There's not much that I can say right now to make this story any better, because I personally am not only speechless, but ashamed that I didn't know this was going on to this grotesque extent.
All this time we talk about conflict diamonds or blood diamonds, but conflict minerals (the kind in our computers, our necklaces, our phones) are directly sponsoring and financing the 21st century holocaust in the Congo:
It’s easy to wonder how world leaders, journalists, religious figures and ordinary citizens looked the other way while six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And it’s even easier to assume that we’d do better.
But so far the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the Congo war’s death toll at 5.4 million as of April 2007 and rising at 45,000 a month. That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.
What those numbers don’t capture is the way Congo has become the world capital of rape, torture and mutilation, in ways that sear survivors like Jeanne Mukuninwa, a beautiful, cheerful young woman of 19 who somehow musters the courage to giggle. Her parents disappeared in the fighting when she had just turned 14 — perhaps they were massacred, but their bodies never turned up — so she moved in with her uncle.
Please PLEASE read the rest of the article here at the NY Times (and pass it on)! No woman should have to go through with Jeanne has gone through in the Congo.
Email your representatives asking them to help support Representative Jim McDermott's McDermott Amendment to HR 2647 and the Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009.
When I first read about the holocaust as a child, I was saddened to the point of crying. In 2004, when a Holocaust survivor came to my post to speak about his experience in internment camps, I couldn't help but become emotional at hearing his story. After all these years, this man still cried when he talked about the Nazis and their massacre of innocent people (not just Jews but Romany people, Catholics, gays, etc.).
Like most people, I vowed that I would never just sit idly by if there were ever a Holocaust going on, and here we are in the midst of it.
For whatever reason, we don't feel motivated to step in the way we did in Europe and destroy the forces of evil. But there is no excuse to not write your representatives or leadership and ask them to help. There is no reason why you can't pass this along. There's no reason why you can't take some action.
If you'd like to do something, check out The Enough Project. Sphere: Related Content
