Her father taught his students to ‘value, study and honor their collective history,’ and his daughter to follow her heart. That legacy took the author on a journey to the Congo, where six million have died without shocking western sensibilities. ‘I vowed that when I returned home I would talk and write about the Congo in as many public forums as possible. To advocate for the Congolese, I must teach friends, family and others that the deaths of millions is a global issue that cannot be ignored.’
‘How many Congolese lives had been sacrificed to produce the coltan in my cell phone?’
On the weekend after Thanksgiving, I went home to Brooklyn, N.Y., to visit my father - the man whose height and stature always felt like a wall of protection between me and the world. As I sat beside his hospital bed in these last few months of his life, I had watched the body of this once robust, 6-foot-2, 240-pound man slowly transform into a wilted flower.
Now he was down to about 130 pounds. I whispered in his ear, ‘Daddy, do you remember me telling you that I’m going to the Congo’? He nodded back, but I wasn’t sure if it was a mere nod of recognition or true comprehension.
My personal connection to the Congo had been forged by my father, Ernest Crane. Born and raised in Harlem, he would often say, ‘I feel like a walking history book,’ as he recalled the important moments he participated in and lived through: Jim Crow, the March on Washington, Vietnam, Watergate. He often credited ‘Mama Lilla,’ his grandmother, with giving him a love of history. She would tell him bedtime stories of her parent’s lives as slaves - this was the root of his interest in his African ancestors.
It is no wonder that he was a lifelong student of liberation movements in America and abroad, and an avid reader of African history. Later, as a professor of psychology and African-American history, he taught students to value, study and honor their collective history.
‘How can 6 million people die and the world stands by, in silence?’
I had never been to the Congo but had been transplanted there by my father’s accounts of its history. He spoke of the Congo as a beautiful, lush country that had been sought after, first by Portugal and Belgium, then by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. I recall him saying, ‘The Congo is one of the most underreported massacres in history, how can 6 million people die and the world stands by, in silence?’ He spoke of the courage of Patrice Lumumba, a personal hero of his, who stood up against Belgian colonial rule.
I got closer to the Congo after watching a news program on which a guest spoke about the plight of the Congolese people. Later, flipping through the channels on my TV, I accidentally turned to a program about the systematic rape of women in Eastern Congo. I found myself drawn to stories about the area, and even though these were coincidences, there were too many for me to ignore the call.
I felt compelled to act and battled with myself about how - and if - I could make a difference from thousands of miles away. It was increasingly difficult to continue living the awful cliche of the sympathizing American who talks about the world’s suffering over a chai latte, but goes home and does nothing.
‘As I met the eyes of an armed soldier, I felt my stomach drop.’
Instinctively, I realized the hidden message in my father’s words: ‘Makeda, always follow your heart.’ It was his love of freedom and dignity that compelled me to ask 150 people for $33 so I could go to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, as an independent journalist through Friends of the Congo, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization.
My father passed away on Jan. 3, and two days later, I left for the Congo. As I crossed the border into Goma and met the eyes of an armed soldier, I felt my stomach drop, as if I were on a roller coaster that had just made a sharp plunge. The nearly 6 million people who had died in the 12 years of conflict seemed to loom over the dusty streets of Goma and its people.
At Goma’s main hospital, I looked into the pupils of a woman who represented the hundreds of thousands of women who had been systematically raped by foreign troops and Congolese militiamen; I sought evidence that she still had breath in her body. I felt a bond with her that surpassed sympathy; I knew her struggle was my own.
I listened like an empty vessel to a Congolese trader of coltan (a mineral vital to cell phones and other electronics) say, ‘The voice of a poor man doesn’t have any importance.’ He spoke of U.S., Britain, Rwandan and Ugandan companies profiting from the unregulated mining and selling of Congo’s vast mineral deposits, and I wondered: How many Congolese lives had been sacrificed to produce the coltan in my cell phone?
At refugee camps, I witnessed the inadequate food rations dispensed to the refugees, while in the distance were vast green forests. When I asked children whose villages had been destroyed in the conflict how long they had been in the camps, many couldn’t recall living anywhere else.
‘He spoke of U.S., Britain, Rwandan and Ugandan companies profiting from the unregulated mining and selling of Congo’s vast mineral deposits.’
As I walked through the last refugee camp on the line of conflict between Rwandan troops and Congolese rebels, I again felt the uneasiness that had accompanied my first steps onto Congo soil. I pulled out my father’s picture and looked at his smile, which assured me that I was protected.
Someone once told me: ‘People rarely take risks because they want to, but they take a leap of faith because of the persistent yearning that can only be resolved through action.’ I knew this trip was the start of an intimate relationship with the Congo.
Paying the highest tribute to my father, I vowed that when I returned home I would talk and write about the Congo in as many public forums as possible. To advocate for the Congolese, I must teach friends, family and others that the deaths of millions is a global issue that cannot be ignored. And people must be told that the root cause of the conflict is not ethnic division between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, but control of the Congo’s natural resources.
I will continue to act on behalf of those who have been silenced, grabbing the torch that was given to me, and keeping my father’s legacy in front of me as a guide in creating my own.
—
Makeda Crane, who works in The Baltimore Sun’s editorial department, is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She plans to pursue a law degree, specializing in human rights and international advocacy issues.
Source: blackagendareport.com
This article originally appeared in the Baltimore Sun 25 February, 2009
.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Titus 3:14
For our people should not live unproductive lives.
They must learn to do good by helping others who have urgent needs.
THE CONGO NEEDS YOUR HELP TODAY!!!
DONATE NOW!
They must learn to do good by helping others who have urgent needs.
THE CONGO NEEDS YOUR HELP TODAY!!!
DONATE NOW!
Monday, May 18, 2009
War on women in Congo=FEMICIDE
By Eve Ensler
Special to CNN
Editor's note: Eve Ensler is the playwright of "The Vagina Monologues" and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day has funded over 10,000 community-based anti-violence programs and launched safe houses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. This commentary was adapted from remarks Ensler made Wednesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs and the Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women's Issues.
Playwright Eve Ensler says conflict in Congo is taking a terrible toll on women and girls.
(CNN) -- I write today on behalf of countless V-Day activists worldwide, and in solidarity with my many Congolese sisters and brothers who demand justice and an end to rape and war.
It is my hope that these words and those of others will break the silence and break open a sea of action to move Congolese women toward peace, safety and freedom.
My play, "The Vagina Monologues," opened my eyes to the world inside this world. Everywhere I traveled with it scores of women lined up to tell me of their rapes, incest, beatings, mutilations. It was because of this that over 11 years ago we launched V-Day, a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls.
The movement has spread like wildfire to 130 countries, raising $70 million. I have visited and revisited the rape mines of the world, from defined war zones like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti to the domestic battlegrounds in colleges and communities throughout North America, Europe and the world. My in-box -- and heart -- have been jammed with stories every hour of every day for over a decade.
Nothing I have heard or seen compares with what is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where corporate greed, fueled by capitalist consumption, and the rape of women have merged into a single nightmare. Femicide, the systematic and planned destruction of the female population, is being used as a tactic of war to clear villages, pillage mines and destroy the fabric of Congolese society.
In 12 years, there have been 6 million dead men and women in Congo and 1.4 million people displaced. Hundreds and thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured. Babies as young as 6 months, women as old as 80, their insides torn apart. What I witnessed in Congo has shattered and changed me forever. I will never be the same. None of us should ever be the same.
I think of Beatrice, shot in her vagina, who now has tubes instead of organs. Honorata, raped by gangs as she was tied upside down to a wheel. Noella, who is my heart -- an 8-year-old girl who was held for 2 weeks as groups of grown men raped her over and over. Now she has a fistula, causing her to urinate and defecate on herself. Now she lives in humiliation.
I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? Is it that coltan, the mineral that keeps our cell phones and computers in play, is more important than Congolese girls?
Is it flat-out racism, the world's utter indifference and disregard for black people and black women in particular? Is it simply that the UN and most governments are run by men who have never known what it feels like to be raped?
What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women's bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It's cheap warfare.
The women in Congo are some of the most resilient women in the world. They need our protection and support. Western governments, like the United States, should fund a training program for female Congolese police officers.
They should address our role in plundering minerals and demand that companies trace the routes of these minerals. Make sure they are making and selling rape-free-products. Supply funds for women's medical and psychological care and seed their economic empowerment. Put pressure on Rwanda, Congo, Uganda and other countries in the Great Lakes region to sit down with all the militias involved in this conflict to find a political solution.
Military solutions are no longer an option and will only bring about more rape. Most of all, we must support the women. Because women are at the center of this horror, they must be at the center of the solutions and peace negotiations. Women are the future of Congo. They are its greatest resource.
Sadly, we are not the first to testify about these atrocities in Congo. I stand in a line of many who have described this horror. Still, in Eastern Congo, 1,100 women a month are raped, according to the United Nations' most recent report. What will the United States government, what will all of you reading this, do to stop it?
Let Congo be the place where we ended femicide, the trend that is madly eviscerating this planet -- from the floggings in Pakistan, the new rape laws in Afghanistan, the ongoing rapes in Haiti, Darfur, Zimbabwe, the daily battering, incest, harassing, trafficking, enslaving, genital cutting and honor killing. Let Congo be the place where women were finally cherished and life affirmed, where the humiliation and subjugation ended, where women took their rightful agency over their bodies and land.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Eve Ensler.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/05/18/ensler.congo/index.html
Special to CNN
Editor's note: Eve Ensler is the playwright of "The Vagina Monologues" and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day has funded over 10,000 community-based anti-violence programs and launched safe houses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. This commentary was adapted from remarks Ensler made Wednesday to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs and the Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women's Issues.
Playwright Eve Ensler says conflict in Congo is taking a terrible toll on women and girls.
(CNN) -- I write today on behalf of countless V-Day activists worldwide, and in solidarity with my many Congolese sisters and brothers who demand justice and an end to rape and war.
It is my hope that these words and those of others will break the silence and break open a sea of action to move Congolese women toward peace, safety and freedom.
My play, "The Vagina Monologues," opened my eyes to the world inside this world. Everywhere I traveled with it scores of women lined up to tell me of their rapes, incest, beatings, mutilations. It was because of this that over 11 years ago we launched V-Day, a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls.
The movement has spread like wildfire to 130 countries, raising $70 million. I have visited and revisited the rape mines of the world, from defined war zones like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti to the domestic battlegrounds in colleges and communities throughout North America, Europe and the world. My in-box -- and heart -- have been jammed with stories every hour of every day for over a decade.
Nothing I have heard or seen compares with what is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where corporate greed, fueled by capitalist consumption, and the rape of women have merged into a single nightmare. Femicide, the systematic and planned destruction of the female population, is being used as a tactic of war to clear villages, pillage mines and destroy the fabric of Congolese society.
In 12 years, there have been 6 million dead men and women in Congo and 1.4 million people displaced. Hundreds and thousands of women and girls have been raped and tortured. Babies as young as 6 months, women as old as 80, their insides torn apart. What I witnessed in Congo has shattered and changed me forever. I will never be the same. None of us should ever be the same.
I think of Beatrice, shot in her vagina, who now has tubes instead of organs. Honorata, raped by gangs as she was tied upside down to a wheel. Noella, who is my heart -- an 8-year-old girl who was held for 2 weeks as groups of grown men raped her over and over. Now she has a fistula, causing her to urinate and defecate on herself. Now she lives in humiliation.
I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? Is it that coltan, the mineral that keeps our cell phones and computers in play, is more important than Congolese girls?
Is it flat-out racism, the world's utter indifference and disregard for black people and black women in particular? Is it simply that the UN and most governments are run by men who have never known what it feels like to be raped?
What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women's bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It's cheap warfare.
The women in Congo are some of the most resilient women in the world. They need our protection and support. Western governments, like the United States, should fund a training program for female Congolese police officers.
They should address our role in plundering minerals and demand that companies trace the routes of these minerals. Make sure they are making and selling rape-free-products. Supply funds for women's medical and psychological care and seed their economic empowerment. Put pressure on Rwanda, Congo, Uganda and other countries in the Great Lakes region to sit down with all the militias involved in this conflict to find a political solution.
Military solutions are no longer an option and will only bring about more rape. Most of all, we must support the women. Because women are at the center of this horror, they must be at the center of the solutions and peace negotiations. Women are the future of Congo. They are its greatest resource.
Sadly, we are not the first to testify about these atrocities in Congo. I stand in a line of many who have described this horror. Still, in Eastern Congo, 1,100 women a month are raped, according to the United Nations' most recent report. What will the United States government, what will all of you reading this, do to stop it?
Let Congo be the place where we ended femicide, the trend that is madly eviscerating this planet -- from the floggings in Pakistan, the new rape laws in Afghanistan, the ongoing rapes in Haiti, Darfur, Zimbabwe, the daily battering, incest, harassing, trafficking, enslaving, genital cutting and honor killing. Let Congo be the place where women were finally cherished and life affirmed, where the humiliation and subjugation ended, where women took their rightful agency over their bodies and land.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Eve Ensler.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/05/18/ensler.congo/index.html
Friday, April 17, 2009
Nicole Richie Speaks Out Against Congo-Mined Minerals
FIRST PUBLISHED: April 16, 2009 2:41 PM EDT
LAST UPDATED: April 16, 2009 3:35 PM EDT
LOS ANGELES, Calif. --
Nicole Richie has joined the likes of Ben Affleck, Mia Farrow and Emile Hirsch by speaking out about the situation in the African nation of Congo.
The celebutante-turned-celebumom posted a video on her blog, hoping to raise awareness about the sexual crimes being committed in the warring country.
“I’m about to tell you a true story about a place where babies and grandmothers are being raped on a daily basis and the reason they are being raped is directly connected to the purchases of our cell phones, of our laptops and of our iPods,” Nicole said in the clip.
With longtime pal John Prendergast from The Enough Project, and Kimberly Pinkson, from the EcoMom Alliance, the trio explain that minerals that are found in the Congo are used in the making of electronic products regularly purchased by consumers. They go about naming several products and companies that use the minerals, which Prendergast points out do not have to be bought in Congo, but can be mined in other countries not under crisis.
Nicole goes on to note that rape is being used as a control mechanism, but does not single out the group involved in the crimes.
“The No. 1 weapon out there — it’s not guns, it’s not knives, it is rape,” she says. “They are raping these women and not only is it — I mean it’s not just rape, these women are being raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children… I mean, this stuff is really inhumane. This is the worst thing that I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Nicole and her pals suggest people avoid buying products that include minerals from countries engaged in conflict.
“We are not as ignorant as people think we are. We simply don’t know. And it’s not our fault,” she says. “It is so easy to be just completely distracted and I really am optimistic that if I bring it to my peers attention that they are gonna wanna do the right thing.”
Copyright 2009 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.
LAST UPDATED: April 16, 2009 3:35 PM EDT
LOS ANGELES, Calif. --
Nicole Richie has joined the likes of Ben Affleck, Mia Farrow and Emile Hirsch by speaking out about the situation in the African nation of Congo.
The celebutante-turned-celebumom posted a video on her blog, hoping to raise awareness about the sexual crimes being committed in the warring country.
“I’m about to tell you a true story about a place where babies and grandmothers are being raped on a daily basis and the reason they are being raped is directly connected to the purchases of our cell phones, of our laptops and of our iPods,” Nicole said in the clip.
With longtime pal John Prendergast from The Enough Project, and Kimberly Pinkson, from the EcoMom Alliance, the trio explain that minerals that are found in the Congo are used in the making of electronic products regularly purchased by consumers. They go about naming several products and companies that use the minerals, which Prendergast points out do not have to be bought in Congo, but can be mined in other countries not under crisis.
Nicole goes on to note that rape is being used as a control mechanism, but does not single out the group involved in the crimes.
“The No. 1 weapon out there — it’s not guns, it’s not knives, it is rape,” she says. “They are raping these women and not only is it — I mean it’s not just rape, these women are being raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children… I mean, this stuff is really inhumane. This is the worst thing that I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Nicole and her pals suggest people avoid buying products that include minerals from countries engaged in conflict.
“We are not as ignorant as people think we are. We simply don’t know. And it’s not our fault,” she says. “It is so easy to be just completely distracted and I really am optimistic that if I bring it to my peers attention that they are gonna wanna do the right thing.”
Copyright 2009 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Sexual violence in Congo provides the backdrop for play 'Ruined'
NEW YORK — The photos in the lobby are a sobering reminder of the real people behind Lynn Nottage's "Ruined," a gripping play focused on Congo, where horrific rape Is Routinely Used As A Weapon In A Seemingly Endless War.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The women look at the camera in stark black and white, some of them stoic, some fighting to hold back tears. Some of them trudged long distances to share their stories of sexual violence with Nottage.
More than five million people have been killed in Congo since 1994 and untold thousands of women have been violated so aggressively, sometimes with bayonets, that their vaginal walls are ripped, leaving them "ruined" - too damaged to work or have children, and frequently shunned by their families.
The Congolese refugees who spoke with her during her visit to northern Uganda, just wanted someone to listen to them, Nottage said five years later, over coffee at a cafe in her Brooklyn neighbourhood.
"A lot of the women felt they weren't being heard," said Nottage. "I explained to them, 'I'm a storyteller, I can only give you an ear.' No one had ever listened to their stories from beginning to end."
A tribal chief's daughter shared her astonishment that a woman of her station could be raped by four soldiers. The fair-skinned daughter of a Belgian immigrant described how she couldn't get aid groups to believe what she had been through. Another woman broke off to sob for minutes straight.
Nottage was inspired by Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children," which tells the story of woman who profits off war but loses all her children in the process.
Nottage's protagonist is Mama Nadi - an opportunistic Congolese bar-owner who survives by not picking sides in a region with many sides to choose from, protecting a small group of women but still implicated by the moral choices she makes.
Nottage refuses to judge her.
"She's a creature of the environment of the war. Is she right? Is she wrong?," she asks and leaves the question dangling.
The play is not journalism. Nottage drew on her interviews - she borrowed Mama Nadi's name, for instance, from one woman with whom she spoke - but she invented her narrative, one that is brutal, but also leavened by optimism and lively music. The history of the wars is kept muddy; the militia men are mostly undifferentiated. The women, who survive largely by prostitution, are the focus.
The play, which had its world premiere last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, opened in February to favourable reviews off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage I and has been extended for a third time to run through May 3.
It already has been nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for best off-Broadway play of the season and it has received strong buzz as a possible finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The winner will be announced April 20.
Congo's dramatic spike in rape has been fuelled by rival militias, tribal conflicts and a national army described as one of the most badly-disciplined and corrupt in Africa.
No one is really sure how many Congolese women have been raped; estimates range from 60,000 to 400,000, said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a Congo expert with Human Rights Watch.
"There's no question that this is widespread," she said. "It is used as a weapon of war. It's not just bored soldiers with nothing better to do."
Van Woudenberg applauded the play for getting the details right: the way armed groups pretend they are fighting for the people; the survival tactic of trying to remain on friendly terms with everyone; militias' use of women as slaves, both sexually, and as cooks and maids. She hopes its audience will come out of the theatre wanting to learn more.
Nottage's husband, Tony Gerber, a filmmaker, took the photos during the Uganda trip. He has since travelled to Congo twice to make documentaries for National Geographic.
Gerber explained the role his photos played in his wife's creative process.
"The eyes of the women in those photos followed her. She could go back to those photos, back to the pictures, as a way of checking in with reality," he explained, adding, however, that the characters in the play are fully her own.
Nottage worked hard to tell a full story. Though her subject is brutality, her characters laugh, sing, dance and tease each other. The play is full of music and joy, even as the cataclysm in Congo casts a broad shadow.
The play offers a hint of hope in its poignant conclusion, a note that has bothered some audience members who complain the play cries out for a harsher ending. Nottage loses her normally calm, even demeanour over such criticism.
"It enrages me . . . I'm not going to fuel that image of Africa. We're constantly being sold the hopelessness," she said.
The Congolese say, "'We have the ability to find the beauty; that's why we survive."'
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The women look at the camera in stark black and white, some of them stoic, some fighting to hold back tears. Some of them trudged long distances to share their stories of sexual violence with Nottage.
More than five million people have been killed in Congo since 1994 and untold thousands of women have been violated so aggressively, sometimes with bayonets, that their vaginal walls are ripped, leaving them "ruined" - too damaged to work or have children, and frequently shunned by their families.
The Congolese refugees who spoke with her during her visit to northern Uganda, just wanted someone to listen to them, Nottage said five years later, over coffee at a cafe in her Brooklyn neighbourhood.
"A lot of the women felt they weren't being heard," said Nottage. "I explained to them, 'I'm a storyteller, I can only give you an ear.' No one had ever listened to their stories from beginning to end."
A tribal chief's daughter shared her astonishment that a woman of her station could be raped by four soldiers. The fair-skinned daughter of a Belgian immigrant described how she couldn't get aid groups to believe what she had been through. Another woman broke off to sob for minutes straight.
Nottage was inspired by Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children," which tells the story of woman who profits off war but loses all her children in the process.
Nottage's protagonist is Mama Nadi - an opportunistic Congolese bar-owner who survives by not picking sides in a region with many sides to choose from, protecting a small group of women but still implicated by the moral choices she makes.
Nottage refuses to judge her.
"She's a creature of the environment of the war. Is she right? Is she wrong?," she asks and leaves the question dangling.
The play is not journalism. Nottage drew on her interviews - she borrowed Mama Nadi's name, for instance, from one woman with whom she spoke - but she invented her narrative, one that is brutal, but also leavened by optimism and lively music. The history of the wars is kept muddy; the militia men are mostly undifferentiated. The women, who survive largely by prostitution, are the focus.
The play, which had its world premiere last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, opened in February to favourable reviews off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage I and has been extended for a third time to run through May 3.
It already has been nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for best off-Broadway play of the season and it has received strong buzz as a possible finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The winner will be announced April 20.
Congo's dramatic spike in rape has been fuelled by rival militias, tribal conflicts and a national army described as one of the most badly-disciplined and corrupt in Africa.
No one is really sure how many Congolese women have been raped; estimates range from 60,000 to 400,000, said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a Congo expert with Human Rights Watch.
"There's no question that this is widespread," she said. "It is used as a weapon of war. It's not just bored soldiers with nothing better to do."
Van Woudenberg applauded the play for getting the details right: the way armed groups pretend they are fighting for the people; the survival tactic of trying to remain on friendly terms with everyone; militias' use of women as slaves, both sexually, and as cooks and maids. She hopes its audience will come out of the theatre wanting to learn more.
Nottage's husband, Tony Gerber, a filmmaker, took the photos during the Uganda trip. He has since travelled to Congo twice to make documentaries for National Geographic.
Gerber explained the role his photos played in his wife's creative process.
"The eyes of the women in those photos followed her. She could go back to those photos, back to the pictures, as a way of checking in with reality," he explained, adding, however, that the characters in the play are fully her own.
Nottage worked hard to tell a full story. Though her subject is brutality, her characters laugh, sing, dance and tease each other. The play is full of music and joy, even as the cataclysm in Congo casts a broad shadow.
The play offers a hint of hope in its poignant conclusion, a note that has bothered some audience members who complain the play cries out for a harsher ending. Nottage loses her normally calm, even demeanour over such criticism.
"It enrages me . . . I'm not going to fuel that image of Africa. We're constantly being sold the hopelessness," she said.
The Congolese say, "'We have the ability to find the beauty; that's why we survive."'
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Congo Violence Fueled by Common Material in Cell Phones, Laptops...
By Rima Abdelkader
For many, one's cell phone has become a fifth limb. But, for Congolese lawyer Joseph Mbangu, it's more a case of life and death.
The New York-based lawyer is trying to alert cell phone and laptop users that a key ingredient in their devices has been at the center of vicious struggles over natural resources between rebel and government forces in the eastern Congo.
"So many people have to die for us to be innocent users over here," said Mbangu, who is also the outreach coordinator for the documentary, "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," recently aired on HBO.
Congolese miners have been killed, and women raped during the 11-year war over mineral deposits in the eastern Congo, Mbangu said. One of the deposits is a natural metallic ore, columbite-tantalite, or coltan, that, when refined, stores an electric charge in a capacitor used in common electronic devices.
The Congo region, which contains as much as 80 percent of the world's coltan reserves, yielded 300 tons and $5.42 million last year, up 50 percent over 2007, a recent U.N. Security Council report said.
There is some dispute over the percentage. The independent group of advisors put the figure as high as 80 percent, but Sasha Leshnev, a Washington-based researcher who is an expert on minerals in the DRC, puts it at 15 percent. For the Congolese caught in the conflict, it hardly matters.
"For women to be raped and mutilated so that some rogue army could sell it (coltan) and enslave people and have forced labor is really outrageous," Mbangu said.
The exploitation of mineral resources is one of several factors that is fueling the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said U.N. spokesman Yves Sorokobi.
DRC's U.N. ambassador Faida Mitifu, speaking recently in New York during a panel discussion on media coverage of sexual violence against Congolese women, said the exploitation of mineral resources is the driving force behind the conflict. The history of exploitation and conflict dates back to the Congo's colonial history with Belgium, she said.
But she said there's renewed hope for change.
After a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year on sexual violence and conflict in the Congo, Sen. Sam Brownback (R. - Kan) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D. - Ill) introduced a bill last May that would prohibit the sale of certain products that contain coltan or cassiterite mined in the DRC.
Although the legislation stalled, Durbin will reintroduce the bill after Easter recess, his press secretary, Max Gleischman said.
The U.N. Security Council also is trying to bring attention to the issue. "Exporters and consumers of Congolese mineral products should step up their due diligence efforts by publicly disclosing evidence that would demonstrate that they are not knowingly purchasing tainted minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo," the 2008 UN report said.
To step up the pressure, the U.N. Sanctions Committee in February also listed two firms that operate in the Congo, the Bakavu Aviation Transport and the Business Air Services, that are allegedly involved in the illegal exporting of coltan and other natural resources from the DRC.
Mbangu, the Congolese attorney, called on electronics companies to come up with alternative minerals to replace coltan or to find the mineral elsewhere.
Leshnev, the expert on minerals in the DRC, agreed. He joined with 32 organizations, including The Enough Project, in a letter campaign asking CEOs of major electronic companies to change the way metals are purchased.
"If the major electronic companies would have independent supply chain audits for their metals as well as be able to trace their metals back to the mine of origin, then the average American consumer would know that their product would be conflict free," said Leshnev.
Tama McWhinney, a spokeswoman for Motorola, said the cell phone manufacturer is "concerned about what is happening with coltan in the Congo" and has asked vendors to "verify in writing that the coltan that is used" in their protects is not from the DRC.
With more than four billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, up from one billion six years ago, even Mbangu admitted it's very difficult to navigate in the 21st century without a cell phone or a laptop. He occasionally uses both devices but it hasn't stopped his campaign to protect innocent people in the Congo.
It's difficult to enforce the same kind of sanctions against those who were involved in the illegal mining of diamonds, Mbangu said. Unlike diamonds, coltan is not a luxury, and it is not as visible as a diamond necklace, he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nycity-news-service/congo-violence-fueled-by_b_184192.html
For many, one's cell phone has become a fifth limb. But, for Congolese lawyer Joseph Mbangu, it's more a case of life and death.
The New York-based lawyer is trying to alert cell phone and laptop users that a key ingredient in their devices has been at the center of vicious struggles over natural resources between rebel and government forces in the eastern Congo.
"So many people have to die for us to be innocent users over here," said Mbangu, who is also the outreach coordinator for the documentary, "The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo," recently aired on HBO.
Congolese miners have been killed, and women raped during the 11-year war over mineral deposits in the eastern Congo, Mbangu said. One of the deposits is a natural metallic ore, columbite-tantalite, or coltan, that, when refined, stores an electric charge in a capacitor used in common electronic devices.
The Congo region, which contains as much as 80 percent of the world's coltan reserves, yielded 300 tons and $5.42 million last year, up 50 percent over 2007, a recent U.N. Security Council report said.
There is some dispute over the percentage. The independent group of advisors put the figure as high as 80 percent, but Sasha Leshnev, a Washington-based researcher who is an expert on minerals in the DRC, puts it at 15 percent. For the Congolese caught in the conflict, it hardly matters.
"For women to be raped and mutilated so that some rogue army could sell it (coltan) and enslave people and have forced labor is really outrageous," Mbangu said.
The exploitation of mineral resources is one of several factors that is fueling the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said U.N. spokesman Yves Sorokobi.
DRC's U.N. ambassador Faida Mitifu, speaking recently in New York during a panel discussion on media coverage of sexual violence against Congolese women, said the exploitation of mineral resources is the driving force behind the conflict. The history of exploitation and conflict dates back to the Congo's colonial history with Belgium, she said.
But she said there's renewed hope for change.
After a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year on sexual violence and conflict in the Congo, Sen. Sam Brownback (R. - Kan) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D. - Ill) introduced a bill last May that would prohibit the sale of certain products that contain coltan or cassiterite mined in the DRC.
Although the legislation stalled, Durbin will reintroduce the bill after Easter recess, his press secretary, Max Gleischman said.
The U.N. Security Council also is trying to bring attention to the issue. "Exporters and consumers of Congolese mineral products should step up their due diligence efforts by publicly disclosing evidence that would demonstrate that they are not knowingly purchasing tainted minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo," the 2008 UN report said.
To step up the pressure, the U.N. Sanctions Committee in February also listed two firms that operate in the Congo, the Bakavu Aviation Transport and the Business Air Services, that are allegedly involved in the illegal exporting of coltan and other natural resources from the DRC.
Mbangu, the Congolese attorney, called on electronics companies to come up with alternative minerals to replace coltan or to find the mineral elsewhere.
Leshnev, the expert on minerals in the DRC, agreed. He joined with 32 organizations, including The Enough Project, in a letter campaign asking CEOs of major electronic companies to change the way metals are purchased.
"If the major electronic companies would have independent supply chain audits for their metals as well as be able to trace their metals back to the mine of origin, then the average American consumer would know that their product would be conflict free," said Leshnev.
Tama McWhinney, a spokeswoman for Motorola, said the cell phone manufacturer is "concerned about what is happening with coltan in the Congo" and has asked vendors to "verify in writing that the coltan that is used" in their protects is not from the DRC.
With more than four billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, up from one billion six years ago, even Mbangu admitted it's very difficult to navigate in the 21st century without a cell phone or a laptop. He occasionally uses both devices but it hasn't stopped his campaign to protect innocent people in the Congo.
It's difficult to enforce the same kind of sanctions against those who were involved in the illegal mining of diamonds, Mbangu said. Unlike diamonds, coltan is not a luxury, and it is not as visible as a diamond necklace, he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nycity-news-service/congo-violence-fueled-by_b_184192.html
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