ONE WORLD OF PAIN AMONG MANY

I've been surfing the Web and reading about the crimes against humanity perpetrated in Fallujah, Darfur, and Bagram (among other places), but has anyone heard about this? From Human Rights Watch, "D. R. Congo: Tens of Thousands Raped, Few Prosecuted" (3/7):

In eastern Congo's conflict, government troops and rebel fighters have raped tens of thousands of women and girls, but fewer than a dozen perpetrators have been prosecuted by a judicial system in dire need of reform, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on the eve of International Women's Day.

The 52-page report, "Seeking Justice: The Prosecution of Sexual Violence in the Congo War," documents how the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken insufficient steps to prosecute those responsible for wartime rape. Human Rights Watch called on the Congolese government and international donors, including the European Union, to take urgent steps to reform Congo's justice system

Despite the peace agreement and broad-based transition process in the D.R. Congo, which began in 2003, soldiers of the national army and armed groups continue to perpetrate sexual violence in the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Orientale. In 1998, armed conflict broke out among the Congolese government, several neighboring countries and various rebel factions. Since then, combatants on all sides have subjected tens of thousands of women and girls -- as well as a far smaller number of men and boys -- to sexual violence...

...

An increasing number of victims of sexual violence are demanding justice. "My husband does not want to live with me any more because I was raped by the Mai-Mai," said one woman who, along with 11 others in Shabunda, South Kivu, was gang-raped by combatants belonging to the Mai-Mai, a local Congolese armed group opposed to foreign occupation. "The perpetrators must be punished," she said... (#)

I wonder how many right-wingers who, reflexively turning away from similar crimes Americans are committing, would read something like this and be appalled at the savagery? Assuming, of course, they bother to give it a thought in the first place -- I don't read or hear much about what's been going on in Sudan, for instance, in the mainstream media.

Skin color probably plays a good-sized part of it (and our collective hypocrisy is obvious), but I think it goes deeper than that. There's an underlying indifference to human suffering that gives rise to personal acts like rape and general ones like war. And it spreads like a virus: The evil we do almost always lives on after us, starting with the immediate victims of our evil, who act in kind toward still others. Sometimes it all boils over in one place, and then the rest of us wonder how so much evil could be concentrated in one spot.

Until we're distracted again... togel singapura