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Posts Tagged ‘Media’

M23 Slowly Begins Withdrawal in Eastern Congo

Refugees fleeing as M23 advances; photo CNN

M23 forces have begun to withdraw from smaller towns around Goma. A report today from Agence France-Presse, published on ReliefWeb.int, says that rebels have been seen pulling back equipment from the area. AFP quotes Col. Antoine Manzi, a senior commander in the M23, saying the troops will begin by leaving the smaller towns, then finally pull out of Goma on Friday. According to a BBC article posted on Wednesday, rebel military commander Sultani Makenga confirmed through a spokesman that the M23 forces will begin withdrawing, with a handover ceremony in Goma on Friday. He said, however, that 100 troops will be left at the Goma airport, as part of the agreement. It has also been reported that the M23 political wing may establish its office there.

This action by the M23 follows a meeting last weekend in Uganda of regional political and military leaders to address the crisis. Makenga was told firmly that there can be no negotiations on the issues underlying the rebellion until M23 has withdrawn from Goma. That group of leaders is scheduled to travel to Goma on Friday to monitor the rebels’ withdrawal.

To look behind the headlines, I’ve spent a chunk of time today digesting half a dozen articles on Congo, ranging from news to analysis, and what follows is a flash tour through them. Feel free to thumb through the coming paragraphs as you would a magazine.

M23 troops in Goma; photo CNN

It has been an open secret that Rwanda has backed the M23. Though that country denies it, the United Nations has identified it as a material supporter of the rebels. A resolution adopted by the Security Council on Wednesday expressed “deep concern at reports indicating that external support continues to be provided to the M23 . . . causing a significant increase of the military abilities of the M23,” and called for an end to “any and all outside support.” The rebels have been well armed, both in weaponry and in other aids such as night-vision goggles.

Of course, you won’t hear any of this in the evening news headlines. The major American news outlets (along with most of their other Western counterparts) have been consistent through the years in giving scant attention to events in Congo. In a commentary published on CNN’s website, Vava Tampa, a Congolese who founded the organization Save the Congo, compares the attention given to the problems in Gaza and Syria with the lack of visibility for Congo. Tampa made vivid the number of deaths caused by the wars in Congo over the past 15-16 years:

“The wars in that country have claimed nearly the same number of lives as having a 9/11 every single day for 360 days, the genocide that struck Rwanda in 1994, the ethnic cleansing that overwhelmed Bosnia in the mid-1990s, the genocide that took place in Darfur, the number of people killed in the great tsunami that struck Asia in 2004, and the number of people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — all combined and then doubled.”

There are other reflective, substantive articles on Congo out there if you happen to spot them. A couple of days ago Byron called my attention to one written by Richard Lee of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and published on AllAfrica.com. “Congo-Kinshasa: Governance Reforms Key to Lasting DRC Peace” reports that three Congolese organizations are calling for greater participation by noncombatants in negotiations for peace. Focusing more broadly on the country’s governmental structure, they ask for “clear, structured, coordinated and deep reform of the security sector, including the army, police and intelligence services.” They also call for an overhaul of the Independent National Electoral Commission, and for “the establishment of a National Commission on Human Rights to protect human rights and boost citizen’s confidence.”

12-year-old who lost his arm to a stray bullet; photo CNN

And finally, another perspective is offered by Mort Rosenblum, writing Wednesday on the International Herald Tribune’s IHT Rendezvous blog site. In “The Source of Congo’s Bleeding” Rosenblum reacts to “another of those recurrent headlines” — “Congo Slips into Chaos Again as Rebels Gain” — and says, “It is too easy to blame an innate heart of darkness or a soul poisoned by King Leopold’s colonial cruelty. That leaves out the part about how big powers did — and do — geopolitics.” He looks back at Congo’s history, focusing particularly on the complicity of American and Belgian agents in the assassination of the country’s very popular first president, Patrice Lumumba, and on U.S. support for Mobutu Sese Seko — “the chosen despot.” And he points out one more issue: “Within artificial borders drawn generations earlier in Europe, traditionally hostile tribes don’t accommodate without disinterested outside help. If there are riches to steal, and no real government, obscene thievery is inevitable.”

If you’ve reached this end of the article, it’s pretty likely that you’re more than just curious — that you do care about the people of Congo. If you’re interested in following Congo news in digest form, two good sources are AllAfrica.com and ReliefWeb.com, both mentioned above. In both cases you can sign up for the news you choose to find in your inbox each day.

SAJ 29 Nov 2012

Kony 2012

Have you seen it? What did you think? This 30-minute film has sparked vigorous discussion in the short time since it was posted on YouTube by the nonprofit Invisible Children on March 5. The subject of the film, in case you’ve been living in a broom closet, is Joseph Kony, the brutal leader of the militia that calls itself the Lord’s Resistance Army and has terrorized villages from northern Uganda through north central DR Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Aimed especially at young people, the purpose of the film is to raise a wide public awareness that will pressure governments to arrest Kony on charges before the International Criminal Court, where he is global enemy number one. That, of course, is easier said than done, but it is no less an urgent task for its difficulty.

The reactions fill pages on Google. Foreign Affairs accused the film of being too simplistic in that it failed to talk about all the other groups that have committed atrocities in the region. TMS Ruge, on CNN.com, saw the project as primarily a fund-raising campaign by Invisible Children, and argued that they should have been supporting the Africans in solving their own problems rather than pushing for Western intervention. The Huffington Post published an overview of the reactions in other publications.

I found several articles particularly helpful. The U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict posted on her website a very helpful FAQ about the LRA and the responses of the international community to its activities.

Human Rights Watch has an article posted, “How to Catch Joseph Kony, calling for a “concerted international response to assist regional efforts to arrest Kony and other LRA leaders.” That also “requires stepped-up protection for civilians in the regions,” and attention to the “dire need to rescue children and adults captured by the LRA . . . and to help those who manage to escape.”

The Enough Project earlier published a report outlining a “comprehensive strategy to end the LRA” that called for the work of the 100 American special forces advisers (who were sent to central Africa to assist the local governments pursuing Kony) to be “supplemented by four additional ingredients from the United States and other supportive countries: troops, transport, intelligence, and a defections strategy.”

And finally, an article on the Christian Science Monitor website provided two interesting pieces of info: first, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Louis Moreno Ocampo, supports “Kony 2012,” declaring with obvious enthusiasm that the film, with the social media campaign in which it’s embedded, has “mobilized the world.” And second, the film’s director, Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell, actually agrees with critics who say it oversimplifies. “It definitely oversimplifies the issue,” he says. “This video is not the answer, it’s just the gateway into the conversation. And we made it quick and oversimplified on purpose. . . . We want you to keep investigating, we want you to read the history.”

And right there, I think, is the heart of the matter. I found “Kony 2012″ to be well made for its purpose. It’s a work of advocacy. Invisible Children is a respectable organization doing some substantial programs on the ground in Uganda, the DR Congo, and the Central African Republic. Along with those they do advocacy, which means raising public awareness in order to put public pressure on persons in power to take certain actions. Doing effective advocacy often means simplifying to make the point easy to remember, with a focus on a single person or event to represent a larger, more complex problem.

And “Kony 2012″ is doing exactly that. I could use George M. Cohan’s quote about not caring what you say about me as long as you spell my name right, but Jason Russell says it just fine on his own: “It’s just the gateway into the conversation. . . . We want you to keep investigating.” The conversation is underway, and it is lively.

We invite you to join in the public discourse. Use the comment form below to say what you think.

SAJ 14 Mar 2012
(viewer number 76,568,103)

Protecting Journalists in Congo

The organization Journaliste en Danger (JED) has announced the formation of a “Rapid Alert Network” to prevent and follow up on “serious attacks on press freedom and the physical integrity of journalists [in the DRC], particularly in the sensitive period leading up to the elections of 29 November 2011.” This action was taken at a meeting on October 5-7 in Kinshasa, where representatives of other media groups as well as “provincial government delegates responsible for security issues” worked together with members of JED.

In the JED press release circulated in translation by allAfrica.com, the Rapid Alert Network was described as a joint project of JED journalists and other members of the Congolese press, the Audio-visual and Communication Council, and governmental entities dealing with security matters. The larger plan agreed to in the course of the three-day meeting also included other activities to defend press freedom, and work within press organizations on issues of security and journalists’ rights and responsibilities.

Journaliste en Danger is a thirteen-year-old organization working in the DRC and eight other Central African countries. It is a partner of the international group Reporters Without Borders.

SAJ 14 Oct 2011

“rape in the DRC… has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time”

Worthwhile article found on the BBC online–bound to provoke either rage or despair when you read it.

DR Congo: 48 rapes every hour, US study finds

A study by US scientists has concluded that an average of 48 women and girls are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The study, in the American Journal of Public Health, found that 400,000 females aged 15-49 were raped over a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007.
That rate is significantly higher than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the UN.
The DRC says the figures reflect women being better able to report rape.
Sexual violence has long been a dominant feature of the continuing conflict in eastern DR Congo.
Amber Peterman, leading author of the study, said: “Our results confirm that previous estimates of rape and sexual violence are severe underestimates of the true prevalence of sexual violence occurring in the DRC.
“Even these new, much higher figures still represent a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of sexual violence because of chronic underreporting due to stigma, shame, perceived impunity, and exclusion of younger and older age groups as well as men,” she added.
Read more …

Response to Newsweek Congo Article

The Feb. 1 issue of Newsweek included a short article titled “Battling for Good Health in Congo,” which I thought needed a response. Here is the message I just emailed to Letters to the Editor. See what you think:

Mr. Sheridan, citing a study by Andrew Mack, names the Democratic Republic of Congo as an example of a country where NGO’s have worked “public health miracles” in the wake of war. While those of us who are currently doing medical and development work in Congo are thankful for every resource and every improvement in the health of the people, the article’s upbeat tone calls for a look at some hard realities:

The average life expectancy in Congo is 47 years (WHO 2008). Only 46% of the people have access to safe water (UNDP 2007), and 74% are not getting their daily food needs (World Bank 2007). Of children age 5 and under, 21% are acutely malnourished and 44% are chronically malnourished (stunted growth) (WHO website accessed 1/28/10).

IRIN news reported (12/22/09) that “the Democratic Republic of Congo is still among the worst countries in the world to be pregnant, despite a nationwide push to improve maternal, infant and childhood mortality rates.” The maternal mortality rate is 1,100 out of 100,000 (WHO 2009). UNICEF (1/7/10) estimates that “Congolese children under the age of five suffer at least six bouts of malaria each year. More than 90,000 children die of malaria each year.”

As for treated bed nets to prevent malaria (cited positively by Mr. Sheridan), it is true that UNICEF has been distributing these nets in the past year–5.5 million (UNICEF 10/1/09). But as of 2007 only 1% of Congo’s children slept under treated nets (WHO pub. 2009), so many more nets are still needed. Then there are the many women and girls violently raped in acts of war, the children forced to join militias, and the country’s medical infrastructure badly damaged as militias rampaged through much of the country.

In other words, the D.R. Congo still needs much assistance from the developed world. Four times as poor as Haiti, the people have no means to fix these problems themselves. “Battling for Good Health in Congo” is still a steep uphill fight; and money, volunteers, and other resources are still needed.

SAJ