Congo mining town
A taxi delivers raw minerals to a Chinese-run smelter in Lubumbashi, Congo
Our minibus taxi stopped the other day a few miles outside of Lubumbashi, the capital of Congo's mining country. We pulled off the road, parked next to a collection of huts and sat there for a few minutes. I couldn't understand the delay, so I turned to ask J-P, the local human rights activist I'd been traveling with, what was up.
"Oh, the driver is just loading up some sacks of minerals to sell at one of the foundries in town."
Oh, of course. Only in Lubumbashi, capital of one of the richest mining areas in the world, where precious metals seem to bust through the earth, would taxi drivers supplement their rush-hour fares with a couple hundred pounds of copper or cobalt.
I then started to notice it everywhere. Along the roads, dozens of taxis seemed to be weighed down with metals, their rears nearly dragging across the asphalt, headed to make a sale at one of the many small factories in and around Lubumbashi. This is how a substantial portion of Congo's metals are produced -- mined by hand by "artisanal miners," individuals who break rocks by hand and sell them in small quantities to middlemen like my taxi driver, who in turn sell them to foundries and smelters to be processed.
Everyone in Lubumbashi, it seems, has at one point had a hand in the mining business. J-P and his colleague Joe are human-rights workers now, but years ago J-P hauled huge, 150-lb. sacks of raw metals to put himself through college and Joe had worked as a middleman, selling small-scale minerals to smelters around town.
The middlemen don't get rich, but in a country with a long history of foreign exploitation it's a rare example of Congolese reaping some small benefit from the ground beneath their feet. Our taxi stopped in one Chinese-run foundry in town, where my taxi man had a brief, animated negotiation with a Congolese foreman before getting back into the driver's seat and gunning the engine in a huff. He seemed to get a better deal at a second foundry, also Chinese-run, and when he dropped us off he was all smiles. I asked him how much he made, knowing that people can be cagey about this kind of stuff.
"Pas mal," he said. Not bad.
MJPC blames the Congolese Government for Deteriorating Situation in East Congo
"There is no excuse for missing to pay salaries to soldiers in lawless eastern Congo for six months"
Following the deteriorating situation in east Congo, the MJPC called for the Congolese Government to pay the salaries of thousands of soldiers who have not been paid for over six months in east Congo, take swift action to enforce the International Criminal Court's (ICC) warrant against Bosco Ntaganda and to hold accountable perpetrators of sexual violence against women for their acts.
"Faillng to hold accountable individuals who commit war crimes and crimes against humunity continues to be the leading cause of widespread and systematic sexual violence acts against girls and women in the easten Congo" said Makuba Sekombo, Community Affairs Director of
the Mobilization for Justice and Peace in the DR Congo (MJPC). Mr. Sekombo again criticized the government of Congo for not only the continuing failure to protect women and young girls from sexual violence, but also for "encouraging conditions that create opportunities for sexual violence to occur". "There is no excuse for missing to pay salaries to soldiers in lawless eastern Congo for six months" said Sekombo.
The MJPC has also renewed its call for the Congolese government to take urgent needed action to end human rights abuses in east Congo, hold perpetrators accountable and ensure reparation for the victims of sexual violence. The MJPC has been urging the Congolese government to compensate the victims of sexual violence in order to also help combat impunity in eastern part of Congo where sexual violence against women and children has been widely used as weapon of war for more than decade.MJPC online petition calling for for help to put pressure on Congolese Government to compensate victims of sexual siolence in Eastern DRC can be signed at http://www.gopetition.com.au/online/26180.html
MJPC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to working to add a voice in the promotion of justice and peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular in the East where thousands of innocent civilians, including children and women continue to be victims of massive human rights violations while the armed groups responsible for these crimes remain unpunished.
For more information on MJPC and the activities, visit the web site http://www.mjpcongo.org. E-mail: info@mjpcongo.org or call Makuba Sekombo at 1 408 806 3644.
Posted by: Rizik | July 09, 2009 at 04:55 AM