Sun, 2008/08/03 - 10:28

Dear Dr. Alexia,

I know from my communications with David Z. of AGLI just how busy you must be! I know that you are treating those Burundi, and refugee, families who are recovering from AIDS devastation at our new REAL WOMEN'S SANCTUARY BUILDING. Many praises and thanks go to the Friends Women's Associaton (FWA) for getting that building up, and to AGLI,the African Great Lakes Initiative, for helping. Congratulations to all! We here at NABURR also also proud of the role we have be able to play opening that building and Recovery Center. Don't worry about not being online with us, we know that with the new treatment buildin up, you've been attending to all of the medical recovery the needs of Kamenge Commune,( our Kamenge Village online, here at Nabuur.) We thank you greatly!

Have you read our latest message from CASSILDE?

MESSAGE from CASSILDE, OUR LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE
Thu, 2008/07/31 - 09:02

Hi Frederica,

I have been attending a summer English course which was stressful because I went to school during the day and worked during the night , but now I'm done with it. I am enjoying vacation;I will go for two courses in the fall and I expect to be less pressured since I will have more time to do my homework assignments.

I received messages saying that Nabuur site is going to reopen and I am looking forward to use it again, as it used to be blessing to me.

The most latest news I have from FWA Kamenge is that the women bought another piece of property adjacent to the current clinic building.

They make a lot of progress, and I know how important is your contribution to that success. Thank you very much. God bless you NY Friends Women Association.

Thanks again.
Love,
Cassilde

Bet you are missing Cassilde, too, Dr. Alexia, while she is obtaining her R.N.credential here in the States. Don't worry. She'll be home soon, so much better equipt to serve...you know, that is how she is!

Dr. Alexia, as you know, besides now developing AIDS family recovery treatment modalities, we have another charge and challenge at the REAL WOMEN'S SANCTUARY, women achieving recovery from WAR TRAUMA and ATROCITIES, especially, RAPE.

Along with developing our War Trauma Recovery TREATMENT MODALITES based on PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGICAL INTERVENTIONS and EDUCATION, the POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY of Dr. Martin Seligman; the OPTIMAL PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTIONS of Dr. Linda James Meyers, and PSYCHOANALYTIC INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP TREATMENT STRATEGIES, which we are engaged in developing,online, now, I understand from CASSILDE, that the FRIENDS WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION at Kamenge Commune wants to erect another BUILDING, devoted to treating WAR ATROCITIES...EXPECIALLY THE EPIDEMIC OF RAPESin the CENTRAL AFRICA region including RWANDA,DRC,CONGO, UGANDA, AND DARFUR, AS WELL AS BURUNDI!

Well, from what I've experienced working with the women of Burundi under the guidance of FWA...the Friends Women's Association...of Kamenge, and, AGLI...the African Great Lakes Initiative, I say,

Let's do it!
I'll start a new thread!
What else can I say?

Take Care Dr. Alexia. We love you.

Pax,

Claudia McGeary September 5, 2008
7:49 PM (50 minutes ago) Reply

Emphasis added (bold) for Catholic Relief Services who cares for all, in all countries. Faith in Africa is developing programs with CRS on the subject of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. The next events are October 1 & 2 in New York City -- at Fordham University and St. Ignatius Loyola Church. Flyer will follow shortly.
Claudia

-----Original Message-----
From: John Ashworth
To: Group
Sent: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 9:49 am
Subject: Fwd: The Traumatic cost of the war in South Sudan

FEATURE: The Traumatic cost of the war in South Sudan
Friday 5 September 2008.

By Sam Aola Ooko*

September 4, 2008 (NAIROBI) — In 2005 peace, albeit a semblance of it,
returned to the large swathe of land within the Republic of Sudan known as
Southern Sudan with the signing of a document called the Comprehensive
Peace Agreement (CPA). Government soldiers of Sudanese president, General
Hassan Omer Al-Bashir and those of the rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation
Movement (SPLM) of late Dr. John Garang de Mabior, downed their blazing
guns for the last time.

The ceremony in Nairobi, witnessed by then US secretary of state, Colin
Powell, effectively ended 22 years of the second civil war between the
Arabised North and the black African South. But peace in the south remains
fragile. And this shakes to the core the very base on which this peace
stands because the Sudanese, mainly in the south, are still counting the
traumatic cost of the bitter war.

But Sudan had been in a state of war for a longer time. In 1955, a mutiny
of southern soldiers in Juba sparked the first Sudanese civil war, which
did not end until 1972. At the last time of checking, more than 200,000
Sudanese had been displaced from their homes and thousands more killed in
an ongoing conflict pitting government-backed militias and local
insurgents in Darfur, a part of the Sudanese North bordering Chad.

The fragility of peace here comes in more ways than one. Poverty,
ignorance and disease - the three enemies of progress that made them go to
war with the North over unequal distribution of national resources and
social freedom are still biting hard.

Local conflicts still abound and not a day passes without a cry of
desperation renting out in the eerie Southern air. Lately political
jostling amid the bloody clan realignments for government positions and
charges of grand corruption by their supposed liberators have added to the
toll and the Southern Sudanese are paying dearly for it.

Tension over sharing of scarce resources and apportionment of state wealth
(mainly oil within Abyei on the presumptive North-South border), cattle
raids and militia activity are a common occurrence here, spilling over to
issues around the implementation of the CPA and an upcoming refe
rendum in
2011 on self-determination for the South.

Traumatic experiences of the war haunt everyone here. The soldiers who
have only known war and are trying hard to eke out a living in peaceful
and normal conditions, the women who lost their fringe sexuality to the
assaults, rapes and abuses at the hands of men in warring factions and the
children and young people who virtually lost their innocent childhood to
the tragedies of the war. Trying to be normal in a place where the most
basic of services are missing or unreliable is not easy and, according to
Global Aid Network, a charity working in the area, water, food, permanent
shelter, roads, infrastructure, and agriculture are vital to a full return
to normalcy. Which means that addressing the deep mental and emotional
wounds of the Sudanese survivors themselves, including children, most of
whom have witnessed physical maiming, torturing, and killing of
neighbours, friends, or family should be paramount.

In every village I visited in Southern Sudan as I went about chronicling
the traumatic effects of the war in Southern Sudan, I saw expressions of
dejection, sadness, hopelessness, uselessness in the faces of those I
interacted with. This article attempts to bring out the real traumatic
cost of the war and the efforts by civil society and aid workers working
20there towards rebuilding, recovering - and healing - a new South Sudan.

True, the figures are as massive as they are devastating. Apart from the
deaths, there is still displacement issues to deal with, not mentioning
the destruction of livelihoods. From 1983 until 2005, the war in southern
and central Sudan left more than two million people dead and drove some
4.5 million civilians from their homes. From 2003 to the present, the war
in Darfur has killed at least 200,000 (possibly up to 400,000) people and
driven more than 2.5 million people from their homes.

What is the psychological cost of this and the mitigating factors that
influence it? Enormous, experts and aid workers echo in agreement. Anisa
Achieng, an aid worker for an American church organization, says:
"Communities still need to learn how to foster peace, but current
conditions make this difficult. Families are still displaced, people have
easy access to arms, and tough living conditions make some people
desperate."

Dr. Yousif Ismail Abdullah, who runs the Peace and Tolerance International
Organization in Omdurman, adds: "There is need to provide emergency
psychological assistance related to availing collective and individual
psychiatric and psychological therapy and counselling. There should be a
trauma centre created to raise awareness among targeted groups of how to
revert to normal life, with less depression and post traumatic stress
disorders (PSTD)." This will target psychiatrists, psychologists,
counselling staff, volunteers, social workers at local non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) in Juba and surrounding areas.

In a nutshell, it comes to one point - that instead of war, the people
must now be equipped psychologically to wage peace. But experiences of 20
or more years of war are not easy to put beyond everybody's thinking. "We
southerners are really suffering, during the war and up to now," says
Agnes Odwar, a member of parliament for Torit County. "We're now learning
how to bring peace to our people, families and communities."

Catholic Relief Services runs a conflict resolution program to promote
peace in the area. Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR)
program teaches participants to peacefully resolve conflict over the long
term. The program explores explored five principles that form the
foundation of a peaceful, healthy society: security, conflict
transformation, justice, trauma healing and identity.

While the training prepares participants to use conflict transformation
and peace building skills professionally in their communities, attendees
also go through their own personal journey of healing. Most par
ticipants
lost family members and friends during the civil war. Many were also
forced to flee Sudan for years, even being separated from their husbands
and children.

Beatrice Omony Ogak, an officer in the regional government of Eastern
Equatoria, said after attending a STAR session: "The trauma in me has been
released. I had hatred built up toward the offender, but I wouldn't meet
with them, now I've forgiven them, and today I've become the example.
People expected me to be down, but I raise my head. I now build my
future." Beatrice's child was killed during an attack by the Lord's
Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group that sometimes conducts raids in
southern Sudan.

But the stories of former child soldiers forcefully drafted to fight their
perceived enemies during the war must also be told. Adama Mutiak, 15, a
former child soldier, is still recovering from the trauma he has suffered.
He has never known a normal childhood and, like many others in southern
Sudan and neighbouring Northern Uganda, where Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
rebels have reined supreme since early 1980s, Adama lost his childhood to
war.

He was kidnapped at the age of 10 by the LRA and forced to march from his
native Uganda into Sudan, where the LRA has jungle bases. He was only
abandoned in the bush after about 4 years after suffering a gunshot wound
to the leg because he could walk no further. "I still think they will come
back for me when I am healed although I know the war is over", he tells
me. "The nightmares I suffer daily about the people I was forced to shoot
dead makes me think that life has no meaning but I try to move on."

Rumbek is the administrative capital of Lakes state - also known as
Buhayrat- within the Southern Sudan government. Here, I encountered people
with previously untold stories of suffering under stress. Monica Agwir, a
40 year old mother of six, was herding cattle in the hot, scorching sun
near the dust-capped village of Malual when I met her.

She told me how she has tried to shake off the psychological trauma of the
war to no avail. "I suffer a lot, because I think of a better future for
my children but I only see a bleak one." Why, I ask. "Because our past is
guiding our present and our future, but our past is a bad past; we were
raped during the war, our children forced to kill and all our property
destroyed. And nobody has come with anything to appease us despite the
peace agreement. Look at me, I still have bitter memories that this hot
sun cannot burn out", she responded philosophically.

Of course her angry words also translate that life is very unbearable. For
a long time,the Southern Sudanese people were unable to grow food or earn
money to feed themselves, and malnutrition and starvation became
widespread. It is still the same story. But a few women now talk about
their rape experiences, hitherto a taboo subject in southern Sudanese
culture in spite of the psychological trauma. As with most rape victims,
the victims are reluctant to talk about the experience. Many of them will
not talk about it. The doctor may see physical evidence of sexual
violence. The social worker may see behavioral evidence. But until a trust
relationship is established, the rape victim will never reveal the true
source of her pain.

Juba has changed so much since the triumphant entry of the SPLA forces in
2005 soon after the signing of the CPA. Serving as permanent regional
capital of Southern Sudan, it has gained new status of importance. With the
advent of peace, the United Nations has increased its presence in Juba,
whereas many Southern Sudan operations had until that time been managed
from Kenya. Under the leadership of the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs, the UN established a camp known as "OCHA Camp",
which serves as a base for many aid agencies and non-governmental
organizations.

But the local populations in the fringe areas are suffering unto
ld trauma
from the presence of land mines and other unexploded ordnances. "We know
that there are bombs in our villages yet we live here. This has made us
feel scared and traumatized a lot because our movement is hindered and we
cannot do any meaningful farming or animal husbandry which are our
mainstay", a 65 year old father of eight and a grandfather, Dieng Maluk,
told me.

In 2004, a team from University of Konstanz in Germany documented a study
on trauma in Southern Sudan. The team's findings, published as
"Psychological trauma and evidence for enhanced vulnerability for
posttraumatic stress disorder through previous trauma among West Nile
refugees" confirmed the trauma problem in the region that continues to
this day.

However, mitigating social demographics have meant that Southern Sudanese
people - men, women and children - have experienced many traumatic events
and suffered many daily hassles that affect them psychologically, and this
still continues after the end of the war. Many traumatic and PTSD-like
complaints, behavioural problems, and depressive symptoms are being
reported in Southern Sudan.

In their 2002 book, Trauma, War, and Violence: Public Mental Health in
Socio-Cultural Context, Joop T. V. M. De Jong and Joop de Jong, admitted
that massive traumatic str
ess resulting from armed conflict and terrorism
remained a prime concern of governments, non-government organizations and
the UN.

Yet there is little systematic knowledge of how to address psychological
problems of these proportions. These situations are further complicated by
the lack of culturally appropriate models for mental health care in many
low-income countries, and Southern Sudan is a case in point. But the world
must help the suffering innocent victims who continue to pay the price. It
is a heavy cost to pay, but traumatic effects of war should not just be
left to the victims, nonetheless.

*Sam Aola Ooko is a Nairobi-based freelance journalist writing on
sustainable development and on the environment. He is the founder director
of Africa Journalists Network on Stress and Trauma (AJNST)
http://africatraumajournal.wordpress.com

Copyright (c) 2003-2008 SudanTribune

END

--
John Ashworth
ashworth.john@gmail.com

+27 82 853 3556 (cellphone - international roaming)
PO Box 60413, Karenpark 0118, South Africa
086 616 3523 (fax - domestic South Africa only)
+254 725 926 297 (when I'm in Kenya/Uganda only)
+88 216 4333 3401 (satphone - when I'm in the more remote parts of Sudan)

Denis Hurley Peace Institute
PO Box 4000, Pretoria 0001, South Africa0D
+27 12 321 2600 (office phone - but I'm rarely there!)
+27 12 326 6218 (fax - international)

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Democratic Republic of Congo

Bukavu school - MONUC

Family in DRC - MONUC

Little girl with malaria - MONUC

MONUC troops - MONUC
Last Update: Aug. 4, 2008

Since August of 2007, non-combatant civilians have again become victims of widespread atrocities in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. These acts of violence include murders, mass rapes, looting and other major violations of human rights. During the past year, over 500,000 Congolese were displaced due to violence, bringing the total number of refugees to more than 1.6 million people. Combined with disease and malnutrition, this violence causes an average of 45,000 civilian deaths per month. Since this phase of conflict in the DRC began in 1998, more than 5.4 million people have died, making this the deadliest global conflict since World War Two.

The January ceasefire between the Congolese government and rebel militias was intended to halt the conflict, but was broken within a week. This recent eruption of violence has increasingly hampered humanitarian aid deliveries, as organizations are unable to safely transport supplies throughout the region. Human Rights Watch reports that over 200 civilians were killed since this ceasefire was brokered.

The recent decision by the United Nations to classify rape as a war crime and a security issue, coupled with the war crimes trial of Thomas Lubanga at the ICC may serve to reduce the culture of impunity that surrounds the crimes committed in eastern Congo.

Background on Democratic Republic of Congo
Background on North Kivu
The Kivu region is located in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania. Throughout its history an influx of migrants from these regions has fueled competition over land rights and access to politico-economic power. As migrants have largely originated in Rwanda and Burundi (Banyarwanda) this has caused tensions to split along linguistic lines, separating Rwandaphones, speakers of Kinyarwanda from non-speakers. In some regions, the Rwandaphones, largely Hutu and Tutsi came to outnumber native Nande groups.

As land became scarcer, competition for remaining territory was exacerbated by periodic famines. As the Nanda considered themselves the historic political and territorial overlords of the region, this set the stage for future inter-ethnic conflict between Rwandaphones and non-Rwandaphones.

Development of Ethnic Conflict
After the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) achieved independence in June of 1960, the coalition of different ethnic groups battled for land rights during the Kanyarwanda War (1963-1965). This was complicated by a conflict over representation in local administrative and access to natural resources. This was complicated by the legal status of recent Banyarwanda residents, as post-1908 arrivals were denied citizenship by the Congolese constitution. Due the government power struggle in newly-independent Congo, many Congolese Tutsis were labeled as rebels against the government. As a result of the attempt to quash this rebellion, many Tutsis were interred in concentration camps. Concurrent with this internment campaign, Tutsi had their land and livestock confiscated, were expelled from the country, or were simply murdered.

After Mobutu Sese Seko consolidated his hold on the government of Congo in 1965, he formed an alliance between the government and the Rwandaphones in the Kivu region. In 1972, a humanitarian crisis began due to a massive inflow of Burundian refugees into the Kivus in the aftermath of a failed Hutu rebellion against the Burundian government. This crisis compelled Mobutu to issue blanket citizenship to all Banyarwanda who arrived in the Congo between 1959 and 1963. This was seen by many as an alarming increase in Banyarwanda power at the federal level. Combined with the rising economic power of the Banyarwanda Tutsis, there was increasing resentment on behalf of local Hutu and Congolese. In an attempt to check growing Tutsi power, these groups increased their political mobilization, gaining additional influence in the national assembly in the late 1970’s.

This increased political power led to a reversal of Mobutu’s citizenship laws, instead requiring Congolese citizens to prove ancestral residence since 1885. This move marginalized the Rwandaphone immigrant community who had arrived since then. Tension mounted on both sides as suspicion and resentment of the other increased.

As the Cold War ended, Mobutu increasingly yielded to pressures for reform and democratization. In the Kivus political parties were constructed along ethnic lines, with each party possessing local allied militias. The reform movement resulted in an increasing distinction being made between residents, particularly between Tutsi and non-Tutsi inhabitants.

Government Crisis of 1993 and the Rwandan Genocide
In March 1993, tensions peaked, when Governor Jean Pierre Kalumbo Mbogho, an ethnic Nande, ordered state security to drive Tutsis out of the Kivus, allegedly calling the ethnicity of the Banyarwanda into question and promising their extermination. After 14,000 are killed in two months of violence, Mobutu dismissed Governor Kalumbo Mbogho and increased Tutsi representation in the provincial government.

Despite Mobutu’s efforts to placate the situation in the Kivus, tensions remained high throughout 1994 due to a regional catastrophe. Between April and July 1994, the Rwandan Genocide caused more than a million Hutu refugees, interspersed with members of the Interahamwe militias, to flood into the eastern Congo. The instability that this influx caused intensified tensions between ethnic groups in eastern Congo. As instability grew, locals began to militarize along ethnic lines as competition for resources increased. As Hutu militias began espousing the genocidal ideology of the Interahamwe, the local Tutsi population fled to avoid a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Politically, the central government supported the Hutu militias as a justification for an increase in centralized federal power.

The First and Second Congo War
Continuing unrest lasting into 1996 led to a Rwandan incursion into the Congo with the goals of protecting the Tutsis of Kivu as well as destroying the Hutu camps sheltering an anti-Rwandan insurrection. The Congolese central government opposed this incursion, prompting reform elements to join forces with the Rwandan invaders. Eventually anti-government forces, supported by Rwanda, Uganda and Angola would coalesce around the leadership of General Laurent Kabila. Kabila’s forces waged a war of national liberation, eventually overthrowing the government of Mobutu Sese Seko and forcing him into exile. With the end of Mobutu’s regime, it appeared that the situation in the Congo had finally stabilized.

However, less than two years later, this shifting combination of alliances contributed to the beginning of the Second Congo War, the largest armed conflict in African history. Kabila faced many of the same problems as Mobutu, a fragmented nation, subsistence economy with the added challenge of a large Rwandan armed force in eastern Congo. In an attempt to dismiss charges of Rwandan control of the government and reinforce Congolese command over the rich natural resources of the east, Kabila called for the withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers from the Congo. Removing the protectors of the Banyarwanda caused them to militarize and seek armed protection from Rwanda.

Tutsi from Kivu provinces, with support from the Rwandan government, took control of the eastern city of Goma under the banner of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). The RCD, also containing large numbers of Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers, possessed the backing of those two governments as well. As the RCD went on the offensive, it began to wrest control of eastern Congo from the government. This fighting for control of the mineral resources of the Congo was accompanied by the massacre of thousands of innocent civilians. After victories by the RCD, international supporters of the Kabila government, namely Zimbabwe and Angola stepped in with assistance as the conflict turned into a war for control of the Congo’s vast mineral resources, notably coltan, cobalt and diamonds.

Each of these actors supported different militia groups, causing interethnic tensions to soar and destabilize the Kivu region. Increasingly cruel violence became the hallmark of the conference, including rape as a weapon of war, the commonplace murder of non-combatants, leading to the death of around 3.6 million people by the middle of 2002. In the middle of that year, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Angola withdrew troops from the DRC, followed by the ratification of the Pretoria agreement. This pact arranged for the withdrawal of 23,000 Rwandan troops from the Congo in exchange for the disarmament of all expatriate Rwandan militias operating in eastern Congo. Coinciding with the arrest of three wanted Rwandan génocidaires, this removed one of the pretexts for the Rwandan invasion in 1998. The removal of troops and disarmament of ethnic militias created a power vacuum altering the operational dynamics for groups in North and South Kivu.

Resurgence of the Conflict
At the end of 2002, the Kabila government, now headed by Laurent Kabila’s son, Joseph, signed a power-sharing deal with rebel factions in the Congo. These agreements set up a transitional government which took power in 2003. The peace pacts also called for elections in 2006, integration of rebel militias into the national army and allowed for an expansion of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).

The lull in violence accompanying this settlement was short-lived as tensions between Banyarwanda and indigenous Congolese groups escalated. This was illustrated in a conflict between the RCD’s Goma contingent and elements of the national army which erupted in February 2004. The simultaneous increase in Tutsi prominence in national politics sparked a Congolese campaign of discrimination aimed at the Tutsi and their allies. As the excesses of Rwandan soldiers during the First and Second Congo Wars came to light, the RCD’s Goma wing and their Tutsi allies were delegitimized and they began to lose political power in advance of the 2006 national elections.

The first democratic elections in forty years confirmed this delegitimization, with the RCD only polling a small portion of the population. As a result of this defeat, President Kabila had the political capital to attempt an integration Banyarwanda forces into the national army. However, hardliners on both sides were opposed to this move and ultimately prevented a resolution, and dissidents nominally under General Laurent Nkuda’s command began to attack the national army. A ceasefire agreement to integrate Nkuda’s forces into the army, brokered by Rwanda, only created a lull in tensions and failed to address the underlying grievances of the conflict.

Current Situation
In late August 2007, the forces of General Nkunda ambushed pro-government troops, reigniting heavy fighting in the Kivus. This violence produced massacres in several small villages and forced thousands of people from their homes. As government and rebel forces battled for supremacy in the region, MONUC assisted in the negotiation of a ceasefire, which quickly fell apart. By the end of 2007, a year which saw over 500,000 people displaced by fighting, MONUC, the government of the DRC and rebel groups were again negotiating a truce. This truce, ratified at the end of January, broke down after a week as violence continued to rage in eastern Congo between a patchwork of government soldiers, rebel armies and allied militias.

Centered on North Kivu, recent violence has displaced between 500,000 and 800,000 people since the resumption of hostilities in August of 2007. This brings the total number of displaced to over 1.4 million, with 1.1 million IDPs combined with an additional 350,000 refugees in neighboring countries. Since the breakdown of the ceasefire in January 2008, an additional 75,000 have been forced from their homes.

As the violence continues, the degenerating security situation has contributed to the sporadic delivery of humanitarian aid. Agencies such as UNHCR have suspended aid distribution due to violence, which has also caused a halt in registration of newly displaced people. Indiscriminate violence against civilians also includes a massive occurrence of sexual violence, with more than 40,000 reported rapes. Diseases such as malaria and cholera continue to rage in the area as a simultaneous reduction in foreign food aid compounds nutrition problems. These multiple challenges contribute to a situation that causes an average monthly mortality rate of 45,000. In total, nearly 5.4 million people have died since the beginning of the Second Congo War.

Who are the parties to the conflict?
There are three sets of actors that are currently committing mass atrocities against non-combatant civilians

The Congolese Army (FARDC). The army consists of poorly trained and frequently unpaid soldiers that lack supplies and is known for committing widespread human rights violations. Its soldiers loot and pillage villages throughout the military campaigns against General Laurent Nkunda and other insurgent groups. According to the UN Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), 40% of all human rights violations in the second half of 2006 were perpetrated by the Congolese Army.
General Laurent Nkunda's militias. These militias frequently clash with the Congolese army and the FDLR, are known to give no warnings to civilians when they shell or open fire upon government-controlled areas or villages. It has also been reported that Nkunda's soldiers indiscriminately kill, rape, and severely injure scores of non-combatant civilians. Additionally, Nkunda's forces have been linked to mass graves discovered throughout the region.
Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR). These forces are comprised of former Rwandan militias, primarily of Hutu extraction. These fighters fled to the Kivu regions after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Reported patterns of violence indicate that FDLR forces give preferential treatment to Hutu areas and commit widespread atrocities in areas where the Tutsi and other ethnic groups are the majority.
How are civilians being harmed?
All of the actors listed above have committed many, if not all, of the following types of widespread, mass atrocities against non-combatant civilians:

Summary executions/Murder
Rape and sexual violence
Looting and destruction of property
Forced displacement
Abductions
Arbitrary arrests
Recruitment of child soldiers
For more information, see the most recent Human Rights Watch report, "Renewed Crisis in North Kivu."

Stories from the conflict
"When the firing started, people started to flee in all directions. My mother was too old to flee, and she hid inside her house, with eight family members and four neighbors. I was scared, and I hid behind the house, and covered myself in long grass. ... Then, at 5:30 in the morning, I saw the soldiers come to the house. There were so many of them. ... The soldiers knocked on the door, and massacred eight people inside the house. Only my four grandchildren survived, they are now here with me. [The soldiers] continued firing in the village, and, from where I was, I fled further into the bush. I returned three days later to see the bodies of my children and my mother. The bodies were in latrines; I could see the feet of my mother sticking out."

—"Renewed Crisis in North Kivu," Human Rights Watch, October 2007
Reports on Democratic Republic of Congo
Human Rights Watch - Renewed Crisis in North Kivu (PDF)
International Crisis Group - Congo: Bringing Peace to North Kivu (PDF)
ENOUGH Project - Averting the Nightmare Scenario in Eastern Congo
US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights - Democratic Republic of the Congo
International Rescue Committe - Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis (PDF)

Additional links about Democratic Republic of Congo
Amnesty International
Carter Center - Democratic Republic of the Congo
Internal Displacement Monitoring Center
International Rescue Committee
Refugees International
Relief Web
UNHCR - Democratic Republic of Congo
ENOUGH Project
Human Rights Watch
International Crisis Group
BBC Country Profile
Congo Global Action
Google News - Democratic Republic of Congo
IRIN News - Democratic Republic of Congo

Caritas worker fears for Congo
Catholic News (AU)
September 11, 2008
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=8960

Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Caritas Australia worker Lulu Mitshabu says her native country is now in an immeasurably worse condition than when she fled.

The Age reports Ms Mitshabu grew up angry in dictator Joseph Mobutu's Zaire which shaped her for a perilous future as an activist against a regime where power had corrupted absolutely.

It is almost 20 years since the whisper that her hours were numbered forced her to flee across the border late one night into Zambia.

That journey into the unknown meant she missed the end of Mobutu's reviled reign, the emergence of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the horror of the bloodiest human conflict since the end of World War II.

An estimated 5.4 million people have been killed since war broke out in 1998. Although the war ended in 2003, continuing skirmishes and civil collapse mean the casualties of one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters continue to rise at a rate estimated by United Nations agencies at 1,200 deaths a day due to disease, poverty and violence bequeathed by war.

Presenting a dossier on the DRC emergency in Sydney yesterday for aid agency Caritas, Ms Mitshabu said that when she returns to her homeland now as a humanitarian worker, she finds a country immeasurably worse than the one she fled.

"At least when I grew up, you could go to school, you could still have access to medical services. But because of the conflict now there are no roads, there are no services, there is no infrastructure," she said. "Even the hospitals have no beds."

Where once she was concerned with the recognition of women's rights, she is now concerned with their very survival in a society where brutal sexual violence has become endemic.

On her recent visit in June, in one province in one month, 2,000 women reported rapes, according to a report by the UN mission to Congo. Countless more told no one.

Ms Mitshabu saw and heard first hand what becomes of women who resist rape.

"Sometimes (the attacker) uses the gun and shoots the woman in the private parts. Or they use sticks, or melt rubber and paint that across them. They will do this in front of their children or force the brother or son to rape them. Then the woman is stigmatised, her husband will chase her from the house because she is spoiled."

The Caritas dossier calls on the Rudd Government, which has signalled that it wants to significantly boost Australia's profile and participation in Africa, in aid and diplomacy, to lobby for an international commission of inquiry into the atrocities in Congo and to commit $20 million in emergency aid.

It also reminds Australia's corporate sector that exploitation of Congo's vast resource riches have underwritten much of its bloody history, and calls on companies to be accountable in their investments.

According to a Caritas Australia statement, its groundbreaking report, "Forsaken Voices: Rape and Plunder in the Democratic Republic of the Congo" details the horrific effects of murder, rape, child soldiers and the extractive industry are having on the DRC.
The article above is complete.

Channel 4 accused of pro-Muslim bias by Catholic priests
Channel 4 has been accused of being biased towards Islam and not showing enough respect to Christianity.
By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
The Telegraph (UK)
September 11, 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/2800169/Channel-4-ac...

The television channel, whose head of religious broadcasting is a Muslim, is said by several Roman Catholic priests to be unfair in its treatment of different faiths.

They claim it recently showed a whole season of broadly positive programmes on Islam while a "Da Vinci Code-style" documentary on Christianity cast doubt on the validity of the Pope.

In addition, they say the Channel 4 website treats the history and beliefs of Islam more reverently than it does Christianity.

It comes just days after the BBC was accused of pandering to Muslims by Hindu and Sikh leaders, who claimed the corporation makes a disproportionately large number of programmes about Islam.

Fr Ray Blake, a leading Catholic blogger who is a parish priest in Brighton, said: "I don't think it's fair towards Christianity. There seems to be a rather supine attitude to Islam and a trivialising attitude to Catholicism. I find it worrying.

"Channel 4 has shown quite serious discussions about Islam but nothing that treats Christianity in the same way."

Over the summer, Channel 4 broadcast a week of special programmes on Islam including a feature-length documentary on its holy book, the Qu'ran, and a series of interviews with Muslims around the world talking about their beliefs.

However last week it repeated a controversial documentary first shown at Easter, called The Secrets of the 12 Disciples, which claimed St Peter died in Palestine, not in Rome as the church has always taught.

Academics quoted in the documentary say this means that he was not the first Pope and so other pontiffs have not been his true successors, with the Vatican accused of "fabricating" a connection with the apostle to justify its power.

The Catholic blog Clerical Whispers quoted one commentator as calling the arguments in the programme "intellectually-challenged" and added: "They are on a par with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and are unsubstantiated. It shows undisguised disdain for the Catholic Church."

Another blogging priest, Fr Tim Finigan, said the Channel 4 website highlights the torture and persecution carried out by the Roman Catholic church during the Inquisition, which he said is in contrast to its positive description of Muslims.

He wrote: "My point in posting all this is not to denigrate Islam but rather to draw attention to the kind of treatment that can be given to religion, and how far it is from the customary treatment given to beliefs and practices that are sacred to Christians."

One commenter on Fr Blake's blog wrote: "The Commissioning Editor for religious broadcasting at Channel 4 is Aaqil Ahmed, a Muslim. I have long noticed that the only coverage Christianity gets on Channel 4 is in the form of programmes that seeks to undermine the authority of the Church, our traditions and our scripture."

A spokesman for Channel 4 denied it favoured Islam over other religions, however.

He said: "Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Religion, Aaqil Ahmed, commissions programmes on the basis of their merit, and our output reflect a wide range of beliefs and faiths."
The article above is complete. Of course you know that the channel 4 they're discussing is in the UK.

Pax.

Tom