, text and video format. Within seconds, Google Earth brings the daily life of a refugee camp into your home thousands of kilometres away. To start your journey, click here.

Haitham of Sabbah’s blog was initially very excited over the project until he realised that “NONE of the Palestinian refugee camps within the Occupied Palestinian Territories are published there”

Haitham suggests two possibilities for ignoring the Palestinian camps: there has been an end to Israeli occupation of Palestine and they forgot to tell the world; or possibly the UNHCR doesn’t recognise the Palestinian refugee camps. I wonder if there is something bordering on a conspiracy of silence going on here between Google and the UNHCR. We all know how strong the Israeli lobby is in the US so I don’t think it is beyond belief.

It is disturbing to see such a horrible mistake (intentional or unintentional, we need to know) spread by a UN agency which claims to be taking care of refugees all around the world. The UNRWA lists the name of all the refugees camps in West Bank (19 camp) and Gaza (8 camps) and their population (West Bank 486,479, Gaza 478,272, total 964,751). Not only that, but they also have location maps for these refugees camps on their website:

A petition has been created to ask Google Earth and UNHCR to correct the mistake and to include the Palestinian camps on the map. You can sign the petition here.

Links:
Google Earth map of Darfur atrocities
Silobreaker - Google maps various

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Google Earth
Refugee Camps

***Two new blogs from South Africa’s shackdweller movement. The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign is an umbrella body for 15 community organisations. The body was formed in 2000 with the aim of

of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality.

***Shackdwellers: Housing Struggles Worldwide is a collection of feeds from housing movements world wide some general movement reports and a little commentary. This is a work in progress which also supports Abahlali, Ota Benga Alliance (DR of Congo) and Fazel Khan who was dismissed in 2006 for criticising the University of KwaZula Natal - the site reports on lack of academic freedom and freedom of expression in South African universities.

***More food riots in Haiti. The riots started in Les Cayes and have now spread to Port-au-Prince and Gonaives as up to Cap Haitian. UN forces have been deployed on the streets and at least 5 people have been killed with more injured.

The Causes: via AIDG Blog

* The cost of staples such as rice, beans, food and condensed milk have increased by 50%. The majority of Haitians (80% of the population) live below the poverty line and most of Haiti’s food is imported.
* Humanitarian aid has been held up in customs, with much simply rotting. .
* Oh and of course, the Haitian government is broke, flat broke.

***The Greatest Silence: Rape in the DRC

shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), shatters the silence that surrounds the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Many tens of thousands of women and girls have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. A survivor of gang rape herself, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson travels through the DRC to understand what is happening and why.

Eve Ensler is the producer of the Vagina Monologues and last May she went to the DRC where she was “witness to the profound human suffering and unprecedented sexual violence”. Keith Harmon Snow comments on Ensler’s campaign to end sexual violence against women in the DRC and exposes the hypocrisy behind this campaign and others who literally feed on the suffering of others, assigning guilt to victims whilst managing to remove their white selves, their corporate money and power from any responsibility in that suffering.

He in my opinion, rightfully, makes the connection between the sexual violence against women in the DRC and what he describes as the “travesty of violence against women” to be found in pages of Glamour Magazine and Vanity Fair both of which carried articles on Ensler’s campaign and interviews with Christine Schuler Deschryver, “described as a human rights activist”.

Why are there gala UNICEF “fundraising” benefits—the Annual Snowflake Ball—in New York hotels with white-tie U.S. Presidents as honorary ambassadors and state department officials from the National Security Council—and $10,000 tickets—held by and for officials who remain silent about genocide in Ethiopia or northern Uganda or the U.S.-backed coup d’etat that occurred in Rwanda in 1994 or Zaire (Congo) in 1996?

What we know to be true is that Eve Ensler was lucky to get this article in Glamour at all. The magazine is a travesty of violence against women—cosmetics, luxury aids, “health” and “beauty” products, liposuction, breast implants and sexually seductive advertising peddling the “perfect” female body and great American culture of sexual violence—and yet Glamour offers a platform for Ensler’s message about sexual brutality of unprecedented human proportions.

What Eve Ensler and Glamour have not addressed are the warlords behind the warlords, the corporations and white collar crime which is never—or selectively, now and then expeditiously, if ever—reported on the pages of Glamour, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, or the other promoters of popular propaganda brought to us by the Conde Naste corporate empire.

Harmon Snow goes on to expose Christine Schuler Deschryver whose family history in the DRC goes back beyond the days of Mobutu to independence and Patrice Lumumba, her “conservationist” husband, and other establishment and corporate players who remain unnamed in Vanity Fair and Glamour magazines.

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DRC
Eve Ensler
Vanity Fair
Glamour Magzine