Study: 3.8 million dead in Congo

Jolie Rouge

Thursday, December 9, 2004 Posted: 9:05 PM EST (0205 GMT)

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) -- Six years of continuing conflict in Congo have claimed 3.8 million lives, nearly half of them children, with most victims killed by disease and famine in the still largely cut-off east, the International Rescue Committee said in a study released Thursday.

The international association for years has produced the most widely used running estimate of deaths in Congo, Africa's third-largest nation.

More than 31,000 civilians continue to die monthly as a result of the conflict, despite peace deals that ended major fighting in the 1998-2002 war, the New York-based group said, citing mortality surveys prepared with the assistance of on-site teams of physicians and epidemiologists.

Congo's death toll remains a third higher than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa 18 months after major peace deals, the International Rescue Committee said.

Most deaths come from easily treatable ailments, it said, citing measles epidemics known to have swept populations in the foreign- and rebel-held east during the war.

"In fact, Congo is the deadliest war the world has seen since the end of the Second World War, and ... these staggering figures have gone largely ignored by the media and world leaders," Dr. Richard Brennan, director of the organization's health unit, told Associated Press Television News in New York.

Researchers used a scientific random selection meant to produce a representative sampling. The surveyed 19,500 households across Congo and projected death tolls based on specific accounts of deaths within those households.

The survey found 2.7 deaths every month out of every 1,000 children under 5, a child mortality-rate twice that even of sub-Saharan Africa.

Deaths among children accounted for 45.4 percent of the 500,000 estimated deaths from conflict in the latest deaths between the survey period of January 2003 and April 2004.

Sporadic but persistent clashes and tensions continue to limit civilian access to humanitarian assistance, food supplies and basic medical care.

Seventy percent of Congo's estimated 60 million plus people still have no secure access to food, international agencies estimate.

The size of Congo -- a nation as big as Western Europe -- and the length of Congo's conflict have helped heighten the death toll and limit outside awareness of civilian suffering.

Starting in 1998, the conflict in Congo quickly drew in the armies of five other African nations. Neighboring Rwanda and Uganda and allied Congolese rebel groups held control of the east and northeast. Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia held the west for the government.

Fighters in rebel- and foreign-controlled areas throughout the war blocked normal trade routes, plundered food stores and blocked farmers from producing crops, according to aid groups and refugees.

A rare visit to cut-off central Congo at the height of the war, by The Associated Press to the front-line town of Kabinda, found war-displaced emerging from hiding in the bush bringing emaciated children, adults dying of measles and women dying of complications from childbirth.

The group's last survey, released in April 2003, estimated 3.3 million deaths.

A U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee approved the original methodology, which largely is the standard process for estimating suffering from crises in areas that have been all or largely cut off.

For the survey, researchers used a scientifically randomized selection to pick 10 health zones in west Congo and 11 in east Congo, and further scientific random selection to pick households within the zones for interviewing.

While the methods of the survey have been largely accepted, some statisticians have cautioned against overprecision in estimating death tolls when on-the-ground documentation of deaths is not possible, as in many wars.

Congo's government, working with a U.N. peace force growing to 16,000, is working to secure government control across the country.

The key targets are militia groups roaming the forests and volcanic east, a lawless area of few roads that saw little government presence even before the war.

Congo's failure to rein in militias seen as threatening regional security helped spark the war.

The U.N. and others accused occupying nations of prolonging it to plunder Congo's gold, diamonds and other wealth.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa....ap/index.html

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

schsa

There are some places where nothing will stop people from fighting and killing each other. Add disease and famine and people will die. So much could be prevented if it were safe for care groups to go in and assist but no one is going to send aid workers anywhere that there is a chance that they will be killed before they can help.

It is a country totally out of control not unlike the Ivory Coast and so many African nations. Too bad because there is a great possibility that this could be a rich and productive nation.

__________________
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.

Jolie Rouge

Donors push restraint on Congo
Friday, December 10, 2004 Posted: 2:15 PM EST (1915 GMT)

KIGALI, Rwanda (Reuters) -- International donors urged Rwanda on Friday to exercise restraint in its relations with neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo amid reports Rwandan soldiers had crossed the border to attack rebels.

Key financiers including the European Union, United Nations, the United States and Sweden meeting in the Rwandan capital side-stepped a decision on whether to cut aid in the event of unilateral military action by Kigali.

Kigali has repeatedly threatened to send soldiers across the border to carry out surgical strikes against rebels based in Congo, some of whom took part in its 1994 genocide.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo said last week it was "almost certain" Rwanda was involved in attacks on rebels who hide out in Congo, raising fears of renewed war in a region where 4 million people have died from genocide and war-related hunger and disease in the past decade.

Rwanda says it is impatient with delays to international promises to help disarm the rebels. "One would hope the government of Rwanda would respect the integrity of Congo, exercise restraint and resist the urge to take unilateral action against Congo," Kamau Macharia, UNDP representative and donor coordinator told Reuters.

But the donors said the latest developments would not affect their relations with Rwanda, which relies on external financial aid to fund 90 percent of its development budget and 50 percent of its general budget. "Overall, Rwanda has registered remarkable economic growth which must be supported continuously," Kamau said.

Separately, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto said after a visit to both countries that the United States is confident Rwanda and Congo were committed to peace. "Both countries as well as Uganda have shown commitments and we can move forward. I am very hopeful that we will have progress," Yamamoto said on Friday in Kinshasa. He did not specify what commitments had been made.

Rwanda's economy grew 5.1 percent in 2004, rebounding from 3.5 percent in 2003 on the back of better performance in the coffee, services and industrial sectors, according to the country's budget presented last week.

Rwanda has already invaded Congo twice in the past decade, in 1996 and 1998.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa...eut/index.html

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

U.N. peacekeepers arrested for sex crimes
Monday, February 14, 2005


UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The Moroccan mission to the United Nations has announced it arrested six U.N. peacekeeping soldiers in Congo accused of sexually abusing local girls and discharged the contingent's commander.

Fred Eckhard, the U.N. secretary-general's spokesman, on Monday said the announcement over the weekend showed "the Morrocan authorities attach as much importance to eradicating sexual abuse within U.N. peacekeeping missions as does the U.N. The mission hopes that the vigorous and public reaction of Morocco will serve as an example and that other troop contributing countries will follow," he added.

There have been more than 150 allegations of sexual exploitation of girls as young as 13 by U.N. peacekeepers in Congo.

Annan last Wednesday urged the Security Council to add at least 100 military police to the peacekeeping mission in Congo to help prevent sex abuse by the U.N. forces.

Eckhard said other measures had been taken, including improved surveillance around U.N. military camps, a curfew and the shuttering of local stores where soldiers interacted with locals.

Allegations of abuse first surfaced in 2004 and the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services said abuse by peacekeepers was ongoing.

According to last month's report by the U.N. watchdog agency, peacekeepers regularly had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money.

Sexual activities continued even while the investigation was continuing in the eastern town of Bunia between May and September 2004, the report said.

The United Nations currently has about 11,500 soldiers, 150 civilian police and 700 international staff in Congo trying to support the country's fragile peace process and help it move toward free elections later this year. In October, the council authorized an increase in the U.N. mission to 16,700.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa....ap/index.html

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Thousands flee Congo plague outbreak
Friday, February 18, 2005

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- A rare form of plague has killed at least 61 at a diamond mine in the remote wilds of northeast Congo, and authorities fear hundreds more who fled into the forests to escape the contagion are infected and dying, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Eric Bertherat, a doctor for the U.N. health agency, said the outbreak has been building since December around a mine near Zobia, 170 miles (300 kilometers) north of Kisangani, the capital of the vast Oriental province.

Nearly all the 7,000 miners have abandoned the infected area and sought refuge in the world's second-largest tropical rain forest, all but cut off from the outside world.

Security fears -- mainly from bandits and militia leftover from Congo's five-year war -- have also slowed international response, Bertherat said.

Plague is spread mainly by fleas, and causes an infection in the lungs that slowly suffocates its victims. If caught in time, it can be treated with antibiotics.

Bubonic plague is the most common strain, transmitted to humans who touch infected animals or inhale the bacteria in the air.

Pneumonic plague -- the kind in the current outbreak -- is rarer, but also more easily transmitted from person to person through coughing or touch. Bertherat, speaking to reporters by telephone from Geneva, said plague is commonly found in this region of northern Congo, but this large an outbreak was unusual.

Unlike deadly ebola, which is also found in the dark forests of Congo, Bertherat said this outbreak of plague wasn't likely to spread too quickly given the remote and isolated terrain. "It's still a large concern," said Bertherat, "because these are cases moving elsewhere."

Bertherat and a 10-member team of WHO doctors will arrive in Kisangani on Monday to prepare a journey into the forests. He said doctors from the aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres were already there, treating miners they could locate.

The forests have long been both a refuge and a death trap for Congolese running from war, disaster and disease. More than 1 million people still live rough in the forests after fleeing Congo's devastating 1998-2002 war. Aid groups say nearly 1,000 people still die every day from war-induced starvation and disease.



According to the WHO, the incubation time for plague is two to six days. Victims develop a fever and cough. Breathing becomes difficult as lungs fill with fluid.

Death can come as quickly as 48 hours.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/02/18....ap/index.html

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

WARNING : GRAPHIC - NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH










U.N.: Congo Militias Grilled Victims Alive
By EDDY ISANGO

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - Militiamen grilled bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, U.N. peacekeepers charged Wednesday, adding cannibalism to a list of atrocities allegedly carried out by one of the tribal groups fighting in northeast Congo.

The report came as a key U.N. official said the ongoing violence in Congo, claiming thousands of lives every month, has made it the site of the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The commander of U.N. forces in Congo, Gen. Patrick Cammaert, presented a report on abuses allegedly committed by the Patriotic Resistance Front of Ituri. ``Those responsible for atrocities will be brought to justice,'' Cammaert said.


Peacekeepers have also begun working to cut off weapons supplies to the group, which apparently entered the country from neighboring Uganda, he said. Members of the group were suspected of killing nine U.N. peacekeepers in a Feb. 25 ambush. On March 1, gunmen fired on Pakistani peacekeepers and the peacekeepers fought back, killing up to 60 fighters, U.N. officials said at the time.


Congo became a battleground for six nations during a 1998-2002 war that killed some 50,000 people directly and another 3 million through strife-induced hunger and disease. But sporadic fighting continues between militiamen, rebels and government troops in the lawless northeast.


Jan Egeland, head of U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Wednesday that the fighting in Congo had overtaken Sudan's embattled Darfur region as the world's most serious humanitarian crisis. ``Measured in human lives lost, I think that Congo is the number one problem in the world today,'' Egeland told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland.


About 3 million Congolese are now in acute need of assistance and as many as 30,000 people are dying every month from conflict-related causes, Egeland said. The United Nations says Sudan's Darfur region remains a major crisis, estimating that about 180,000 people have died there since October 2003 and a further 1.8 million have been displaced. Egeland said as many as 10,000 people may be dying there every month as a result of violence, disease or malnutrition.

The Darfur conflict began in February 2003, when rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government to win more political and economic rights for the region's African tribes.

The allegations of cannibalism in the U.N. report were from a summary of testimony from witnesses gathered over a year from hundreds of people who had been kidnapped by militias in the region. The report said that some victims were killed by torture and decapitation. Those not killed were held in labor camps and forced to work as fishermen, porters, domestic workers and sex slaves. ``Several witnesses reported cases of mutilation followed by death or decapitation,'' the report said.

The U.N. report included an account from Zainabo Alfani in which she said she was forced to watch rebels kill and eat two of her children in June 2003. The report said, ``In one corner, there was already cooked flesh from bodies and two bodies being grilled on a barbecue and, at the same time, they prepared her two little girls, putting them alive in two big pots filled with boiling water and oil.''

Her youngest child was saved, apparently because at six months old it didn't have much flesh.

Alfani said she was gang-raped by the rebels and mutilated. She survived to tell her horror story, but died in the hospital on Sunday of AIDS contracted during her torture two years earlier, the U.N. report said. The mother gave her account in February, but the U.N. waited to publish them until after her death for fear she would become a target for reprisal.


The new International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, said this week that its first cases will deal with war crimes committed in eastern Congo.


03/17/05 00:36

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...news_0305congo

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Angola's Virus Death Toll Reaches 126

LUANDA, Angola (AP) - Angola's death toll from an Ebola-like virus has climbed to 126, the Health Ministry and World Health Organization said Thursday, making it the deadliest recorded outbreak of the rare Marburg disease.

There is no vaccine or cure for Marburg, which spreads through bodily fluids and can kill rapidly, according to the World Health Organization. The virus was identified only last week as the death toll spiraled.

The worst outbreak of the virus on record killed 123 in neighboring Congo between 1998 and 2000. That was also the last known outbreak.

Angola has recorded 132 cases of the Marburg virus over the past six months, the ministry and WHO said in a joint statement.


Almost all the deaths have occurred in the northern province of Uige, which lies on the border with Congo and since last year has received tens of thousands of refugees returning home after fleeing to the neighboring country to escape Angola's civil war.


About three-quarters of cases have occurred in children under 5, and a small number of health care workers are among those adults infected, WHO said last week.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said Wednesday it was sending experts to the Southwest African country.


Officials in Uige have canceled school classes for 30 days and advised residents to take precautions including extra attention to cleanliness and sanitation.


Angola's public infrastructure was wrecked by a two-decade civil war which ended in 2002. Sanitation facilities are inadequate or nonexistent, and hospitals are understaffed and poorly equipped.


The CDC scientists will assist WHO with outbreak investigation, infection control and laboratory diagnosis.



03/31/05 17:12


http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...1712543717.htm

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jaidness

this is so sad, how it has been basically ignored, I have been following this for a while now and have urged my politicians to do something about it. Is this to be our generations holocaust? 3.8 million, just makes me go cold, how can anyone ignore this? While the whole Terri S thing has raged many have died for lack of involvment, lack of media attention, lack of outrage by the masses...thank you Jolie for trying to bring this matter to the publics attention by posting this.

__________________
Crazy,but thats how it goes Millions of people,living as foes,maybe,it's not too late,to learn how to love and forget how to hate.~Ozzy~Crazy Train
In your house,I long to be,Room by room,patiently,I'll wait for you there,Like a stone,I'll wait for you there Alone~ LIke A Stone ~Audioslave(for my hubby)

schsa

I don't think that it is being ignored as much as other countries know that the civil war that is going on will endanger anyone who tries to help out. Aid is available but it cannot get to the people who need it because the rebels will take it first and kill anyone who gets in their way.

__________________
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.

Jolie Rouge

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jaidness

ugh that Marburg virus is scarey stuff!

__________________
Crazy,but thats how it goes Millions of people,living as foes,maybe,it's not too late,to learn how to love and forget how to hate.~Ozzy~Crazy Train
In your house,I long to be,Room by room,patiently,I'll wait for you there,Like a stone,I'll wait for you there Alone~ LIke A Stone ~Audioslave(for my hubby)