Martin Timothy Banned

Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 90

Cannibalism rape and killing in the Congo.. hey it's the African way! Quote: By Adrian Blomfield 4 Nov 2008 The Democratic Republic of the Congo's five-year, six nation war is said to have killed around 4 million people.



On paper, the killing should have stopped when a peace agreement was signed two years ago. This deal came after Rwanda and Uganda started the war in August 1998 by invading their giant neighbour. They claimed to be hunting down rebels responsible for the genocide of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis in 1994.



However the war dragged in five other countries and escalated into Africa's largest conflict. A survey by the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based relief agency, found that 3.8 million people have died, the highest toll claimed by any conflict since the Second World War.



War-induced starvation and disease were the biggest killers. Rwanda still launches regular strikes into eastern Congo, the latest last week. The other foreign armies have withdrawn, but each left behind a motley collection of militia groups. These armed gangs continue to inflict misery on the innocent, waging a war that long ago lost any pretence of purpose. Dr Kalume Mushabaa, 39, and two other surgeons specialise in corrective fistula operations for the victims of rape.







"The surgery they need is extremely delicate and difficult," said Dr Mushabaa. "When I and my assistants are in the operating theatre and we discover how terrible their condition is, we weep together. "And I ask myself, 'A man can do this kind of thing to another human being? Is it possible for a man to inflict this destruction on another person?' "Sometimes I say to myself 'Perhaps my sister, or my wife, or my daughter will be treated like this.' I think this while I am weeping."



Dr Mushabaa performs 10 operations on rape victims every week. The hospital has helped 2,400 women since May last year and, despite a peace deal signed between Congo's warring factions, the number of cases has not diminished. Instead, the wards are filled with women who have survived hideous ordeals. Migisha Ntenganya, 21, is too distressed to describe her experience. Dr Mushabaa performed emergency surgery after her attackers fired a bullet into her vagina.



Quote: Laurent Nkunda's rebels have now driven 100,000 people from their homes. The corpses of the dead were still rotting on the streets of Bukavu, a ramshackle port in the country's east, the living had barricaded themselves inside their homes as marauding rebels tore through the city, raping killing and pillaging.



Above the town, in the gardens of a shabby but elegant colonial era villa built overlooking Lake Kivu, the architect of the chaos sat snoozing in a deck chair.







Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda meets with advisors at his headquarters the north eastern town of Kitshoumba, the renegade brigadier a former psychology student, could not be roused from his siesta, his men lay dozing on the mansion's rolling lawns as kingfishers chirruped in the trees.







His militia force includes children as young as eight, when one of them accidentally discharged his rifle, he was subjected to a pantomime style beating, still the brigadier did not stir.



Bored, I wandered into the villa, which had been stripped of virtually everything but a battered and hideously out of tune grand piano. I banged out a few bars of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, played so badly that it seemed to rouse the sleeping rebel leader. A tall, lanky figure with the type of thin face that marked him instantly as a member of the Tutsi tribe, Nkunda loped towards me and extended a boney hand.



I identified myself as a reporter from The Daily Telegraph, to which the brigadier mysteriously replied: "Ah, cricket! You must explain the rules one of these fine days." As I interviewed him, back on his deck chair, I remember searching his inscrutable face for signs of ruthlessness. This was, after all, a man who once had 28 of his own men bundled into weighted hessian sacks and thrown from a bridge into the Congo river after a mutiny in the city of Kisangani two years previously.



There was, I fancied, a hint of cruelty in his eyes that a smooth, softly spoken voice did not entirely disguise. But he had none of the charisma and few of the idiosyncrasies of other Congolese rebel leaders. Thomas Lubanga, a former militia leader now on trial for war crimes in the Hague, used to like to jive in front of audiences forced to watch on pain of death as a uniformed brass band played British Army marching tunes.







Jerome Kakwavu, a chimpanzee-eating narcoleptic and former traffic warden, always traveled with a menagerie of baboons and other assorted primates.







Nkunda preferred to affect boredom. He was also more articulate, presenting himself as the champion of Congo's Tutsis, known as the Banyamulenge. Claiming that the Congolese government was planning genocide against the Banyamulenge, he told me he had no choice but to seize Bukavu.



While there had been attacks on Congo's Tutsis, Nkunda's claims were wildly over exaggerated. He may have lacked charisma, but he was an effective military leader "...my soldiers are the best fed in Congo," he boasted, his militiamen had grilled bodies on a spit, and boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, adding cannibalism to their list of atrocities.







His men wore new uniforms and carried gleaming rifles, suggesting that they had been armed by Rwanda's Tutsi government, which has long played a destabilising role in eastern Congo. The government troops defending Bukavu were also a useless bunch, who abandoned their weapons as they fled the city. The UN mission in Congo did nothing to stop the mayhem, and South African peace keepers I ventured out with kept getting lost.







Quote: The European Union briefly discussed sending a force to Bukavu similar to a French-led mission that had proved effective further north in Ituri province the previous year.



The idea was abandoned after Nkunda agreed to withdraw from the city, the dull brigadier returned to the forests, launching occasional raids in isolated towns and the world quickly forgot about him, it was a mistake, one of many made in central Africa, that has returned to haunt us.



Bahati Ndasimwa, a 24-year-old with a round friendly face - but eyes that told of torture - said she was raped by too many men to count.



Quote: Not all Africans are quite that bad!











Martin Luther King in the Kennedy White House.







The Martin Luther Kings at President Kennedy's murder, looks like neither of them wanted to miss any of the action either. On paper, the killing should have stopped when a peace agreement was signed two years ago. This deal came after Rwanda and Uganda started the war in August 1998 by invading their giant neighbour. They claimed to be hunting down rebels responsible for the genocide of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis in 1994.However the war dragged in five other countries and escalated into Africa's largest conflict. A survey by the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based relief agency, found that 3.8 million people have died, the highest toll claimed by any conflict since the Second World War.War-induced starvation and disease were the biggest killers. Rwanda still launches regular strikes into eastern Congo, the latest last week. The other foreign armies have withdrawn, but each left behind a motley collection of militia groups. These armed gangs continue to inflict misery on the innocent, waging a war that long ago lost any pretence of purpose. Dr Kalume Mushabaa, 39, and two other surgeons specialise in corrective fistula operations for the victims of rape."The surgery they need is extremely delicate and difficult," said Dr Mushabaa. "When I and my assistants are in the operating theatre and we discover how terrible their condition is, we weep together. "And I ask myself, 'A man can do this kind of thing to another human being? Is it possible for a man to inflict this destruction on another person?' "Sometimes I say to myself 'Perhaps my sister, or my wife, or my daughter will be treated like this.' I think this while I am weeping."Dr Mushabaa performs 10 operations on rape victims every week. The hospital has helped 2,400 women since May last year and, despite a peace deal signed between Congo's warring factions, the number of cases has not diminished. Instead, the wards are filled with women who have survived hideous ordeals. Migisha Ntenganya, 21, is too distressed to describe her experience. Dr Mushabaa performed emergency surgery after her attackers fired a bullet into her vagina.Above the town, in the gardens of a shabby but elegant colonial era villa built overlooking Lake Kivu, the architect of the chaos sat snoozing in a deck chair.Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda meets with advisors at his headquarters the north eastern town of Kitshoumba, the renegade brigadier a former psychology student, could not be roused from his siesta, his men lay dozing on the mansion's rolling lawns as kingfishers chirruped in the trees.His militia force includes children as young as eight, when one of them accidentally discharged his rifle, he was subjected to a pantomime style beating, still the brigadier did not stir.Bored, I wandered into the villa, which had been stripped of virtually everything but a battered and hideously out of tune grand piano. I banged out a few bars of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, played so badly that it seemed to rouse the sleeping rebel leader. A tall, lanky figure with the type of thin face that marked him instantly as a member of the Tutsi tribe, Nkunda loped towards me and extended a boney hand.I identified myself as a reporter from The Daily Telegraph, to which the brigadier mysteriously replied: "Ah, cricket! You must explain the rules one of these fine days." As I interviewed him, back on his deck chair, I remember searching his inscrutable face for signs of ruthlessness. This was, after all, a man who once had 28 of his own men bundled into weighted hessian sacks and thrown from a bridge into the Congo river after a mutiny in the city of Kisangani two years previously.There was, I fancied, a hint of cruelty in his eyes that a smooth, softly spoken voice did not entirely disguise. But he had none of the charisma and few of the idiosyncrasies of other Congolese rebel leaders. Thomas Lubanga, a former militia leader now on trial for war crimes in the Hague, used to like to jive in front of audiences forced to watch on pain of death as a uniformed brass band played British Army marching tunes.Jerome Kakwavu, a chimpanzee-eating narcoleptic and former traffic warden, always traveled with a menagerie of baboons and other assorted primates.Nkunda preferred to affect boredom. He was also more articulate, presenting himself as the champion of Congo's Tutsis, known as the Banyamulenge. Claiming that the Congolese government was planning genocide against the Banyamulenge, he told me he had no choice but to seize Bukavu.While there had been attacks on Congo's Tutsis, Nkunda's claims were wildly over exaggerated. He may have lacked charisma, but he was an effective military leader "...my soldiers are the best fed in Congo," he boasted, his militiamen had grilled bodies on a spit, and boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, adding cannibalism to their list of atrocities.His men wore new uniforms and carried gleaming rifles, suggesting that they had been armed by Rwanda's Tutsi government, which has long played a destabilising role in eastern Congo. The government troops defending Bukavu were also a useless bunch, who abandoned their weapons as they fled the city. The UN mission in Congo did nothing to stop the mayhem, and South African peace keepers I ventured out with kept getting lost.Bahati Ndasimwa, a 24-year-old with a round friendly face - but eyes that told of torture - said she was raped by too many men to count.Or actually they are..