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TechnoratiStop Texting, to Save Lives in Africa
WASHINGTON- Activists asked cell phone users
to stop texting for one hour on Wednesday -- not to save energy or focus on
the road, but to call attention to one of the deadliest and most
underreported conflicts in the world.
What's the Story?
The so-called "Cell Out" campaign is part of Congo Week, a series of actions being held worldwide between Oct. 18 and 24 to call attention to what many believe is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world -- the ongoing war over resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Coltan, a mineral needed for many electronic devices, including cellular telephones, is at the center of the conflict in the DRC, which the United Nations has called the deadliest conflict anywhere since World War II.
Africa Action, a Washington, DC-based group pressing the U.S. government to more actively support peace and prosperity in Africa, is among the groups calling on its supporters to turn off their phones for an hour, suggesting they change their voicemail messages to inform callers about the link between cell phones and the carnage in the DRC. [» Read more from Africa Action about the "Cell Out" Campaign below.]
"Congo Week" is organized by the Washington, DC-based Friends of the Congo organization to raise awareness about the ongoing conflict, which they say has been largely ignored by the international media -- and as a result little is being done to help stem the violence.
Over 70 events have been registered on the Congo Week Web site, including film festivals in New York and the DRC, a cell phone drive in Baltimore, a dance workshop in San Francisco, and public presentations on college campuses from Miami, Florida to Portland, Oregon. Activists are also participating in over three dozen countries.
The Worst Humanitarian Crisis in the World
Sexual violence in the DRC has been labeled "the worst in the world" and has increasingly been used as a tactic of the brutal war between the Congolese army and various rebel groups, explains the humanitarian news agency Inter Press Service (IPS).
Since the war began in 1998, scores of women and girls have been raped as armed groups use sexual violence to tear apart families, spread disease, and weaken communities that might oppose them, notes the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in a video report posted to OneWorld TV, OneWorld.net's video sharing platform. Many men in Congo feel humiliated when their wives are raped and they worry about diseases like HIV, so women are often doubly victimized -- first by their rapists and then by their husbands, who reject them.
Dr. Denis Mukwege, director and founder of a hospital in Bukavu, DRC, believes the women raped since the conflict began over a decade ago could number somewhere around half a million. This is far higher than the United Nations estimates of 200,000-300,000 victims, Mukwege told IPS.
Since the fighting began, some 4 million people have died from violence, hunger, and disease and 2.5 million have been made homeless, estimates the poverty alleviation organization Oxfam International.
A fragile ceasefire between rebel groups and the Congolese government was declared upon the signing of the Goma peace agreement in January 2008. But in the second half of the year, fighting resumed between the Congolese army and the forces of renegade general Laurent Nkunda and other armed groups, notes Human Rights Watch.
The roots of the conflict date back to the end of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, "when the leaders of the Hutu regime that carried out those killings were defeated" and fled to neighboring Congo, explains CBC News.
A New U.S. Policy on Sudan
While over a thousand people a day continue to die as a result of the war in the DRC, the conflict to the north in Sudan is getting top billing -- both in the U.S. media and at the White House. Top U.S. officials announced a new Sudan policy this week, saying that a system of incentives and disincentives -- based on verifiable measures of progress -- will be instituted to help end the conflict and human rights abuses, promote democratic institutions, and ensure that international terrorists do not operate in Sudan.
U.S.-based peace groups have mostly met the new policy with cautious optimism.
"Africa Action welcomes the administration's policy that addresses Darfur and all Sudan, and appears to be results driven," the group said in a statement, but also expressed concern that incentives not be based solely on Khartoum's cooperation in anti-terror efforts, but rather be focused on the pursuit of peace and justice for the Sudanese people. [» Read more from Africa Action.]
Refugees International applauded the plan for allocating funds and equipment to the resource-strapped international peacekeeping force in Sudan, and also for promising to support fair elections in the country. But the group bemoaned a continuing lack of attention to the needs of the country's massive number of displaced people. [» Read more from Refugees International.]
The Save Darfur Coalition, which consists of nearly 200 faith-based, advocacy, and humanitarian groups, said the success of the plan will depend on the level of follow-through by U.S. officials -- and especially President Barack Obama -- in the coming months and years, adding that Obama should make Sudan a priority during his discussions with Chinese officials next month. [» Read more from the Save Darfur Coalition.]
China is considered to have the most leverage over Sudan's leadership, as it is the primary purchaser of the country's oil.
Several groups said they want to see a clear set of benchmarks the administration will use to effectively measure progress on ending human rights violations and ensuring accountability for war crimes.
While media reports have indicated that violence in the Darfur region of Sudan has abated in recent months, the situation is far from stable and Sudanese citizens continue to face abuse and attack, says Human Rights Watch.
A recent report from the international humanitarian watchdog group documented government censorship, harassment of human rights organizations, arbitrary arrests of opposition leaders, and government air and ground attacks on villages in Darfur as recently as mid-September. Some 1,200 people have also been killed in inter-ethnic violence in the southern part of the country this year, the report noted, stressing the need for global pressure on Sudan's government to end the conflict and abuses. [» Read more from Human Rights Watch.]
23 Comments so far
Show AllHere's the website link for Friends of the Congo; obtained through an email subscription to updates from Keith Harmon Snow, www.allthingspass.com.
www.friendsofthecongo.org
I don't have a cellphone of my own either. Sometimes I'll borrow one from someone for a few hours if need be, but that's rare. If and when I do, I'll use it to make a quick call to get a ride or something. That's about it.
People get after me to get one and can't understand why I don't want one.
I don't understand how people can afford them really. And the texting thing, geez.
I guess I'm just not in demand? lol. I don't have people trying to get in touch with me 24/7.
Hutus of Rwanda are guilty for the conflict and related crimes in the DRC? I think people who believe that need to do some serious reading. Doing an Advanced Google search of globalresearch.ca using "Congo" as the sole search term turns up plenty of article links, including the ones below. Keith Harmon Snow has a website, www.allthingspass.com, very dedicated to mostly African problems, conflicts, and U.S., U.K., etcetera, imperialism, corporatism, "capitalism", ... there; as well as the problems caused by many (so-called) humanitarian organisations and USAID, probably also the NED of the U.S. He friends or associated with Friends of the Congo and another Congolese rights organisation, if not more than another one.
Or search GlobalResearch.ca by country, in this case the Congo. This following link provides an index for "Articles about Congo", but doesn't seem complete to me. Keith Harmon Snow's article at GR aren't in this index. They can be founder through the author index for him though. However, in other articles that he's written about conflicts in other African countries, the Congo is often referred to; f.e., in one or more of his articles on the real situation in the Darfur region of Sudan.
You'll find a "Countries" link in the left-hand column of any page at GR and can choose Congo from the resulting list. One index in which other articles that aren't specifically about, but in which useful analogies are made, or related consequences affect the Congo, or the other way around, these articles can surely be found using the sub-Saharan Africa index linked further up on the left-hand-side of pages at GR.
Advanced Google search works pretty well too, though.
In some of the articles I'll link to, or maybe not in these, but nevertheless in others, like by Keith Harmon Snow, we get to learn that the Congo is very, very rich in mineral resources. Colton's one, among many. Actually, I think the older of the three articles I'll link to at GlobalResearch.ca, the 2008 article, specifies three key minerals; but from what I recall from articles by Keith Harmon Snow, there are certainly more than three profitable minerals to be mined or extracted from the Congo by Westen corporations.
"The Real Authors of the Congo Crimes. Nkunda has been arrested but who will arrest Kagame ?",
by Prof. Peter Erlinder, who teaches at the Wm. Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN, Feb 2 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12139
"The conflict in the Congo is a resource war waged by U.S. and British allies",
by Kambale Musavuli, OnlineJournal.com, Feb 19 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12404
"Congo Resource Wars",
by Andrew Gavin Marshall, geopoliticalmonitor.com, Mar 1 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8310
QUOTE: "This report examines the current war and genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which started in the mid-1990s, placing emphasis on the roles of Western covert operations, corporations and the plundering of resources that has resulted".
HRW? Beware of HRW ... anything, in Africa! HRW and others, including Amnesty International, have been despicable to the point on calling for U.S. and NATO intervention in African crises, and it takes idiots and psychos to make such a call upon the worst criminals on Earth! Save Darfur, this bogus and so-called humaniterian movement is even worse; or if not worse, then definitely no better, but I think worse is what it is. It's a bogus front for Western imperialism, etcetera.
That's not to say that everyone who joins the Save Darfur ... movement is ill-intended, but that doesn't make them right, either. Peace Corps volunteers came to learn the ugly truth about the ugly reality of the PC, what its real purpose or use is and many enough quit. The PC is an instrument of the U.S. imperialists, corporatists, etcetera. They deceive honest and sincere people into joining what really are just groups or organisations used to cover up the criminality of the U.S. in third-world countries, f.e.
Never fear. Republicans will save them with Christianity.
The idea that going a waking hour without "texting" is to be considered some kind arduous awareness-raising sacrifice is a rather disturbing statement on the state of our society. Frightening actually.
And how in the world is this going affect the demand for African tantallum and the resulting bloody conflict in any way? What a sick joke!
pjd412 - I think that anything that makes people stop and question what we really need, what we are all about, is worthwhile. If people realize that a cell phone is a sometimes thing, fewer may be sold. It may affect the demand for coltan. It may reduce the pollution caused by discarded electronics. It may help burst the idea that one cannot go anywhere or do anything without an "app". Perhaps parents walking down the street will notice their children, or the trees or the clouds instead of whomever is trivializing into their ear. We have been brainwashed to think we cannot plan or survive for even an hour without remote satellite assistance.
I just noticed you said you do not have a cell phone. Hang in there! Last week I got my first minimalistic cell phone very reluctantly because they are phasing out public phones everywhere and because there is a lot of social pressure to be available at all times. People do not know how to plan ahead or account for contingencies. They found it annoying that I would not get with the program.
I hope this phone will outlast me because I do not want to buy another one and support gang warfare and rape in Congo. Nor do I want to support the vile telecommunications companies.
As Wordsworth said:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
... and the rest of the poem is very good too.
Joe
I doubt it will have the effect you suggest.
From what I can observe, the "texting" phenomenon is nothing less than a form of mass epidemic of severe OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Riding home on the bus from the dentist just a few hours ago, the tuned-out - glazed eye appearance of the young people texting is frightening - totally tuned out of the natural or real social environment.
Too bad this got published the day after the action took place.
That happens all too often.
Joe
I learned about it also about 2 years ago..and messaged about it in some boards..i don't even own a phone..lol. i just tell people i know, if they need to contact...it's e mail or "the next time we see each other" ..they tell me i'm like a hermit that way..lol.
very inconvenient in today's world..but somehow one has to manage ..
but then, in today's world...there are those , like in congo, who can't even eat enough food..much less to concern themselves about "getting in touch" by .......phone...it's THEIR poverty and suffering that teaches the rest of US how the privileges most of the world enjoys in technologies and the lifestyles attached to these come at the cost of so much suffering elsewhere.
it's a real lesson and reminder...that phone or no phone...the world is connected - most sadly in its tragic consequences...
i have a friend at work - a STUNNINGLY beautiful young woman from Rwanda she could be a Nubian Princess- who sometimes tells me of the horrors they had to live through in africa, and the stories and consequences of the times under Idi Amin..and says:
"people in the united states have no idea what true horror and poverty and suffering and hunger and hopelessness is"
I also don't have a cell phone. I can be reached by old-fashioned phone at home or work. I dont need people calling me when I'm traveling, or as has happened with my wifes cell phone, outdoors on a trail hiking.
I am annoyed how something is initially a luxury, then the corporations always re-arrange our social and physical infrastructure (well-documented in some cases) so it becomes a necessity. The personal automobile, in all but rural areas, is certainly the greatest example of this.
Likewise, few people remember Ma Bell's 10 cent public phones (in booths - because a phone conversation was considerd a private matter - I know; how quaint) - at least a few every city block. Now, what public phones that are left are expensive, and generally relegated to use by drug-dealers. Also, almost no bars and restaurants let me use their phone anymore, but looking down the bar, instead of chatting with their neighbor, the patrons are all surfing with their cell phone/pdas. So, usually someone will loan me theirs, except if I don't have my reading glasses handy, it is hard to "dial" (quaint expression) and find the "send" key which is in a different place for each phone with those tiny keys. How nice.
Cell phones and other portable communications devices are very useful for political activism. Remember the story on here about those two guys arrested for sending out Twitter alerts about police movements in Pittsburgh? Those were for people who had PDA,s BlackBerries, or other internet-capable phones amongst the protesters so they could avoid arrest. It would have been pointless if nobody at the protests had the ability to access those messages.
Yeah, not having a cell phone caused me to miss the message that the action after the first dispersal was moving to Oakland, where the bigwigs were anyway. Actually, the officially announced march toward downtown was apparently a carefully held ruse all along - to be revealed as such by text message at just the right time with the real plan. Thus, the police were caught completely off-guard. It was quite brilliant.
So maybe I'll get a cell phone to be used purely for direct action events in the future.
Just don't drop it in the toilet like most college students do.
unfortunately - you are also correct. it is like having to try to aim for betterment of all, justice, and all that. but because of the way things are structured to intimately in everyone's lives everywhere -- one also has to rely on the very things that are partly the reason why there is so much to try to make better...such as with injustices, poverty, use of resources...that lead to these kinds of things in africa.
The DRC conflict might be the most ignored conflict in modern history( China's internal wars,post communist control are still almost unkown outside China).
Where are all the gallant USAan protectors of women?
Oh, I forgot removing the insidious Burqa in Afghanistan.
Yes. In the DRC, the U.S., U.K., and other European countries already are very dominant with regards to natural resources, and fueling the conflict there, which keeps the country "nicely" destablized while Western corporations piggishly profit from the natural resources of the Congolese people. The western pigs still have more "work" to do before achieving the same level of dominance in Central Asia, for the natural resources there; oil, natural gas, and while they surely won't forget the rich mineral resources, either. So they figure that they need to busy themselves with the Asian project, especially.
I started using a cell phone only about 4 years ago. I've had just one phone during that time period and it still seems to be going strong. In general anything I buy I keep as long as possible. If it's fixable I will fix it rather than toss it out to buy another. It saves the environment some, along with saving me some money.
good for you NC-Tom.
being that the way things are structured, ever more deeply , until the day - one hopes - that we all might find better ways, that basically entraps people into certain ways of doing things, such as these we are talking about...
at least we can TRY to limit our "footprints", knowing that somehow they have consequences that are harmful or hurtful to others...even if would wish it could be even less so.
what I do - since I have no phone or cell phone - and the last time i had a "land phone" was , i think, 7 years ago...
is when I have to go about my obligations: work, errans, whatever..i just try to do it old-fashioned way..
i just go and be there . and if i'm "late" or whatever...there's nothing i can do about a bus traffic..or i am sick and i'll go to a public phone, no matter what, and call in with whomever i have to contact..and they just have to know that's how I exist..take me or leave me and i'll find another way to earn a living...but if i can , under normal circumstances, I will be there, rain or shine. and once i am there - i focus on the work at hand, with absolutely no distractions, no calls from "friends" outside , and all my attention is on my work.
I call it - the old fashioned way of honor..but NOT completely dictated by the clock running like a rat and always on the "phone" and "in touch".
and I found out =- just my observation - that most people with cell phones seem to be like slaves to their own "being in touch"...
'maybe one day - there will be cell phones that don't have to use these minerals and cause such consequences...and i can "be in touch" more ....:-)
I learned about this maybe a year and a half ago. I'm glad I didn't turn into one of those people that need each new cell phone model the day it comes out. I think I've had 4 different phones since I started using them 5 years ago...2 of them were replacements for one model I had twice that broke the same way both times, and the other two just came with the plan.