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I ask you to bear with me because I'm really mad.
And when I'm this mad,
I sometimes verge on incoherence.
What's more, this is going to be
a three-part commentary over three days
because I couldn't possibly abbreviate
the subject matter further.
And each commentary may be a touch longer than the norm,
so please hang in there.
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch, that tremendously influential
international human rights organization
released its latest report
on the maelstrom of carnage and conflict
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
It's the most definitive report yet,
and it's quite the harrowing document.
With impeccable research,
it establishes the collateral damage
inflicted upon the people of the Congo
by the latest military adventure,
believe it or not, a joint adventure
between the so called Federal Congolese Army
and the United Nations peacekeeping forces.
You talk about an oxymoron.
But the collateral damage has meant maiming and murdering
and cutting to pieces of thousands of people
and thousands of rapes of women
with a savagery that knows no name.
And this merciless raping, of course,
has led to the transmission of the AIDS virus.
So for the women, it's a continuing nightmare.
And just a word of potboil history:
After 1994, that is to say after the Rwandan genocide,
a million people crossed into the Congo,
including huge numbers of genocide there,
the genocidal that's responsible for the genocide,
and they've inhabited the jungle ever since.
And in the intervening 13 or 14 years,
the Congo has descended into an infinite number
of malicious and marauding armies and local gangs
who have murdered and *** for *** and pleasure,
mostly to get their hands
on the mineral resources of the Congo.
Five million people have died in the process.
And the military strategy of choice
has turned out to be the raping of women,
half a million women.
Whole community subdued to the mass raping of women.
And then along comes
the United Nations peacekeeping force
known as MONUC,
supposedly to bring peace and to protect the women.
MONUC has been a colossal failure.
And this latest military adventure called Kimia II,
documented by Human Rights Watch,
has been the greatest failure of all.
Believe me, it's time for heads to roll.
I'll deal with that tomorrow.
I'm Stephen Lewis.
**Captions by Project readOn**