mithril

From: "torresD" <torresd30@hotmail.com>
Subject: **** is more widespread than possibly anywhere else on Earth.


Their relatives had their hearts ripped out,
their heads cut off, their ***ual organs removed.

This, it seemed, was the standard way of killing here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4424909.stm
Despite a peace deal signed two years
ago to end the long-running civil war,
violence is continuing in the east of
the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And in the province of Ituri,
Hilary Andersson finds evidence
of cannibalism by some rebels.

There is a part of the world where
atrocities go beyond all normal bounds,
where evil seems to congregate.

Almost everyone who has ever worked
there will know where I am talking of.

The area is not very large on the map of Africa.

But the region in and north of the
forests of central Africa has hosted
Rwanda's genocide,

the massacres in Burundi,
the devastation of southern Sudan,
the mutilations in Uganda,
and the atrocities of the
north-eastern Congo.

And so I had the usual feeling of
dread when we flew into the area
on this trip.

We left the acacia-lined,
sunswept plains of east Africa and,
as we approached, the sky began to darken.

We began to descend through black clouds
that hugged the huge forests below.

We landed in a ferocious rainstorm in
the small town of Bunia in the north-east of the Congo.

'Hole in Africa's heart'

The Congo is a vast territory,
the size of western Europe.

The war is not about any principle at all,
violence has just moved in where there is no authority

But it has been called the hole in the
heart of Africa, because much of it is
a giant power vacuum.

In the north-east, at least seven warlords
are locked in brutal scramble for personal
power and control.

Lots of the fighters are children.

**** is more widespread than
possibly anywhere else on Earth.

And the war is not about any principle at all,
violence has just moved in where there is no
authority.

Mutilation

We visited a refugee camp set in a small valley,
a piece of land like a basin.

Around its rims the United Nations
patrolled to keep the militia out.

It reminded me of the atrocities in Bosnia,
where at a certain point individuals turned
into human devils


In an afternoon every person we spoke to,
without exception, had witnessed not just
killing but horrific mutilation.

The children had sunken, troubled eyes.

The women looked exhausted and the
men were bursting with what they
had to tell.

Their relatives had their hearts ripped out,
their heads cut off, their ***ual organs removed.

This, it seemed, was the standard way of killing here.

Why?

You want to know why?

Yes there is war, but this is different.

This is not just killing, or taking territory.

It is deliberate mutilation on a
scale that makes you reel with
horror.

It reminded me of the atrocities in Bosnia,
where at a certain point individuals turned
into human devils,

bent on doing not just the worst
they could but the most atrocious.

Militia attack

We met a woman who I will call Kavuo, not her real name.

Survivors of militia attacks remain
in hiding for fear of further violence
To talk to her about her story we had to
travel to a remote location in the jungle,
where we could not be seen or heard by others.

What she had to speak of is an atrocity
shrouded in secrecy here, an atrocity.

It is taboo to even speak of it.

The events she told me about happened
two years ago and hers was one of the
first public testimonies of its kind.

Kavuo was on the run with her husband,
her four children and three other couples.

They had spent the night in a hut,
and got up in the morning to keep moving.

But they had barely left the hut
when six militia men accosted them.

Kavuo and the women were ordered
to lie with their faces on the ground.

The militia ordered Kavuo's husband
and the other men to collect firewood.

Then the women were told to
say goodbye to their husbands.

They obeyed.

The militia then began to kill the men one by one.

Kavuo's husband was third.

Her testimony is that the militia men
lit a fire and put an old oil drum,
cut into two, on the flames.

I will omit other details.

But Kavuo says the militia cooked
her husbands parts in the drums
and ate them.

Beliefs perverted

Those who have studied the region say
cannibalism has a history there but as
a specific animist ritual, carried out
only in exceptional cir***stances.

Fighters told us that those who carry
out such acts believe it makes them
stronger

What has happened now is that the
war has turned Congo's society
upside-down.

Warlords are exploiting this,
and perverting existing beliefs
for their own ends.

Fighters told us that those who carry
out such acts believe it makes them
stronger.

Some believe they are literally taking
spiritual power from their victims.

That once they have eaten,
they have the power of the
enemy.

These atrocities are also designed
to instil utter fear into the enemy.

Anarchy

It is estimated that four million people
have died in the Congo as a result of the
long running war.

That is truly staggering.

It is more than those killed by
Cambodia's Pol Pot and more than
those killed in Rwanda.

Most people have died of hunger and
disease that the violence has left
in its wake.

Kavuo lost four of her children to
illness and malnutrition even before
her husband was killed.

Now she lives in a remote village in the forest,
and cannot afford to look after her surviving children.

If this is her story,
imagine how many others are like it
and the numbers begin to make a
horrifying sort of sense.

As we flew out of the Congo,
I could see the vast forests below,
thick with trees,

infested with malaria, and barely accessible.

A huge area that few outsiders venture into
an area where evils happen that are rarely reported.

The blood red sunsets,
the streaks of black clouds
a weird sort of echo.

Anarchy is not just a word.

In the north-eastern Congo we saw its reality.

What is happening there is proof of the scale
of devastation that chaos can invite, and of
the terrifying human capacity for unleashing
deliberate evil on the innocent.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on
Thursday, 7 April, 2005 at 1100 BST on BBC
Radio 4.

Please check the programme schedules
for World Service transmission times.