IsthatyouJohnWayne 0 Posted May 23, 2003 It is funny that humans seem to spend so much time being inhumane. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PitViper 0 Posted May 23, 2003 Pygmies beg UN for aid to save them from Congo cannibalsBy Michael Dynes, Africa Correspondent PYGMY leaders have called on the UN to set up an international tribunal to put government and rebel fighters from the Democratic Republic of Congo on trial for acts of cannibalism against their people. Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN’s Indigenous People’s Forum that during the four-year civil war his people had been hunted down and eaten. “In living memory, we have seen cruelty, massacres, and genocide, but we have never seen human beings hunted down as though they were game animals,†he said. “Pygmies are being pursued in the forests. People have been eaten. This is nothing more, nothing less, than a crime against humanity.†More than 600,000 pygmies are believed to live in the Congo’s vast jungles, where they eke out a subsistence existence. Both sides in the war regard them as “subhumanâ€, and believe that their flesh can confer magical powers. UN human rights activists reported this year that rebels had cooked and eaten at least a dozen pygmies. Some of the worst atrocities took place when the Congolese Liberation Movement, one of the main rebel groups, tried to take the town of Mambasa from the rival Congolese Rally for Democracy last year. Mr Makelo called on the forum to ask the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. There were reports yesterday of cannibalism against other Congolese in the mineral-rich province of Ituri in the east. Fierce clashes between ethnic Hema and Lendu militias this month are know to have resulted in more than 300 deaths. A mass grave containing the remains of more than 30 men, women and children was found near the town, UN officials said. Church leaders and residents have accused Lendu militiamen of killing civilians, cutting open their chests, removing hearts, lungs and livers, and eating them. Father Joseph Deneckere, a Belgian priest who has lived in the Congo since 1970, said that traditional superstitious beliefs, entrenched hatreds and attempts to settle old scores lay behind the atrocities. “Some of the victims had their sexual organs missing after tribal fighters cut them off to use as charms,†he said. Tribal fighters had also been seen wandering around the bush with human organs “draped from their weaponsâ€. Acquitto Kisembo, a resident of Bunia, the town at the centre of the fighting, said: “The sight of a corpse with a missing liver or heart is horrific, especially when you know those parts were eaten, and that the same could happen to you.†UN officials have opened a formal investigation into the allegations, which they describe as credible. The region remains dangerously tense, despite last week’s ceasefire, the UN says. Gunmen with rocket-propelled grenades roam the streets of Bunia. Eighty per cent of the 350,000 inhabitants have fled. About 750, mostly Uruguayan, UN peacekeepers are stationed there, but they do not have the authority to use lethal force. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, has asked France to lead an emergency force to stabilise the region. It has agreed to do so, but has insisted that other countries join. Britain, which is considering contributing, says that it is a “stop-gap operation†to reinforce the existing UN contingent. ========================================== Quote[/b] ]Mr Makelo called on the forum to ask the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. It's not?  I'll be damned... -=Die Alive=- Where is Willy Wonka when you need him? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FallenPaladin 0 Posted May 23, 2003 It is funny that humans seem to spend so much time being inhumane. Â Unfortunately yes. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarkLight 0 Posted May 23, 2003 It is funny that humans seem to spend so much time being inhumane. Â That's where humanity is for. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Die Alive 0 Posted May 23, 2003 It is funny that humans seem to spend so much time being inhumane.  That's where humanity is for. Oh, the humanity! Quote[/b] ]More than 600,000 pygmies are believed to live in the Congo’s vast jungles, where they eke out a subsistence existence. Both sides in the war regard them as “subhumanâ€, and believe that their flesh can confer magical powers. Magical powers, eh? -=Die Alive=- Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarkLight 0 Posted May 23, 2003 It is funny that humans seem to spend so much time being inhumane. Â That's where humanity is for. Oh, the humanity! Exactly ;) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jinef 2 Posted May 23, 2003 Yuck, poor people. Quite amusing though, in a sort of satirical way i suppose. A bit like in Africa the cure for AIDS is thought to be to have sex with as young as virgin as possible, not very helpful. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
-TU--33ker 0 Posted May 24, 2003 Yuck, poor people.Quite amusing though, in a sort of satirical way i suppose. A bit like in Africa the cure for AIDS is thought to be to have sex with as young as virgin as possible, not very helpful. some people in africa belive that you're imune against AIDS if you have sex with an albino. so albino women often get raped! this belief in "magical powers" is really a problem in africa... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Longinius 1 Posted May 24, 2003 I got two friends finishing training for the Swedish UN deployment force right now. Looks like they might be going to Congo I guess. Might get a bit more than they bargained for. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PitViper 0 Posted May 24, 2003 $33ker @ May 24 2003,11:46)]this belief in "magical powers" is really a problem in africa... a bit mindboggling isn't it? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tex -USMC- 0 Posted May 24, 2003 $33ker @ May 24 2003,11:46)]this belief in "magical powers" is really a problem in africa... a bit mindboggling isn't it? Not really. It's just an indication that the culture is a bit behind the times. Remember, we were having witch trials as recently as about 300 years ago. They just don't have MTV Africa, that's all. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mr. Duck 0 Posted May 24, 2003 @ May 23 2003,11:56)]Quote[/b] ]“Some of the victims had their sexual organs missing after tribal fighters cut them off to use as charms,” he said. Tribal fighters had also been seen wandering around the bush with human organs “draped from their weapons”. A week or so ago I saw an episode of "The World's Most Dangerous Places" about the civil war in Liberia. Some crazy stuff. 10 year old  kids running around with AK's and RPG's, people eating the hearts of the enemies they killed, every prisioner that was captured was summarily executed after being offered freedom if he told the truth during interrogation...At one point a reporter who was with the rebels inspected some weapons they captured from government troops. The AK's he saw were date stamped as being made in 2002. I've heard such stories too (eating of hearts, executions but not with rifles but knives, and that sort of stuff), but then in Ambon. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarkLight 0 Posted May 24, 2003 $33ker @ May 23 2003,18:46)]Yuck, poor people.Quite amusing though, in a sort of satirical way i suppose. A bit like in Africa the cure for AIDS is thought to be to have sex with as young as virgin as possible, not very helpful. some people in africa belive that you're imune against AIDS if you have sex with an albino. so albino women often get raped! this belief in "magical powers" is really a problem in africa... A lot of them also believe that having sex with a virgin woman will cure AIDS, of course, doing this only makes the problem A LOT bigger... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarkLight 0 Posted May 24, 2003 @ May 23 2003,11:56)]Quote[/b] ]“Some of the victims had their sexual organs missing after tribal fighters cut them off to use as charms,” he said. Tribal fighters had also been seen wandering around the bush with human organs “draped from their weapons”. A week or so ago I saw an episode of "The World's Most Dangerous Places" about the civil war in Liberia. Some crazy stuff. 10 year old  kids running around with AK's and RPG's, people eating the hearts of the enemies they killed, every prisioner that was captured was summarily executed after being offered freedom if he told the truth during interrogation...At one point a reporter who was with the rebels inspected some weapons they captured from government troops. The AK's he saw were date stamped as being made in 2002. I've heard such stories too (eating of hearts, executions but not with rifles but knives, and that sort of stuff), but then in Ambon.  This year a reporter came to my school who had been to some african country. He told us stuff about the child soldiers there, for example: He was walking the street when a 9 year old kid walked over to him, aimed an AK 47 at his face and told him to give all his money to the kid or the kid would shoot his head off. Considering the fact that kids are used as soldiers there the reporter gave the kid his money. This little guy just walked away with the money and his AK. Scary shit... Children are small, most of the time less scared than grown ups, and they're very effective with smaller weapons. And we haven't even talked about how it feels for the enemy. How would you feel if you were being shot at by children, i know i'd fire back, but i'd find it very hard. And also, the fact that your friends are actually being shot by some 10 year olds. It must be very hard to stay sane in that situation... Some pretty shocking stuff is happening out there... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
-TU--33ker 0 Posted May 25, 2003 $33ker @ May 24 2003,11:46)]this belief in "magical powers" is really a problem in africa... a bit mindboggling isn't it? what do you mean? my english isn't the best. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DarkLight 0 Posted May 25, 2003 $33ker @ May 24 2003,13:26)] $33ker @ May 24 2003,11:46)]this belief in "magical powers" is really a problem in africa... a bit mindboggling isn't it? what do you mean? my english isn't the best. Mindboggling... Quote[/b] ]2 entries found for mindboggling.mind-bog·gling (mndbglng) adj. Informal Intellectually or emotionally overwhelming: “a mind-boggling bazaar of competing manufacturers and overlapping technologies†(William D. Marbach). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- mind-boggler n. Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. [buy it] mindboggling mind-boggling adj : intellectually or emotionally overwhelming; "a mind-boggling display"; "a mind-boggling puzzle" From this website Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Assault (CAN) 1 Posted May 26, 2003 I read in interesting article today by Gen. Lewis MacKenzie(Ret) of the Canadian Army. Quote[/b] ]Congo tragedy shows up the UN National Post Monday, May 26, 2003 If it weren't so tragic it would be tedious reflecting on the United Nations' abject failure to address significant issues of international peace and security in the absence of major support -- both moral and material -- from the United States. Study after study undertaken at the behest of the UN's Secretary-General, the most recent being the year 2000 Brahimi Report, have offered up academic solutions to a disastrous situation that cries out for practical solutions. Lakhdar Brahimi (currently the UN Secretary-General's envoy to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan), following a review of the UN's peacekeeping failures in Srebrenica, Somalia and Rwanda, recommended the UN should avoid sending peacekeepers to a conflict absent a precise and unambiguous mandate, adequate funding and sufficient military force to handle a worst-case scenario. Fast forward to the current situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A total of six foreign armies and up to 11 factions (at last estimate) are locked in a violent struggle for control of various parts of a resource-rich country the size of Ontario and Quebec combined. Into this morass the UN has inserted a few hundred officer observers -- unarmed --and a few thousand lightly armed soldiers. Their mandate is to help facilitate the implementation of various flawed peace initiatives that are not honoured by the majority of the participants to the conflict. Ŕ la Somalia in 1992, the UN troops are virtually blockaded in their barracks and are at the mercy of the drugged, undisciplined and ill-led belligerents who surround them and couldn't give a **** for the UN and the utterances from its headquarters in New York. If you are invited to a knife fight you should always take a gun. But yet again, the UN has taken nothing more than a rucksack of optimism and left a UN commander out to dry. Like it or not, the UN is no longer capable of finding adequate resources, read countries, willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters in uniform for someone else's human rights, unless the conflict threatens world peace and security or is in America's self-interest to get involved. Apply that criteria to the situation in the Congo and you get little interest and no action writ large. Africa, in general, and the complicated situation in the Congo don't register on the "must-do" list of the Security Council. Observers wax eloquent on how the Security Council would have acted to stop the potential genocide in Rwanda in 1993 if only they had known of Canadian General Roméo Dallaire's forecast of genocide and his plea for additional soldiers to try and thwart it. Balls! The Permanent Five veto-holding members of the Security Council knew a **** of a lot more about what was going on in Rwanda and what was being planned by the Hutus than General Dallaire, who had virtually zero intelligence-gathering capability in his tiny command. They chose to do nothing because they had no national self-interests in Rwanda. Estimates put the death toll from the current conflict in the Congo at more than three million since 1998. That figure, along with two million plus slaughtered in Southern Sudan during the same period, should qualify Africa for the front pages of the world. Rape, machete blows indiscriminately removing thousands of children's limbs, child-soldiers forced into service as young as 12 have hardly caused a hint of Western interest. On the other hand, recent claims of cannibalism with the hearts and livers of enemy soldiers being eaten while still warm has caught the attention of the sensationalist-seeking Western press. The Congo is a perfect example of a crisis the UN should be able to resolve without the leadership of the United States -- by deploying the force necessary to sort out the thugs and goons who currently control the streets and jungles. The fact that the UN is not capable of doing so should be the final piece of evidence to convince even the most optimistic among us that it is incapable of carrying out the role assigned it in 1945 as the primary instrument responsible for international peace and security. Those numerous Canadian commentators who call for our immediate participation in the Congo as "peacekeepers" display a disturbing ignorance of the profound change that has taken place regarding conflict since the end of the Cold War. Peacekeeping was a key component of our foreign policy for almost 50 years. It was a good run, but the concept is pretty well dead and buried and it's time for its inventor -- us -- to admit it. Mercifully, countries rarely go to war these days, but factions within countries are fighting in more than 50 conflicts as you read this. If the UN is to take on stopping the slaughter it needs the participation of professional militaries trained for combat in sufficient numbers to defeat -- euphemism for kill in most cases -- the perpetrators of these war crimes. The concept of a neutral and impartial role for the UN in such conflicts is dangerous wishful thinking, and wrong. Like it or not, this fact, based on compelling evidence accumulated over the past decade, should be serious food for thought as the federal government undertakes the long-overdue foreign and defence policy review as promised by prime ministerial contenders Paul Martin and John Manley. Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992. © Copyright 2003 National Post From:Here. Tyler Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CuteQA 0 Posted May 27, 2003 an offtopic question. Is that a Offcial flag of Republic of Nogova in Ralph's sig Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
