Children, scary-eyed and brain-damaged by undernourishment, hobbling, teenage polio victims paddling themselves along on bits of packing case, deformed and toothless faces smiling grotesquely as they begged, young bodies scarred, broken and hideously regrown ... disease and malnutrition
Nowhere on earth has suffered more terribly from the consequences of colonial rule than Congo. The very word colonial doesn't begin to encompass the scale of human misery, greed and cruelty that have been visited on Congo by foreign predators throughout its history, whether we talk of Arab slavers or the pillaging of the country's people and riches by the appalling King Leopold of the Belgians, or the murder in 1961, with Belgian and US connivance, of Congo's first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, just one year after the country obtained its independence.
Roaming militias fought, looted and killed at will. Mass rape and the mutilation of women became a military weapon, destroying tribal and family life. Still today, in eastern Congo, thousands of men and children are condemned to slave labour in gold, diamond and tin mines, frequently at Congolese army gunpoint, always in unimaginably appalling conditions. Congo's mineral reserves are the largest on the planet, yet three-quarters of its population live on less than a dollar a day. Mining companies raise billions on stock markets, but 60m Congolese have yet to see the smallest benefit from their country's wealth.
Crisis in the Congo: Uncovering The Truth explores the role that the United States allies, Rwanda and Uganda, have played in triggering the greatest humanitarian crisis at the dawn of the 21st century.
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