Katie Blake's List: recent articles

• Congolese state security forces have killed an estimated 500 people and detained  about 1,000 more, many of whom have been tortured, in the two years since  elections that were meant to bring democracy, Human Rights Watch said in a  report released today. The brutal repression against perceived opponents began  during the 2006 elections that carried President Joseph Kabila to power, and has  continued to the present.
•  

   

   

  While everyone focuses on the violence in eastern Congo, government abuses  against political opponents attract little attention. Efforts to build a  democratic Congo are being stifled not just by rebellion but also by the Kabila  government's repression.

   

   

   

  Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher in the Africa  Division of Human Rights Watch

  • freedom of speech and political belief. oppositon is essential for a democracy to exist. if no opposing party exists, and the media is resticted by the governemnt, it creates an environment of oppression in a country claiming to be a democracy.
• Kabila government's use of violence and intimidation to eliminate political  opponents.
• "While everyone focuses on the violence in eastern Congo, government abuses  against political opponents attract little attention," said Anneke Van  Woudenberg, senior researcher in the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.  "Efforts to build a democratic Congo are being stifled not just by rebellion but  also by the Kabila government's repression."

  • why diplomatic initiaives for democracy as well as conflict prevention
• Those in western Congo who might challenge government policies face brutal  repression, while in the east the armed conflict with renegade general Laurent  Nkunda's forces has resulted in horrific atrocities by all sides.
• Kabila's subordinates worked through several state security forces - including  the paramilitary Republican Guards, a "secret commission," the special Simba  battalion of the police, and the intelligence services - to crack down on  perceived opponents in the capital Kinshasa and in Bas Congo province
• Following the 2006 elections, which were largely financed by international  donors, foreign governments focused on winning favor with Kabila's new  government and kept silent about human rights abuses and the government's  increasingly repressive rule. United Nations reports documenting government  involvement in politically motivated crimes were deliberately buried or  published too late to have any significant impact on events, Human Rights Watch  found.

  • what organizations can get involved if the UN is even contributing to the corrupt environment?
• At least 500 perceived opponents of the government were deliberately killed or  summarily executed. In some of the most violent episodes, state agents tried to  cover up the crimes by dumping bodies in the Congo River or by secretly burying  them in mass graves. Government officials blocked efforts to investigate by UN  human rights staff, Congolese and international human rights monitors, and  family members of victims.
• Congolese officials have refused to acknowledge abuses committed by state agents  despite inquiries by the National Assembly, the media, and other citizens or  groups.
• Journalists who were linked to the political opposition or who protested abuses  were threatened, arbitrarily arrested, and in some cases tortured by government  agents. The government closed down radio stations and television networks that  were linked to the opposition or broadcast their views. Several of these  stations were later permitted to operate again.

  • freedom of the press, freedom of speech, is nonexistant
• "The Congolese people deserve a government which will uphold their democratic  rights, not one that represses opponents,"

• "As they beat me with sticks and whips, the soldiers repeatedly  shouted, ‘We will crush you! We will crush you!' Then they threatened to kill me  and others who opposed Kabila."

   

   

  - A political party activist detained and tortured in Kinshasa in March 2007  by President Kabila's Republican Guards.

10 more annotations...

• Five years after the Second Congo War officially came to an end, peace remains  precarious, especially in eastern parts of the country. Hundreds of thousands of  people are still homeless, and undernutrition affects 70 percent of the  population.
  
• warns of the dangers if displaced persons become dependent on food rations
• Agriculture has the undeniable potential to produce enough food in Congo and  even reserves for times of catastrophe," states Thomas Kembola Kejuni, DR  Congo’s Acting Deputy Minister for Agriculture.
  
  But out of 6.7 million  hectares of arable land in the country, only some 1.1 million ha are currently  under permanent crops. Too many farmers had to flee the land due to violence
• As of mid-2008, 450 000 internally displaced persons had returned home to  Katanga province, many with the intention of resuming farming and fishing. North  Kivu still has a staggering 846 000 displaced persons internally.
• "Big companies won't come in, so the only way to relaunch agriculture is to  start with small farmers, which is why the EU supports small-scale agriculture,"  according to Patrick Houben, agriculture and food security projects officer at  the Delegation of the European Commission

  • 7. suggestions

3 more annotations...

• in rural areas, people spend 80 per cent of their household money on food

  • % of income spent on food
• A third of these women are HIV carriers, others are victims of sexual violence  and others still are refugees returning from nightmares untold.
• Only now, as skyrocketing food prices expose the neglected state of farming on  the continent, are fledgling local governments and the mandarins of global aid  coming to the same conclusion.

  • the national government needs to wake up andcan if more democratic so can repsond to people's needs

  • the national governemnt needs ot wak up and can if more democratic so can resond to people's needs
• the really basic inputs – good seeds and fertilizer, access to a little bit of  credit – will go a very long way toward restoring food security for Africa
• in the Congo, where agriculture has suffered from decades of inattention,  almost nobody uses fertilizer. There is a huge potential there

  • ag practices
• in the easternmost town of Kalemie
• the Threat Assessment Level billboard at the United Nations peacekeepers'  barracks says it all – the needle is set at dead centre, demarking a merely  moderate danger of 3 out of a maximum 5.
• Not quite crazy enough for war journalists, who bypass the occasional Mai Mai  rebel attacks around Kalemie for the substantially more volatile North and South  Kivu, where the localized remnants of the Congolese civil war are more easily  found.
• "During the war the soldiers stole our animals, and we were down to eating the  peels of the cassava. We had to send the older children out to find food even  when it was dangerous, to keep from starving."
• In Kinshasa, government officials readily acknowledge their moral responsibility  to pay more than lip service to the farming sector. Only by sheer accident has  the Congo managed to thus far avoid the food riots that have wreaked havoc in  some 30 other countries, according to Thomas Emboli Jejune, the country's deputy  minister of agriculture.
• Aid workers in Kinshasa say the irony is that today the Congo is a net food  importer, when by almost any measure the country should be able to feed itself.

• "During Belgian rule you had coffee, cocoa and rubber ruling the country,"  says Patrick Hobe, who heads the European Union's food security aid branch in  the Congo. "Now, today, we have to completely change the scheme so that when  there is agriculture it has to begin small if we want to reverse the imbalance  against the rural populations.

   

  "Look at the neighbouring province of Bandundu, right next to Kinshasa, where  there is plenty of maize. It makes sense that Kinshasa should be eating that  corn. In fact, why can't we feed all the cities from the regions surrounding the  cities?

   

  "One reason is that if you load a truck and drive it to the city you will be  stopped 126 times and forced to pay money to local bosses. It's crazy. So we are  focused on the two tracks for a solution – you need better roads and better  governance."

  • accountability and control government needs
• many Western aid workers worry the revival of mining and forestry threatens to  suck away the Congo's energy to the detriment of agriculture. Particularly in  mineral-rich southern Katanga, the Chinese quest for copper, cobalt and  especially coltan, a heat-absorbing mineral critical to the manufacture of  cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices, comes with financing that  dwarfs all other international efforts in the Congo.

  • hot flat and crowded. reliance on mineral wealth lessens need for democracy

• While nobody doubts the Chinese guarantees will result in crucial  transportation improvements, the worry is the road work will follow the colonial  "mines-to-port" model and thus bypass rural Congolese smallholders, who  represent the country's farming hopes.

   

  "We cannot afford to say no to mining development," says Bedouin Kakudji  Kabemba, the Congolese chief inspector of agriculture in mineral-rich Katanga,  where 70 per cent of the province's estimated 9 million residents derive some or  all of their income from rural farming. "It is sucking in all the capital and  energy and bright people who want to make money. Yet we know mining will not  save us.

   

  "On one hand, it makes a boomtown of Lubumbashi. But look more closely and  you will see two cities, one with money and one with none. Even for the ones  with money, how long will it last? Mining is an international boom and one day  it will end.

   

  "We realize today that if we cannot advance agriculture, there is no chance  of advancing life in eastern Congo. We need to be the breadbasket of the entire  region. But there is much work to do."
  

12 more annotations...

• Renewed conflict in late-August 2008 in eastern areas of the  Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) intensified the humanitarian crisis  caused by more than 10 years of civil unrest and armed conflict.

  • late august 2008 = last outbreak of conflict
• Continuing insecurity and repeated human rights violations, compounded by the  impacts of climatic hazards and epidemics, have exhausted the coping strategies  of displaced populations and host communities.
• Conflict-induced displacement and loss of assets have dramatically decreased  agricultural production in DRC
• lack of strategic food stocks and storage capacity has placed additional strain  on local markets.
• An FAO Emergency Coordination and Rehabilitation Unit has been operational in  DRC since 1998.

  • the Food and Agricultural Organization is one organization already trying to help

3 more annotations...

• Countries with severe localized food insecurity due to the influx of  refugees, a concentration of internally displaced persons, or areas with  combinations of crop failure and deep poverty.

• • really recent and predictions (but credible?)
• A report from Human Rights Watch documents the Kabila government's use of  violence and intimidation to eliminate political opponents.

• Masisi
• • use to support idea: conflict must be ended before real progress in anything (investment, ag production etc.) can be reached. even aid preograms are stopped when conflict
• 40,000 people have fled the violence in recent days, in addition to 200,000  people displaced in the region since December
• Roads are unsafe
• Most of the longer-term displaced have missed at least one harvest

  • cant produce food when running for their lives
• eastern part of the country, which has been torn apart by conflict between  government forces, militias and rebel groups

4 more annotations...

• • recent program for recent events. specific info
• Haut-Uélé district of the Orientale province in the Democratic Republic of Congo  (DRC) has been destabilized since the 1990s by a succession of armed groups

  • one of many areas in the DRC
• In September 2008
• the Lords Resistance Army has been intensifying attacks against the civilian  population, looting towns and villages, burning down houses, abducting hundreds  of children, raping and killing people.
• As a result of the intensification of these attacks, the food security situation  has dramatically deteriorated.
• Crops were not harvested in December 2008, and farmers have not yet been able to  prepare their fields for the next season due to fear of being attacked.
• forced to flee their homes

5 more annotations...

• Today, nobody knows the stock levels, says Adelard Mambo, 43, president of  Kalemie's MPK fishing association.

   

  "There is no state regulation, no enforcement. We fish freely, yet we are  seeing fewer fish."
• A different story is told in the vast, lush market garden of Quartier Congo on  Lubumbashi's outskirts, where so many fish were stolen that the seven farm  associations representing smallholders simply abandoned their aquaculture ponds

  • where is law enforcement?

• Today, nobody knows the stock levels, says Adelard Mambo, 43, president of  Kalemie's MPK fishing association.

   

  "There is no state regulation, no enforcement. We fish freely, yet we are  seeing fewer fish."

  • why governemnt nees to be better set up so can actually govern

1 more annotation...