Update #7: "Congo's Forgotten Children": Finalist in Rory Peck Awards
David Niblock and the production team were the only journalists to reach the town of Kanyabayonga where children describe how they hid in dense forest to escape the fighting. Separated from their parents, without shelter, clean water and little food, many became ill and died.
The Rory Peck Award judges said the film owed its identity to the camerawork and particularly praised David's "amazing eye for detail". One said: "David Niblock brings something unique to this film. It is a testament to his character and skill that we see the children as people not as victims."
Update #6: AJE - Congo: Oil gotten gains
Congo Brazzaville is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite the fact that it produces nearly 300,000 barrels of oil a day. Denis Sassou Nguesso, the country's president has been in power for all but five of the last 30 years, since a military coup in 1979. He has long been suspected of siphoning off large portions of the country's oil revenues but suspicion only turned to proof when documents produced in court showed that oil belonging to the state had financed his son's spending sprees in Hong Kong, Paris and Barcelona, and on his own stays in luxury New York hotels.
Update #5: PRI Radio The World: Congo civil war
The scope of tragedy in eastern Congo defies comprehension. A war in the African country killed four-million people between 1998 and 2003. And fighting has continued -- among government forces, insurgents, militias, and Rwandan Hutu rebels. One of the most gruesome features of the conflicts is the widespread use of rape as a weapon. Armed groups use it to terrorize communities and control territories. Tens of thousands of women and girls have been attacked. The World's Jeb Sharp reports from Bukavu in Congo's South Kivu Province and on aid groups and grassroots activists responding to the crisis. - download -- more on 'Rape as a Weapon' & the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative mentioned.
Update #4: Treehugger
The Incredible Story of Conflict Mineral Mining
The Incredible Story of Conflict Mineral Mining
Excellent slideshow of images and links.
Update #3: Fighting the Silence
Fighting the Silence is a powerful, shocking but also empowering film that tells the stories of Congolese rape survivors who are trying to change their world.
Update #2: More on Coltan
Grand Theft Congo - $2m of the most widely traded mineral in London, stolen from the mines of Congo each week (2005)
In Focus: Congo's Bloody Coltan
Update: Congo is the Invisible War.
Analysis of New York Times reports (1998-2009) on Congo (165) & Darfur (1701).
Do the corporate interests of the US and China, respectively, affect conflict reporting?
One resource that is driving the fight over Congo is a component used in every cellphone: Coltan
Congo's Forgotten Children
Dispatches examines how the children of Congo are being affected by the latest fighting that is tearing their country apart. An entire generation has been scarred by a seemingly endless conflict - in the last 12 years at least three million children have died as a result of fighting and the hunger and disease that war creates. - watch short clips here -
The long running conflict is largely ignored by the rest of the world but last November Congo briefly hit the headlines as rebel troops seized control of a large area of Eastern Congo. The Dispatches team were the only journalists to reach the town of Kanyabayonga. Children describe how they ran and hid in dense forest to avoid the fighting. In the panic many were separated from their parents. They spent up to three weeks with little food, no clean water and no shelter and as a result many became ill and died.
Reporter Deborah Davies hears directly from children from across East Congo describe their horrific experiences: a five-year-old boy, struggling to breathe in his hospital bed, thinks soldiers threw a rock at him because he's too young to understand that he's been shot in his chest; an 11-year-old girl hides behind her hands because she literally can't face describing how she saw a woman raped and slashed to death; a teenage boy describes how he was kidnapped by an armed group when he was twelve and forced to kill; a boy who was orphaned at 10 works in a gold mine breaking rocks in searing heat trying to earn enough money so he can go to school.
The latest fighting has also seen a huge increase in the number of children being kidnapped by armed groups and forced to be soldiers. At a special centre for former child soldiers Dispatches hears about the long term psychological damage to youngsters who've been trained to kill, to kidnap other children and who've been used for sex - as "wives" to militia commanders.
Many of the child soldiers Dispatches met were taken by the CNDP rebel group. Dispatches meets it's leader, Laurent Nkunda to challenge him on his illegal use of children and his role in causing the latest crisis, which has led to up to a third of a million people fleeing in terror - more than half of them children.
In Kanyabayonga, Dispatches follows families as they trudge out of forest on their way home only to find their houses have been completely looted. But it becomes clear that the damage was done by the Congolese army. Under the terms of a ceasefire the rebels withdrew without ever entering the town. These events have been investigated by a UN human rights team. Their report into the actions of the Congolese army is expected at the end of February.
But the majority of the recent suffering has been caused by the advance of a rebel group who still surround the major town of Goma . The Don Bosco orphanage is caring for hundreds of new arrivals, many of them under five years old. They include a girl of about three who hasn't spoken since she was found three weeks earlier all alone in the forest.
The Dispatches team also travel to one of Congo's gold mining areas to talk to children who work there because they've lost relatives and been forced to leave their homes as a result of a previous round of violence.