posted on Mar, 16 2005 @ 03:50 PM
Eastern Congo is suffering the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, with a death toll outstripping that in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur
region, according to a top UN official.
United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said on Wednesday that over the last six years the toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo's
amounted to "one tsunami every six months" - a reference to the December disaster which left about 300,000 people dead or missing in
Asia.
"In terms of the human lives lost ... this is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today and it is beyond belief that the world is not
paying more attention," he told a news conference.
"Several witnesses reported cases of mutilation followed by death or decapitation," the world body said in a report after gathering testimonies from
survivors for nearly a year near Congo's northeastern border with Uganda.
"Vital organs were said to have been cut off and used as magic charms. There were also reports that [ethnic] Hema children were thrown on arrows
stuck into the ground," the report said.
source:
english.aljazeera
The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Since 1997, DR Congo has been overwhelmed
by ethnic strife and civil war.
In less than five years more than 3.3 million people (mainly children, women and the elderly) have died. Children
are the most vulnerable victims of this crisis – thousands have been killed as a direct result of the fighting and many more have died from disease
and starvation. Reports keep coming from DR Congo about the recruitment of thousands of young children into the militia, where boys as much as six
year old are forced to fight and kill and commit atrocities. These reports also indicate that hundreds of women and girls are being raped, mutilated
and killed. Life has very little meaning in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and why does the international community WAKE THE FU** UP and do
something about it? The people of DR Congo need help! They are dying by the second, and for them there is "one tsunami every six months"!
Until then, this is the picture seen in the DR Congo:
Would you like your children armed with a rifle like this?