Congo Freedom Alliance Worldwide

Brief History of the Problem
    
    One of the finest non-fiction books, King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild, documents Congo tragedies from 500 years ago to the present and is a must read for any who care to understand this horrific problem. It is one of the many sources to document the claims on this website.
    The current Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) failed Kabila governments (assassinated Laurent Kabila - front man for Rwanda and the Rwandan who claims to be his step son - Joseph Kabila - have been in power since May 1997, now 18 years - almost two thirds the length of the 30 year Mobutu dictatorship.  (See this interactive Google map & zoom in on DR Congo).  Are things better or worse for most of our 79 million Congolese?
    The Rwandan genocide spilled over into Congo in 1994 when the present Congo tragedies began.  The DRC’s wars alone from 10/1996 to 9/2010 cost 6.9 million lives and conflict related casualties continue at about 30-45,000 per month since then (World Bank page 5 footnote 11) or (NYT article by Nicholas D. Kristof February 2/6/2010) – adding another estimated 1.1 million through 9/2012 for a staggering total of 8 million dead of various causes due to conflict.  And the casualties continue to climb with no end in sight.  The respected International Rescue Committee has done sophisticated studies that confirm these horrific casualties (See this PDF and its website).  Horrific. Murders, massacres, genocide, crimes against humanity, holocaust, injuries, starvation, home dislocation, disease, post traumatic emotional stress, and unfathomable suffering. Bodies swallowed by the jungle, and its heat and predators and no competent government organizations to stop it, or to investigate, or to collect statistics, and to prosecute to deter future crime.  Entire families and villages are lost like ocean waves washing away footprints in the sand.
     And that does not count the millions more wounded.  37 million Congolese women are in danger as there is a violent rape every minute with several million victims so far, and is reported that 1 in 3 women will be raped.  Children kidnapped and forced to commit crimes, and the population starved, victims of unchecked disease, terrorized and displaced from their homes to places all over the world.  Other casualties easily totals another 16-24 million.  Congolese believe EVERY Congolese is injured with post traumatic stress even if not physically killed or injured because they witnessed these events and had family members and friends killed, injured, raped, displaced from homes, children kidnapped for militia service.  It is an assault on the minds of all Congolese.  The population is terrorized by outside predator war lords, their armies, and Congolese traitors who collaborate, just like certain French collaborated with the Nazis.  Half of the casualties are children – many child massacres among 32 million children under age 15.  It also involves slavery as bad as it gets in the world as evidenced in this U.S. State Department report pages 125-127.  And it all continues to this day. In 2015 there are 77 million Congolese living in the DRC.
      The frightening part is that no one knows the actual casualty numbers because no one is keeping statistics as we have non existent institutions and corpses are devoured by nature.  Anyone who says he or she knows exactly how many are killed and injured is lying; all international organizations can do is to use interviews, surveys and statistics to get a good idea.  But we know it is more millions than all the wars combined since World War II.  Congolese are not animals to be destroyed, injured, and abused like chickens by human predators.  The UN states that what happens to the DRC matters to Africa and the world (data is old but pertinent).  According to a Chinese proverb, “For a nation to survive and prosper, heaven must smile to it, the earth must be favorable to it and its people must be at peace.”
     For over 500 years since the late 1400s, Congolese have been victims of the most vicious outside predators, as well as those from within. Over these 5 centuries there were 3 distinct tsunami waves of human destruction, when predators erased tens of millions of Congolese as easily as ocean waves erasing footprints on a beach. The latest is the worst conflict on earth since WWII that continues tragedies to this day. Yet few in the world know about these events, or seem to care, and thus there is little pressure to bring surviving perpetrators of recent atrocities to justice, or to stop those occurring today and certain to occur in the future. Congolese people are wonderful and worth helping. Watch this 60 Minutes video story titled "Joy in the Congo: A Musical Miracle" and you will have a better idea what we mean.
    The first Congo tsunami wave of human destruction began in the late 1400's and for 400 years, Portuguese and Islamic traders captured unknown millions of Congolese to satisfy the slave trade by whites too lazy to do manual labor themselves. Many Congolese who resisted were murdered and they died of many other causes, too, besides the vicious brutality of captivity, being chained, tortured and treated like animals, and being relocated all over the earth to strange new lands.
      The second tsunami wave of Congolese destruction happened between 1885-1908 when a German, Belgium's King Leopold II, claimed the Congo, and all its contents, as his private company he called the Congo Free State to do with it and all within as he saw fit, with no restraints to orders executed by his private Force Publique army. Congolese, with only bows and arrows and spears to defend themselves from the invaders, stood no chance against modern weapons.
    Leopold through his Force Publique army enslaved the entire population of 20 million Congolese that it could “catch,” to collect ivory and then rubber for his private company profit, and caused the holocaust slaughter of half its population (10 million) by "civilized white Europeans." The slightest resistance was met with maximum violence. These white Europeans were the “hounds from hell” unleashed by Leopold. Then there were the torturous injuries, dismemberments, rapes, and terrorizing of the rest of its population– all in the name of profit for one man and his cronies. The white Europeans behaved as if Congolese were game to be hunted and displayed as trophies of the hunt. The common view at the time was that Leopold's army made no distinction between cutting the head off a Congolese or a chicken. Congolese were enslaved to be beasts of burden and the slightest infractions could cause beatings with a hippo rawhide whip, called a "chicotte," that inflicted gross wounds and even death. Leopold's private army of 19,000 would kill African parents, then take the surviving children and place them in Catholic orphanages where they were indoctrinated to become soldiers in his Force Publique. The environment was infested by disease and ruled by the "chicotte" and chains to break the will of children to become compliant to the king's orders. Leopold was called the “king of beasts” and the Congo was his “den of devils” because of the bad behavior of Leopold’s employees. German Emperor Wilhelm II called him “Satan.”
    What if half of the USA population was killed due to a single tyrant's orders? Genocide and crimes against humanity for certain. British Lord Acton, expressed the following in a letter to Bishop Creighton in 1887 two years after Leopold II's reign of terror began in the Congo: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely...” How true then and now.
    While the Nuremburg war crimes trials for Hiller's leadership sent the convicted to prison or the gallows, no such happened to the Leopold criminals. Their billions in wealth earned by their reign of terror feathered their private bank accounts and built modern Belgium with mighty rivers of Congolese blood. Would there even be Belgium restitution to Congolese survivors and to their country from the wealth stolen from it? Not hardly.
    The negative publicity of these crimes by many, including authors and human rights activists like Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, Williams, Morel, and Casement soon shocked the world. Due to Leopold being an "international embarrassment," Belgium was forced to takeover Leopold's Congo rule in 1908 to lessen world criticism. A robber baron operating in the Congo at the time said if Leopold would have been permitted to operate another 10 years all Congolese would have been exterminated. Thus is why for all of the above reasons knowledgeable Congolese cringe when they hear Leopold's name that to them is like Hitler – another German mass murderer.
    While Belgium officially ended slavery, it still wanted the resources to build Belgium that lacked resources – not to help Congolese. Thus, the clever Belgium government was the one now demanding Congolese provide it with "cultivated rubber," instead of the wild rubber vines, and forced all Congolese citizens to pay "taxes" or there would be “serious” consequences. How could poor people without money and jobs pay their taxes? They had to collect rubber. Belgians believed Congolese to be less than human and the common slur they used against Congolese was to call them “monkeys.” The inhuman conditions continued, as in Leopold’s reign, with near zero concern for uplifting average Congolese out of poverty. For all intents and purposes it was still brutal slavery so Belgium could continue profiting from rubber. Then Belgium forced Congolese conscription during two world wars and worked them literally to death as porters against their will – beast of burden - just as Stanley had done, and they built roads and railways, and finally were forced to staff the mineral mines where they were worked to death for next to nothing, and were still whipped like only a cruel sadist would beat animals.
    Under Leopold, those Congolese not willing to "take it" made alliances with other powerful tribes to unite in armed resistance that developed into effective guerilla wars against Leopold's regime, and later against the occupying Belgium government. It was always the legal justification for the Force Publique army. Thus, due to world pressure and fearing revolution, Belgium finally granted independence in 1960, and was shocked that Congolese were ungrateful when then Belgium King Boudoin came to the Congo and in a speech praised Leopold. Then Congo's first democratically elected leader, Lumumba, who was very popular with the people, was assassinated by world powers because they did not like his independence and they feared wrongly he was Communist. There continued to be international exploitation of resources by states and multinational companies - still a primary problem today. A Belgium spy, a former army sergeant named Mobutu, inserted himself in the middle of the conspiracy, over threw the elected government, and anointed himself a dictator, and would earn the title "America's tyrant" due to his reliable anti-Soviet stance, who would also earn the title of African Caligula. Mobutu was responsible for Zaire falling into ruin over a 30 years reign of terror. Elitists ask, why are Congolese unhappy?
    The most recent tsunami wave of human destruction came from the violence of the first Congo War 11/96-5/97 and then the second Congo War 11/98-7/2003 - initiated by other countries. The April-June 1994 Rwanda genocide didn't end, it then just moved into the DRC. See this BBC story. Many believe that a Congolese traitor (Laurent Kabila) - a front man for Rwanda - and his adopted Rwandan son, Joseph Hyppolite Kanambe now named Kabila, who was a Rwandan soldier trained in communist China and Rwanda, led foreign armies to conquer Zaire and capture wealth and in the process slaughtered many. Laurent Kabila was assassinated and Kabila's Rwandan step son, viewed as a planted Rwandan "Manchurian Candidate," was "appointed" president with the approval of Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and Zimbabwe leadership - the ones who initiated the war for wealth, power, and territory. The assassination conspiracy suspiciously was never investigated by the "loving" step son, President Joseph Kabila, which is befitting a Shakespearean tragedy. He ruled violently, and then was selected president in a sham election - twice. Over a 4 week period after the November 2011 election, the UN reported that Kabila's security forces in Kinshasa killed 33 election protesters and wounded another 83 by gunshots and 16 others are missing. Can you imagine how USA citizens would react if their government did such in any American city, much less our Washington, D.C. capital? Kabila has violently stopped other peaceful election protests, too. Freedom? To Congolese, this is the equivalent of the USSR conquering the USA and then installing a Soviet general as President of the USA. Europe and the USA have too often been willing to back evil brutal war lords instead of true democratic reformers with the sole interest of Congolese. Why? Congolese ask if their nightmares will ever end.
    The DRC is the worst human "killing field" on earth since WWII and one of the most horrific crimes against humanity in world history. It was and is a fight over extraordinary blood money. It is about greed and power. It is about an invasion of foreign armies. It is about Rwandan self-proclaimed "militias" operating in the DRC who cannot go home, and about ethnic cleansing between Tutsis and Hutus.
    Korea, Vietnam, Cambodian killing fields, Rwanda genocide (watch movie trailers), Bosnia ethic cleansing, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan-Darfur are dwarfed by the titanic DRC crimes. See this United Nations report of violations in the DRC just during the period from March 1993 to June 2003 that details 617 incidents involving a holocaust of up to 6 million killed and millions more injured in other ways just over that period - constituting war crimes against humanity and genocide.  But, from 2003 to 2013 the toll has climbed millions higher.
    This war violence - caused some 8 million dead of various conflict causes. There are many civilian victims, including cannibalism from the Les Effaceurs (“the erasers”), and other horrific crimes against humanity – including mass starvations, gang rapes, mutilations, labor slavery, sexual slavery, forcing children to join their armies and do unspeakable things to members of their own families and others. Who was responsible? No one? Just unorganized riots by individuals with no one in charge? No one giving orders? No grand jury investigations or criminal trials for those inside and outside the DRC who led the wars, although a few token lesser opposition generals are being prosecuted as fall guys to divert world attention away from the real masterminds. The war lords in power say there cannot be justice and peace. Can you imagine those being the conditions when a gang terrorizes families in an American community? Criminals do not get to set the conditions - so government investigates, indicts, attacks, arrests, prosecutes, convicts, and punishes. The war lords operating the country refuse to permit truth and reconciliation conferences because it means testimony by victims against them. The DRC violence has not stopped to this day, and Congolese ask why the world will not help them. How bad does it have to get before the world demands and enforces justice, like after WWII?
    Who caused this? First, who gave the orders? Second, who executed the orders? As of March 14, 2012 only one person has been convicted for any of these war atrocities and while it helps, he was not one of the key leaders. Why? Because the major war lords inside and outside the DRC, leaders of countries, threaten to plunge the region back into war if anyone attempts to prosecute them, and no leader or country is willing to stand up to these tyrants. Justice? Where are the governments willing to hunt these criminals to bring them to justice? Where are the equivalent of the Simon Wiesenthal hunters of war criminals if government will not do it? Read this Enough article to understand how not punishing those who committed horrible offenses has consequences that can continue a cycle of violence for generations, like in other hot spots in history. The authors offer a plan to solve the problem of justice and should be listened to carefully.
    The driving force behind the wars is the struggle over mineral wealth in a country as large as the USA east of the Mississippi. It is the 11th largest country in the world. Today DRC is one of the richest countries on earth, blessed according to the UN with a vast fortune of $24 trillion in over 1,000 precious resources, which is backed up by World Bank studies.  It is almost 40% of the world economy and equal to the entire GDP of the USA and Europe combined.  See this 60 Minutes video, as well as private business assessment, such as OTC or the Financial Policy Council. Yet only few elites benefit from the bounty.  Our Congolese people are among the poorest have-nots in the world with a mere annual GDP of just $201 (UN), $349 (World Bank), $379 (IMF), or $400 (CIA) per average individual (goods and services divided by the population).  The DRC has the lowest GDP of any country in the world.  Professional teachers in Kinshasa earn just $360 to $564 US per year and all needed for basic survival in our capital bigger than New York City; and teachers in other parts of the country earn far less.  Some Congolese are lucky to earn 50 cents US per day, and most are unlucky to earn nothing each day as the country is plagued with 73% unemployment, and citizens have a life expectancy of less than 50 years of age, while our president transformed himself from a poor person into a billionaire and lives in luxury fit for a king. Why?  But then Transparency International ranks the DRC government as one of the most corrupt on earth. The fighting is over the wealth, where one golf ball sized diamond ca be worth hundreds of millions and worth killing.  Civilians are the victims of mostly foreign predators' wrath. Congolese believe greedy foreign thieves, in collusion with corrupt Congolese, foreign countries and multinational companies, operate the country like it is their private Leopold II company, living in luxury - violating human rights, raping and killing while the poor have nothing and are victims of everything. See this list of some of the minerals all predators are fighting over and the ways the world uses these minerals, as well as a summary of the USA's Dodd-Frank law that helps the problem, but conservatives are determined to kill it.  Again, out of touch elitists ask why are Congolese so unhappy? To Congolese, this is all like their world turned upside down.
    Thus, the above are the reasons since 1999 the UN stationed observers gradually increasing its strength up to 20,000 international peacekeeping troops from 30 countries. The UN has spent about $13 billion (27% USA money) with Congo MONUSCO peacekeeping efforts. It is the most expensive UN operation on earth.
    While it has been effective to some degree, it has been very ineffective in others and has even been guilty of crimes against the very defenseless people they are charged to protect. But, there has been more positive than bad, and most important is that if the UN left the country, disaster would result to defenseless Congolese. President Kabila has demanded that the UN leave. It will probably stay, but for how long the world is willing to continue this expensive operation is unknown.
    Even with UN presence, violence continues and no violators pay for their crimes. It is a terrorists paradise where evil men prey on defenseless Congolese men, women and children like unstoppable herds of Tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptors feasting on fleeing rabbits scattering with nothing to defend themselves except sticks. Easy hunting and no one coming to the rescue, because the world doesn't care enough, unlike in America where competent police race to a 911 emergency call, even in the smallest town. If you do not mind being a little afraid, watch this You Tube video clip of the movie Lost World: Jurassic Park to imagine how helpless Congolese civilians feel when faced with much more powerful gangs of rebel and government predators well armed with the latest military weapons, who mass murder, cannibalize, gang rape, enslave, kidnap children, and use machetes as their favorite tool to mutilate the defenseless. After all, watching this Hollywood acting scene about dinosaurs is nothing compared to how real Congolese victims feel. It is a perfect analogy.
    And then what is the worst nightmare to Congolese --- the world did not insist on justice for the warlord killers and gang rapists who caused the carnage to Congolese, and still do --- but instead encouraged the predators to agree among themselves, as a "peace settlement," to share various positions of power and wealth in the DRC government - like dividing up someone else's cake for themselves. Killer pirates dividing up the spoils.
     How about asking the the average Congolese what they want? The Kingdom of Bhutan has placed happiness of its people at the highest on its agenda. The UN was so impressed that it passed UN Resolution 65 309 English, or French version, to encourage such around the world. DRC predators are very happy. When do Congolese get to be happy? Again, out of touch elitists ask why are Congolese so unhappy?