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No democracy is seen in the Congo as children are being used as sex slaves

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 19 November 2006
2 comments

Elections-Elected Social Mary MacElveen Africa

No democracy is seen in the Congo as children are being used as sex slaves
By Mary MacElveen
November 18, 2006

In reading the main stream American press accounts of the Congo elections in which the loser filed a challenge to the outcome, it was as if I were having a flash back to the 2000 presidential elections in the United States.

One former rebel who lost the election “filed a lawsuit Saturday claiming he was cheated of millions of votes” Does that sound familiar to anyone reading this? Although he said he would not resort to violence which would create chaos. Well that is admirable of him. At first reading that sentiment coming from Bemba, I was pleased to see him wish for a peaceful resolution. That is because the Congo cannot tolerate any further violence.

It has been reported of in articles coming from the UK Guardian, The Nation Magazine and in previous writings of mine. But, for the most part the main stream press remains mute on the violence that happens to the most innocent of children. I will get to that again, in a bit.

One has to admire Jean-Pierre Bemba when he stated that he would use all legal avenues available to him instead of resorting to violence.

According to the AP, Bemba received 42 percent of the overall vote to President Joseph Kabila’s 58 percent. Now here is a flash back to our elections as reported by the AP “provisional results have to be formalized by the end of the month in the Supreme Court, where the lawsuit was filed.” But it also stated that the building was being guarded by riot police. I would say that our Supreme Court was surrounded by the Capitol police in preparedness of any violence, but none came.

While it reported that foreign and local observers monitored this election, have any of them monitored the continued violence against children within that country? While violence erupted as a result of the disputed results, the UN was able to act swiftly to negotiate a cease fire.

What is disturbing in the way their elections were handled is when one reads, “Three civilians and a soldier were killed during three hours of machine gunfire and mortar explosions” As all eyes were on Florida, one must be grateful that acts of violence like this did not occur. Yes, we had our brutes and in one case they shut down the counting of votes in Miami-Dade County.

Are the homeless in the Congo sending a message to this government when it was reported “they set off the last confrontation by throwing stones at vehicles and blocking the road with burning tires.” I would say so. Something is amiss in that country when a voting process has the most vulnerable reacting violently.

As I read that “Gen. Baudouin Liwanga, governor of Kinshasa, has since banned protests.” I would love to ask him, why not ban the rape, sodomy and torture of children within the Congo? I think that is only fair.

The AP also reported “The Atlanta-based Carter Center said its mission of observers had confidence in the announced results." in which Kabila received 9,436,779 votes to Bemba’s 6,819,822.

While this same article cites European observers as saying "If, in an absurd case, the fraudulent use of the registers were in favor of the same candidate in all the polling stations of the country, this would not go beyond 650,000 votes in favor of one or the other candidate." It truly boggles the mind that they can be monitoring this election as if it were a normal election.

Nothing about this election is normal and there is no freedom when it comes to the rape and sodomy of the children that live within that country. If the Europeans and other western organizations are monitoring their elections, then why in God’s name are they not screaming of the plight of the Congolese children? If the main stream press is reporting of their elections as being a simple dispute and one that almost mirrors ours, then why are they not reporting how some girls within the Congo have their labia lips pierced and padlocked? Can you imagine if that were your daughter?

In the press all eyes are on how we are handling Iraq and whether or not some will get their way by sending in more troops or where President Bush feels we need a final push, it angers me that situations such as this go un-noticed. Countries such as the Congo never even had a first push of troops to stop the violence within this country. Where are the Congolese children’s right to liberation?

No congratulations should go out to President Kabila’s election win within that country only our condemnation that he is not doing anything to help the children of his country. There can be no democracy and freedom if the most frail and innocent of any country is being terrorized. I would say that children who are being raped, used as sex slaves, beaten and inflicted with the Aids virus are the victims of terror. Wouldn’t you?

http://www.marymacelveen.com/blog/_archives/2006/11/18/2510337.html

Forum posts

  • Sad story! Nobody in the civilized "west" gives a dam about Africans or African children.

  • Surely this writer isn’t advocating US intervention in the Congo simply because tens of thousands of African children are forced into prostitution.
    How about the on-going horrors the poor street children in Brazil have had to endure for decades? Should we intervene in Brazil as well?
    Where do we as a nation mark the line when it comes to intervening in another sovereign nation’s activities?
    Are we supposed to be the Policemen of the World for all eternity?
    And for crying out loud, how much money can the Federal Government keep spending on these foreign interventions before the Federal Government is bankrupt?
    After all, this entire cluster fuck of a war in Iraq has cost the American taxpayer over $300 billion, adding another trillion to our already enormous and unpayable national debt of $8.6 trillion.
    You do-gooders need to look more at the money trail before you start asking the State Department to intervene in yet another sovereign nation’s internal affairs.

    And, more importantly, you do-gooders need to focus on the problems we have at home, which are considerable, such as an unpayable national debt that if left unresolved will make the US a second rate economic power, costing us millions of jobs, and eventually our future prosperity.

    Come on, lady, the US Federal Government’s primary task is to take care of its own, something our political class, both Repukables and Dimocrats, have failed miserably in doing, precisely because they would rather intervene in another Third World country, not for the good of the oppressed, but always for the aggrandizement of rich multi-nationals and the World Bank, instead of minding the store at home.

    This has been the bread and butter of our parasitic political class, intervening in undeveloped countries under false pretenses, only to rape them further with the help of the IMF and the World Bank, as they allow foreign investors to obtain Third World countries’ infant infrastructures, like their telecommunications and motorways, for a song, thus prolonging any undeveloped country’s entry into the 21st Century and thus prolonging the agony of so many of the oppressed peoples of the Third World.

    There is a very good reason why so many Third World nations remain poor, despite the fact that they have enormous resources and potential.
    The reason is called foreign exploitation. And on top of the list of foreign exploiters is our own country, America.

    US intervention under these often presumptous ’altruistic’ intentions have proven to back fire in the past, and often are done at the behest of another party under false pretenses, such as giant multi-nationals that happened to be favorites of both US political parties, such as Union Carbide in India and the United Fruit Company in Central America.

    What is happening in Iraq is no anomaly, it is merely the worst case scenario of America’s constant intervention in other nations’ affairs under false pretenses.