#123 Congo

Refer back to http://journals.aol.com/jaykolb/Moraine/entries/983, my entry on why some crises get an outpouring of help and others are ignored. 

The Oprah show yesterday had a segment on the plight of women in the Congo. 

Over 4,000,000 people have been killed in the Congo over the past 6 years.  (Compare that to the tsunami count, even per year.)  There are marauding armies in the forest, who swoop down on the villages at night.  They kill or maim any men who resist, gang rape all the females, woman and child alike, in front of their families, take crops, animals, and anything else they can eat or sell, and drag the young women off into the forest to be kept as sex slaves, until either they die, become pregnant, or escape.  And this happens over and over and over.  The villagers have nowhere safe to go. 

The marauders are believed to be the remnants of fighters from the Rwandan civil war between the Hutus and the Tutsis.   You know - the war in the mid-90's, where very small boys were conscripted and turned into killers, where noncombatants had their hands or feet chopped off?  These are those boys all grown up.   They know no other way to live.  I don't know whether there's an actual goal in mind, like a civil war, or if they are simply gangs, but they have killed 4,000,000 people since 1998, and there is no end in sight.

Asked why America and Europe are ignoring the situation, Oprah's experts said that it was central Africa, and there is a perception that the people there are savages, and they are just killing each other.  The guns being used are purchased from manufacturers in the US and Europe, who are not inclined to ban the sales - the least they could do.

Oprah asked what individuals could do, and a woman from an aid group in the area said that the women need only (something like) 85 cents a day to feed their families and send their children to school (school is not free there).  So if everyone sent only $20 a month, they could help a family.

I was left thinking, "How can that help?  If conditions are really as bad as you say, then if they can buy clothing and food and send their children to school, wouldn't that just make them more attractive to the gangs?"  It seems like the most useful thing would be to set up safe areas, and get rid of the gangs.  Then that $20 can help the people to recover.  

I'm not going to send a cent that's just going to end up supporting a murdering rapist.