
As we embark upon the fourth annual Breaking The Silence: Congo Week, Oct. 16-22, 2011, I greet you in the name of many Congolese youth who are seeking to ride the winds of change that blew from the African youth revolution in Soweto in 1976 to the streets of Cairo today, now making their way across the Atlantic to America, symbolized by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As a coalition of Africa-focused human rights and peace organizations representing a broad range of individuals, including Rwandans, Ugandans and Congolese people, we write to express our dismay at your university’s decision to welcome and inaugurate a partnership with Rwandan President Paul Kagame at Carnegie Mellon University on Sept. 16

Walmart released a video for their back-to-school campaign series titled “Urgent Care” that features three teenage boys trying to identify an unknown skin condition. One boy browses a “Web MD” page on leprosy, asking if the boy with symptoms has “been in the Congo recently.”

The rationale for the U.S. intervention in Libya is to protect vulnerable civilians from mass slaughter by the Libyan regime. Why has the U.S. has pursued a military path to “protect” civilians in Libya, when there is a far greater humanitarian crisis unfolding in the heart of Africa, in the Congo. President Obama has the diplomatic tools at his disposal to help alleviate the human suffering in the Congo but has not used them. Watch the videos and sign the petition.

Congolese youth, the great Congo of today is ours. This gift is not just hereditary, but also because millions of Congolese have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country since 1482. We must do everything in our power to assure that our beautiful Congo remains in the hands of the sons and daughters of the Congo.

A series of disasters has displaced and killed millions of people. Distinguished panelists who are not afraid to voice radical viewpoints give us an update on the current situation in Haiti, the DR Congo, Pakistan and New Orleans. Two of these advocates, Ezili Danto of Haiti and Kambale Musavuli of the Congo, are well known to Bay View readers. Ezili (longtime readers will remember her as Marguerite Laurent) emphasizes the economic disparity in Haiti: Half of 1 percent of Haitians own 98 percent of the wealth.

A nationwide coalition of U.S. activists is calling on President Barack Obama to intensify pressure on the government of newly re-elected Rwandan President Paul Kagame. They want Obama to immediately terminate all military assistance and freeze the $240 million scheduled for Kagame’s undemocratic regime.

We with our cell phones are directly fueling the most heinous violence the world has seen in 65 years and subsidizing what one activist, Kambale Musavuli, has referred to as the wholesale rape of land and people. As the beneficiaries of this violence, each of us can and must stand in solidarity with the Congolese people.
“Avatar,” the highest-grossing film of all time, may be more real and current than the average person knows. The battle of Pandora is taking place right now in the Congo! The central question in the Congo, as in “Avatar,” is who is going to control the resources and for whose benefit? Congolese youth have initiated a worldwide mobilization campaign in partnership with young people around the world.

Rwandan police have arrested Peter Erlinder, the American lawyer who traveled to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, on Monday, May 23, to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. He is charged with “genocide ideology,” a crime unique to Rwanda which Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and even the U.S. State Department have denounced as a tool of political repression.

Congolese women are telling world leaders, “Listen to the Congolese for a change. We CAN bring an end to the geo-strategic resource war in the Congo.” Come hear Kambale Musavuli, the dynamic young Congolese leader who travels the U.S. breaking the silence about that war that has taken 6 million lives. He’s speaking Sunday, April 18, 6:30 p.m., at the Black Dot Cafe, 1195 Pine St., West Oakland.

As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of Black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western based “prescriptions” are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions. The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo’s challenges than to resolve them.

Coltan is a mineral necessary for making electronic things work – like cellphones, ipods, PS3s and laptops. Over 6 million Congolese have been murdered to assure that the corporations and governments involved have a corner on the market for the minerals that the Congo produces. This is “Break the Silence” Congo Week. Check out the events and get involved!
One hundred years ago, a global outrage surrounding the death of an estimated 10 million Congolese resulted in the end of King Leopold II of Belgium’s rule in the Congo. Ordinary people around the world from all walks of life stood at the side of the Congolese and demanded the end of the first recorded Congolese holocaust. A century later, the world finds itself facing the same issue, where the Congolese people are subjected to unimaginable suffering.

Kambale Musavuli, national spokesperson and student coordinator for Friends of the Congo, in this interview by POCC Minister of Information JR, challenges the people of the U.S. and President Obama to stop the resource wars in the Congo that have killed 6 million people, half of them children, for minerals like the coltan that powers our cell phones and almost everything electronic.

The December 2008 United Nations report is the latest in a series of U.N. reports dating from 2001 that clearly documents the systematic looting and appropriation of Congolese resources by Rwanda and Uganda, two of Washington and London’s staunchest allies in Africa.

Forty-eight years ago, the first freely elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Emery Lumumba, was brutally murdered by the United States, Belgium and certain local elites because he wanted the resources of the Congo to benefit the Congolese people.

2008 marked the 100-year anniversary of the removal of the Congo from King Leopold II of Belgium as his own personal property. Global outrage at the King’s brutal rule resulted in his losing the Congo treasure trove on Nov. 15, 1908.

The New York Times piece, “Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Trouble in the Congo,” laid the foundation for a more honest dialogue about the resource war in the Congo, which has resulted in dying and suffering of holocaust proportions.
On Nov. 11, KPFK radio host Dedon Kamathi interviewed Kambale Musavuli from the Congo, who is the coordinator of the global student movement Breaking the Silence Congo Week. Maurice Carney of Friends of the Congo joined him for an update on the unfolding diplomatic initiative to bring peace and justice to the Congo. Former Congresswoman [...]